The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  That lifted her head up sharply, and the glare he got at the reminder of her single attempt to swim made him urge Steady on to a faster pace, just in case she decided to chuck something at him.

  But even that little easing of the tension disappeared when they crested that last bony ridge and saw the warriors waiting for them in the valley below.

  Gabriel had been born in the Territory, his father the son of Eastern settlers, his mother the daughter of a Métis woman. Their farm had been successful enough that he’d been sent off to school when it was clear he had no skill for growing things, with his siblings content to stay behind. He had grown up seeing Métis cousins and the occasional Anishinabeg or Dakota come through, either hunting or trading. He had grown up learning hand language, picking up words here and there, had learned what certain markings and attire meant, and when it was a time to speak, and when he should remain silent, and his time with the Hochunk had taught him how to admit that he did not understand a thing.

  He had no idea what it meant, that these five men stood in front of them, their chests bare of decoration or design, bows behind them, knives sheathed. Their faces were round and stern, two bareheaded with narrow braids at either side of their heads, three with their heads covered by long fur caps that, when one of them shifted, Gabriel identified as wolf skin.

  Warriors, for all that they showed no weapons in their hands. Behind them, dogs shifted —not bulky travois-dogs but lean creatures who might have shared a grandparent with the wolves these men had killed. They were held on no lead but awaited a command either to stand down or attack.

  Apsáalooke, mayhap. Or not. He tried to find some connection to the old man who had traveled with them, but their moccasins were of a different pattern, and the old man’s face had been so ancient, so lined, that he could see no familial resemblance here.

  “Gabriel?” Isobel had fallen a pace behind him, shifting Uvnee so that they were half-hidden behind Steady’s bulk, back with the mule.

  The girl he’d first met would have lingered, curiosity overcoming common sense; after their encounter with the Spaniards, the Hand might have pushed forward, demanded their respect. Her behavior now was that of a seasoned rider—wary but polite, aware that they would see her only as a white female, without age or status. That she was the Devil’s Hand had no meaning here.

  He didn’t look back at her, playing the part as he swung out of the saddle and walked forward to meet warriors on their own terms.

  Pausing a few paces away, he waited, watching them without meeting their eyes, then focusing on the man to the left standing half a step ahead of the others. The wolf skin on his head draped over his bare shoulders, and Gabriel guessed that he was in his early twenties, perhaps slightly older, and the others with him were a similar age or slightly younger.

  Old enough to be experienced, young enough to still be firebrands. That made them dangerous, no matter what their intent. And without knowing for certain what tribe they were, without knowing the politics of this region, making any assumptions could be deadly.

  The Road promised adventure, not certainty. Thrice so, traveling with Isobel.

  Gabriel lifted his right hand, palm out and fingers spread, to his shoulder and twisted his wrist back and forth several times, then made the sign for trouble, making it a question. They studied him, and as ever, there was a moment of fear, that he had made the wrong sign, that his innocent question—what trouble exists?—had in fact given offense, unintended.

  One of the younger men, one without a wolf’s mantle, stepped forward, an almost violent movement, and was held back by another, his hand on their arm.

  The leader flicked his gaze from Gabriel to behind him, then back to Gabriel again, sizing them up. “You have been to the shaken valley.”

  His English was rough, with an accent Gabriel could not place, but he spoke it well enough to be understood, which was a relief. If something were to go wrong, he’d rather Isobel be aware of it at that moment, not after he’d had time to translate.

  Shaken Valley. As good a name as any, he supposed.

  “We have.” Were they going to blame them for what was happening? He did not allow his muscles to ready for attack or his hand to reach for his knife, however much he craved the reassurance of it in his hand just then. He cursed that he had left the carbine latched to Steady’s saddle; not that it would gave been much use against five opponents, but if nothing else, the wooden butt made an effective club.

  “The valley shook while you were there. You angered the spirits.”

