The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Five, she counted. Five sets of hands-that-weren’t, five greedy, hungry mouths wanting to suck the marrow and the power from her bones.

  Five magicians, dead and trapped under the grass, trapped under the soil.

  Do you know who you are? she asked them. Do you know who you were?

  Anger responded, anger and frustration wrapped around a pulsing core of need, without conscious thought or function, and it lunged at her, no longer five but a single entity, only aware that they needed and she had.

  These things had been human once; she knew how to deal with them. The sense-of-Isobel skimmed just out of reach, resting within the dry bones of the cage, and then raised the ante.

  She waited, waited waited an infinity of waiting, tracing the loops of the devil’s sigil in her mind, dark green flame flaring along the curves and lines, the loops and lines tarnishing and silvering in its path, turning and turning until they were all dizzy with the turning, dizzy with greed. They took the bait, then she turned and slipped into them—

  Sensations filled her, overwhelmed her, and she forced them into some kind of sense, some frame of comprehension. Hunger, the ever-driving hunger for more, for more knowledge, more strength, more understanding. The sensation of being driven by the winds, hither and yon, chasing the scent of power, the lure of understanding. The crooked finger of invitation, suggestion. An Other, speaking of secrets unknown, power unclaimed. A sensation more than a knowing, an awareness rather than a vision; not trusted, never trusted, warily they gathered, driven/lured/prodded to this place, this valley, gathered to circle, bearing ritual and power, to reach up and pull, beyond their capabilities but together, together, with ritual and power. . . .

  It stirred, and they pulled; it flew, and they chased; it dove, and they pounced.

  Power. Immense, impossible, overwhelming. A chorus of voices singing alleluia, screaming alleluia, binding and rending, binding and rending, over and again, clawing at their own flesh, tearing out their own thoughts to find space to gorge themselves. . . .

  —slipped past them, coming out the other side, shaking as though she’d run the full distance of the Territory, sick and wheezing.

  Too much. Too much for her, too much for still-mortal blood and bone; she could contain power, but she was not power, not yet, only the sigil keeping her intact, only the sigil keeping her whole. She touched her skin and felt it crackle and slip off, black scale flakes shedding off her bone.

  The world shook underneath her, around her. Rage. Fear. Sorrow. Betrayal.

  Gabriel had never minded waiting. As a boy, he’d learned to wait his turn; as an advocate, he’d earned to wait for witnesses to say the important thing, the accused to say the wrong thing, the judge to make a decision. As a rider, he’d learned to let the miles wash over him, settling in each moment without demanding the next.

  Waiting on Isobel tested that, the need to do something, to act, gnawing at him. Instead, he reached for the water, bypassing the smaller rivulets, the tiny pools, to touch the river he’d sensed before. Running water, not the panacea that silver was, but anyone born to the Territory knew that there were things that did not, could not cross running water intact.

  If he could have diverted a stream, as he had suggested, he would have. It wouldn’t have been enough. The river itself, summer-low, wouldn’t have been enough.

  “I knew you were trouble the minute I saw you. But such interesting trouble.” He pulled his water-sense back, shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, the just-polished quarter- and half-coins tucked there, smooth and cool to the touch. He suspected that they were now black with tarnish but felt no need to check.

  “Stand pat,” he told Flatfoot, the mule’s head upright, watching the shadows, while the horses grazed. “If I need you, I’ll call.”

  He walked circuit of the salt circles, making sure that the horses hadn’t disturbed the delicate white lines, and the skin on his arms prickled half a heartbeat before the mule let out an unhappy moan. Two heartbeats later, the ground under them undulated, reminding Gabriel of the times he’d ever been on a boat, the sickening, swaying sensation that had unnerved him so much, he’d sworn never to leave solid ground again.

  Quake. Stronger than the one he’d felt before, by a magnitude.

