Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (53 page)

It had changed, Farron had said. It wanted to grow.

The magician had been able to sense it in the crossroads and in the spring. She had been able to feel it through the stone. But it had not attacked them, not until the magician had appeared. Yet it had killed those in Widder Creek, had done something to every creature in Clear Rock. . . . She needed time to think, to figure it out.

Without this madman crowing uselessly over her.

“Fray Bernardo, if you would be useful, fetch me some water from the spring.” She did not deny that she would feel a certain satisfaction if the creature were to return and finish its work, but when the man simply stared at her, she snapped at him. “We need to make a poultice. Surely your god will protect you long enough to scoop water from its edge?”

He drew himself up to argue with her, and Isobel stared him down. “Are you afraid?”

A look of such disgust and hatred flashed on his face that even half-unconscious, Gabriel reacted, trying to reach for his knife. Her hand on his arm paused him. She stared at the friar a heartbeat longer, and he dropped his gaze first, turning to do as she had requested.

“Isobel.” Gabriel made her name a command and a question, and yet she shook her head, not able to look her mentor in the eyes just yet. This was nothing he could help with.

“Stay still,” she told him. “Farron will be back soon, and we’ll get you fixed up.”

He leaned his head back, wincing at the cold stone, and laughed, a pained, coughing noise. “An otter. That would make a story to tell along the dust roads, how Gabriel Kasun died at the hands—paws—of a giant monstrous otter.”

“That wasn’t an otter.” She had seen otter pelts before. They were sleek and brown and about the size of a small dog, not . . . that. And they assuredly did not have more than four limbs.

She cast a glance back toward the spring, where the friar was carefully approaching. At his pace, it would take all day to scoop water and bring it back.

“It was an otter,” Gabriel said. “Make sure you tell ’em how damned large it was, though, all right?”

“You’re not going to die.” She turned back to him, trying to shove all her worry and anger back inside, to put on a reassuring, comforting face. But she knew she wasn’t very good at it. “You can tell them the story yourself, how you were attacked by a beast and survived.” He would have scars, no matter what. She could see them through the cloth now, jagged scrapes that were still bleeding, a pale green pus oozing out along the red. Where was the blasted magician? She needed her herbs, she needed—panic, desperation, a sense of utter helplessness filled her, and she pulled away from Gabriel, wrapping her arms around herself, heedless of her blood-covered hands or muddy skirts.

He was going to bleed out in front of her or die of infection, and there was nothing she could do. She was the Left Hand, not the Right. She was the cold eye, the quick knife, the final word, the decider of protection and punishment. Isobel felt the urge to scrape at her palm, claw the sigil out of her flesh. She could not save, she could not heal; all that power,
useless
.

“Pieces,” he said, his eyes fluttering closed. “All in pieces.”

“No. Stop it. You’ll be fine, I swear. . . .” But his eyes had closed and his body slumped, the damp strands of hair clinging to his forehead, his mouth slack with pain, and something rattled in her throat, a keening noise she’d never made before.

There was no warning before she felt Farron’s hand on her shoulder, his voice in her ear, pressing her down, placing her hand on the ground. “Listen,” he said, a command he’d never used on her before,
and she fell into the sound of her own heartbeat, too fast, panicky, until a slower, deeper echo reached her, the
thudthudthudding
of her heart slowing to the
thud thud thud
of the road beneath her, the dry whisking and grinding of the bones deeper still. They held her, pressed against her, connected her. The panic didn’t fade but became manageable, a smaller part of something so much larger.

Brother Zacarías moved her out of the way, gently, and stripped Gabriel’s shirt from him,
ts
k
ing and muttering under his breath as he appraised the damage. “Brother, you have water?” he called over his shoulder, and wonder of wonders, that caused the older monk to hurry, scooping water into the hem of his robes and carrying it back. Zacarías sorted through the herbs, finding what he needed without Isobel’s aid, and mixing it with a handful of water to form a paste. “To draw the poison out,” he explained, and Isobel nodded her understanding, watching Gabriel’s face tighten with pain as the friar pulled the cuts open to apply the poultice, then bandaged them.

