The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Power fed on power.

  The boss and Marie had taught her how to treat power; Gabriel had shown her how to speak to elders; Farron had warned her of the temptations of madness. Isobel held those doors closed, contained herself, allowed the winds to probe and push without giving them domain over her, without allowing them within her. I belong to another.

  Amusement returned, tumbling, sly laughter, but they did not provoke her claim. There was no malice in the winds, nor kindness, nor humor, only power, relentless and rising.

  Isobel thought of figures gathered together in this space, figures of wind and flesh, then imbued the image with curiosity, a question. Will you share with me knowledge of a thing, free ones?

  The breeze cooled, swirled. Power had risen here, given flesh and form, but they cared nothing for the how or why. Nothing of flesh interested them for long.

  Thank you for—

  She felt the air swirl once more and then fall still before she could complete her thanks. She was flesh and boring.

  But something lingered outside the second circle, behind where Gabriel sat with his hat pulled down over his eyes, his body propped against the bulk of his kit, the horses and mule behind him, stirring restlessly. The remains of their fire, the warm smell of chicory dumped over coals still lingering in the air. And the smell of something else, sulphur and yeast and warm, sweet smoke.

  Isobel reached for it, then hesitated. Nothing died as quickly as a fool in the Territory. Another one of the boss’s sayings when he was feeling particularly acerbic. Isobel could see him leaning back in his chair, unlit cigar tucked between his fingers, a glass of whiskey at his elbow, watching the people watching him out of the corner of their eyes, that half-smile on his face as though she were listening to him tell stories while she swept the floor, a child of ten again.

  If this were the haint that lingered, it was no friend to her. And if it were the presence that she had felt lingering around it . . .

  She had no proof it was a friend to her, either.

  But stopping here accomplished nothing.

  She closed her eyes, feeling the snap and spark of the sigil within her, molten under her touch, filling the lines of the infinitas drawn in the ground, filling the black lines on her palm, filling the shape of it within her. Then her eyesight blurred and her head spun, something more than herself taking over her body.

  Isobel resisted, scrabbling for control, until she felt a faint familiar brush across her ear, not words but sensation, impulse. Command. Come.

  She knew it, knew it as her own blood, as the sound of sunlight and the weight of rain, trusted it as she had not trusted the winds. She let go, let it wrap around her, let it show her what it would.

  Dizziness rocked her, then her sight sharpened again, painfully bright. The grass covering the meadow was still green and healthy, tiny flowers scattered throughout, but where insects should have chirped and birds hopped after them, there was nothing. Where animals should have burrowed and hunted, there was emptiness.

  No, not emptiness. Not the void she had thought it before. The animals and insects had not fled but been pushed, the space left behind filled by such rage and sorrow it became impossible to remain, impossible to exist in its presence.

  This was what she had touched before. The emptiness that had rejected her—had pushed her away rather than allow her to be consumed.

  She did not attempt to speak to it this time, did not engage, but let the wards Gabriel had drawn sustain her, let herself breathe against the awareness of them, then past them, sinking into the sigil drawn around her, the hot breath of what commanded her.

  And then she let herself sink into that space.

  Wind. Fire. Restless, scorched heat, enough to darken the soil, set an entire mountain aflame. Not lightning, nothing so mindless, but more powerful, alive, drawn by force from the skies and driven into the stone. Nothing human, nothing even once-human. Something angry, something lost.

  Something old.

  Gabriel Kasun hadn’t survived a childhood in the Territory, nor studying law back in the States, without learning how to deal with situations he did not like. The first rule was to take as much control as he could and let go of everything he couldn’t.

  After completing the circle of salt, he paused until the warding clicked into place, then pulled his pack over to make a seat and settled himself to wait. Often things happened fast, sometimes they happened slow, and there was no force of his making that could decide which it would be.

  He looked for the wapiti, but if Isobel’s guardian was still around, it was not showing itself. That was either reassuring or worrisome.

  He checked Isobel next; she had seated herself on the ground, her right hand now resting on her knee, her left hand on the ground beside her. Her face was calm, eyes open but seeing something he could only imagine, wisps of hair floating loose from her braid and framing her face. He turned and looked over the rest of the meadow. Nothing soared in the sky, nothing rustled in the grass, and he had the sudden disturbing sensation of being the only living thing between the mountains he could see and the river he could sense.

  Then the mule brayed and Uvnee called back, a scuffle indicating that someone had bitten someone else, and the sensation broke.

  “The worms are still here, at least,” he told himself. “If we die, they will have a suitable feast.”

  It was a thought he’d had before; it still didn’t help.

  Restless, he took out his boot knife and checked the blade, noting that the silver inlay had tarnished again already. He pulled out a strip of linen and cleaned the discoloration away, then tested the knife’s edge and, satisfied, slid it back into its sheath. As he bent forward, something caught his eye, glinting in the sunlight.

  Caution warred with curiosity. Anything here and now would be suspect; something that called to him now, when Isobel was vulnerable . . .

  And yet she was protected within the circle he had made, as safe as anything might be —safer than he was, most likely. And that glint might be something that would lead them to answers to what had been done here and by whom . . .

