Gabriel's Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  "Impotent, even," Margaret said, then bit her lip as though to stifle a laugh. Gabriel could read the tension in her shoulders, but hopefully the bandits could not.

  "You should not feel so confident." Longfellow spoke for the first time, his voice a painful-sounding crackle of ice. "We are a long way from the devil's stronghold, and he has greater issues to worry at than a small town in the middle of nowhere reaching an... unfortunate disappearance."

  Henry's head lifted at that, and Gabriel arranged his fingers against the table in subtle tradesign for 'no.' It wasn't enough, not yet. But he could feel the potential for violence rise in the room, like the thickening of the air before a storm. His gaze flicked across the townsfolk, seeing only surprise and a hint of outrage at the overt threat, not fear or concern. If he could feel it, the ratcheting of tension in the bodies across the table, surely the others could as well?

  But mayhap not. They'd been protected for so long, isolated within their town, they might not recognize it for what it was.

  Gabriel braced himself, casting about for a way to redirect the conversation without tipping their hand too obviously, when Joad stepped into the silence, his natural impatience driving him.

  "What do you mean by that? Not the threat, that was plain as a blight on corn. But about the devil being distracted."

  Well, that was one way to do it. "He means the Americans are pushing at the eastern border," Gabriel responded, letting his fingers relax and stretching his body to take up more eye-space, drawing their attention to him. "And there are folk who should know better, thinking that the Agreement failing might not be so bad, that the world should be for them as can grab it, and no other rules apply." He let his gaze meet the eyes of every bandit across the table from him, noting the moment Dag finally pegged him for the Rider she'd met on the road.

  "Paul," she said in a low voice, the single word a warning, and her leader's eyes narrowed as he suddenly took more notice of Gabriel. His skin prickled under that gaze, the thrum of something filling his ears, and he had the sudden thought that he'd missed something, something important.

  Gabriel was no trained brawler, but he'd gotten into a fight or three and he knew what to look for. The way they moved, turning so that they kept the room in sight without ever losing track of the others—they'd done this before. The camp they were in –now—had it been a town once, before they came? Who had they driven from their homes, to take possession of it?

  Mouse-Face’s words came back to him, and he felt a shudder deep in his brain.

  He shook it off. It didn’t matter. Now mattered.

  "You've been out there," Paul said, turning his full attention to Gabriel. "You know."

  Gabriel inclined his head slightly, not agreeing but not disagreeing, either. Draw the other man in, force him to show his hand, then he could determine their tactics, decide the next play.

  "If the devil cannot keep out the Americans, cannot keep out the Spanish," and Paul nodded his chin at Zacarías as though he were a fully-armed soldier rather than an unarmed monk, "then do you truly think he can protect you here? The tribes already wrestle each other for hunting land, do you think they will allow you to remain once the Devil's Hand is removed?"

  Gabriel wondered at the man's reaction if he told him that the Devil's Hand was not only not removed, but a few days' ride from him. He contemplated saying just that, then, regretfully, let it go.

  "The Tui would not harm the town. They have given the tribe no offense."

  "You think that will matter, when the Agreement fails? You think they don't want that well, too? That land you've got growing? Think they won't just come down and take it, soon's they can? Better to let us in, let us protect you before it does happen."

  Margaret shifted, looking uncomfortable, and Joad's jaw clenched, his skin going pale under the pressure. Gabriel hoped that they were playing along, but he had a moment's fear that the bandit's words were getting through, pushing them where they hadn't known they were raw.

  "And then what?" Henry asked, his voice tight. "You will kill the tribes before they can attack us? Take their hunting lands? And after that, what? When will you be satisfied?"

  "He doesn't want the land," Gabriel said suddenly, feeling the odd pieces clattering into place, the tension on his skin suddenly too familiar. "He doesn’t even want the well itself. He wants the water. All the water."

  Paul grinned, and if the teeth hadn't been human-flat, Gabriel would have reached for salt, assuming it was a ghoul or demon across the table from him, so flat and cold were his eyes. He almost did reach for salt anyway, before remembering that the stick was tucked into his saddle bags, in the shed with Steady and well out of reach.

