The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You made a decision, and you carried it out.” He didn’t like what he was about to say, but it was his responsibility to say it. “Sometimes those decisions, those things, will be ugly. That you didn’t do it with your own hands? Doesn’t make it any less your responsibility any more than it wasn’t the judge’s responsibility when he had a man executed, for all that someone else primed the shot.

  “So, you take responsibility. Could you, in any conscience, allow the magicians to be released, despite the fact that they had committed no wrong under the Law?”

  “No.” There was no hesitation, no doubt in her voice. “The madness, I could feel it in them. They had no control; they didn’t want control, only to consume. They would have gone after anything that fed them—anyone with even the slightest hint of power, and they would have gone after the weakest first.”

  Someone like April, her girlhood friend they’d met in Junction, whose touch was to grow things green and bright. Or Devorah, any rider; anyone who could touch the Road could feel the bones beneath their feet. Or even himself: Gabriel might resent and resist, but he knew what he was, what he could not escape. His water-sense would mark him, no matter how slight.

  The things that made them part of the Territory, he thought, and wondered why he’d never thought that before, so obvious and yet invisible.

  “They would have gone after anyone with even a scrap of power. I couldn’t let them. But”—and there was the thorn in her heart, the crack in her chest; he could hear it, see it in her, and his own chest ached for her—“if I am the cold eye and the final word . . . what is there to stop me?”

  “Nothing, save your own sense of where to stop.”

  That brought her up short: she had been expecting him to say something else, mayhap tell her how to limit herself, or some secret, but he had none, had no answer save what he gave her.

  “You are the devil’s eye, Isobel. What do you see?”

  She stared at him finally, and then turned away, looking out over the expanse of grass, the clustered line of trees, the rise of the hills and mountains around them, and then back to him. Her eyes were nearly all pupil, like a cat’s in candlelight, and he felt the urge to remain still and make no sound.

  “Infection,” she said finally, her voice heavy and slow. “Things ooze where they should be solid, hot where they should be cool, cold where they should be warm, soft and brittle as it eats into the bones, and the bones cannot hold, even as the spirit cannot break free. Poison, seeping into everything. If it were a wound like yours, I would slice it open and wash it until your blood ran clean.”

  His hand touched the scar on his side reflexively. It was healed now, only giving him the occasional twinge, but he could remember the pain he’d felt those first few days, when every breath made him wonder if he would ever rest easy again, much less ride.

  “But the left hand is not the giving hand,” Isobel went on. “If I do this . . .”

  “You’re afraid you’ll hurt the spirit, do what the magicians couldn’t?” He wanted to scoff, to tell her that a single mortal couldn’t do more than an impossible banding of magicians, but then he remembered the scene inside the lockhouse, the bodies torn and strewn across the hard-packed ground, and was uncertain.

  “This is not part of the Agreement, Gabriel. There are none under the devil’s protection who are harmed here; the men who did this have been punished, either by death or worse, and the ancient one is not mine to interfere with. This is . . .” Her voice slowed, grew more strained. “This is not the devil’s due, nor were those magicians. And yet I carried out that sentence, without hesitation, as though . . .”

  The ground swelled underfoot as she spoke, a rumbling he could feel with his skin, and behind them Steady let out a ringing cry, part defiance and part fear, even as the hills rising above them shook hard enough to cause, in the distance, the crashing sound of a rockslide.

  “No.” Her eyes were wide, her face ashen. “No —”

  She wasn’t speaking to him, he realized even as Isobel picked up the salt stick and threw it at him. “Ward yourself and the horses,” she told him. “And stay there.”

  She grabbed the fabric of her skirt in both hands and hitched it, then took off at a dead run for the center of the valley, going three quarters of the way across before stopping as though she’d hit a wall, spinning around, and collapsing to her knees.

  A heavy wind slicked through the valley, low along the tops of the grasses, the ground shuddered, unruly, and the blue sky overhead seemed a distant, peaceful joke. He ground the salt between his palms and tried to draw a warding circle, but the wind scattered the grains faster than he could pour them. Giving up, he stuck the salt stick between his teeth, wincing at the bitter, sharp taste, and ran for the horses, grabbing their reins and bringing them close together. If he could, he would have sent them back through the passage, but he worried that a rockslide there would be deadly for all three of them.

  Better to stay here, as far from rocks or trees as he could, and pray the ground did not open up and swallow them—or Isobel.

  And then the world broke loose.

  The moment Isobel had dropped to her knees, her palm down on the ground, she felt slapped between two impossible weights pressing the air from her lungs, the strength from her limbs.

  “Please.” She wasn’t sure what she was asking for, or who, but the word was all she could squeeze out. “Please.”

  They did not listen, could not hear her. The wind picked up, nearly knocking her sideways, the grass sharp-edged and harsh against her hands and face. Her hat was knocked clear off her head, only the leather cord under her chin keeping it from blowing away, digging into the soft skin there until she jammed it onto her head again, defiant as though to tell the wind to keep its hands off her and hers.

  She didn’t hear it laugh; that had to have been her imagination.

