The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Someone who thought the Territory merely another parcel of land to be owned and used.

  Isobel, unaware of his thoughts, had turned on the older woman. “Are you aware of what you protect? What they have done?” She didn’t wait for a response but plowed on, her body practically shaking with rage, hands clenched at her sides. “These fools, for some reason I cannot scry, thought to make use of magicians—not one but many.”

  The marshal scoffed at that. “No one can convince a magician to do anything it does not chose to do. And there is no insult in bad ideas, else we’d all be up before judgment on a regular basis.”

  “If you offer them something they want badly enough, magicians are manipulated easy as any,” Isobel said. “Enough to come together, enough to perform abominations without honor, to entrap an ancient and force it back to flesh, to strip away its medicine for their own use.”

  The marshal’s eyes widened and she drew a breath in as Isobel’s words sank home. “Impossible.”

  “I would have agreed,” Gabriel said before Isobel could lose her temper, “except it seems to have been more improbable than impossible.”

  The woman’s gaze flickered between them, then to the two Americans, staring at them as though seeing them truly for the first time.

  “They failed.”

  “They succeeded,” Isobel corrected her, her voice the edge of a blade. “Well enough that those magicians slaughtered buffalo for their medicine, well enough that those magicians were then powerful enough to use that to pull an ancient spirit into their grasp—but not well enough that they could hold that grasp. Well enough that the Territory itself had to intervene.”

  Gabriel’s attention flickered to Isobel at the mention of the buffalo, his fingers tightening in reaction to what she had described. The primal heart of the Territory, slaughtered . . .

  No marshal who lived past their first year carrying the sigil was slow on the uptake. “Blood and stone . . . The quakes. That was their doing?”

  Isobel’s tone eased in the face of the woman’s clear shock and fury. “These two were the instigators. The two you have trapped here . . .” She didn’t look at the magicians within the crossroads, but Gabriel could tell from the set of her shoulders that it was an effort to resist. “They were among those who lived.”

  “You have no proof.” The older man stepped forward, ready to argue his case, and the marshal turned on them, her disagreement with Isobel of far less import than her new-kindled anger with the two of them.

  “You, do not speak,” she warned him. “Nor you, either.” She stabbed a finger at the younger man’s chest. “The word of the Devil’s Hand carries far more weight than anything you might say in these lands. If you’d half the intelligence you think you own, you’d know that much at least.”

  Under perhaps any other circumstances, Gabriel would have been amused, but Isobel’s eyes kept flicking sideways, the urge to look at the makeshift crossroads clearly held back by a thread, and he was imagining every scrap of silver he owned coated with thick black tarnish. . . . There was nothing amusing about this at all.

  “The devil’s what?” The older man was shaking his head, looking at the marshal, then Isobel again, and then to Gabriel, as though another man could explain it all in ways that made sense. The younger man, at least, looked distinctly uncomfortable, like a man who’d woken in a jail cell and only slowly remembered the events of the night before.

  “Oh, you poor, foolish bastard,” Gabriel said. “They told you nothing, did they? They sent you here to treat with magicians and told you nothing of what you dared, what you risked.”

  Despite himself, Gabriel felt relief: the things he had told Abner had gone no further, or at least not into the hands of the men who’d sent these two their orders.

  “Tell me, did those orders come from Jefferson himself or some even greater fool?”

  Whatever bluster the American would have attempted to hide behind, the marshal cut him off before he could do more than open his mouth.

  “Enough.” She turned to Isobel, lifting her hands in a gesture of appeasement. “Whoever they are, whatever they have done, the false claim will be judged and proper restitution determined. There’s a judiciary a few days from here —”

  “This is not a matter for a judge.” Isobel’s voice was sharp, and Gabriel felt his spine straighten in response, alert to violence even though he knew she would not, was reasonably certain the marshal would not, let it go that far.

  “A false claim of insult is a matter of Law.”

