“To cut through the snow,” Gabriel explained, then gestured to one of the men who brought it out to help him lift the first magician onto it. The wood was old, polished smooth with use, with leather straps that buckled over it to keep the load in place. “You’ll be able to pull this?” he asked the other man. “Fully loaded, I mean.”
“Can haul a full hunt’s worth back through mud if need be.” The man Gabriel spoke to was barely Isobel’s height but twice her width, and she thought, glancing at his shoulders and back, he might be able to pull the entire Territory, given enough rope.
While the men were fussing with the bodies, Isobel touched Lou’s shoulder lightly, pulling her attention away. “In winter?” Isobel asked, then off the woman’s puzzled glance, clarified, “You said you have to raise the wards again, come winter?” The thought of easing a town’s wards at all seemed mad to Isobel, but surely there must be a reason.
“Well, yes. Andreas’s here year round, but most of the folk in it . . . We go out to the fields in the day, spring through autumn, or out on hunt for a while at a time.” Lou’s tone made it clear that she thought explaining this was akin to explaining the sun rising, but Isobel tried not to take offense. “Once winter comes, though, neither beast nor man’s got cause to go beyond the walls. We get wolf packs up here; by midwinter, sometimes they’re hungry enough to do foolish things. And that’s only the ones on four legs. So, yah, come the first snow, we raise ’em up and settle in.”
Wards were not curtains, to be taken down and rehung. They were . . . part of the town, woven into every structure, every soul. . . . Surely, Lou was mistaken somehow.
“You stay inside all winter?” Gabriel’s voice was politely incredulous, and Isobel could tell from the set of his hip and shoulders that the very idea was near making him shudder. Isobel looked around the town—it was pleasant enough, if quiet, but the flat-log walls they’d passed through suddenly seemed to loom overhead, blocking out the sky. She thought she understood a bit of his revulsion at the idea, though she’d never ventured far from Flood either when the weather turned cold. But then, she’d never ventured much farther than the creek when the weather had been fine, either.
“We’re lively enough, come snow-months,” Lou said as the two men pulled the ropes over their shoulders and began to haul the sledge away, Gabriel walking alongside to ensure the bodies didn’t fall off. “Once everyone’s tucked back inside. And there’s always work to be done. You want a hide or fur, Andreas’s the place to find it. No quality better.” She seemed to suddenly recollect herself and gave an apologetic smile.
“Now your man’s sorting the prisoners, let’s get your animals stabled, and then I can show you the ward posts, yah?”
The stable was more of an open shed, the roof low and the walls slanted, with a coarse rope net in place of a door, but the roof and walls seemed sturdy enough, and it was dry and cool within, with two shaggy brown dogs curled up in the corner who came out, tails wagging, when they led the animals in, showing no alarm at these strangers invading their space.
And, Isobel acknowledged, even though the rope gate wouldn’t hold any of them, least of all the mule, if they wanted out, the entire town was enclosed; there wasn’t far they could get to.
“Just turn ’em loose,” Lou said, making a wide gesture with her arm. “We’ve only a few animals here right now, so they’ve roam of the place.”
Isobel made short work of untacking the animals, stacking their gear on a low wooden platform, then making sure they had fresh feed and water. “Someone’ll come by and haul your gear to wherever you’ll be staying for the night,” Lou said, watching Isobel work. “Come on, then.”
Isobel gave Uvnee a final scratch under her ear and a promise of fresh carrots if she could find any, before following the other woman back outside.
“Nearest one’s this way,” Lou said, and started walking, not looking back to see if Isobel was following. “So, you’re from Flood, hey? What’s it like?”
Isobel shrugged, not sure what the woman expected. “Same as any, seems like. People, buildings, problems.”
“More problems than most, being that close to the Master of the Territory.”
“I suppose?” Nobody had ever asked her that before. “It’s not . . . People tend to be quiet about their problems,” she said. “They come and they go, but you don’t exactly know why they came or what they leave with. That’s their business. And when you live there . . .” She tilted her head, then shrugged. “He’s just the boss, is all.” She’d never known anything else, to compare.