  “Ah . . .” Gabriel wasn’t sure trying to explain that it had been a pack of magicians would go over well. Magicians might claim some of the Territory’s medicine in their madness, but they were still whites, still outsiders. Gabriel’s skin was pale, and he had been in the valley where spirits had been angered enough to send the game away and shake the ground for days in all directions. He was reasonably certain they didn’t need any other correlation to assign blame.

  He didn’t want to fight them, but he had no desire to die, either.

  “Iz, be ready to ride forward.” He hoped that his voice conveyed what he couldn’t say: that she was not to get off her damn horse, that she was not to hesitate, that whatever happened to him, she was to get the blazes out of there as fast as she could, trampling them if need be.

  The men could not catch Uvnee once she took flight, but those dogs would certainly be able to inflict damage if they were given a chance. Four dogs, five men. Steady, given cause, could take one, possibly two of the dogs out, plus one of the men. The mule would be able to protect itself, even with the ghost cat’s scarring on its hide. He could take two of the men out, maybe three, before they dragged him off Steady’s back.

  All those thoughts flashed like heat lightning and were gone, leaving him loose for whatever was to come. He gave a quiet command, and Steady’s square head lowered, thick neck curved in a way that would warn anyone accustomed to horses to steer clear of his teeth and hooves. If they could not pass in peace, he would at least buy time for Isobel to reach safety.

  Gabriel grinned crookedly; when the devil had promised him peace in exchange for this duty, he should have assumed it would be this way.

  His expression must have been fierce; one of the other men wearing a wolf’s mantle drew back, eying him consideringly. Gabriel dropped Steady’s reins entirely and lifted his hands in a gesture that asked, “What are you waiting for?” in any language, and let his grin widen. They might wear a wolf’s skin, but he could be one.

  Since leaving the valley, Isobel had focused her attention on how Uvnee placed her hooves, the narrowness of the trail, the blueness of the sky, and the intense irritation of the insect bites on her hands and neck, as a way to —not to forget; there was no way she would forget—put aside what had happened behind them. Even the demon, normally cause for concern, had been merely a distraction, all the more so when it did nothing but watch them as they rode past.

  It was like kneading bread: you let your body do one thing, pay so much attention to it, there was no room for anything else. Empty mind and full hands, Ree had said, over and over, when a loaf turned out badly. If you worried about the baking, you would ruin the dough. And so, she’d focused on the trail and the placement of her hands on the reins and the way she leaned in the saddle to keep Uvnee balanced, until the feel of claws and wet smudges faded.

  But when she followed Gabriel down that last rise and saw the men waiting for them, Isobel felt her stomach clench and tighten, hot fingers sliding up her spine and spreading along her scalp. Not anger, not fear, but something beyond that, something fierce and inevitable and closer to, if she had to name it, intense annoyance.

  She reined Uvnee back, allowing Gabriel to take the lead as she studied the five the way the boss had trained her to read people—taking in their stance, their expressions, the way they grouped themselves—to see what it was they wanted that they would not allow themselves to name.

  They w
ere angry, she decided, and they were afraid, and they were very brave to come this close to where they knew an angry sprit lived. The fact that the ancient spirit was not angry at them did not matter; they had come to see what had angered it, to do what the spirit wished them to do to end its anger.

  And they had done it on their own, she thought, watching their faces. If they claimed a victory, it would be theirs alone, but if they came to ruin, the spirit’s anger would not find its way back to their people as well.

  She felt a twinge of sympathy for them that faded the moment they made a move toward Gabriel. Her mentor’s hissed warning was heard and ignored. She would not leave him here.

  Her blunderbuss was strapped to her pack; even if she could lay hands on it without them noticing, she couldn’t ram shot and powder fast enough to be useful. Her knives, both the one at her waist and the larger one strapped to Uvnee’s saddle, were within reach, but she would not stand a chance against even one of the warriors facing them.