  Gabriel licked his lips and damned himself for a fool. “The Law is set for the affairs of those within the Territory. These men are outsiders, two for where they come from and two for what they are. Surely it would make more sense to have the Master of the Territory consider their actions and determine their punishment?” He cast a glance at the makeshift crossroads and the two figures now standing still, watching them. A shiver ran down his spine, remembering what Isobel had said. These were not quick-witted Farron, not allies even for a moment. If they broke loose while these two argued jurisdiction . . .

  “How would you even transport them?” he went on. “You with one horse, them with none? You’d walk them two days to stand before the bench?”

  “That is exactly what I aim to do,” she said. “My duty.” Her hand had shifted to her waist, where the pistol snugged into a leather harness. Gabriel didn’t know too much about handguns, but he’d seen the like before, back East. If it came to bullets, they had already lost.

  “The Tree is equal to the Infinitas.” Isobel’s voice, Isobel’s words, but with an undercurrent, an echo he’d not heard in her recently. They had invoked the Master of the Territory, and he had come.

  The Tree was not equal to the Infinitas. That awareness simmered in Isobel, resentful. But in this instance, it took precedence. It must take precedence. The Devil was Master of the Territory, but he did not own it, nor did he wish to. And the Left Hand was the hidden force, not the overt. The rebuke was gentle but clear, and Isobel bowed before it, objections tromped underfoot before they could rise.

  Patience, maleh mishpat. It wasn’t his voice but the memory of it, and below that the whisper again, pouring molten into her ear, both of them counseling her: Abide. There is a greater plan at play.

  She did not understand, but she was not required to understand, only obey.

  “You may take these two to stand in front of the bench,” Isobel said. “And your Judge will pronounce judgment on them for claiming false insult.” The Americans, she suspected, would likely be stripped of everything save boots and saddle and sent across the Mudwater, warned never to return. “But the magicians are . . .”

  The marshal went toe to toe with Isobel, a handspan taller but more slender, age giving her a brittleness Isobel could sense more than see, but a wicked cunning as well. “They must be taken to tell their portion of the story. Then the judge will decide.”

  Isobel narrowed her eyes, the heated prickle of power seething behind them enough to make her want to shake the marshal, to scream in frustration at the woman’s blindness. Because she had trapped them, she thought them controllable. Thought herself in control, as though anything flesh could control these winds. “Then we will travel with you.”

  A heartbeat, stretched and tense, and the marshal dipped her chin, dark eyes intent on Isobel’s face. “Agreed.”

  Gabriel broke the awkward silence that followed. “If we’re to travel together then, might we know your name?”

  The marshal looked surprised, as though only now realizing that she had never identified herself. “LaFlesche. Marshal Abigail LaFlesche.”

  Gabriel took her offered hand first, shaking it firmly. “You’ve Umonhon work on your jacket,” he said. “You’ve kin there?”

  “My mother’s sister’s husband.” Her hand brushed the design on the arm of her jacket, as though to reassure herself it was there, then she offered her hand to Isobel, who took it. The marshal’s finge
rs were narrow and hard, and Isobel thought that she would not fumble with either knife or gun if the need arose. But not all threats answered to blade or bullet.

  Then again, she had crafted a false crossroads that caught not one but two magicians, however distracted. Isobel would not underestimate the marshal either.

  “So, these two, we can bind and walk.” Gabriel gestured to the Americans. “But how now do we deal with the remaining two?”

  LaFlesche smiled then, the long bones of her face at odds with the sudden gleam of intelligent mischief in her eyes. “Well, it’s a fine thing you came along when you did, then, isn’t it?”

  The magicians had stilled once Isobel had added her own warding to the trap, but they were aware of her now; their eyes followed her as she came closer, tracking her movement the way she thought a ghost cat might, waiting for the ripe moment to leap, to rend and tear. . . .

  She reminded herself that the massive ghost cat had died when it tried to attack them, and that these two were already bound by the marshal’s work, and weakened by their struggle against each other. But she would not underestimate them, even so.