  Old Woman Who Never Dies' tribe would have been within their rights to leave Gabriel on the banks, feverish and near death. Graciendo would have been within rights to kill him when he stumbled, half-mad, into his winter den.

  They hadn’t, for one simple reason: The Agreement wasn't about debt, or obligation. It was about intent.

  The people of Rabbit's Mound had brought him here under misleading hospitality, had tried to bind him... but they had offered him no direct harm. Had intended no-one harm to him, or –anyone—anything—else. What this man wanted.

  Paul Gauthier would turn them into slaves.

  "Water's gonna be the new silver," the bandit said, unashamed. "And a well like you've got there, deep and sweet and protected seven ways from Saturday? Magic’d so it never runs dry? When the time comes, that'll make us kings in this land.

  "And it's not like we're gonna kick you out or anything." His voice softened, reasonable as a preacher at a baby-naming. "You keep on as you were, growing and weaving and doing what you do. We'll take care of the rest."

  The worst thing was, Gabriel knew, knew that it wasn't a bad-faith offer. It wasn't a good -faith one, either, but on the surface it wasn't bad. And it had the underlying value of truth: eventually, the Agreement would fail. The devil knew it, even as he sent Isobel cross-Territory, fixing what she could.

  All Henry and the others had to do was accept the bandits' offer and they could stop worrying, stop trying to find protection, because they'd have it.

  Against everything except their protectors.

  "There's just one problem with that," he heard himself saying as though from a long distance away. "What if the water doesn't want you?"

  10

  The moment the word left his mouth, Gabriel wanted to kick himself. This wasn't what he’d planned, at all. He'd hoped to push the bandits into making a mistake, into doing something that would draw the weight of the Agreement down on them. Logic. Persuasion. Those were the tools he'd been trained to use.

  But their leader was too smart, too calm; Gabriel suspected that he was using the same plan on them, or one similar enough, and with the utter arrogance of the man’s ‘offer,’ the odds on who would break first were not in the town's favor.

  So. A pivot.

  Gabriel wasn't Isobel, to command any kind of obedience just by his presence. He wasn't even a marshal, or a Judge, that he could state the Law and have it stick. He'd been an Advocate, but in a place far from here, where all the rules were different. All the rules save one: don't lose.

  If your opponent is holding all the cards, bring in a new deck.

  He grinned, the cockiest, most self-assured grin he'd ever built, and asked again, "What if the water doesn't want you?"

  "Are you mad?" The look of tolerant amusement on the bandit's face made Gabriel's teeth clench behind the grin, rage not entirely his own tightening his muscles and making his stomach sick.

  He could feel the spirit-snake slithering along his arm, smell the stink of Graciendo's fur, hear the flickerthwack of the devil's cards. He heard the words of the river-witch, back down in Red Stick. "Everything's got a price; what matters is how you pay it. Everything's an agreement. Else it's something else, less pretty, less kind, and far less binding."

  Henry was right: the folk of this
town were not soldiers, were barely even hunters. And he, Gabriel, had been right: one man alone could not stop them. But this… he could feel something other than himself surging in his veins, wet and fierce and unstoppable.

  His choice, what he would do with it.

  Gabriel pushed down the rage and lifted his chin, shaping his words as though he were back before the Bench, arguing for a man's –life—or death. "You come into our home and you speak as though it were simply a matter of... Of violence. Or the threat of violence. As though water or bone or wind can be claimed. As though we are the ones making the decisions."

  They were all staring at him now, but he thought the woman, Dag, had a flicker of understanding, and Zacarías…if anyone else here understood what the Territory was, it would be the monk, if he'd allowed himself to truly remember even half of what had happened up on that hill, when the Hand and a magician had saved their sorry selves from magic the Territory had reshaped into something new...