  She turned her fingers downward, nails digging past the grass into the dirt, all her weight pressing into her palm until her arm and shoulder ached with it, doing her best to ignore everything but the knowledge of the sigil on her palm and what it meant, what it meant she was, what it meant she was required to do.

  “Please,” she said again, asking the barrier that met her to allow her through, the way she had moved past bone and stone and warding, to reach the magicians within the hut. The valley shuddered under her, the disorientation outside and around her as well as within, as though she were trapped in a fever rather than the fever being under her own skin. The spirit raged; she could feel it, this close, as though she’d grabbed a heated poker, no, something hot but spiked, a handful of gooseberry vines or a cactus pad that wriggled and fought within her grasp, and each wriggle sent another rumble through the bones as they pushed back, pressing that rage flat in an attempt to calm it.

  “That won’t work.” She was unsure if she spoke the words or merely thought them, unsure if the barrier she sensed was aware enough to even know she was there, much less hear her. “You’re doing more harm that way, can’t you see?”

  It was useless; the bones knew only the bones, knew only the earth they were buried in, the deep slow movements and the sudden cracks; the barrier was there to protect itself, not those who lived above.

  She thought of the elk’s advice and the Reaper hawk’s. To save herself, to do what she had been sent out to do. To leave the bones to themselves, to meddle in it.

  The Agreement gave the devil dominion over those who came into the Territory but not those who were of the Territory—the tribes, and those born of the bones themselves, the creatures of spirit and medicine. And not the magicians, who came from outside but gave themselves over to the winds.

  But what of the Territory itself  ? She could feel it spreading out under her hand, though they were far off the Road here, in this deserted hollow, the cool fire of stone and bone rising from below to tower overhead, everything resting just so, and she thought again of Gabriel’s story of the Black Hills. Too large, too strong
for even the devil to comprehend. He thought to control this?

  She bit her lip until she felt blood in her mouth, her thoughts hurt as badly as the burning thorns, prickly discomfort that made her shy away.

  You know. The whisper, molten threads, no longer outside but within, running through her bones. The Master of the Territory saw what you are, but we have the greater claim.

  She lifted her hand to her mouth, smeared the blood there across her palm, mixing with soil on her skin, the bitter taste of dirt on her tongue. The Territory had been given into the devil’s keeping, and she was of the Territory by birth and touch and claim; she could do what the devil could not.

  Living silver, wrapped in her bones.

  Magicians could not die, a spirit pulled back to being could not fade; the fury it felt would last a thousand and a thousand years, until nothing lived in this valley, in these hills, anywhere for a day’s ride or more, spreading over time. If they released it . . .

  That fury would scorch the ground, burn dirt and rock, turn water to steam and every living thing to ash. But then it would be free, and the damage would be contained, the land —the people —beyond this valley safe.

  Gabriel. Her stomach dropped. No warding could protect him if that happened. She should never have let him come with her if she’d thought it through, if she’d thought at all.

  Another rumble, this one stronger, more violent, and she swayed on her knees, feeling the beating of massive, invisible wings below her, and curled around it the shadowed tendrils of something else, thick and clinging, reeking of want and need.

  The magicians who had died here were not destroyed; they lingered by the power of their own desires, and for the first, for the truly first time, Isobel understood why they were told to run when they encountered magicians.

  They had no care for anything save power, not even themselves. They would willingly spend their very blood and bone to become something greater. Would willingly destroy the world below them to achieve what the winds contained. Just as the ancient spirit would destroy everything to be free.

  Isobel pulled her palm from the ground, her other hand scrabbling for the knife at her side. The silver along the handle and edge no longer gleamed in the sunlight, tarnished to a dull black just in the time since they’d ridden into the valley, just the same as the silver band on her little finger.

  “Tell me something useful,” she muttered to it. There was no need to toss silver here to know that something was wrong, something was dangerous, and not all the silver they carried on them was enough to clear the way.

  Living silver. Living silver clears all things.

  She laid the edge of the knife across her palm and drew a line deep into the flesh until blood welled, rising up to the black lines embedded into her palm. She dropped the knife into the grass and slammed her hand down onto the ground again, the dirt under her fingernails and pressed into the whorls of her fingertips mixing with the blood running down her fingers, aching pain driving from her palm up into her arm, coiling around her elbow and up into her shoulder, her neck, and down her spine, spreading throughout her body until all she could feel was the ache. When the ground trembled underneath her again, as though trying to buck her off its skin, she shoved all of that down, the ache and the pain, the blood and the fear and need she felt, to feel the ancient one move freely, for the magicians to disperse into the winds, for the land to settle back onto its bones and be calm once again.

  She was the Devil’s Hand, the cold eye of justice, and she would do what was required to keep the Territory whole.

  And if that meant destroying everything within this valley, she would do so.

  “But it doesn’t have to be,” she told it. “Let it go.” Neither a command nor a plea: a suggestion, a better way. “Trust me.”

  The bones wavered, and she felt the warding crack and splinter. The spirit howled itself open, the tattered remains of the magicians fell away, and the spirit broke free.