  He rose to his feet, moving carefully toward where the glint had appeared. Tracking a thing that did not move was more difficult than one that did, but it was not impossible, and the angle of the sun aided him, reflecting light when he moved his head just so, revealing its location.

  Gabriel crouched but hesitated before reaching for it. Was it a trap? Would this lead him into the claws of whatever had attacked Isobel?

  If it did, the distraction might give Isobel more time to do whatever it was she was doing.

  With that thought, he turned his head to check on her one more time; she hadn’t moved, far as he could tell, save both her hands were now resting palm down on the ground, her head bowed, the brim of her hat hiding her face entirely. The grass under her seemed tipped with a greenish light, the strands moving as though brushed by a breeze, but the air was unpleasantly still where he stood, sweat forming under his arms and under his hat in a way that couldn’t be blamed solely on the sun. His mouth was dry, and he rubbed the back of one hand against his lips, feeling the chapped skin catch and pull. The air was dryer here than he was accustomed to; it burned the inside of his nose and throat unpleasantly.

  Irritated by his own hesitation, Gabriel leaned forward, keeping his weight on his heels, and closed his fingers around the source of the reflected light. His brain told him it was small, and metal, and cool, even as he was standing up, moving backward, away from the dubious patch of grass, back toward Isobel—and the stick of salt still resting on top of his pack.

  Only then did he open his hand and examine what he’d found.

  “Hail and high water,” he swore, closing his fingers over it as though that might make the object disappear or change into something else. But when he took a deep breath and opened them again, it was still there, a simple bronze circle with three words stamped into it: JUSTICE. INTEGRITY. SERVICE.

  T
he badge of a US Marshal.

  Gabriel had encountered more than a few of that breed in his time, and for the most part they’d been straightforward, solid men. Not the sort to be found so far from their domain, and assuredly not without orders.

  “What were you doing here, Marshal?” he asked the badge. “And what did you stumble into?”

  . . . Our new president has determined the need to send a surveying team across the Mississippi and into the Territory you call home. He names it a ‘Corps of Discovery’ and claims it a simple excursion to survey this new land beyond our known borders.

  “You wouldn’t . . . ,” he breathed to a man sitting in a faraway city, who could never hear his words. “Oh, you couldn’t.”

  No. If Jefferson wished to send men into the Territory, he would use the scouts that already had clear passage by the devil’s mercy. Not a marshal. Not someone with official standing, consequences.

  Mayhap the badge had been stolen? They were not particularly valuable, conferred no particular authority without a letter of warrant. One of those gathered here might have picked it up: who knew what a magician might take; they were all mad, and as prone to mischief as a crow.

  He tried to imagine a marshal coming west, turning magician, and failed utterly. Impossible. Or improbable enough to be impossible.

  Gabriel turned the badge over in his hand, as though studying it might give him some better answer. It was a simple hammered circle, the star embossed on one side, words on the other, similar if not identical to the ones he’d seen back in Philadelphia.

  It had been years since he’d been in the States, but he remembered it well—the energy, the vigor . . . and the sense that they were already pushing at their limits, the eagerness among politicians, farmers, and merchants alike to expand their hold.

  Exhausted, worried, uncertain, Gabriel admitted to himself that Jefferson’s initiative was not merely academic curiosity, nor that it would end with a simple survey. The reports the scouts carried back would speak of expanses of open land, and in those distant rooms, someone with more greed than sense would think the tales of the devil myth and superstition, that the land waited only for a steady hand to take it.

  He thought of Isobel’s friend April, who looked to the east, who hungered for the things modern civilization could bring. Her friend, and others who thought that way, were fools. Gabriel had lived in the civilized world, if only for a few years. Had spent time in the web that its politics and laws wove, binding them to each other, constantly compromising. He knew what came with civilization and the cost those things demanded.

  He closed his fingers around the badge once again and slipped it into his pocket. Marshal or no, surveyors or no, it didn’t matter. The devil had held the Territory safe against Spanish and French incursions for hundreds of years. If the States thought they would have a different result, they would learn otherwise.

  And with that thought, Gabriel turned back to Isobel and forgot everything else.

  With a dizzying jolt, Isobel dropped back into the cage of her own flesh. One shuddering breath, then another, and she settled within herself again, the keening memory fading to something more bearable. But she could see it now: sinew and hide stitched with power, dry channels of bone without blood or sweat to soften it, a raging spirit caught within it.

  Trapped.

  Isobel stood, her knees still uncertain under her weight. Her toes were cold within her boots, her fingers numb, as though it were winter and not nearly mid-summer, and she was hollow as though she’d not eaten for weeks, a dry scraping hunger that made her thoughts muddled and her limbs weak.

  It had tried to consume her and nearly succeeded. Nearly. But she had its measure now: immense pain and rage, bound by sorrow. It could not rise into the winds; it could not dive into the earth. Trapped, not within the circle the magicians had carved, but in the narrow band of the living, trapped between stone and air. What had the magicians attempted, what had they thought to capture, and how had it gone so horribly wrong?

  The horses shifted and shied as though they too felt it, the mule kicking fitfully. Isobel suspected that, like the dogs, only their loyalty kept them here when all other animals had fled.