  “You should have kept to your ways,” she told them, although she was not certain if they could hear her through the bindings, or if they were still able to comprehend human speech. Magicians went mad enough, but what she had touched in the valley had traveled past that madness into something far worse, a windstorm of thorns, thunder, and lightning. Simply because these two retained human shape, she should not assume anything human remained within.

  The only way to tell would be to push at them, push herself through them, and that was the very thing she had no intention of doing; if the whisper came back to suggest it, she would cut it from her head with a dull knife before listening.

  One of the magicians, slender-built with eyes the color of a coalstone, hissed at her again when she drew close. His face was hatch-marked with scars, raised white lines that looked too regular to have been accidental, and he had only four fingers on the hand he raised to her, as though to scratch at her eyes through the binding, only to draw back his arm with a yelp.

  The wards held. But for how long? The false crossroads had drawn them with the promise of power without there being anything in truth for them to draw on—and she was still vastly curious as to how the marshal had managed that—and they had near-drained each other in trying to escape, but . . .

  Magicians. A wise soul ran from them; they did not draw closer.

  “Odds are no one ever claimed a Hand was wise,” she said to herself, and then raised her voice so that the two inside the warding could hear her but the others behind her could not.

  “If it were left to me, I would crack you open and scatter your ashes back to the winds. But false claim of insult has been brought against you, and the Law says that you must stand by while they answer for it.” She didn’t think they understood what she was saying, but the second figure, bulkier, his face hidden by thick chunks of dust-black hair, turned slightly when she spoke, as though he were listening. “You will come with us, without struggle, to stand before Law.”

  And once there, well. The Tree might carry the Law, but its roots were deep into the Territory itself. What they had done, to the ancient one they’d abused, to the buffalo-spirits they’d slaughtered, to those harmed by the quakes that followed . . . that would not go unanswered.

  “Do you understand?”

  Isobel waited for a response but expected none, and none came. Accepting their silence as consent, she dropped to one knee and placed her palm not against the ground itself but on the joint lines of the warding.

  It hissed and hummed against her, identifying her as not-to-be-contained but not yet willing to yield to her.

  She spread her fingers, feeling delicately along the tangled lines. Some push of the winds from within, driven by the magicians’ madness, tangling with the warm, earthy feel of the Tree, a sense of the marshal’s own self that matched that hard, capable hand and the intelligence in her face. And there, the tang of sulphur and bone where her own warding took hold. One overlaying the other, tangling where they met, neither giving way.

  Another time and place, Isobel would have been tempted to sink down, unpick the threads of the Tree, reweave them into her own understanding, learn how the marshal had crafted a crossroads where none should exist. But now was not the time, and this was never the place.

  Instead, she followed the scent of sulphur and bone, catching and pulling at her own work, reweaving the barrier into a net to cast over the two figures rather than the crossroads entire. But the lines were too tangled, the living thrum of the marshal’s sigil and the hollow echo of the crossroads beneath it knotting them up, barely able to contain the cold-fire fury of the souls trapped within.

  The magicians, sensing what she meant to do, fought her, pushing her away and tugging her off-balance, bleeding wind and shrieking in silent thunder, searching for a weakness they could seep into and crack her open like a nut.

  She flailed under that push and tug, grabbing for the power shimmering and sparking, fingers scratching at the sigil in her palm, demanding the help she had been sworn, that had been sworn to the strength of the Territory.

  But rather than the now-familiar dizziness, memories of mornings in the saloon came to her; the softness of how the sun rose, light touching rooftops and sliding into windows where drapes had been drawn aside, the first cry of a cockerel and the stamp-clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, the first slam of a door and the copper rattle of pans in the kitchen, the chiming of the winding clock as the day began. She missed it all with a sudden shocking intensity, her first true understanding of homesickness, and —trusting instinct—she grabbed hold of it, grabbed hold of the stillness before dawn, the hush before the first waking breath, the stillness of a beloved voice before it spoke and the echo after a farewell, and shoved it all into the warding, binding it with molten threads of silver, even as she gripped the earth and bone with both hands and pulled it tight.