  There were no words to describe it, nothing in Isobel’s thoughts that could contain it, save the dismay that even a brace of magicians had thought to control this, the air above them filled with a presence that made clear the form she had sensed before was barely the shadow of its shadow: endlessly stretching wings, and eyes and claws and elongated head, the rattling scream of a tornado above her, the wind no longer laughing but howling with outrage. Immense, ancient, powerful as only the long-dead become, fed on the blood of the Territory and the flesh of the winds. And she, petty and puny, daring to —

  “Not me!” she screamed at it. “It wasn’t me!”

  It had consumed them, consumed their power, stuffed it greedily into its maw and swallowed them whole. But not enough. Never enough. The shreds that had clung to its wings burned in the air, burned the soil down to rock with its rage, and the ancient spirit searched for the others, a thousand red-faceted eyes, a thousand bloody talons ripping through her, until it reached the core.

  She braced herself on hands and knees, her eyes closed, head bowed, until the whisper curled outside her ear, opened itself up, and flowed.

  An endless current, unfolding from the earth, tumbling on the winds, a respite of silence within the storm. Isobel was there, held by the current curling out from within her, but the whisper looked past her now, Isobel only the container, and whatever occurred, occurred far beyond her understanding.

  And in that nub of silence, the storm moved, the endless wings lifting, the red eyes looking elsewhere, the grass around her burnt to the ground, thick smeared clumps of soot filling the air, but her own skin untouched, her clothing ashes on her flesh, only the knife, the silver shining clean, remaining.

  One heartbeat. Another. Then the faint clack of grasshoppers, somewhere grass still remained. And then, overhead, the long low call of an owl, hunting as the sun slowly slipped over the mountains to the west.

  And then the sound of her own breathing, as she realized she was still alive.

  She let that rest for a moment, feeling her heart beat, too fast and too loud, the breath in her lungs too harsh for not having moved, the lack of weight pressing at her. She lifted her bloody hand from the ground, then pressed it back again, wincing at the sore flesh on dirt but feeling only the soft familiar dizziness of the bones deep below, the Road distant but present. The barrier was gone; the valley had been abandoned.

  “Gabriel?”

  Something harsh and warm draped over her shoulders, and she reached up to touch it—a blanket, familiar, her own blanket from her pack, and equally familiar hands wrapping it over her arms, a shaking hug engulfing her and the blanket, soft, harsh breath mingling with her own as he held her like a child, and she, dry-eyed and unutterably weary, stared out at the burnt expanse of the valley.

  Justice is done, the whisper said, and was gone.

  “I want a nice, quiet week in a town,” she said. “Just a week. Maybe two. Can we do that?”

  “Yah.” He shook, and it took her a moment to realize it was from laughter. “Yeah,” Gabriel said, “we can do that.”

  It was late even by a saloon’s standards, the bottles closed and dishes washed, the felt tables covered by sheets, chairs stacked and floors swept, the larger lamps trimmed and closed for the night. Marie walked across the main floor, her slippered feet and skirt making soft sounds in the air. The scent of bay oil and whiskey lingered over a fainter, more pervasive smell of tobacco and brimstone, and she followed it to the far wall and the faint indentation of a narrow door set into the wall.

  He was within; she knew that the way she knew everything that occurred within the saloon, within Flood itself, from the river banks to the outskirt farms, and she thought, briefly, to leave him to it, to retire to her own bed and wait for him to speak to her instead.

  “Come in,” came the response before she could decide.

  She placed her hand against the wall, and the door swung open. She wondered each time she entered what would happen if she were not granted permission, if the d
oor would still open or no, but had never felt the need to test it. If she were not wanted within, she would not enter.

  There were no windows in this room, no desk, only a sideboard with a crystal decanter of whiskey and the remains of supper on a tray. The walls were light brown wood, smooth-hewn and polished by time and use, three of them set with lamps that cast no shadows, while one was covered by a map, a fine-grain calfskin larger than any calf ever grew, etched with careful black lines and lettering.

  His back was to her, hands resting on his hips, his attention on the map. He had shed his jacket during the evening, his hair slicked back and dark against the starched whiteness of his collar, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow.

  The map was still for the first moment she glanced at it, then a patch of yellow faded to pale green, a thick black line thinning, a shadow of pink darkening to red. In the upper left corner, new lines formed, spiderweb-thin, a dark, ominous blue.

  She waited, but no further shifts occurred.

  “You worry.” His voice was rich and dry, and the face he turned to her was marked by wry amusement, all white teeth and smooth brown skin. For once, his amusement did not sit well with her.

  “I always worry.” She was his Right Hand, tasked to ensure that those who came to him were seen, heard. If something was happening, something that affected the House, troubled him, she needed to know.

  Unless, the thought came on the heels of the first, it was not a thing for the Right Hand to know. Unless it was a matter for the Left Hand.

  She glanced at the map again, but—as ever—it was too much for her to take in, too much to look at for too long.

  “It’s nearly dawn. Even you need to sleep eventually.”

  It was an old joke between them, decades old, and his smile softened in acknowledgment before turning away from the map entirely, moving across the room to pour a measure of whiskey into two glasses, offering her one.