The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “But what do they mean?”

  Gabriel was suddenly immensely tired. “I don’t know. Calls Thunder gave them to you, so I’ll assume that it’s for you to learn, not me.”

  Her face fell, and she cast her gaze down toward her lap. “I only gave them a hairpin,” she said, soft-voiced, reaching up to touch the feathers gently. “It didn’t mean anything.”

  He hadn’t expected her thoughts to turn in that direction. He forgot, at times, that she was barely past sixteen; for all that the devil had laid on her, for all the power she held, she was still in many ways so very young.

  “Was it something you treasured?” He knew it was; the hairpin had been made from bone polished smooth from care and use. “That was all Calls Thunder would consider, if you gave them something you valued in return.”

  Gabriel had long suspected that the dream-talker had given Isobel not a gift but a marker. Isobel of Flood, Isobel Devil’s Hand, could claim no special standing among natives. By giving her those feathers, he thought, Calls Thunder had marked her as someone of worth, of power. They might be enough to keep her safe in awkward situations, if she stepped wrong or the Agreement was in doubt.

  Might. He would not rely on them, nor allow her to, either.

  “The thing that attacked me, in the circle.” She changed the subject as she took the coffee pot, now boiled, off the tripod and poured it into mugs, giving the first one to the old man. “I thought at first it might be a haint, that someone had died here and not been properly warded. But the feel of it . . . was wrong.” She paused, then handed him the second cup. “Haints sorrow, and sometimes they’re fierce-mad. But this didn’t . . . this didn’t feel right.”

  Gabriel blew on his coffee to cool it, then took a sip and winced. She’d over-boiled it again. “Well, it wasn’t a fetch, or we’d be trying to sew our faces back on.”

  “I don’t know what it was.” Her voice was tight, too high, and he waited while she stirred what was left in the coffee pot, frowning at the grounds as though they could tell her something but wouldn’t.

  “You think whatever it is”—he made a vague gesture with his cup—“is causing the quakes?” It would follow: this was where the old man said the quakes began. “And the magicians . . . were they trying to contain it, or did they create it?” His bet would be on the latter.

  “I don’t know. Yes. Whatever happened there, it’s tied in somehow. I just . . . Magicians. Plural. That’s worrying.”

  Her matter-of-fact tone surprised a laugh out of him. “Just a bit, yes.”

  “Corbeau, pas de buse,” the old man said, and lifted his mug to indicate the area behind them. “Ils ne sont pas . . . ici juste pour manger la vieille viande.” His hands lifted and spread, one following the other to the right, then down. “Ils sont venus pleins de connaissances, et les bêtes sont parties, et le ciel est devenu vide, et la terre a tremblé.” And then he stopped, as though he had run out of words.

  “They . . . came full of knowledge? And the beasts left, the skies emptied, and the ground trembled,” Gabriel translated, although he wasn’t quite sure he’d gotten it entirely correct. It made no sense to him, and from Isobel’s expression, she fared no better.

  “Ground trembled” was reasonably clear, though.

  Isobel jerked her head as though dislodging an unhappy thought, then reached over and took the mug out of his hands, drinking half the contents in one long pull before handing it back. “And the magicians? Did they flee too when the ground shook?”

  When Gabriel asked him, the old man lifted his shoulders in a gesture that needed no translation. He did not know.

  Isobel had just refilled the mug with the last of the coffee, Gabriel scraping the last bit of corn mash and honey from his plate, when the old man stood up without a word, walking away from the fire. They watched as he clucked to his pony, sliding the woven halter over its head and draping his pack over its back like a blanket.

  “He’s leaving?” Isobel glanced at her mug, then at the camp’s morning disarray. “Are we supposed to follow?”

  Gabriel made no move to get up. “I don’t think so. He’s satisfied his curiosity and led us to where we needed to be. He’s done.”