  The magicians screamed, the howling of a winter wind crashing over a rooftop, the roar of a spring storm taking down any tree that dared stand in its path. Isobel’s knees buckled, cold sweat coating her skin, but the Tree withstood, and the bones withstood, and slowly, slowly, the wind died down, sulky and sullen. The sigil in her palm flared, cold itch and a burning light, and the figures within the binding went to their knees, then onto their sides, inert, harmless, asleep.

  Isobel felt the false crossroads crumble, the original warding dissolve, both the marshal’s and her own, leaving only the new-shaped binding wrapped around two figures, sodden and silent on the grass. Only then did her gaze fall on the objects tied to their belts.

  She knew she should stand up, back away, say something to someone, but she couldn’t remember what or who, or how to move at all. Her fingers were clenched tight, her knuckles gone white, but she couldn’t bring herself to undo them until hands covered hers, warmer and familiar, easing the fingers apart, smoothing them straight, thumbs pressing into her palms until something gave, and she collapsed against Gabriel’s chest, his voice a soothing rumble of nonsense, his breath warm against her hair.

  He was speaking a language she didn’t know, and she could not tell the words, but they soothed and calmed anyway, until she pushed away, his hands no longer touching her but close, close by in case they were needed.

  She took a breath, then another one when that didn’t hurt.

  “Get them off them,” she told Gabriel. “Get them off.”

  He looked at her, puzzled, and when she gestured weakly with one hand at the bodies, looked again, more closely. Then he was moving, bending by the bodies, cautious, removing the scraps of buffalo hide from their belts, returning to Isobel’s side with them held gently in his hands.

  She touched one of the scraps with the edge of her thumb. Her eyes and throat burned as though she’d been standing too close to a blacksmith’s fire. “Burn them and bury them,” she told Gabriel. “Pl
ease.”

  “I will,” he promised. “Isobel, I will.”

  She nodded, witnessing his vow, and he sat back a little, giving her room to breathe.

  “Are they—?” The marshal, standing off to the side, the two men grouped behind her. The long-haired one was scowling, looking down at the ground, then off at the trees, at the horses, at anything that wasn’t on two legs, while his companion merely . . . stood there, his hands clasped behind his back. He put more weight on his right side than his left, she noted.

  “Alive,” Isobel told the marshal. “They’re . . .” They weren’t asleep, not exactly, but Isobel didn’t have words for what she had done. “They will remain still,” she said. “But that won’t hold for long.” She was already feeling the tug of power that, even sleeping, the magicians contained, pushing against her, looking for a crack to push through. Like holding your breath underwater, trying to resist the stream’s current, only the other way around, air trying to find its way into her lungs.

  A few days’ walk, the marshal had said. It would have to be enough. It would have to hold.

  She managed to ignore the push of power long enough to stare at the two men behind the marshal, narrowing her eyes. “Should I do the same to them?”

  “Hey!” That got the younger man’s attention, his gaze going to her finally, outrage in every patch of his body.

  There was a rumble in Gabriel’s chest that sounded like amusement, then he said, “We only have three horses and the mule. Best keep them awake and walking.”

  They might have looked relieved; Isobel couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Closing her eyes again, she flexed her fingers, feeling the bindings around the magicians the way she would feel Uvnee’s reins against her skin. Three days. She could hold them for three days.

  After that . . .

  After that, she would worry about that.

  They’d waited only long enough for Gabriel to build a fire and burn the scraps of hide until they were charred, the thick, putrid stench finding its way through the kerchief held to his nose, then he dug a hole and buried the kerchief-wrapped remains with a silver quarter-coin and a splash of the marshal’s whiskey as an appeasement to the spirits.