“Ahuh.” Lou didn’t seem convinced, but Isobel pushed the question back to the other woman. “And Andreas? You’ve lived here long?”
“Born here. Left for a bit, did some trapping along the north side of the border, stayed with my father’s people for a bit too, but then I came back. The Territory doesn’t like to let go for long, yah?”
“So I’ve been told,” Isobel agreed, most of her attention turning to the houses they were approaching. They were low to the ground, hewn wood above stone, with a stone chimney rising from the middle of each building, more solid-looking than anything she’d seen before, as though they intended to squat there until the mountains fell down. The chimney reminded her of the homesteading they’d stopped in months ago, where a thick hide covered a hole in the roof where the cooking smoke escaped. If the winters were as harsh as the marshal’d said, she imagined being able to circle around a stove, rather than having it at the other side of the room, would be useful in keeping warm.
The buildings were otherwise unremarkable, although Isobel couldn’t exactly say that Flood had been any prettier; there was no reason to paint or prettify if the wind and rain would take you back down to grey again. In all the places she’d seen, Patch Junction had been the exception, with its paint and flowers and trying to be something it wasn’t.
That thought made her frown. She had liked Patch Junction. It was busy and bright, and full of bustle, built on an old crossroads, Gabriel’d said; the original settlers had cleared the crossroads and built a trading post into a real town, with farms circling around it. So why now did simply thinking of it fill her with unease?
She shook the feeling off with an effort. Too long on the road, too long not seeing anything other than trees and rocks and the back of Gabriel’s head. That was all.
“Back here,” Lou said, leading her between two of the houses. “Here’s the first post.”
The houses were not built up against the enclosing town wall after all, Isobel discovered. There was a narrow alley that ran behind the houses, the space between them and the much taller wall barely wide enough for two people to walk along abreast. There were no windows on this side of the houses, just rough planking, the chinks between them filled with plaster. She took a closer look, curious. The plaster was rough to the touch, like petting a newborn calf.
“Rock dust and the hairs we scrape off hides; stiffens the plaster,” Lou told her. “Not so much for insulation, though. Inside, you line the back walls with as much hide as you’ve got. But over here, this is what you wanted to see?”
When Lou had mentioned a ward-post, Isobel expected something like she’d seen outside Clear Rock, a medicine-sigil burnt into a marker or maybe a boulder, holding the power in place. Instead, Lou showed her a collection of bones hung against the inner wall, some held there by thick black nails gone red-rusted, others seemingly wedged into the wood as though they’d grown there. Most of the bones were the size of her hand, others longer, some bleached white and the rest crackling-brown with age and weather, and Isobel reached out her own hand to touch one, only to pull her fingers back as though she’d been slapped.
“What is this?”
Lou’s brows drew together in confusion, her head tilting as she looked first at Isobel, then at the bones, then back at Isobel. “The ward-post,” she said, as though a child should have known that.
Isobel rubbed her fingertips together, reassuring herself
that she could still feel them. The wardings of Flood’s boundary were sunk deep in the earth, circling the town from river to farms’ edge. You could feel them when you stepped over, and they felt you, knew if you belonged or were a stranger, if it should alert the boss or let you pass. The wards she’d encountered elsewhere, at campsites and farmsteads, had been weaker but similar: woven into the ground the way a stream cut through stone. Even the makeshift hollow crossroads the marshal had created, the warding there had been passive, waiting for something to push against it before reacting.
This . . . was awake. She thought of the sensation she’d felt when they crossed the gateway, and wondered if she’d caused this, or if it had been that way before.
Lou was still staring at her, waiting on her to say something.
“How old is this?”
“Told you. Since before the town was. Folk who were here started it, we just”—Lou shrugged —“built around ’em.”
Isobel stared at the bones, her eyes itching as though road dust lingered in them. The folk who were here, Lou’d said. The folks who were here.
