The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  There was no need to tell this man what the magicians had drawn back to half-life, or that the dead lingered as a haint, tainted with madness, bound within the earth for eternity. No need to speak of the torment they lingered in, that shook the valley with their pain. There was nothing his knowing could change, nothing his judgment could heal.

  That was her burden to carry, not his.

  “Magicians built that trap—and died in it,” she went on, and was gratified, selfishly, to be able to read the surprise in the way his eyes widened ever-so-slightly.

  “A duel caused the quakes?”

  Duels—one magician setting themselves against another—were not common, but they were not uncommon, either. They preyed on each other the way wolves preyed on deer, and woe to the soul caught up in their storm.

  Isobel had survived such a storm, though as much through luck as wisdom. She knew firsthand what a magician could do, and what two magicians might do, if they took their battle outside a crossroad.

  If you see a magician, run. It was advice meant to keep ordinary folk alive.

  “Not a duel,” she said quietly. “They were not waging war against each other, but together.”

  The judge spluttered before he regained his words. “You’re mad.”

  “I wish I were,” she said. “But I speak truth. Five who died, and two that we know of who lived.”

  Seven was strong medicine. Territory medicine. Seven calls from an owl meant someone would die. Gabriel had taught her that.

  She thought of the owl she had seen, the one that had led them to the marshal, and something cold stroked her bones. There was nothing to say to her that it had not simply been a bird, disturbed from its slumber, hunting by day. These things happened. But Isobel had grown up in the devil’s house, and she knew better than to presume. The wapiti guarding the valley, the owl leading them to the magicians . . . spirit-animals with impossible, contradictory advice, and whatever had happened to her in those hills that left the lingering taste of smoke and silver on her tongue. If she could only remember.

  None of that mattered now. She focused instead on shaping the right words, clear and concise.

  “And these men . . . I cannot speak to the how or why, but they were in that valley. They admit to attempting to influence the acts that happened there. That the magicians may have tried to kill them after cannot be proven”—though it was likely, and a pity they didn’t succeed —“but that it was without cause is blatantly untrue; whatever happened in that valley, they were part of it. And that they do not speak of that part, their culpability, makes their claim of insult nothing save falsehood.”

  The words poured out of Isobel now, and the relief she felt as her mouth moved was akin to slipping into the hot water of a bathhouse. Her mouth, her tongue, her throat forming the words, her breath pushing them out, but the words themselves came from deeper than she could reach, drawn not only from her thoughts or the sigil in her palm but the heat curling up along her bones.

  She was the devil’s gaze cast over the Territory, the great and the small alike. But something else looked through her as well.

  “And that is your observation?” The judge had listened to what she said, showing no more emotion after that single slip, waiting for her to say that yes, that was her observation, and be done.

  “It is my observation and the judgment of the Devil’s Hand.”

  She had not meant to say that, had not opened her mouth to say it, and yet the words came, falling solid as stone into the room.

  The twitch in the judge’s jaw was the only sign she had that her words affected him. She could not override his decision, whatever it might be. This was not a matter for her—for the boss—to decide. But she had just confirmed his suspicion that the Master of the Territory was watching.

  She had grown up under the boss’s eye, his hand a comfort on her shoulder. It was difficult for her to remember that to some, he was mysterious, unknown, unpredictable. Frightening.

  And now, to everyone here, so too was she.

  To give the judge credit, the twitch and the flicker of his eyes was the only sign he gave, then his face shuttered again, unreadable.

  “Mister Kasun?”

  Gabriel slid his arm from around her shoulders and stood up. She was so accustomed to seeing him on horseback, or sprawled on his kit once they made camp, that she could have picked him from a crowd a hundred paces away, and yet the man in front of her suddenly seemed a stranger. Gone was the casual slouch of his shoulders or the easy way he placed his boots, like he knew the ground would rise up to meet him. This man’s boots were planted solid on the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, chin up and hair slicked back out of his face.

  “I was not privy to certain details Isobel observed, nor the means by which she determines truths. However, I have observed her in detail over the past months and will place my word that she speaks the truths as she observed them.”

  The judge sniffed once, not entirely displeased. “Eastern advocate, are you, boy?”

  “Trained for it, sir. Not currently practicing.”

  There was some joke there that the two men got—three, from the snort that came from the States’ marshal still sitting on the bench across the room.

  “And you give your word on her.”

  “As her mentor, yes, your honor, I do.”

  Gabriel had never had cause to give his word before a Territory judge before, although he’d seen it done, when he was younger: the settlement he’d grown up in had been fractious enough that a judge had made a point of stopping by twice a year to settle things before they got out of hand. Those had been noisy affairs, yelling in two or three languages, depending on who was before the bench, and usually ended with a round of drinking that would inevitably start the next round of arguments.

  It was quiet in this bench-hall once they’d finished giving their observations. The judge had not retreated to his quarters, as Gabriel’d half-expected, but rather leaned against the far wall, his eyes hooded, occasionally rubbing his bare scalp with one hand as though to stimulate his thinking.