  The horses, hobbled, were unable to run away, but he forced himself to move between them, a hand on each neck, calming and soothing. The mule’s eyes were rolling, and its skin shuddered as though a swarm of flies had landed on it, but it stayed put, as though its stillness would calm the ground below.

  Within her own warding, Isobel had slumped forward, her upper body bent over, her legs tucked underneath her, and she wasn’t moving. He didn’t know what was happening, had no way to check what was happening, not unless he broke his own warding and hers.

  As though warning against that, the ground trembled again, hard enough to rock him sideways. Had there been two tremors before, close together? Fool that he was, he hadn’t asked.

  Steady let out an unhappy whinny, and Uvnee snorted and pressed closer against him, nearly pushing him over. “Easy, girl. Easy. It’ll be over soon.”

  He hoped it would. Before, the trembling had faded nearly as soon as it began; this had gone on far longer than that. He thought it had, anyway. The swaying sensation made it difficult for him to judge time passing; he couldn’t quite focus on anything, but eventually, the unnerving shivering of the world ceased and the animals calmed. He waited a while longer until he was reasonably certain that the quakes had ceased, then broke his wards and ran to where Isobel was still slumped, unmoving.

  The urge to reach through, to pick her up the way he had before, was like a physical pain, but he dropped to his own knees just outside her circle instead. Unlike before, she had created this warding: even if he were able, his breaking it would lead to nothing good.

  He waited, aware of an ache in his foot where he thought one of the horses had stepped on him in their distress, the discomfort of sweat drying on his skin, and the warm ache of his ribs where he’d likely torn open a scab, but did not move, as though afraid movement might cause some new trouble, afraid to miss even the slightest change in Isobel’s position.

  When she did shift, the faintest exhale and a sideways slump of her body, he risked calling to her. “Iz? Izzy.” He had not called her that in weeks, months. Isobel was the cool, collected girl he’d met in the saloon. Isobel was the Devil’s Hand. But this girl, slumped sideways, her hands and face dirty, he could only see as Izzy.

  “Izzy, let me in.”

  He felt the wards fade, and risked moving across, knee-walking to her side, careful hands lifting her, brushing hair out of her sweat-streaked face.

  “Welcome back,” he said, placing two fingers under her chin and lifting her face enough that he could check her eyes. They were clear, if a little dazed-looking. “You had me worried.”

  “So . . . So much . . .” Her voice was faint, and he could see the instant she wandered away from him again.

  “Iz, no. Look at me, Iz. Isobel.”

  Her eyes were too dark, the pupils blown wide, but she was there, trying to focus.

  “Look at me, Isobel. Listen to my voice. Can you do that? Come on, come back.”

  He had her cradled in his arms now, draped over his lap, and kept his voice steady and calm, despite the panic trying to shove its way through. Once had been foolish enough. Allowing her to do this a second time . . . But only she could have. When he touched the Road or used his water-sense, he went so far and no further. He could go no further.

  You choose to go no further, a voice reminded him, and he brushed it away irritably.

  Isobel . . . Each time, he saw her sink deeper, reach further. Each time, it changed her. She saw things, felt things, was connected to things in a way she could not explain and he didn’t want to think of.

  Uncanny. The magician, Farron, had tried to warn him. Had told him not to think of her as a girl, or woman, but as a tool. A weapon. A Hand. The Reape
r hawk and the wapiti had said the same thing, differently.

  He couldn’t. She was the Hand. He knew that. Watched her discover that fact herself, over and again, each time coming away different, the weight of what she was becoming not obvious to her yet, not entirely, but clear enough to those around her.

  But she was also Isobel. And he had promised to stand by her. To train her. To keep her alive.

  To not leave.

  “Can you sit up?”

  She looked puzzled, as though not even aware that she was lying down, then nodded. Her eyes were still glassy, flitting back and forth as though she didn’t quite have control of where they looked yet. She hadn’t taken a blow to the head that he’d seen, hadn’t moved except to slump forward, but he would take no chances.