“And you alter them. Weaken the bindings in good weather, raise them for cold.” Isobel shifted to look more closely at the bones without getting any closer. “The older ones are mixed with the new—they’re moved?”
“I don’t know. I’m not . . . I don’t handle them. Told ya, Possum or young George does that.” For the first time, Lou seemed to realize that there might be something wrong. “They’re all right, aren’t they? The wards? They’re . . . they’re still working?”
Isobel would have sworn nothing could drag her attention from the shimmering, seductive hum of the bones, but those words pricked her into movement, her jaw dropping even as she turned to stare at her companion instead.
“You can’t feel them? At all?”
Lou shook her head once, her brow pinched with worry. “Not . . . not the way Possum can.” She bit her upper lip, then licked at it nervously. “I mean, we know they’re there, we see ’em keep out the storms and the beasts, so they must be there, right? And Possum would say something if they weren’t?”
Lou assumed they were working, but she didn’t know, the way Isobel had always taken for granted, had felt wards shift under her like a horse under saddle, or a dog pushing close to be petted.
The realization was a blow to her gut, only from the inside out, leaving more questions behind. Could the woman not feel them when she went in or out of town? Although she was older, her gait was steady and she seemed strong, but maybe she didn’t leave town often anymore, didn’t have reason for the wards to touch her.
“Maître?” Lou had taken a step back, as though Isobel were more unnerving than the bones.
“They’re fine,” Isobel said. “The wards, they’re . . . they’re fine.”
“Ah.” She nodded, swallowed, her throat clenching around the movement, and looked away from Isobel and then back, as though afraid she might be accused of rudeness. “Well, there’s a relief. We don’t get many riders up here ’cept the occasional marshal, and truth is, not many of us have the touch so’s noticeable ’cept Possum, and he’s, well, he’s Possum.” The older woman spoke too quickly, her hands pressing against each other as though for comfort, but Isobel had none to offer.
“The touch?”
“Yah know—” Lou gestured, blunt, calloused fingers and bitten-down nails, spreading them out as though she were smoothing a cloth in front of her. “Territory’s touch. Makes you likely to do things, like scrying or growing.”
April, back in Patch Junction, was a grower; she could make flowers bloom and crops flourish by her touch. Isobel had never thought much of it; that’s just who April was, the way Gabriel could find water and Grace, the blacksmith’s daughter, sang birds into the pot.
“Anyhows, that’s how it touches some. And some other of us”—Lou indicated herself—“it passes right by.”
Isobel shook her head, not to say no to whatever Lou was saying but to try and rid her head of the buzzing, like someone’d let a hive of bees in between her ears.
Gabriel had said that everyone could feel the Road if they just listened the right way. She’d just assumed wards were like that, that all you had to do was listen.
The buzzing slipped down into her chest, making it difficult to breathe. All the things she’d done since taking the Road, since signing her Contract, she’d tacked up to the sigil on her palm, her doing the devil’s will the way she’d bargained to, but she’d been able to feel the wardings long before then, long as she could remember. And not just feel them but hear them humming in her.
The way the whisper had, when it urged her up onto the hills, when it coaxed her into reaching for the haint, up in the valley.
When it had called to her, outside the mine, up in De Plata.
Something inside her.
Molten strength pushing through her, wrapping itself around her. Pushing up into her, hot metal into cold water filling the forge filling her with steam and stink.
Dizzy, she tried to walk away, thinking if she moved aside she could think again, breathe again. Instead, she stumbled, although her feet would have sworn the ground was smooth, her arms coming up in reaction, hand outstretched, fingers and then palm coming into contact not with dry wood or warm flesh but dry, crumbling, burning bone.
Isobel screamed, the sound torn from her throat with Reaper’s talons, and the air around her went black.
The men pulling the sledge seemed disinclined to talk, which Gabriel supposed he understood; saving your breath for breathing was wiser. Still, he had a rider’s natural curiosity, and if they had no interest in answering his questions, there was nothing to say he couldn’t learn by other means. It was hard to stop a man from looking, so long as he kept half an eye on the bodies, too, to make sure they didn’t slide or, Devil forbid, start to wake.