  The sigil in her palm remained cool, without an itch of power. The Agreement the boss had with the tribes required only that they maintain the peace so long as no insult was given—and gave them the right to determine insult. Even against the Hand herself, if she were foolish enough.

  She had not been responsible for what had happened in the valley; magicians were not under the devil’s authority—the tribes could not hold the boss responsible for what one might do any more than they could blame him for the wind or the rains.

  But if a white man had led them here, had meddled in such a way to injure the Territory itself, using magicians as his tools . . . the tribes would be within rights to hold the boss to account.

  Isobel wished she’d thought to pack one of Polly’s headache powders as well as her cramping remedy.

  The Right Hand might have soothed tempers into something calmer. But Marie was not here, and Isobel saw one of the warriors reach for his bow, while another’s knife cleared its sheath, and Gabriel was just standing there.

  Isobel felt her larger knife come to her hand, and then it was no longer in her hand but blade first in the grasses, inches from the toes of the one with the drawn bow.

  “Hold!”

  She might have shouted the word; she might have cried it. Neither the blade nor the word would have been enough, but she heard their heartbeats pulse in the air and caught at them, stilling them, slowing them to where they could not move at all.

  Six heartbeats fluttered in her palm, the pulsepulsepulse a softer sound than her own breathing, so delicate, so easy to close her fingers, tighten and squeeze . . .

  The Hand opened her palm and kneed Uvnee forward, the mule close at her heels. One heartbeat stuttered and fell, and behind her she knew Gabriel was swinging into Steady’s saddle, leaning forward, his body still not quite his own, tied to her own will, her irritation.

  Five pairs of eyes followed her as she rode past, a darkness seething in them. Isobel could feel the hatred surging like a living thing, pressing to break free, to lunge, pull her from Uvnee’s back and rend and tear her into shreds. She had never been hated before, not with this hot, focused intensity, and the urge to strike back against it, to clench her fingers and still their heartbeats utterly, washed through her, a flame to kindling.

  Instead, as they left the five behind, she forced her fingers to ease, uncurling, letting the heartbeats flutter away one by one.

  She waited, listening for the sound of pursuit, for cries of rage or anger. Instead, there was silence, stunned and, she thought with no small satisfaction, respectful.

  “Izzy.”

  She wasn’t Izzy anymore. She hadn’t been Izzy in a long time.

  “Isobel, what did you do?” His voice was hoarse, framing a hundred questions in the one.

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t shape the knowledge into words. There was the feel of something moving within her, molten and slow, and it was both strange and familiar, and deeply uncomfortable. “If they had attacked, you would have been hurt, maybe killed, and it would have done nothing. If they had tried to attack me, I . . .”

  Her voice faltered. What would she have done? She kept her eyes steadily on the grassy slope in front of Uvnee, did not allow her thumb to press into the center of the sigil, the way she had learned to seek reassurance. She had acted as the Hand, but the sigil had remained cool, the slow burn inside her coming from . . . from where?

  She thought of the molten whisper sliding within her, holding the ancient spirit caged, holding the poison within itself, and her throat closed up and her eyes cast down, and she had nothing more to say in answer to Gabriel’s question.

  Thankfully, he did not ask again.

  Gabriel hadn’t realized he was trembling until the warriors—and their dogs—were distant behind them. He recognized the reaction; it was the same sensation he’d get after making an argument to the court, when expected opposition hadn’t been raised, when it was all over and in the judge’s hand to decide.

  He’d never thought to feel that again in the Territory.

  He looked over at Isobel, who had pushed her hat back and lifted her face to the sky, where the blue had disappeared again behind clouds, pale white broken by darker, more ominous ones. It didn’t feel like a storm was brewing; they’d likely not have to worry about more than a passing shower, and there was far less risk of a sudden windstorm here, surrounded by sloping hills, than the plains. But he scanned the horizon anyway, looking for potential structures or outcrops where they could take shelter if needed.