  “But . . .” Isobel stopped herself from complaining like a child, biting her upper lip. She didn’t like the old man, and he clearly didn’t have much use for her or her boss, but he had helped them when he’d no obligation to do so. Isobel had no right to ask more of him. She stood up, stepping in front of the old man and his pony before they could leave.

  “Merci,” she said, and made one of the few gestures she knew for certain, hands up and palm down, fingertips pointed at the old man and sweeping in until her thumbs pointed at her own chest, almost a reverse of the boss’s gesture when he spoke of the Territory. “Thank you.”

  He looked at her then, and his right hand clenched and rested over his heart, then he brought a single finger up and touched his forehead, opened his hand and placed it palm down at his heart again, sliding it out to the right. Then he smiled, a narrow squint of his eyes more than his mouth, and reached forward, his finger pausing just shy of touching her, before his hand clenched again and dropped to hip high.

  “He says you are wise,” Gabriel said behind her. “A child still, but wise.”

  She felt her eyebrows go up but kept her voice civil. “I suppose that’s his way of saying ‘well done’?”

  “More or less.” She could hear the laughter in her mentor’s voice, and her own mouth quirked up in response, even through her frustration. The old man nodded once at Gabriel, then got on his pony and left.

  We don’t say goodbye on the Road, Gabriel had taught her. The Road curves around on itself, and you just assume you’ll meet again. She didn’t know that she ever particularly wanted to see the old man again, but it was an odd comfort, nonetheless, to think that she might.

  “So, what now?” Gabriel asked once the pony had ambled out of sight. “Do we go? Stay?”

  Something cold stirred in Isobel’s gut at the question. The presence had left them alone during the night, but it still lingered, trapped in its own pain. Something terrible had been done to it here, something that reached out beyond this place, as far down as Jumping-Up Duck’s people, and maybe farther than that.

  “I need to find out what happened here,” she said, turning to face him, half-expecting argument or outright refusal. Instead, Gabriel simply sighed and poured the dregs of the coffee over their fire, listening to the flames hiss down into embers.

  “Of course you do. Which means we’ll be chasing after magicians.”

  Isobel ducked her head at the expression on his face, an odd, determined distaste. “Not yet. First, I need to settle the haint.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” He spoke even before she’d finished, his words trying to drown out her own. He’d stood up too, his arms crossed against his chest. She was tall for a woman, but he could still tilt his head and look down, making her feel like a little girl scolded for doing a poor job sweeping the floor.

  She opened her mouth to continue, to explain, and he cut her off. “Last time, it was only the wapiti and the old man who saved you, Isobel. And neither of them are here now.”

  Of all the objections he might have raised, that she hadn’t expected. “You’re here.”

  “I’m useless.” He spat the words out, then stopped, drawing a quick breath as though he hadn’t meant to say them, was trying to pull them back. Isobel blinked at him in shock, then crossed arms across her own chest, refusing to retreat further.

  “I can’t do what you do,” he said, softer this time. “Even the old man could see it, could see you were in trouble, and I just . . . stood there.” His jaw clenched, and he rubbed at his face as though exhausted. “I can teach you how to behave around marshals and unfriendly miners, I can talk my way past bandits and natives, but Isobel, when you throw yourself into the crossroads, I can’t help you.”

  “That’s not . . . I’m not asking y
ou to.” Her voice wobbled a little, and she fixed it, irritated. “You said it yourself: I’m the silver. I need to find what’s wrong and fix it.”

  Devil’s silver, he’d called her. Throw her at something that felt wrong and draw the power out, make it safe again. She rubbed the fresh-polished ring on her little finger, watching it glint in the sunlight.

  “I have to do this, Gabriel.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, her gaze trained on the ring and the black lines in her palm. “It might stop the quakes, might . . .”

  “Might. Fine word. Or it might—”

  Destroy her. He needn’t say it out loud. Silver, in the presence of power, tarnished. Too much tarnish and it became useless.

  “It’s not a choice I’m making. I have to.”