The circle-and-sigil he sketched at that thought was a childhood reflex, making him flush and turn his attention more firmly to his surroundings.
The trail they were walking on had been packed down hard with use; there were occasional puffs of dust but nothing like they’d encountered outside. Wide enough for the sledge or three people walking abreast, but not a wagon; if they hauled anything here, it was by sledge or wheelbarrow, or something equally narrow. Looking up, he noted the stockade walls curved slightly, not quite a circle but shaped more like an egg, and he tracked how the trail they were on curved around as well. The center of the town was a decent-sized green that had the worn look of grass cut not by scythe but teeth—a community graze, most likely, where they’d keep their livestock in the winter.
After the green, the trail split in two again, both forks lined with low cabins, most of them with their doors open. None of them looked new-built, but they were all in solid repair, able to withstand near anything the Territory might throw at them.
So: A well-established town whose founders had been allowed to build on a site that had been in use by the tribe that had lived here first. That spoke well of the first settlers but gave him a quavering sense of worry, too. Why had the tribe abandoned this place? It was well situated, with fertile land close enough for them to farm . . . Had the hunting suddenly gone off ? Surely, the settlers did not lie —the town had been here long enough to have drawn ire if it were not wanted, and not even the tallest palisade would protect them from warriors determined to take back their lands. Had it been freely abandoned? What had the settlers bartered that was valuable enough to earn them that?
Or, more worrying, had something gone wrong here, that the tribe refused to stay, handing it over instead to foolish whites to suffer the consequences?
He felt his fingers twitch again and forced them still. If there had been something wrong, surely someone would have felt it by now. Two generations they had here, at least. Not the oldest settlement in the Territory, but for as far out as it was, old enough, and isolated.
More likely that was the answer, Gabriel decided, looking
at the simple sturdiness of the buildings. The local tribe had been small, the woman had said. They’d likely welcomed the newcomers as potential allies against winter and nearby tribes, and then over time lost their children to those tribes or even the town itself. His mother could tell the same story of her family, trade alliances leading to marriages and children. Even two generations could be enough for a small tribe to disappear, if that were so.
Thus mostly reassured, he followed the men and the sledge down the second trailway, past open, empty doorways, and then a patch of open space, until they came to a halt in front of a wood-and-stone hut. It was small, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright, and unlike the other structures, this door was firmly closed.
“This is your lockhouse?” Looking up, Gabriel saw the marshals’ sigil not only painted on the door but carved into the wood, at least a fingertip deep. The paint filled the gouges, a darker red than he was used to seeing elsewhere in the Territory but reassuringly familiar.
“Locked up close and safe as certainty,” a voice said in his ear as one of the sledge-pullers pushed open the door and started unloading the bodies with ginger caution.
“You must be Possum.” It wasn’t a guess: narrow face, a shock of greying hair, and red-rimmed eyes over a disturbingly pointed, pink-skinned nose, and if the man in front of him had been called anything else, it would have been a crime.
“And you must be one of the road rats the marshal drug in. Welcome to Andreas.” Possum crossed long, bony arms over his chest and stared through the open double doors as the men laid the bodies out on the dirt floor. “Mind you don’t smudge any of my sigils,” he warned. “Or I’ll repaint ’em with your bodily fluids; see if I don’t.”
The two men took about as much notice of his threats as a horse did a fly.
Given the opportunity with someone who seemed to like to talk, Gabriel took it. “Solid, maybe, but a bit smallish. Your judge not throw many people into lockup?”
Possum shrugged, still glaring. “Bandits get what’s coming to ’em, they try Andreas’s walls. But winters are long, people get cussed, specially when they ain’t seen sunlight in a week. Easier to lock ’em in here than have to deal with sorting out the bloodshed after.”
The Cold Eye Page 26