The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “He brought the idea to the wind-taken,” the judge said. The elder ignored him, staring steadily at Tousey, who seemed to almost smile, briefly. Isobel thought that for the first time, he looked like a man who knew his place and what was expected of him.

  “My name is Paul Tousey. I am a United States Marshal, sent here to engage with the individuals known as ‘magicians’ in order to determine if they might be useful allies for my government.” He glanced to where Isobel and Gabriel stood. “It is my considered opinion that they are not, and the results of that contact are . . . regrettable.”

  The elder stared at him, then nodded once, as though he’d understood every word. “We will take him.”

  And that was that, near as Isobel could tell. The two younger natives came forward, slipping a horsehair rope over Tousey’s head but not tightening it; it seemed a reminder, some ritual of parole more than an actual restraint. But before they could lead him off, he said something to the judge, who gave a sharp nod and made a hand motion. They dropped the end of the rope and let him step away.

  Coming toward them, Isobel realized.

  “You’ve lived in the States.” He was speaking to Gabriel, not her.

  “I have.”

  Even with a rope around his neck, the skin of his face rough with exhaustion and whiskers, the marshal had a certain air to him now, an assuredness that was not boastful. He nodded, as though Gabriel’s words confirmed something.

  “I would ask you a favor, one I will, regrettably, be unable to repay. If you would, send word across the river to my superiors. Inform them of the events of the past few days. I would prefer that my fate be clear rather than left open to interpretation.”

  “You don’t want them to think you deserted.”

  Tousey gave a wry smile and a shrug. “In the event of my death, my family will receive my pension. Otherwise . . . Will you do this for me?”

  There was a pause, and then Gabriel nodded. “I will do this for you.”

  Isobel looked between the two of them, feeling as though she’d come late and missed something important. But she had a more urgent question whispering in her mind just then.

  “Do you think they will send others, despite your failure?”

  Tousey looked at her then, his eyes clear, and sad. “I am certain that they will.”

  Someone coughed behind them, and he took a deep breath, then exhaled. “I will not offer you my hand; we were not friends. Farewell. I do not think we will meet again.”

  “The road turns on itself,” Gabriel said, “and we never know where we may end or who we may see there.”

  Tousey did not smile again; she thought perhaps he had no more smile left in him. “Very well, then. If so, I hope that we may begin as friends in a less inopportune time.”

  Isobel watched as he walked back to meet his captors, then allowed the four to escort him away. “What will happen to him?”

  “It depends on which tribe gets him,” Gabriel said. “For three different tribes to come, either they all felt aggrieved by his actions, or—”

  “Or?”

  “Or they want to know what he knows.” Gabriel’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Magicians aren’t the only ones who might think to benefit from powerful allies, Iz. The Agreement is old, but it’s not unbreakable. On either side.”

  Isobel stared at him.

  She thought of the buffalo, slaughtered for the power in their blood. Of the great, ancient spirit trapped by greed. Of men far away, poking and poking at the Territory, promises carried on threat of hellfire, or sweet-milk promises that only make your stomach bloat.

  She thought of the whisper waking her from sleep, and the way the devil studied his cards, every hand he dealt, and a man who walked to his fate without flinching, though someone else sent him there.

  And she thought again of the buffalo, hooves pounding heartbeats against the ground, of cards falling on felted tabletops, of the look in the Reaper hawk’s eye.

  Survive. Protect.

  She pulled the shawl more tightly once again, although she felt too warm, not cold.

  “We need to go back to the valley.”

  It might have been proper to stay until the marshal’s bones were reclaimed and safely interred in the boneyard, but neither of them had any desire to stay, and it seemed the town had no desire for them to linger either. The town of Andreas might live by the Agreement, but Gabriel did not think that they had been particularly comfortable with the close-up reminder of it.

  They left the marshal’s pony in the stable with the old mare. He’d thought about taking her—a tough little road horse like that would be wasted pulling a plow, but when Isobel looked at her, then looked back at him, he’d shaken his head.

  “We’ve no need for her. They can let her be stolen at some point, make a nice gift to some young warrior.”

  She’d only nodded. He hadn’t added that he thought the reminder of the marshal’s death would be an extra burden on shoulders that already bore too many.

  No one saw them off as they rode back through the gates, the judge having made awkward farewells immediately after the American had been handed over. It was just as well, Gabriel supposed. “Lovely to have visited; sorry about the dead marshal and shredded bodies we left behind” wasn’t the best repayment for hospitality, and if only Gabriel understood how close they had come to a potential border incident with a foreign power . . .

  He didn’t regret agreeing to carry the marshal’s message. Tousey’s family deserved that much peace. But Gabriel wasn’t sure how he would word it, who he would send it to, without explaining how he came to be there —without making himself seem more useful to them than he had a desire to be.

  And they would see him as useful; there was no escaping it any longer.

  As preoccupied with his thoughts as he was, Isobel was worse. She had been stiff as they saddled the animals, and even now her fingers were too tight on the reins, making Uvnee tense as well; her shoulders were stiff, and she didn’t look around, taking in any last memories of the town the way she had every other place they’d left, but stared ahead, her expression grim.