  How had the magicians caged such a thing, and why?

  “Because they were fools,” she said, her words sounding hollow and flat within the circles. “And because they were mad.” Magicians dared where most would cower, because there was only one goal they reached for: to become more powerful simply for the sake of power. Farron had admitted it without shame. He would have consumed her, too, if she had faltered.

  The spirit had been ancient and powerful. . . . Having been touched by the winds, she could near imagine how a magician might salivate over such a thing.

  But Farron had also told them that magicians did not gather together, that when two met, they would destroy each other. Had he lied? Possibly: she had liked Farron but she would not trust him. Or perhaps something had made his words into a lie. Whatever had been intended, only one question mattered: should she continue? If she cleansed the bindings and released it—if she could release it—would that fix what they had done or worsen it?

  This was no mortal thing to be read and understood, to be influenced, however skillfully. It was more, and greater, and Isobel felt the scratch of fear as she realized that the moment she pushed through the protection of her circle-and-loops, the moment she touched that presence again, despite her protections, it could easily destroy her.

  That fear scratched deeper, cracking her confidence. Something had tried to keep her from this, had known she wasn’t enough to face it. Had shown her what was bound here, what would destroy her.

  “You weren’t trying to stop me,” she murmured to it, as though talking to one of the cats that crowded the alley behind the saloon, half-wild but crowding for kitchen scraps. “I think you were trying to protect me, weren’t you? But I’m here now. Let me help.”

  Kneeling again, placing her hand down against the grass, Isobel breathed in deeply once and then exhaled, sinking as deeply into the ground as it would allow her.

  Something waited, just beyond the void, shimmering and alive. Isobel did not reach for it but waited. If she had eyes, she would avert her gaze; had she hands, she would fold them at her sides; had she form, she would stand tall, not proud but strong.

  “I am Isobel née Lacoyo Távora, Isobel of Flood, the Left Hand. My blood is on the devil’s Contract, his sigil on my palm.”

  Forever in waiting, encased in the void, fear scrabbling at her, the memory of those claws tearing at her, the sensation of nothingness, of being forever trapped until she lost all sense of self and name . . .

  “I am Isobel née Lacoyo Távora, Daughter of Flood, Devil’s Hand, the cold eye and the quick knife, and this is my responsibility.”

  Something moved within the shimmer, heavy and slow. If the earth could sigh, it would sound thus.

  Come. Not a command this time, not an invitation, simply direction. It led her along the surface fissures, dipping deep into the earth, stroking along the roots that grew there, and she sensed the bindings that held the presence to the valley, deep bone and soil wrapped around it, smothering its flames, air pressing down over it, flattening its wings, and how they shivered desperately for release, revenge.

  And each time it shivered, the earth did as well. She could feel it, her fingers curled around its tendrils, a quiver in the flesh of her leg, a tremor in the bone of her elbow, impotent rage finding the only outlet it could reach. The sky pressed on her, the bones reached for her, and she allowed it, felt herself flatten and fade.

  we fight for power, she understood.

  The haint had no voice save to howl. The shivering didn’t slow, the furious and frustrated anger sharp and clear as icicles, loud as hail against a wooden roof. It bit at them, battered them, trying to find a lie in their words, a weakness in their defenses it could lash out against. If the magicians had been mad, so too was their victim. Mad, and fille
d with the power it had scraped from earth and wind before it was caged. There would be no reasoning with it, no freeing it. It was ancient, and mad, and desired only to destroy.

  Hold, the whisper asked of her, pressing her down further. Wait. Hold. It would hold forever, but Isobel could not. The haint sensed her weakness, claws scrabbling, tearing her inside out the better to feast on what was within, jealous and resentful; she had come to it and it would keep her, all that she was, for the price of what had been done to it.

  Isobel felt it within her, howled her own rage, and as though summoned, the void flowed, molten and hot, pumping around and into and through her, forcing the haint back enough that Isobel could pull at that flow, drawing one swirl then another in pure instinct, looping in her thoughts; You will not consume me.

  A desperate, flailing thudthudthud of hollow-boned wings battered at her, then there was a cold flare where her palm would be, and Isobel screamed, her eyes—she had eyes again and hands and form—opening to find herself covered in sweat, gritty with dust, still sitting in the middle of the infinitas warding, in the middle of Gabriel’s circle.

  Beneath her, the presence raged, still trapped, still lost, but it could not touch her.

  When she looked up, Gabriel was on his knees just outside the circle, his hat off and his face visible in the light . . . the fading light—how long had she . . . It didn’t matter, save that now she could feel the hunger rumbling inside her ribs, the ache that came from sitting too long without movement, the slow fade of the molten silver from her blood, until she was only flesh and bone again.

  She lifted a hand to her face, and her fingertips came away grimy and wet, her eyes sticky and sore. “I am Isobel née Lacoyo Távora,” she said, barely able to speak, her throat thick and swollen. “I am the Devil’s Hand, the strength of the Territory, and you will not have me.”

  Gabriel made a motion as though to reach for her, then checked it. “What happened?” His voice was cracked, as though he’d been yelling.