  "We're all here on sufferance," Gabriel went on, his gaze passing over them all, one by one. "Not the tribes, not the devil's. They're just trying to teach us the rules." Or, in Isobel's case, enforce them. Not for the sakes of those who broke them, but for everyone else. To keep the Territory safe for the rest. "Saying you'll claim the water, control it? That's like... like a magician saying he'll claim the wind. You've got to pay for it. You've got to pay what they ask. And you've got to have permission. Otherwise it’ll turn on you."

  Magicians petitioned the winds and went mad when they took on that magic. Mad, and not—quite—human. Claiming water...

  Water-child. The sensation of drowning, the dry-fever that wracked him when he tried to leave, swelled his throat with a too-familiar panic, and his fingers clenched at the wooden table in front of him.

  "What, you think the water will object to who draws it?" The sallow-skinned bandit scoffed, glancing sideways at his companions as though inviting them to share his amusement.

  "I think," Gabriel said softly, "that if you try to force the issue, you will regret it."

  Wind was magic and bone was magic, but water... water was life.

  They knew the town had no real defense. But the well did.

  The first settlers had invited the Tua to perform a medicine dance when it was dug. Medicine like that would settle into the well, wrap around it. Change it. Empower it.

  Gabriel could feel the surge of that power within him. But was it simply the well, or something more?

  It was a risk he wasn’t sure he could take.

  "This is nonsense," the other woman said, and he heard the scratch and thud of chairs being pushed back, the scrape of metal on leather.

  "It's been illuminating, speaking with you," Paul said, standing in a more leisurely fashion, his hand clear of his knives, but Gabriel did not make the mistake of thinking he was harmless, and neither did those around him. Just because you could not win a fight did not mean you should not fight it.

  His fingers closed around the hilt of his larger blade, sliding it free from the sheath and flipping it up into ready pose, even as he saw Zacarías reaching for something under the –table—a stick the width of a thumb, and the length of his arm. The monk slid it through both hands, squaring his feet. Joad had his knife out, a heavy, curved thing that could likely chop through deer bone without hesitation.

  He felt his body move, the chair sliding back as he got to his feet and had the odd sensation of watching as though through someone else's eyes, distanced from where he was.

  He did not have to do this. He could let go, not-answer. What did it matter to him what this town decided, so long as they survived?

  It mattered.

  It seemed impossibly simple now. Gabriel felt the fear, the frustration and the anger, layers of it built like scabs over resentment, but none of that changed the Touch laid on him at birth. Water claimed him. The Territory claimed him. He'd been running from it his entire life, terrified of drowning. And yet...

  He'd been terrified by what he saw in Red Stick, the creeping sickness infecting people, turning them mean and foolish, ready to turn on each other for gain and for fear. Terrified, and furious, and all the more so for watching Isobel sink deeper and deeper into what she was, letting the Territory's medicine, the devil's machinations, reshape her into something he could not understand.

  Mentoring was about teaching them how to survive. But he didn't know how to help her survive that. So, he'd gone to rage at the River, expecting that it would take him, drown him... maybe, in his darkest thoughts, turn him into a thing that could help Isobel. Or simply to end him.

  Instead... it had let him go.

  The blurred fog cleared, and he could see, now. It had claimed him. But he had not claimed it.

  Intent mattered.

  Gabriel pressed the soles of his boots into the floor, lifted his spine the way he would settling into Steady' saddle, pushed himself deep into the ground like roots, spreading and searching until he tapped at the bright trickle of water deep below. But it moved too slow, too thinly, and he extended his Touch further, feeling for the water that fed the well itself, deeper below.

  Hello?

  Nothing. He felt a moment's disappointment mixed with relief, and the latter made him angry enough to try again.

  "The moment someone moves, they will have given offense." Henry, still trying to follow Gabriel's script, as best he could, while Margaret moved to his left shoulder, another staff in her hands. They must have arranged to have them stashed underneath, when the tables were being moved together. Gabriel had a moment to thank fortune for foresight, before something tugged at him, pulling his attention down and inward again.