  “I know.” Anger and frustration laced his voice, but it wasn’t loud anymore, and she risked looking up at him then. He had turned away, looking east, the morning sun warm on his face, highlighting the lines at his eyes, the faint strands of grey in his scruff, features as familiar and dear now as any she’d known since birth. “I don’t like it, but I know.”

  “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for, but there was something under his words, dark and swift, that made her ache.

  And then she was engulfed, his arms around her shoulders, the familiar, comforting smell of him wrapped around her, and she let her cheek rest against the rough cloth of his shirt, feeling his breath rise and fall.

  “Ah, half the time we’re chasing into or after things pell-mell, we haven’t the chance to set things to order first. This’ll make for a nice change,” Gabriel said, his voice the rough drawl she hadn’t heard since the saloon, the one that made him sound charming, harmless, made a person think he wasn’t smart or dangerous.

  But he was—smart and dangerous. And he trusted her to be the same.

  “It’s just a cleansing,” she told him, intentionally flippant, to match his tone. “Nothing different than draining a crossroads or calming a spell-beast with blood in its mouth.”

  “Oh, yes,” and the drawl was definitely on full display. “Nothing to worry about there at all.”

  She twisted slightly, and he let her go, stepping back a pace. “How do we do this, then?”

  She had no idea. “Take the horses a bit farther off. In case —” She looked at the roped-off ground where the grass had died, where she could still see faint traces of steam rising from the ground, even if Gabriel couldn’t. “In case something happens.”

  He nodded, neither of them discussing what that “something” might be. Her relief at not having to explain was measured by a desire that he would stop her, refuse to let her do this.

  She knew he wouldn’t, that wish only the remnant of her fear, burnt to ash but still clinging to her skin. Something here had scraped power from the Territory. Scraped it, taken it . . . and kept it here. By what, or for what purpose, she could not tell, but even if the haint had not lingered, that much power threw things off-balance, perhaps enough to shake the ground, scare away those who lived near it. A magician might claim it, or a marshal might drain it, but neither of those were here now.

  And the haint . . .

  She felt again the aching, sorrowful rage, and shuddered.

  “Salt.”

  Gabriel, in the middle of moving the horses and their packs to the requested distance, reached into her pack and tossed her the cloth-wrapped bundle that contained what was left of her salt stick. She held it in her hand, weighing it against how much she might need, then walked to where she’d felt the presence most strongly before, at the edge of the browned, dying grass.

  The last time she’d done anything like this, she’d been driven by something other than her own will, the knowing of what to do rising up from within her when she needed it. She felt none of that now, as though she were still cut off from the bones, the deep stone, leaving her bare and alone.

  “Boss? A little help, please?”

  She waited, a breath caught in her chest. No whisper filled her ears, no sense of what to do slipped into her thoughts, only her palm, itching, and the weighted awareness of something lurking, tied to this meadow, this ground. Not the haint: something deeper, warmer. A whisper of resignation, then a tentative touch of strength, protection, belonging, followed by the tingling prickle of the wind over bare skin.

  Isobel exhaled. Something had changed. She didn’t, couldn’t stop to question it; whatever had responded wasn’t the boss, but it was enough to know that she had allies here, somehow.

  She crumbled some of the salt into her hand and started walking out a circle, then stopped. “No.” She licked the salt off her palm, then took a few steps back and handed the stick to Gabriel, who, finished with the horses, had been waiting, watching. “Draw it around me.”

  His gaze flickered from the salt to her, then he picked up where she had left off, leaving a faint, glistening line of salt in a circle just outside where she’d roped off, white against the grass where the dead turned to green again.

  While he did that, Isobel walked inside the circle, letting an awareness of the protection he was laying down flutter against her skin. She was within, contained but not constrained, the warding silent until something came to rouse it.

  “Be at ease,” she whispered to whatever watched them. “Be at ease; I bring no harm.”

  Dead grass above, something seething below. Isobel worried her lower lip between her teeth, not-thinking, not-feeling, simply walking, careful of where she placed her steps, watching where the steam rose in narrow tendrils, then faded into the clear. Walking an inner circle until she felt the sense of whatever had attacked her ease: not gone, but no longer quite so vigilant, so tense.