  The road marshal paced, her bootheels a steady, sharp slap against the planking, then a pause as she wheeled, and the slap slap slap again. He wasn’t sure if it was soothing or prone to drive him mad if she kept it up much longer. The woman who’d gotten Isobel into trouble, whatever her name was, had disappeared at some point. A wise choice —it may not have been her fault, but he couldn’t hold her blameless, either.

  Next to him, Isobel was watching the Americans. They were sitting still, not looking at each other, a marked distance between the two of them. The judge had spoken to them, quietly, before he heard from the marshal or Isobel, but if they’d spoken since then, Gabriel hadn’t noted it. Then again, he’d had other things to worry about.

  Her nose hadn’t started bleeding again, and her voice’d been steady when she spoke, no stutters or hesitations, but the memory of too-cool skin and too-fast pulse haunted him.

  “What happened out there?” He didn’t look at her, and he didn’t feel her shift to look at him.

  “I don’t know. It’s still hazy.” Her voice was soft but certain. “Lou showed me a ward post. They were . . .”

  “Native work, yeah.” Mayhap his original thought had been true, that the foundation had taken insult at the Devil’s Hand come too close into things that didn’t concern him. Mayhap that’s all there was to it, his deeper concerns baseless.

  “They used bones.”

  That was a new one to him, but it didn’t surprise him overmuch: bones had strong magic and remembered for a very long time. Likely even forever. “You touched them?”

  She bristled under him like a cat splashed with water. “I did not. They were . . . I can’t remember. But there was something about them that . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and he slid his arm back over her shoulders, not pulling her closer but just to reassure himself that she was there, that she was upright and breathing. The mem
ory of her laid out on the bench, her nose bloodied and her eyes vague, still made him feel ill, but his responsibility was to teach and support her, not coddle her.

  “Whatever you felt, you didn’t like it?” Her skills were still raw but there had been nothing wrong with her judgment, and if her gut was reacting like his, the odds were high something was wrong.

  Her breathing steadied a little, and she leaned in toward him. “Lou couldn’t feel them. She can’t feel her own boundary-wards. She said that not many of ’em here can.”

  That surprised him—usually, you went into the wilderness, you found more folk with the touch, not fewer. Insular, he thought again. Incurious. He’d give pure silver to speak with some of the younger ones, those out working the field, see if they were the same. “But they were working?”

  “Yes. They were . . . alert?” She wasn’t asking him, he thought, but testing the word for herself. “Awake. They were awake, and that . . . that didn’t seem usual. So, I tried to listen closer.”

  Of course she had. Gabriel swallowed a rebuke, knowing it was at least partially his fault, and waited her out.

  “They were layered, old over older. And I could hear this . . . noise. Like a hive readying to swarm.”

  She stopped, swallowed, the noise of it loud in his ears. He waited, gaze fixed on a spot somewhere between the drop of the ceiling and the rise of the wall, where some discoloration of the planking made it look as though there was a hole. It was easier to speak when you could pretend there was no one listening; he had spent a few nights like that, in a starlit camp, speaking things that could only be said to the fire, the ashes of your words gone cold and scattered in the morning, never spoken of again.

  “And I didn’t touch them, but I almost did, Gabriel. I reached out, and then the world went dark, and . . .” Her left hand flexed and clenched, resting on her lap as though it didn’t belong to her at all. “They burned me, Gabriel. The bones, the oldest bones. When I reached out to them.”

  “It was warning you away?” His fears returned that the old medicine left here had taken insult by her arrival. The settlement was non-native now—the devil held dominion. But the wards might not realize that . . . They needed to talk to Possum, and this time the man would be more forthcoming.

  “I don’t know,” Isobel was saying in answer to his last question. “I don’t think so. But I don’t know.” Her face scrunched in concentration and distress. “There was something they told me, something important, and I can’t remember . . .”

  Her wording eased some of his fears—“told,” not “warned.” “Leave it be,” he told her. “It’s easier to remember when you don’t actively dig at it.” He rested his right hand over her left, still tight-clenched. “Is this telling you anything?” The sigil, he meant.

  She glanced down, and an expression he couldn’t read passed over her face. “No.”

  “Then leave it be for the nonce. There’s only so much you can pack on a mule and then it’s got the sense to kick off the weight. You’d best be at least as smart as a mule.”

  She looked as though she were about to argue, pulling in breath to speak, but they were both distracted by movement at the other end of the hall, the judge pushing himself away from the wall, shaking down the line of his coat and fixing his vest, the image of a man about to make a pronouncement.

  Isobel had never understood fury, whiskey-hot rage that made her stomach roil and sparks crackle in her skull, until the judge told them his decision.

  “You’re as mad as they!”

  “Iz . . .”

  Isobel shook off Gabriel’s calming hand, turning to stalk after the judge as he paced the width of the hall. Behind him, LaFlesche looked nearly as unhappy as she felt but said nothing.

  “You can’t simply—”

  His voice was weary but firm. “They’ve done no injury by the Law that I could hold them, and I’ve no authority to bind such as they for anything less. The magicians go free.”

  “They attempted —” She clamped her jaw shut when he swung around, raising one finger to her, warning her to cease interrupting.

