The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Ree used to say, when you didn’t know what to do, clean dishes. Dirtying dishes worked almost as well. She studied the browning flesh, using a finger to test doneness.

  “Just a bit more,” she said. “We’ve only the two plates, though.”

  “The old man can use my plate,” Gabriel said. “I’ve eaten off worse than bark before.”

  Isobel was going to say that the old man had likely eaten off worse as well, when she froze, her fingers lifting from the fish, still close enough to the flame that she could feel the heat against her skin.

  “Iz?” Gabriel’s voice was hushed, not worried but questioning, while the old man set aside the strap of leather he had picked up again and waited, his hands resting on his knees. She swallowed, her tongue suddenly too large and her throat too dry.

  The sigil in her palm flared once, prickly heat, matching the prickling on the back of her neck, and she knew without looking that the ring on her finger blackened further. Power gathered around them.

  She didn’t want to look, not with her eyes, not with the awareness the sigil in her palm gave her. She wanted to pull the ground over her head and hide, but the ground wasn’t allowing her in, so she had no choice save to flee or look. And the burn of her palm wouldn’t accept flight, demanded she turn, stand, greet the presence that had joined them.

  We dance to the devil’s tune, a whisper of memory reminded her, Marie’s eyes wise and sad. We don’t get to choose it.

  Isobel stood, turned. There was still enough sunlight to see the shadow as it moved, although Isobel had a thought it might be visible under moonlight as well, or better. It would not be seen if she looked for it; lingering at the corner of her gaze, present more when it moved than when it remained still, the fluid tumble of water, the drifting swirl of steam. She knew it for the same thing she had sensed within the circle, the broken remnant of whatever had happened there.

  And yet that thing had been drained, broken. This stirred with power, prickling the hair on Isobel’s arms and scalp; stripped of its substance but none of its danger. The fact that it had left the circle, was not constrained by it, left Isobel uneasy; she did not know what had been done there, did not know what the magicians had called into the circle or why they had left it here, if they had left it at all. . . .

  She had been trained to read people, to tell what they needed, what they wanted, but there was nothing to read here. Nothing save the prickling sensation of power gathered, wound like husks around corn. Was this shadow the bait of the trap, or the one who had set it?

  Isobel forced her panic down, lifting her left hand palm-up so that the sigil was visible, if their visitor could see it. “Here I am,” she said. “Did you call me?”

  She heard the old man saying something and Gabriel’s hushed response, but it was as though they existed elsewhere, heard from a distance. She breathed in through her nose, then out through her mouth, feeling her weight shift in her boots, heels sinking against the ground. This time, she did not try to go deeper, did not risk rejection, but rather spread herself out, the roots of a cottonwood running just below the surface, knotted and strong.

  The non-shape in front of her shifted, as though trying to avoid her touch, but never so far that it disappeared. Like a cat, she thought. Wanting food, fearing a kick.

  “If you need aid, and it is in my power to aid you, tell me how,” Isobel said, her left arm steady as she held it out. “The Devil’s Hand is offered to you.”

  Every child in the Territory knew the touch of a boneyard warding, the cool press of go-away-do-not-disturb that wrapped itself around the dead and kept them safe. It was a dry, smooth warning, without malice or fear. The thing that pressed against her now was none of those things, like nothing she had ever felt before. It sparked like tinder, hot and rough, and forced itself inside her, under her skin, and reached for her bones, scrabbling with a thousand tiny claws to take hold, to pull her inside out and consume her.

  And yet she knew it for what it was: a haint, a ghost who had not been honored, not laid to proper rest.

  For an instant, she was terrified. Her stomach contracted, pressing itself against her spine, even as her bowels threatened to loosen, fear and sorrow flooding her thoughts until there was nothing else.

  Then the lines in her palm flared, red-hot, and she yelped, pain racing through the bones of her arm, shaking everything else out of its way, and she could breathe again, her thoughts and emotions her own. She panted, chest heaving, and tasted something hot and bitter on her tongue.