  Salt around them and silver within. For cleansing, every child learned. For protection. The buckles on Gabriel’s belt, the ring on her finger, the coins they carried in their pockets. Polished bright. Crumbled salt and polished silver, rising from the waters and the deep bones. But they were tools, only tools. Were they the right tools?

  What else dealt with power?

  Isobel reversed her steps, tracing the circle widdershins.

  The lands they’d ridden through had been scraped dry. A crossroads gathered power, became dangerous, and needed to be cleansed on a regular basis. Every child knew that. But a crossroads drained would seek to refill itself. A land that had been scraped dry . . . what would it do?

  There was something she was missing, some detail she hadn’t been able to glean. The quakes, the missing animals, the slaughtered buffalo, the haint lurking . . . She could feel the thread connecting them slide across her fingers, and she realized she’d veered from the circle she’d been walking, creating a new pattern within: the double-ended loop of the Devil’s infinitas.

  Let it happen, came the thought scented with amber whiskey and the taste of warm, sweet smoke.

  Step and drag, the toe of her boots leaving no visible sign in the crackling brown grass, then step and drag with her other foot, alternating carefully, completing one loop, then a diagonal crossing in the middle, slanted crossroads that sent a spark up her heel, ricocheting along her spine as she crossed it, then another loop, slow and careful, at the other end.

  She knew that Gabriel had finished the outer circle, could feel the moment it was completed, an almost audible snap under her own voice, and it was only then that she realized she was humming, a nonsense lullaby one of the girls used to sing to their baby.

  “Sweet drop of water, from lake you flow

  sweet drop of water, into river you go.

  Silver your cup, and medicine your bone.”

  Another pass of the loop, another spark up her spine, tingling along her scalp when she crossed the midpoint, and then a third time, until something told her she was done.

  Isobel paused at the center point, planting her heels one on either side, and wiped sweaty hands against her skirt. The ground hadn’t cracked open below her; the steam hadn’t burned through her soles or t
angled around her ankles. The distant echo of flickerthwack sounded somewhere in her memory, the devil’s hands turning the cards, and she could feel the odds flip slightly in her favor.

  Maybe.

  The sun had risen enough to be in her eyes while she worked, and even with her hat shading her face, she had to squint, turning to find Gabriel standing on the other side of the circle, watching her, his back to the east so it seemed almost as though the sunlight haloed him.

  “Whatever you’re going to do,” he said, his voice low but carrying, “best do it now, before the sun’s too high.”

  Dawn and dusk and the high point of noon: that was when a magician’s power was greatest, at the times of winds and transition, a good time for wise folk to be still and not draw attention to themselves.

  Isobel grinned back at him. She was about to draw attention to herself in a most significant fashion.

  She gathered her skirt in both hands and settled on the grass, letting her fingertips rest on the ground. She could feel something—not the shadowy presence, something deeper, hotter—moving below, pressing against her, but she ignored it, instead focusing on the sigil on her palm, the black lines echoed in the soil around her. The authority of the Master of the Territory, carried within her.

  Power was power, Gabriel’d said once. The trick wasn’t what you were given—or how—but how you used it.

  The sigil itched, then burned, pale blue flame engulfing her palm for an instant before racing up her arm, down her spine, her muscles twitching and her eyes watering, sparks scraping from the inside out, making her laugh with relief: the bones might refuse her, the boss might not be able to find her, but she still could do this.

  Reassured, she pressed her palms into the ground and whistled for the winds.

  And they came. Eight winds, four by four, pushing each other like restless colts, hungry cats. They came not because she summoned them but because they chose to, simply because they could.

  Magicians whistled for the winds and let them blow through, emptying out what had been and replacing it with . . . She felt the touch of the winds on her and knew, understood, dimly, distantly, the sweeping hunger that could never be appeased, only redirected.