  “Whatever they attempted, it’s no business of ours. Magicians are creatures outside the Law, outside the devil’s claim, and unless they’ve wish to involve themselves”—and his expression showed he thought little of the odds on that—“then they are to be on their way as soon as they are able.”

  And not a moment too soon, his tone conveyed.

  Open the door, unlock the wards, and allow them to saunter away. . . . Isobel could understand his reluctance to keep them within the confines of the town, but to simply wash his hands of what that meant?

  “The Law is the Law,” he said. “Magicians are neither mine nor yours to control. You will release them, and they will go. And we will all hope that they do not decide to take offense at your treatment of them.”

  She lifted her chin and stared up at him. His gaze met hers evenly, with neither a flinch nor an apology.

  She could defy him. She could demand he . . . do what? Hold the magicians forever? Kill them? She knew that they came back from that as often as not, having seen Farron torn apart by a summoned spirit and then reappear not days later as though it had never happened.

  Isobel tried to rein in her fury. Judge Pike was correct, as little as she liked it. The magicians had done damage —immense damage —but the Agreement did not cover them; the Law did not apply to them. Like all other creatures of the territory itself, they were unto themselves.

  She thought of the buffalo she had seen, slaughtered by these magicians for their blood and hide, for the strength they carried, and left to rot without dignity or respect. She thought of the promise she had made —the promise Something had accepted —and her heart ached to think that she would fail in that.

  But there was nothing she could do.

  We tell you nothing you do not already know.

  She was sworn to the Master of the Territory. His limits were her own. Weren’t they?

  Listen, Hand.

  If she could remember what the wards had told her, if she could remember . . . Why couldn’t she remember?

  “Isobel?” The judge was expecting her to back down, to accept his authority in this matter.

  “And what of those who incited them?” She swept her gaze to the two men still waiting along the far wall. The scout was busily staring at his boots. The marshal looked back at them, a resigned patience all she could read.

  A swell of sympathy surprised her. She too had been sent out unprepared. But she’d been given Gabriel. This man had been given a snake-faced scout who didn’t have the courage to face his consequences.

  The Territory didn’t care.

  “Paul Tousey. Jedediah Anderson. By the word given of Isobel née Lacoyo Távora and Gabriel Kasun, confirmed by the word of Marshal LaFlesche, you have been observed falsely claiming insult. The punishment for that is severe. However, since those you insulted are not within the purview of the Law and have not chosen to act on their own behalf, we dismiss those observations.”

  The scout looked up at that, a gleam of hope lifting his shoulders.

  “Notwithstanding,” the judge went on, “you have also been observed by Isobel née Lacoyo Távora in the act of inciting damage to the land of those who have kept peace with us, who have lived by our Law as we live by theirs, according to the terms of the Devil’s Agreement.”

  “And that means what, exactly?” Tousey stood, his pose similar to Gabriel’s earlier, his shoulders straight, hands clasped behind his back. She wondered if that was a thing they taught men, across the Mudwater, in the East.

  LaFlesche spoke this time. “It means that you have given insult.”

  The scout made a noise, a sharp, cut-off bark of a laugh. “It means they’re gonna kill us. Or give us to the savages to kill, or eat, or whatever it is they do. Fine, then, old man, get on with it. Quit yapping at me.”

  “Anderson, shut up,” the marshal said, and then turned to
address the judge, his tone dry as wood. “And may we speak in our defense? Or do our voices carry no weight under your law?”

  “You have a defense that amounts to more than causing mischief  ?” The judge’s voice was equally dry, his hands tucked into his pockets, elbows loose, hips and knees straight ahead, not turned out the way Gabriel and LaFlesche stood, or hip-cocked the way the boss leaned, casual as a coiled snake. Or the scout, who remained slumped, his shoulders rounded in resignation.

  Isobel was suddenly brutally aware of her own body, how straight her back was, her right hand clasping her left, thumb pressed into her palm. She could feel a bruise on the side of her knee where she’d fallen, and another on her shoulder, the smell of blood and sweat still too strong under her nose. She wanted a bath, and a bed, and a warm meal that had no beans in it, served at a table, with a chair under her backside, not a saddle or dirt.

  “Acting under orders of your government will not save you,” Gabriel said from behind her, a caution that seemed to spark something ugly in the other man.

  “You’ve no government for me to be in contrivance against.” The marshal’s skin was sallow in the lamplight of the judge’s bench, and the hollows under his eyes deeper than merely exhaustion, the look of a man already dead, who simply hadn’t realized it yet to lie down. “I am, at worst, a goad, a match. If there was nothing to set alight, I could do no harm.”

  Something shimmered, hot and angry, in Isobel’s bones. But she thought it was not directed at the marshal himself.

  What? she asked it.

  Listen, Hand.

  “You admit that you were sent here to cause harm.” The judge again, his voice calm as though they were discussing the turn of a card, something of significance but no particular urgency. He shifted, though, his body turning to keep Tousey in full sight, suddenly a potential threat.

  “Not to cause harm, no. To observe. To note. To report back. Discovering two . . . magicians mid-battle was pure chance, and we —”