“We wounded it, but the creature still rests under the water.” Bernardo ignored the others once he passed them the water, pacing up and down the small patch of ground. “I must finish this, must drive the evil back to its creator, else the stain will remain on our most noble viceroy and, through him, our King. Zacarías, leave off and assist me!”

The other friar ignored him, intent on Gabriel’s wounds. What had Farron said? That there was madness, and then there was madness?

You had to be desperate to come to the Territory, abandon everything, take the devil on trust.

“We don’t care about your king,” Isobel said, reaching for Gabriel’s hand and closing his cold fingers between her own. The sigil was silent, still, and she cursed it. Why would it point her at the creature but not tell her how to defeat it? The guilt she’d felt before rose again, and she tried to follow it, knowing that was the key. That was what she’d almost understood before Gabriel had been injured.

“We need to—” Bernardo’s rising voice was suddenly cut off with a gagging noise, and Isobel looked up to see the man wide-eyed, his
mouth open as though intending to speak, but no noise coming out. Next to him, Farron once again leaned seemingly against empty air, arms crossed over his chest, a disapproving look on his face.

“He annoyed me,” the magician said, and the cold, unnerving sparkle was back in his eyes. “Do what you were created to do, Hand,” he said to Isobel. “There isn’t much time.”

“But I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off, the boss’s voice clear in her ears, the words of her oath, the Bargain, clear before her memory’s eyes. What she had been created to be.

“Justice,” she whispered. “Be thou justice.” That was what she’d been sent here to do. The cold eye and the steady hand, to keep the Territory safe from without—and within. To ensure that all things followed the Law and the Agreement.

But this thing was no part of either, no more than Farron. Like demon, it should be his fair prey . . . yet he now insisted she deal with it. It had shaken off the unspelling, ignored it . . . because it was no longer the spell that had created it.

It had changed, Farron had said. It wanted to grow.

The
thud thud thud
of the road beneath her was echoed in the
thud thud thud
of the creature’s breathing.

The storm had blown over the Mother’s Knife and been shredded. Each piece had gone to ground. . . .

Had gone to ground. Had gone to pieces. Had taken shape and form; the longer it stayed, the deeper it went. Whatever intent the Spanish king’s medicine-workers had shaped it to do, the Territory had taken it, claimed it.

“Do you see now?” the magician asked. “Do you understand why you must destroy it?”

She shook her head. “No.” She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. It was too much to ask of her.

Farron sighed, exasperated, and stalked off.

He couldn’t consume it; the wind could batter it but not take it apart, because, because . . .

“Silver.”

She opened her eyes, staring at Gabriel. “What?” He was still delirious, his eyes wide, the black center engulfing the blue.

“Silver. Live silver. Throw you into the crossroads.” He coughed weakly, wincing as the monk tightened a bandage around his arm. “Could see it from the start, just didn’t know what it was. Shines in you now.”

“Stop talking,” the friar said sternly. “Drink this.”

“Silver, Isobel. ’S’important. Promise me you’ll remember.”

“All right,” she said, and he sighed and drank, his eyes fluttering closed, and his breathing slowing to a scant rise and fall of his chest.

“Will he . . .”

Zacarías didn’t look at her. “It is up to God and his own will to live now.”

“This is the Territory,” Isobel said softly, more to Gabriel than the friar. “His own will is what matters.”

“And none of it matters if our wee water beastie gets hungry again,” Farron said, having stalked back. “Stop being a child, Isobel.” His jaw was tight, his eyes narrowed, and she realized that he was angry. At her?

“I’m not . . .”

He strode forward, brushing past Zacarías to grab her left wrist, yanking her to her feet by it, holding it so that her palm was in front of her face. His gaze was cold, the lines around his eyes no longer soft with humor or fondness. “You have two choices, little rider. Become what you are, or fail. And if you fail, I will consume you and everything else with power here and do what must be done.” His eyes glittered with red. “You do not want that to happen.”

She stared at him, then back down at her palm. Black lines, looped around each other in a figure eight, encircled by a graceful swoop. She had seen it her entire life, had known what it meant, but she had never truly looked at it before.

“Do you understand?” the magician asked again, cold burning in his voice.

She did. Power consumed power. It would duel until only one remained if it was not held in check.