  Cool crisp bright gave way to dark still deep and a sense of curiosity pushing back at him. Gabriel shuddered, instinctively wanting nothing more than to pull away from the touch.

  Instead, he ripped off the scabs, even those still new-formed and blooded, and let the River in.

  He stood in a river, red clay cliffs rising on other side, the sky storm-grey overhead. Water swirled around his ankles, then his knees, clear one moment then muddy the next, the faint swipe of things moving below the surface, brushing against his legs. He blinked, and the water was rising to his hips, lapping at his fingertips.

  If he let it rise further, if it submerged him, he would drown. And yet, Gabriel felt no fear, no panic.

  He had said no to the Mudwater and... it had let him go. Now he returned, not to offer himself as sacrifice, or demand answers, but to ask for help. One part of the greater whole to another.

  He exhaled, and let the waters rise over his head, filling his lungs and washing away his thoughts, taking every worry, every fear, every shred of anger and love. He was empty, sodden, nameless, lost.

  And then it washed it all back into him, ice-cold and sharp-clear, and he surfaced again.

  "Stop." Gabriel lifted his head, feeling moisture coat his skin like he was back south again, the air filled with wet, and said it again, louder. "Stop."

  Nobody'd drawn blood yet, nobody'd used their weapon; how much time had passed while he was submerged in the water-sense? Gabriel shook the question aside, the thoughts in his head sloshing unpleasantly. "You need to stop. Step back."

  "And who's going to make us, Rider? You?"

  Not him. "I'm..." The words fought to stay behind his teeth; he pushed them out, the river below him surging up through his veins. "I'm water-child and I tell you, the water doesn't want you." Want was not the right word, but he did not have the right word, not in all the languages he knew. "If you try..." He coughed, his throat too soaked to swallow properly. "If you interfere with the folk who were given the blessing, it will rise in response, and wash us from the land."

  Water wore things down slowly, wave after wave, but it could also surge over its banks, and when it did it could not distinguish between one pebble and the next. It could not tell resident from bandit, crops from weed. It would drown everything.

  "Water child, huh? Tell t
he water this," Longfellow said, and lunged, the bone-handled knife in his hand cutting under Gabriel's jacket and stabbing under his ribs.

  He felt the knife go in, sliding into the flesh, but the expected pain didn't come. He glanced down as though to confirm that the knife had made contact and saw the bone handle sticking out, blood already staining the metal. He could hear shouting, yelling, and felt hands on his back, the scuffle of feet and chairs around him, but couldn't react, staring dumbly at the blade. He'd been cut before, knives and claws, and they had all hurt like the seven blazes. Why not this?

  He touched the handle, and water dripped from his fingers onto the blade, washing the blood away. He stared at the drops, too bright and clear to be sweat, and lifted two fingers to his lips, tongue licking the moisture away. It was musty, musky with salt and sulfur, and a shudder ran down his spine that had nothing to do his injury.

  "So be it," a voice said from his mouth, and he felt the creek rise, spilling over its –banks—not just here, but in the bandit’s camp as well, the water following his lead, silt and salt filling wells and cisterns. A sense of horror filled him, matched only by a darker satisfaction.

  "Gabriel. Gabriel, imbécil!" There was a howl and a thump, the sound of wood hitting flesh, and a shocked, echoing silence. "Stay down,” the monk said to someone else, his voice a rumble of thunder, and Gabriel swayed, thinking that must be the sound of his god, roaring down at the sinners.

  "Let it go!" and the monk was speaking to him now, Gabriel thought. He let his hand drop from the blade and looked up. The bandits were down, two face down on the ground, the others on their knees, two people he did not know holding ancient-looking blunderbusses in the ready, while Joad clenched his deer-sticker in both hands, his body singing with the need to use it on someone.

  The monk was speaking Spanish now, so quickly Gabriel could barely understand him. "Let it go, Gabriel. Whatever it is that you do, whatever it does through you, stop it!"

  Oh. But he hadn’t done anything, he wanted to protest. He’d just bled, and…