  The presence off to her side flickered once, limned in darkness. For a heartbeat, it was massive, flaring over her, blocking the sky, and then moved so swiftly she could barely follow it, plowing into her with the force of a rockslide. She felt the blow this time, felt her knees buckle and her ribs crack, and she froze, so cold, unable to breathe.

  Old. So old, so very old and so powerful and so angry and so hungry, and it writhed and seethed, the whirling center of a storm, grit and stone and bitter heat.

  Then there were hands on her, hard and rough, and she was being dragged away, thrown away, and the sound of another voice in words she couldn’t identify, a rising chant that sank down into her skin, into her bones, warming them until she could feel herself again, feel the air moving in and out of her chest.

  She opened her eyes, then closed them again. There was a snort of warm, fetid air on her face, and she opened her eyes to confirm that yes, there was a thick, pale brown muzzle a handspan from her nose, too narrow to belong to horse or mule, even without the multiple points of bone equally close and three times as terrifying. But between nose and prongs, wide-set brown eyes studied her, then closed once in what she suspected was meant to be a wink.

  “Isobel.” Gabriel’s voice, farther away than the elk’s head but still close by. The glow around them had to be coming from the coalstone, because past that pale light, night surrounded them. How long had she been insensible?

  “Yes.” Her voice was raw, as though she’d been screaming.

  Gabriel’s wasn’t much better. “What happened?”

  She managed to shake her head, as the elk shifted slightly, until it towered dizzyingly over her. “It didn’t want my help?”

  It took a little while before the elk backed off enough to allow Isobel to sit up, and even then, Gabriel was hesitant to approach her, as each time he moved in her direction, the prongs would lower again and a deep, wet snort would be issued, warning him off. It wasn’t until the moon had risen overhead, its waxing white light making the spray of stars seem somehow dimmer, that the beast faded out of the firelight.

  It did not go away; she could hear and smell it, just out of sight, but it was allowing them room to tend to her now.

  She couldn’t sense the haint at all; it was gone, but she didn’t think it had gone far. She suspected that it couldn’t go far. It might not be bound within the circle, but something here held it fast, against its will.

  Broken Tongue touched her forehead, his fingers dry as twigs. “Vous êtes—” and he used words that Isobel didn’t recognize, followed by a hand sign that she thought meant strangers, and then . . .

  “Euh . . . des étrangers avec les mains ouvertes?” Gabriel hazarded, frowning. He clearly didn’t know the hand signs either. The old man considered, then gave a shrug.

  “Ils peuvent être des amis, peut-être.”

  “What?” Isobel asked, trying not to move her head, for fear of more dizziness.

  “I think we have moved from useless to possibly not entirely useless,” Gabriel told her. “He’s, I think, calling us ‘friends-not-yet-made.’ ”

  “Pas pire,” he told the old man, nodding. “Good enough.”

  The old man scowled, his lips thinning. “Mais elle est pas assez forte.”

  “What did he say now?”

  “He’s worried about you.” But the look that Gabriel gave the old man told another story. Did her mentor still somehow think that she couldn’t read him? She knew that
his ribs still ached, that he was concerned about something he wasn’t telling her, and that he was lying to her now.

  “Do you remember what happened?” he asked again, even as his hands were moving gently against her skull, her braid undone so he could check for injuries to her head. She knew she wasn’t hurt, but she also knew that telling him that wouldn’t stop him from making certain.

  “What did you see?” she asked in return.

  “Nothing. You stood up and looked around like you’d heard something, then you reached out your hand”—and he tapped her left hand with a forefinger—and told whatever you were looking at that you wanted to help. And then a breeze came up.”

  “Warm or cold?”

  His hands paused a moment. “Cold.” He pulled back and poked one finger at her jacket, helping her ease it off her shoulders. The skin under her blouse prickled without its warmth, even as his hands braced against her ribs, and he had her inhale and exhale. “And then you . . . I’m not sure, but you seemed to be arguing with something. And then your hoofed friend over there showed up and knocked you flat on your back.”