She was the check. She was the silver on the road.

“You may not have it,” she told Farron. “It falls to me now.”

He held her gaze, the hunger near overwhelming him, and she saw the moment when he tamed the winds within, held onto the façade of humanity, and chose to give way before the devil’s hold.

“Well done, little rider,” he said, showing too many sharp teeth, and stepped back—but not so far she did not think he would surge forward again if she faltered.

If you see a magician, run.
There was good reason for that warning. But her obligations forced her to stand.

“Whatever it was, whatever the intent . . .” She breathed the thought a moment, then stood and faced Bernardo. “Whatever ill intent your medicine man crafted, Fray Bernardo, once it crossed the border, fed on us, it became part of the Territory now. The viceroy has no claim on it. And thus, nor do you. Go home.”

“You cannot . . .” He spluttered, taking a step forward.

Isobel was tired. She was sore, she was tired, she had done a terrible wrong, and there were three men to bury, one of whom might have, over time, become a friend. If Bernardo challenged her one more time, her patience would not stand it.

“We have had this discussion already, Fray Bernardo. Your time here is at an end.”

“Our obligation is to wipe the stain of its creation from—”

“Your time here is at an end, Fray Bernardo.” Isobel stood, and while she was a full head shorter than the man and half his width, she could feel the menace within her that caused the man to fall silent, although unlike the magician, he did not step back. “You will interfere here no longer.”

“I don’t understand,” Zacarías said, his voice placating, questioning. “You said that the spell was damaging your land, harming people. Why will you not allow us to remove it?”

“Because they are creatures of the devil himself, tools to spread his work. They wish to destroy us by tempting our noble King and viceroy into the darkest sin, confusing them—”

“You’re annoying me again,” Farron said darkly, and Isobel almost laughed at how quickly the friar clamped his mouth shut. He might not fear her enough, but he feared the magician. She would use that.

“Your spell did not work. It will not work, not on the creature in the springs, nor any other part of it. Not any longer.”

“Part? There are more?” Zacarías’s eyes went wide.

“They are not your concern,” Isobel said. They were hers now.

What she did with them remained to be seen.

PART SIX

SILVER ON THE ROAD

I
SOBEL WOU
LD NOT LET THEM LINGER
at the spring any longer, despite Gabriel’s weakness. She trusted neither friar nor magician to test her words if the creature came to the surface again.

They bundled Gabriel safely as far from the spring as they felt it was safe to carry him, afraid to jostle him and reopen his wounds. Zacarías settled at his side, Bernardo still silenced, the magician’s presence behind him enough to keep him still, although had his eyes been daggers, Isobel would have died of blood loss already.

She didn’t care. The sigil still burned, a steady heat telling her that she was not yet done.

A story without an ending, only a beginning, the demon had said
.
A deck of cards could be burnt once they were used, marked. But a thing of power, a medicine of such fierce intent . . . like the magician, it might not be so easily destroyed. But changed? She felt the weight of the sigil in her palm. Yes, everything changed.

All the places it was being told,
the demon had said. How many pieces had the spell been split into? Impossible to know. Until they caused illness or disappearances, or who knew what. Impossible to
find until then. Impossible to know how they might change, how the Territory might change them.

But this one, this she had. This one she knew.

This one she was responsible for.

“Farron.”

He looked away pointedly, then sighed and looked back at her. “Yes, Devil’s Hand?”

“Stop that. I have to go back to the spring. Alone,” she added, before he could say anything. “Stay here. Help Zacarías if he needs it. Sit on Bernardo if he needs it.”

That made the edge of his mouth tip up.

“What are you going to do, little rider?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said.

“Ah. That’s always the most fun way to do it.” But his eyes were clear of red, and she could read only exhaustion in him, not madness, so she only shook her head at him and headed back up the trail.

She stepped lightly over the ridge, but nothing lurked there, waiting, nor did it leap at her as she made her way to the lip of the spring. The water’s surface shimmered lightly, a faint steam rising from it, and she rested her hand there, her palm—and the sigil—not quite touching water.

She breathed in, then out, waiting. Thinking.

The ill-wishing had been sent to harm, to weaken, to destroy. But there was power here that did not exist beyond its borders, Gabriel said. Medicine that could heal even that which was sent to destroy?