  He watched her from the corner of his eye as they rode down the dusty trail away from the palisades gate. Slowly, her shoulders eased a bit, the reins lowering, but her expression remained somber, her eyes distant. He breathed the warm air, feeling the weight of blood and too-close quarters washed away by the smell of grass and water, the sun warm overhead, the distant feel of water sliding through stone deep below them, and waited.

  He waited until her legs softened around the mare’s sides and her mouth eased, and she smiled when a gold-and-blue butterfly chased itself around the mare’s ears before flitting off into the grass.

  “You killed the magicians, didn’t you.”

  He had chosen not to watch her as he spoke, keeping his gaze between Steady’s ears, watching the soft brown flesh twitch back and forth, pleased to be back on the road as well. Her laughter might have sounded true to someone who did not know her.

  “You can’t kill a magician. They just . . . come back. Remember?”

  He had almost missed her impudence, in all this, and chose to consider its return a good thing. He took two breaths, waited four soft clops of Steady’s hooves, before he looked over. Her fingers hadn’t tightened on the reins, and her body remained open and calm. Her braid was curled over her shoulder, the feathers braided into it fluttering as she moved with her mare, the two of them practically one beast, the way a proper rider should be. Her profile, shadowed under the brim of her hat, showed no hint of a smile, but neither was she frowning, and when she felt his gaze on her, she turned and met it, square and unafraid.

  She had spent her childhood at the devil’s knee; he couldn’t bluff his way past her. So, he took a different approach. “You were not pleased with the judge’s decision to let them go free.”

  “Neither were you.”

  “No. I wasn’t. But I had no ability to prevent it. To preven
t them from doing as they would once they were free.” His throat was dry, and he reached for the canteen slung at his saddle, taking a long swig before going on. “You stopped them.”

  “Were you the one who told the Americans to approach magicians?”

  Her question was so quiet, he almost didn’t understand the words, or the intent behind it. “What? I—”

  “That letter that was in the waystation box for you. It came across the river. Good paper, ink that didn’t fade. The boss uses ink like that, and pays well for it. So, someone with money. Over there, you said, money means power.” He saw her shoulders rise in a slight shrug. “I’m guessing that people with that kind of power aren’t that different from magicians. They want more. And . . .”

  “And the Territory, to certain people, reeks of power, both the money kind and . . . other,” he finished for her. “Yes.” He could lie to her, but he would not.

  “Why?”

  That hadn’t been the question he’d half-expected. The devil understood power, manipulated the desire for it to match his own intentions, whatever they were. But then, the devil stayed in his town, at the center of his web, and wove the strands he needed. His Hand strayed further, saw more.

  Gabriel knew from experience that more was often confusing.

  “Back in Patch Junction, you said that people who wanted things from the States, who tried to bring what was there here, that they were fools. You said that April was a fool for yearning after those things.”

  April had been a fool—not for wanting the things civilization could bring, but for not understanding what else they would bring with them. He had the flash of a dry, cracked riverbed, a cold sun, and rubbed one hand against his leg, feeling sweat that had nothing to do with the heat of the day.

  “My letters were to a friend. Someone I trusted. What he did with the things I told him could not have given injury.” He had passed along nothing of the devil, nothing of magicians, only tales of long rides and small towns, of ten ways to cook beans and the pleasure of the open skies, compared to the cramped quarters of Philadelphia and Boston. Even if such things had been shared . . . No.

  “Are you certain?”

  It would have been kinder if her voice were accusing, angry, rather than curious. Accusations and anger he could counter, deflect, defuse.

  They rode without speaking after that, birds calling and insects singing, and the occasional relief of a doe and fauns lifting their head to watch them ride past, until the weight of it all pressed too heavily on him. He had shared nothing untoward across the river—and he had not shared everything that came back to him. He had thought—had decided —that it was nothing to do with him, no matter of his, what games others played in distant places.

  He had been wrong, and the fact burned in his gullet like rotgut. The snakes had warned him, over and again: enemies and friends would tangle and be confused. Be careful, Old Woman had said. Even Graciendo had warned him indirectly; the old bear had known that traveling with Isobel—with who she was—would endanger him, claw at his refusal to give in, drag him into the very involvement he had run from.

  Not of any thing she would do or say, but simply by being what she was . . . and him being what he couldn’t help but be.

  The Territory had never let him go.

  The moment he had looked into those eyes and offered, on a whim, to mentor the potential he saw there, he had been found.

  “The letter you carried. It was from that friend. He heard a thing that worried him, and he spoke of it to me, I think to ease his mind, to somehow pass word along into the Territory the only way he knew how.”

  Gabriel had spent years in the States, pretending to fit, making himself fit, but he’d never been able to let go, either. Abner had known that before he had. Had not been surprised when Gabriel packed up one night and boarded a coach, not stopping until he hit Saint Louis. The letter hadn’t been guilt speaking; it had been a warning.

  “The new president, Jefferson. He’s a smart man, ambitious. And he’s been given authority, given funding to send a mapping expedition into the Territory. Maps are a kind of power too, Iz. They change the unknown into known, and once a thing is known, it can be taken.”