  Isobel turned her head, wincing as her muscles protested, to where she was reasonably sure the elk waited, draped in the shadows.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “It was our quiet friend who dragged you out of the way,” Gabriel said, misunderstanding her words. “I think whatever you were doing is what changed his opinion of us.”

  She risked turning her head again to look at Broken Tongue. He was sitting by the fire again, legs crossed in front of him, the firelight casting him half in and half out of shadows. “Merci,” she called, not expecting him to acknowledge her.

  He didn’t.

  “Do you feel up to eating something?” Gabriel asked, moving away slightly. “We saved you some of the fish.” He grimaced. “What didn’t burn, anyway. But there’s some left, and bread, if you can stomach it. Then I want you to move around a little before you sleep.”

  She thought about arguing, then thought about the elk keeping guard in the shadows, the way it had, she was certain, winked at her, and she nodded, allowing Gabriel to wrap a blanket around her shoulders and fetch a plate. Nothing else would happen tonight, she thought. Not while the guardian stood watch.

  She looked up and saw the old man observing her. His face fell in shadows, but there was something that made her tense again, then glance to where she thought the elk stood. If she’d learned anything from traveling with Farron Easterly, it was that someone could be an ally and not be trustworthy. And “friends not yet made” did not promise friendship would occur.

  She lifted her chin and stared back at the old man, black gaze steady against brown, until Gabriel came back with her dinner and they both looked away.

  There was no birdsong. Gabriel noted that before he was fully awake: more proof that something was wrong, that there was danger lurking, even if he couldn’t see it.

  Caution prickling his skin, he slipped out from under his blanket, leaving the other two sleeping by the remains of the fire, and went down to the creek to wash his face. There was no sound to alert him, but when he looked up, the elk stood on the other bank, its antlers silhouetted by the pale dawn light rising behind them. He paused, half-bent to the creek, and watched the animal as it moved, placidly chewing at the grass, occasionally lifting its head to scent the air and then returning to the grass again.

  The fact that it lingered was curious; that it had appeared not once but twice was both reassuring and worrisome. He had named it wapiti, but it had not spoken, had not offered unasked-for advice, and spirit-animals excelled at unwanted advice. And yet it was clearly more than an ordinary creature, no matter how it behaved now: it had acted with intelligence when it had let them pass, it had acted with intent the day before when it knocked Isobel away from whatever had been threatening her.

  The thought drove him to pick up a stone and flip it, violently, down the creek, making two skips before sinking into the current. After knocking Isobel away, the wapiti had wheeled to face whatever had attacked her, placing itself as a barrier while grandfather darted forward to pull her to safety. An elk and an old man had been of more use than he’d managed, aware something was happening but blind to whatever it was. Useless.

  And why is that, a voice asked him. Why was grandfather able to see, and you were blind? Hnnn?

  The voice —mocking, but not unkind —was familiar. Old Woman had been the one to take a bedraggled, half-mad man out of the mud and teach him to breathe the Territory’s air again. Not that he’d wanted to at the time.

  You are what you are and this is the place where you are that, the Hochunk woman had told him, sucking thoughtfully on the pipe she carried with her at all times. It smelled like aged skunk to him, but he was never fool enough to say so. The harder you ran from it, the harder it chased you. But it cannot catch you without you willing it so.

  Gabriel’s back teeth ground against each other. He did not will it. He would not. He would not be owned.

  The elk raised its head and looked at him, as though it had heard his thoughts. “Don’t you lecture me either, elder cousin,” he told it, and leant down to splash water on his face. When he looked up again, skin tingling from the cold, the elk was still staring at him.

  “Do you want to be turned into pemmican?” he asked it, and it snorted once —laughter, Gabriel was certain of it—and departed, its hooves kicking in a graceful, thudding lope that covered ground faster than anything that large should move, leaving the grass upright and uncrushed in its wake.