“I’m sorry,” she said out loud, feeling her way. “I didn’t know; I didn’t understand. You didn’t either, did you? All so new, so confusing.”

It might be dead, deep under the water. But she thought not.

She plunged her hand below the surface and
called.

It resisted. It was hungry, it needed to feed, replenish itself, but it would not attack her.

I know,
she told it.
I know. Come to me.

Slowly, angrily, it rose, the whiskers breaking the surface, the ears
and eyes, the giant head, but no more. It stared at her, and she reached out to touch the side of its massive muzzle.

It had shape, form, feeling. Whatever the other ribbons had done or not done, this had changed . . . been changed or changed itself, Isobel thought it didn’t matter. The Territory marked them all one way or another if they chose to stay.

She had to make it understand . . . or she would have to destroy it. In that much, Farron had not been wrong.

She sank shallowly into the bones, reaching herself out to it again.
You’re safe,
she told it.
You may hunt and feed. This spring is yours. But there are certain rules . . .

Not everyone in the Territory made a bargain with the devil, but they all accepted the Agreement he’d forged: share the land and give no offense without cause. Accepted it or paid the price. Like her parents.

Can you do this?

When she returned to the others, her eyes sore and her limbs trembling, her companions asked no questions, and she did not speak, save to say that the spring was now safe.

The world was a blur, first of pain, then noise, and there had been a time, a brief time, when Gabriel had been reasonably sure he was dead. Even now, slowly becoming aware that he was propped up against his saddle, a blanket drawn over his legs, he wasn’t entirely sure that he was alive.

He watched through half-slitted, pain-heavy eyes as the two monks and Isobel brought back the bodies of the dead monks and buried them just beyond the camp’s borders, then went to wash their hands in the stream. The magician remained nearby, perched on a rock and watching him uncomfortably, akin to a buzzard watching an injured deer. Gabriel wondered if the magician had disdained manual labor, or if the friars had refused his help, tainted as they thought him.

They weren’t burying him, he reasoned, so he must in fact be alive.

“How long have I been out?”

“Two days,” the magician said. “A close thing, rider. And pointless, when all you need do—”

“Enough,” he said sharply, and wonder of wonders, Farron stopped talking.

He knew that occasionally someone had inspected a bandage or forced warm water down his throat, but other than that, there had been only the sharp memory of pain, of drowning and bleeding, rivulets of fire chasing their way through his body, and then there had been nothing, and now there was . . .

Nothing. He could see, he could hear, he could move his limbs, albeit slowly, but he felt nothing. He felt a moment of panic and reached for the nearest water, reassured to feel it trickling past him, a handspan underground. Not all his senses were dulled, then.

He did not reach for anything larger, half-afraid of stirring the spring again and waking whatever Isobel had left there. Or, he admitted, feeling the magician’s gaze on him, of waking more within himself than he could accept.

The friar who had been tending him came over, obviously intending to check his bandages again. His name was Zacarías, Gabriel remembered. The only surviving friar other than Bernardo, and didn’t that burn, to lose Manuel and keep Bernardo.

“What you feel is normal,” Zacarías said now, clearly mistaking his brief panic for something else. “I’ve caused the numbness to ease the pain of the poison as it leaves your body. As you recover, enough feeling will return to remind you not to do that again and give you time to heal. And once the poison is gone, you
will
heal. Your fever is down, and you can move your limbs; those are excellent signs.”

Every curando he’d ever known had that same tone, warmly smug, when they thought they’d saved the day. “How . . .”

“Your companion had the proper herbs, and I have the knowledge.” Zacarías had a surprisingly cheerful smile, considering that
they’d been off digging graves. “The Lord smiled on you.”

If Gabriel had felt better, he might have rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not of your faith.”

“Not yet,” Zacarías said, patting the shoulder without a bandage.

“Leave him be,” Isobel said, coming to kneel next to Gabriel as well. “He’s not well enough for to be preached at yet.” She still had dirt under her fingernails despite washing up, and sadness that lingered in her eyes. He should have been digging the graves instead of her, not been sprawled like an invalid. He thought about sitting up, showing her that he was fine, but his limbs would not respond to the command.