  She was listening to him, chewing his words. “And something like that, an expedition, it would be allowed. They’d pass the Mudwater unmolested. The boss wouldn’t even notice it, because it’s not military, not force. Like the monks.”

  The Spanish monks, who had been chasing down an unholy magic unleashed by their masters. The magic itself had carried no intent; the monks had not cared about the Territory, only themselves. There were holes in the devil’s protections, holes that her boss did not seem to care about.

  Or wasn’t aware of. Gabriel wasn’t sure which thought unnerved him more.

  “Only way to stop them would be to shut the border entirely.” He swallowed, and Steady shifted underneath him, dancing sideways, picking up on his discomfort. He stroked Steady’s neck to calm the horse, trying to imagine that, the inevitable and likely immediate results of such an act on the devil’s part. “He’d have to shut all the borders.” Allowing settlers from all three borders meant no one nation could claim insult—not the Spanish crown nor the British, not the Americans. Nor the French, although they seemed to care little for what happened here, the trappers and woodsmen who remained so well-mingled with the tribes, he suspected they thought themselves other than French. If he didn’t shut all the borders, the ones who were affected would take that as excuse . The Territory standing alone was a potential prize yet to be won. The Territory possibly allying with another nation became a threat.

  “He can’t,” Isobel said, and she had that tone again, telling him that although her mouth shaped the words, the knowing came from another source entirely.

  He didn’t know if it meant the devil couldn’t because it would cause more problems than it solved, or if he couldn’t, quite literally.

  The why didn’t matter, only the end result: the Territory remained open for Jefferson’s handpicked spies to continue poking into it, causing trouble they were entirely unprepared to understand, much less survive.

  Gabriel didn’t need a spirit-dream to tell him who would be tasked to deal with the results.

  “You could leave.” Her voice was small but solid, and he had the uncomfortable thought that he might as well have spoken his thoughts out loud. “I’m not sure what’s considered usual for a mentorship ride, but I’m reasonably certain this isn’t it.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him, and he took a swig off his canteen to buy himself time to answer.

  Guilt alone didn’t explain it. Nor duty—he had little enough of either, and she knew that.

  He remembered the dream of a cracked creek bed, the cold sun, and further back, the fish swimming at his feet, passing over him as though he were not there. He remembered the snake’s hissed amusement, and Old Woman’s frown, following him every step deeper into the very thing he’d sought to escape.

  Isobel had been confused by the wapiti and Reaper hawk giving her conflicting advice. He’d been dealing with that since he’d returned from the States, Graciendo telling him how to remain apart, while Old Woman’s teachings followed down into his dreams.

  He could do both. He could remain himself and still be Isobel’s mentor properly. He simply had to make her understand.

  “All my life, I wanted nothing but to leave. I wasn’t a farmer; that was clear from the beginning. My siblings were born with their hands in the dirt, but I . . . It wasn’t for me. When my parents agreed to send me East, for schooling, I thought it was the beginning of my true life, my real life. I was sixteen, a man, and the world lay at my feet.”

  “But you didn’t like it there.”

  “The city . . . There were so many people, even in my classes, it took me months to walk through them and not flinch. But the things I learned, the things I heard, saw . . . I made friends there, friends who had plans, wanted to shape the world. I thoug
ht I could be part of that too, in my own way. But the Territory is possessive, Isobel. It will let us go only so long.

  “I fell ill. Soul-sick. I barely made it to the Mudwater before collapsing. If it weren’t for the Old Woman . . .”

  He had told her some of this, but only some: she had no need to know of the weeks he’d spent recovering, too weak to move, too weak to not listen as the Old Woman poured stories into his ears, waited by his side while the dreams came. “Most folk who live on that side of the river, they plug their ears and blinder their eyes. They don’t want to see there’s a difference between the banks, don’t feel the way things change. But the folk who cross back and forth, the ones who work the waterways . . . They know. They knew they had to get me back across, soon’s I was strong enough.”

  “And you were angry about that.”

  “Furious. I raged as best I could, being weak as a newborn babe. I cursed and I swore, and then I learned new words to better curse. But that changed nothing. The Territory had decided where I would belong.

  “But it couldn’t claim me, either. Not if I didn’t let it.”

  He waited, but Isobel didn’t ask.

  “And you kept in touch with your friends there all this time?”

  “It’s part of how I resist. How I bite my thumb at it.” He reined Steady in, blocking Uvnee from walking on. “But I swear to you, Isobel Devil’s Hand. I did nothing with intent to harm the Territory, or those within.”

  She studied him, her face blank, her eyes flat under the shadow of the hat’s brim, and something flickered in those dark orbs, a trick of the light.

  Then she looked away, and he could tell himself it was nothing.

  “Why do you think it wouldn’t let you go? Is it like that for all of us?”

  “I don’t know. And no —some come and go without issue. I’ve no idea why I’m so fortunate.”

  She let the bitterness pass unremarked. “But you were here, and you were in Flood on my birthday and thought to offer me mentoring.”

  He could see where she was going with that, even blindfolded in the mid-night. “I don’t believe in fate, Iz. We make our own choices.”