  Gabriel reached down again to touch one hand to the surface of the water, letting its chill cool his own skin, the awareness of water filling him. This was real, physical. He could sense where this narrow creek led, could trace back to its source higher in the mountains, the thick packed snow that fed it, the tiny rivulets and deep-down springs that connected to it. Like the Road, it was all one. All connected.

  It was also seductive, that feeling, coaxing him in until he would drown of it. Gabriel jerked his hand back as though the water had suddenly become steam-hot, wiping it against his pant leg.

  “No.” He looked out where the elk had disappeared to, then up into the sky, wispy white clouds moving east to west, echoes of his dreams carried in their shapes. “No.”

  He refilled the canteens he’d brought with him, carefully, not allowing his hands to linger in the water, and went back to rejoin the others.

  Isobel was sitting next to the rebuilt fire, combing out her hair. In profile, the strong bones that had first drawn his eye were even more apparent now, the softness of saloon life worn to finer lines. She would never have been pretty, but something drew the eye and left it there to linger. Her hair was brighter than the old man’s, reddish highlights glinting in the black, and her flesh wasn’t the same copper, but with the two of them sitting together by the fire, for a moment he was all too aware of his paler skin and blue eyes. Never mind that he’d been born to the Territory same as she, that his father and grandfather had been hunters in the Wilds; in that instant, he was an outsider.

  And who holds blame for that? Old Woman asked again in his thoughts before he shoved her out.

  “You have water?” Isobel’s question broke the moment, and he nodded, handing her one of the canteens. She placed her comb down on her knee and poured the water into the battered tin pot, placing it on the tripod to bring the chicory-and-coffee mixture to a boil. Then she sifted her fingers into her hair, swiftly plaiting the long strands into a single braid.

  He sat down and watched her face, how her lips pursed, bright eyes hooded as she concentrated on what she could feel between her fingers rather than what she could see. There was an intensity to her that he’d admired since the first he saw her, a determination to do, to be something, with an intensity that would accept no obstacles.

  It was a quality he’d admired, even knowing it attracted trouble the way a carcass attracted buzzards.

  “How are
you feeling?”

  “Better.” Her hands didn’t pause until she reached the end of the braid, tying it off with the loop of leather cord he’d cut for her. She then reached into her pack and pulled out the two small feathers Calls Thunder had given her, back in De Plata, one greyish-blue, one banded white-and-black, both slightly ruffled along the edges now, each barely the size of his thumb. She wove them into the braid with that same nimble surety and seemed oblivious to the fact that her actions had attracted the old man’s attentions.

  “Tsigili,” he said. “Et jasur.”

  Isobel looked at the old man, then at Gabriel, clearly expecting a translation.

  “Je m’excuse, qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?”

  The old man gestured at Isobel with two fingers held upright. “Des plumes.”

  It was, Gabriel thought, a question more than a statement. “Étant données à elle par la parleur-des-rêves dans De Plata.” If the feathers did have some medicine-meaning, better the old man know Isobel had been gifted them by someone with the authority to do so, rather than claiming them for herself.

  The old man pursed his lips, dropped his fingers, and that seemed to be the extent of his interest.

  Gabriel pushed, delicately. “Vous savez ce que signifient-ils, grandpapa?”

  He grunted. “Le devin et le potin, le messager.” More pursed lips, then, almost grudgingly: “Elle comporte de nombreux symboles forts.”

  Isobel was watching them, her gaze flicking alertly between them. “What did he say?”

  “Your feathers. I told you someone would know what they meant.”

  Her expression livened at that. He had told her that feathers meant something, but he hadn’t known what, specifically, and Calls Thunder, who had given them to her, hadn’t explained.

  “And?”

  “The birds they come from, one is far-seeing, the other carries messages.” Gossip, the old man’d said, but Gabriel wasn’t going to tell her that. “He says that they’re strong medicine.”