He settled for glaring at her. She might be the devil’s Hand, but she was still a sixteen-year-old girl and his charge, and he resented his body’s helplessness in front of her.

“And you, stop that,” she said softly. “You kept your word to the boss; your silver shot was what made the beast retreat, not anything they did, and you kept me safe. And Fray Zacarías says you’ll be well in a day or two.”

“Good,” he said shortly. He’d spent too many years moving since coming home, that it felt wrong to stay in a place longer than overnight. Even if he had been unconscious for most of it.

And once he was well again, he would get the full story from Isobel, everything that had happened after . . . after he couldn’t remember.

“And you,” Isobel said, “are you ready to go home, Fray Zacarías?”

“Si,” the young man said, accepting his defeat gracefully. “More than. As soon as I feel confident my patient is well enough to leave.”

“We go nowhere.” Bernardo strode up to them, as seemingly unaffected by the burial as he’d been by their deaths, and Gabriel saw Isobel’s expression change from concern to annoyance. Whatever had occurred while he was unconscious, the man had not endeared himself to her. “So long as the spell remains, my obligation remains.”

“You are not welcome here any longer, Fray Bernardo,” Isobel said, her voice civil, if only just, with a tempering of steel at its core.

“I do not fear you nor this land. God is with me.”

A harsh snort from behind them told them what the magician thought of that.

“We are but two, Bernardo,” Zacarías said. “Would it not be prudent to return to where our brothers wait for us, and receive further orders? At the very least, if we are to follow God’s will, we need be properly outfitted with food and funds. And horses.”

“I am—”

“Your brother is wise.” Isobel spoke over Bernardo’s posturing. She stood, a head shorter than the friar, her face and fingers smudged with dirt and her braid askew, the two feathers fluttering slightly, and her voice was the roll of thunder moving closer. “Heed him. And tell this to those who give you your orders, that the Territory is not theirs for the taking or the breaking.”

For a brief instant, Isobel née Lacoyo Távora was the most terrifying, awe-ful thing Gabriel had ever seen. His expression, he was certain, was purely malicious enjoyment of the moment, and one, when he looked, that was mirrored on the magician’s face. In this, at least, they were in agreement: seeing Bernardo toe up to the devil would amuse them both.

“You may not—” Bernardo tried to object again, and Isobel tilted her head to the left, eyes narrowing as though she were contemplating how best to smite him into ash.

Gabriel was reasonably sure she wouldn’t do it, even if she could, but if he wasn’t mortally certain, only a fool would push her.

Then again, they had already established that Bernardo was a fool.

“We thank you for your patience and your hospitality.” Zacarías stepped between them, and there was a worn desperation in his eyes and the set of his mouth that Gabriel wished he didn’t recognize. One of the Spaniards, at least, had a lick of common sense, and the ability to know when—and where—they weren’t wanted. “We will leave as soon as Gabriel is up and walking.”

“Zaca—”

“Be silent, brother,” Zacarías said sharply. “You led us by acclaim,
not divine right. And I do not acclaim you now. Stay if you will, but be it on your own pride, not God’s will.”

The silence that followed could have split rocks, but Bernardo finally gave a curt nod of his head, then turned on his heel with precision an army man might have admired, and retreated to where the two remaining Spaniards had set their bedrolls, as far away from the others as was safe distance from the fire.

Isobel was exhausted. Not bone-tired, or even flesh-tired, but heart-tired, she thought. Sore of soul, not body. And while this patch of ground was not where she might have chosen to make camp, particularly with the graves of three men so close, however warded with salt and sigil, it had water nearby, and enough to burn for a fire, and that was enough for now.

It took two more days for the poison to leave Gabriel’s body to Zacarías’s satisfaction. The magician was gone when they woke on the second day, and Isobel knew she was the only one who felt hurt that he had not said farewell.

She also suspected that she had not seen the last of him. The Territory was wide, but there was only one road, after all.

Gabriel had only smiled when she said that, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep. She sat by his side all day, the same as the days before, unable to close her own eyes for fear of what she might see: too many dead, too many who yet might die as the ribbons snaked their way through the Territory. Not all would change; not all would shift from their original intent.