  “All right. Slowly . . .” He eased her up, keeping his hands on her shoulders until she was settled on the grass again, looking around her as though not quite certain where she was still. He wanted to ask what had happened, if she’d learned what she’d wanted to know—but held his tongue, waiting.

  It didn’t take long.

  “I was wrong.” Her voice was flat, scraped and thin. “I didn’t understand.”

  He had grabbed a canteen when he went to her side, he realized only as he was pulling the cork with his teeth, gently tipping it to her mouth, allowing her only a scant swallow before taking it away again.

  “The spirit they called was hungry, so hungry. So old. They thought to bind it to them, to consume its power, to . . . split it among them? Or duel until only one remained. But they failed, and it consumed them. Burnt them to char, burned them from the inside out, even as they forced it to take form, warped it into something it was never meant to be. The ones who fled . . .” She shuddered, her entire body trembling in his arms. “They did not escape. They are unmanned, unminded.”

  Mad dogs, loose in the Territory. Magicians were bad enough but single-minded in their pursuits: only rarely did mortals get tangled with them. Unminded . . . they might lash out at anything that crossed their path. Lash out and destroy—a single rider, or an entire town, it would make no difference to them. They needed to be back on the Road, find a badgehouse, let the marshals know. They carried their own medicine, marshals did, for the protection of the Road.

  For now, Gabriel could only worry about what was in front of him.

  “And the dead?” Had she been able to free them, to bind them, to send them to wherever resting souls went? Or would they now come back mad but whole, the way Farron had?

  She shook her head, a hand reaching up to pluck at her braid, tapping the feathers still tied there, a nervous tic. “Shards of what had been, all the madness, and none of the control. There’s no one being there but the tangled mess of what was, seeking power to replace what was lost.” Her hand left off her braid, reached up to touch his fingers where they curled over her shoulder. Her skin was cold, the calluses on her fingers rough as cording.

  Her eyes cleared, but she wasn’t seeing him. “There’s illness here, Gabriel. Worse than any pox or fever. I only touched part of it before.”

  “How bad?” Could she cure it, he meant, or control it, the way she’d cleansed the land before, against the Spanish curse.

  “It’s caged for now. Held. But the quakes . . . There’s a thread tying them all together now, woven of power and blood. The spirit’s trying to break free. Scraping what it can find, fighting. . . .” She took a deep breath through her nose. “And if it does, if it breaks free, it will take them with it.”

  “And that’s bad.”

  “The story you told me, about the Hills That Danced?” She shook her head, eyes now wide and wild. “It will be much, much worse.”

  He didn’t want to ask it of her, but he had to. “Is there anything you can do?”

  It was as though she didn’t hear him at first, her head tilted, listening to something he could not hear, had no wish to hear.

  “No. The Reaper had the right of it there, at least. The spirits will do as they must, the air will press down and the ground push up, and they will contain as they can. . . . They will not allow the madness to spread. But it pains them to do this, and that pain is a real thing. This will become a barren place. The animals will not return, the grass will die, the creek run dry. It will become. . . .” She struggled for words, and he realized, as a chill touched his skin, that he was not hearing her words but another’s, pushed through her throat.

  “Poisoned,” she finished finally. “Envenenado.”

  “Forever?”

  “For many lifetimes. Maybe all the lifetimes.”

  Half a day passed, the sun warm overhead, and Isobel could not shake the chill from her skin. She could feel the blanket over her shoulders, the heat of Gabriel near her, the flickering of the fire he’d built up, making her a tisane he said would warm her blood. None of it mattered. The cold ran deep inside, pushing everything else away. Her gaze dropped down to her hands, and she spread her fingers out in front of her, palms down, looking at them as though they were not her own.

  She had done what was needed, had done only what was needed. That made it no better, that she had done it at all. The dead were to be protected, not abused, and yet she had. She had gone among the dead and forced them to her will. Without hesitation, without compassion. She had pushed herself into the sodden mess of what remained and forced them to speak to her, to tell her what she needed to know; had shoved herself into their most pained places and taken what she needed. The fact that she had disturbed no wardings, had uncovered no bones, did not change that fact.