  There was nothing as far as the eye could see save the dip and rise of sagebrush-dotted hills, and occasional clumps of rock, broken by a tree here and there, solitary against the sky.

  “They knew we’d be there. They knew where we’d been.”

  “Yah.” There was what looked like an abandoned farmstead to the northeast. He hadn’t thought to head that way, but then he hadn’t thought to head this way at all, so it was never-no-mind what he chose, he supposed.

  He angled Steady in that direction, Uvnee keeping pace next to him. The mule wandered off, chomped a few clumps of grass, then wandered back. Gabriel saw something spook under its hooves, furred and fast, and felt one knot of worry ease.

  It also reminded him how very hungry he was. When had they last eaten something more than coffee and cornmeal or dried meats? Too long. He reached into the nearest saddlebag and pulled out a chunk of dried apple, eying it with resignation. It wasn’t a warm meal and a comfortable chair, but he’d had worse.

  “Eat something,” he told Isobel.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Didn’t ask if you were. Eat something.”

  She said something uncomplimentary about high-handed riders, but when he turned to look, she was rummaging through her own saddlebag, pulling out a mushcake and biting into it without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

  “It could be worse,” he said. “You could be stuck eating grass.”

  She contemplated the remaining cake in her hand and gave a shrug. “Without honeycomb on it, I’m not sure there’s much difference.”

  Her argument was solid.

  She took another bite of the cake, then fed the rest to the mule. “How did they know?”

  “Remember what I said about not knowing why a native does something, Isobel? Goes for how they know, too. Some mutter about tricks and medicine; I think they just gossip better than we do.”

  She didn’t smile at that, the way he’d hoped.

  “Those magicians, the ones who didn’t die . . .” She took a deep breath. “They’re bound to cause trouble. They won’t be able to help themselves. They’ve been broken, their madness no longer controlled. Lacking the power they’d hoped to gain, they’ll scrabble for any they can find, and damn the cost. Not only crossroads, Gabriel. Anything with power. Anyone.”

  A tic in her cheek jumped once, twice, and she reached up to touch the two feathers in her braid, fingertips ghosting along their surface.

&
nbsp; “You, you mean?”

  “Or you.” She turned her head to look at him. “Any rider who can feel the road, any dowser, anyone with planting skills . . . Any dream-walker. White or native. They won’t care; they’ll just take.”

  Gabriel drew a breath, considering the ramifications of a magician attacking a native encampment, trying to take the power of one of their elders, one of their medicine folk.

  “Magicians are not bound by the Agreement,” he said, but they both knew that wouldn’t matter, not if a tribe were driven to anger by such an insult. Not if the magician were white-born. And hundreds of years of careful, cautious coexistence . . . shattered.

  Where the Spanish spell had failed to undermine the devil’s hold on the Territory, that could succeed. The anger Gabriel felt didn’t surprise him, but the guilt did.

  “We have no way to find them, save we hear of disaster after the fact. The Territory’s too large to go chasing after rumor, Isobel.”

  The look she turned on him, full of a savage, quiet frustration, should not have made him want to laugh so badly.

  “I should be able to find them. What use am I if I can’t?”

  Something leapt out in front of the horses, causing Uvnee to shy—a brace of rabbits, startled by their approach. Then something swooped overhead, and Gabriel looked up, expecting to see a hawk or eagle looking to catch an easy dinner.

  Instead, brown-and-white wings spread over them at an angle, an owl turning slow circles, two beats and soar, two beats and soar, and the faint, sharp sound of oooo-aw ooo-aw in the breeze.

  “The poor bastard must be starving to be out during the day.”

  Isobel heard Gabriel’s comment, but all of her attention was on the owl swooping overhead. It could not have been the same owl she saw in the trees that morning; there was no way it could have flown this far, no reason for it to have flown this far. Owls did not wander, particularly in daylight, and the likelihood of it following this track in search of prey seemed slim at best.