  And she knew that she would do it again if it were asked of her.

  The elk—wapiti, Gabriel called it—had been right: she had duty, obligation. A sworn contract, turning her into the devil’s tool. Whatever power she contained, it was nothing more than that. She was no more a person than Gabriel’s knife or gun.

  She looked at her hands and remembered something else.

  “It was an easterner.” Her voice was too steady, too calm. It should shake under the weight of what she had done, what she had learned.

  “Who was?”

  Gabriel moved away from the fire, took her hands in his, turning them, wrapping the fingers around the handle of her mug, the battered tin almost too warm to hold. Still, all she felt was cold.

  “The one who brought them here, convinced them to do this. I saw it in their . . . in them. He came across the Mudwater, American colors on his saddle.” Their awareness of the man was muddled by death, by pain, by the pressure they were held under, mangled by their own madness, but that much she knew: the creak of the leather of his saddle, the smell of him, the flash of the colors marking him as an outsider, giving him passage across the borders, a single man without troops.

  But a single man could be as dangerous as an army.

  Gabriel sat down opposite her, pushing her hands up, reminding her to drink the tisane. She took a sip, merely to oblige him. It was green, and sharp, and warm, but she did not feel warmed. “He spun them a story of . . . of the power they could gain if they did this. Of power elsewhere if they were strong enough to take it. That he would show them if they did this one thing. . . .” She shook her head, less in disbelief than amazement.

  “He made promises.” Scraps of smudged ink, half-mumbled words, the soft flutter of dust in sunlight. “Rewards . . . power if they aided his government?”

  “They were fools to believe him,” Gabriel said, his voice hard. “There’s nothing for them out there. Whatever medicine remains east of the Mudwater, it’s been locked down, harder to find. A magician outside the Territory would be like a wolf in a vegetable plot, surrounded by food and yet starving.”

  “They wanted to believe.” Isobel understood that much. “They wanted what he promised, enough to work together.”

  Only, there was no “together” for magicians. Farron had told her true. Each and every one had turned on the other the moment the spell was cast, driven by fear and greed, each determined
to claim the ancient spirit’s medicine for themselves. Had they managed to not . . . She tried to imagine Farron multiplied, even more powerful, but the smudged, bloody, hungry madness was all she could feel, even splintered into death.

  “Did . . . did they tell you anything else? About the American.”

  Gabriel’s voice sounded strange, strained. He had said he had spent time across the River, that he had studied the law there. He had told her about the city he had lived in, the press of people, and the ways they lived . . . but he had never said if he was happy there, if he’d been sorry to leave.

  Doubt scraped its claws at her, and she closed her eyes, refusing it. “I only saw him as they saw him,” she said. “As they remembered him, and what’s left of their thoughts . . .”

  “It’s important, Isobel.”

  She couldn’t refuse him, not with his voice scraped that raw.

  “He was tall and cast a dark shadow.” It made no sense to her, that one man might cast more of a shadow than another, but that was what they remembered. “His face was dark, like a crow’s”—a crow, yes, tattered wings and bright eyes—“but there was a brightness to him”—and her free hand raised up to touch her chest, settling on the left side, just under her shoulder—“here.”

  Gabriel said something that sounded rude and pained in that language she didn’t know. She opened her eyes to look at him. “Gabriel?”

  He shook his head, then reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out something that glittered faintly in the slant of sunlight. “A brightness . . . like this?”

  The metal, when dropped into her hand, was heavy as a stone and burned like a coal, although she knew it was neither. The edges were smooth, well-worn, and the engraving on both sides was almost too faint to see.

  “What is it?” It felt familiar, but she did not recognize it.

  “A marshal’s badge.”

  Her brow wrinkled in confusion—the marshal’s sigil was the Tree within the Circle, not this.