Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (26 page)

He had to be certain, though. Gun cocked, he opened the door of the nearest building and went inside. No bodies. A chair was overturned and beds were unmade, but there were no other signs of violence. Whatever had happened there had happened quickly. But there was no smell of illness, no bodies too long unbreathing and untended.

A quick pass through the kitchen made him pause and back up.
The cookstove was cold, the fireplace ashes swept up, and the narrow pantry’s shelves were empty. It was spring, yes, and they might have run down their supplies something fierce, but there still should have been some staples, the last dregs of even a hard winter, the last of the potatoes, or . . . something.

Not empty shelves, not even an onion left in the bin. They had taken everything edible with them.

Or something had eaten it.

He went through every house, quickly but carefully, then backtracked to the corral, untying Steady and putting their back to the town, as quickly as he could.

The town of Clear Rock, some five days’ journey west from the farmstead of the family Caron, in the foothills of . . .
Izzy stopped, frustrated. She didn’t know what these low hills were called, where they would appear on the boss’s map. She closed her eyes, trying to visualize the map unrolled across his desk, place herself on it, move herself along the road that would take her there. They had gone north briefly but then turned south, even as they went west. . . . If she could feel the road under her feet, surely she could feel where she
was
on them?

The nape of her neck itched, and something pricked the palm of her left hand, sharply enough that her fingers flexed, making her drop her pencil, breaking her concentration. She looked around even as her right hand went to the knife at her side, a new and still-uneasy reflex.

Nothing was visible on the road save Uvnee and the mule, both of whom were looking at her curiously. The feeling intensified, thrumming through her, and then . . . disappeared.

“I felt something,” she said, glaring back at the mule as though daring it to say something. “I know I did.” Not the way she’d felt the road under her feet; more like how she’d come to know something was watching them, a sense of unease that had no obvious source.

Was their unseen companion back? If it had been a dust-dancer . . .
how had it come off the plains into the hills? What did it want? She didn’t know, didn’t know enough without Gabriel here to explain things, and she felt her frustration build. Where was he? Had something happened to him? If something had happened to him, what would she do?

The mule flopped one long ear at her and went back to contemplating the air in front of its nose as though her panic was of no consequence to it. Whatever had made her tense didn’t bother it or the mare at all. She wished that made her feel better.

Izzy frowned, realizing that she’d once again forgotten to ask Gabriel the mule’s name. Somehow, that failure calmed her: something so ordinary and stupid, a balm against her panic.

The sound of hooves made her turn back toward the town even as she reached down to pick up the pencil from the dirt, tucking it back into her journal and replacing them both in her saddlebag. Gabriel was leading Steady by the reins and looking like he’d just eaten something that disagreed with him. She waited, calmer now, but still feeling the sweat on her skin and the slight pinch of her boots, the smell of horse and leather and her own skin, and the sensation, still lingering, that something had been
watching.

“We’ve got trouble,” he said.

She bit her lower lip, feeling how dry the skin there was. Did she tell him about the feeling? No, wait, let him say what he had to say first. “They’re all gone?”

“Gone, fast and hard. And their supplies are gone, too. Everything edible, down to the last dried apple.” His mouth was a thin line, his eyes unhappy, and her worry deepened. People didn’t just up and abandon their homes, pack up all their supplies, not unless something drove them out.

“But not illness.” Again, she meant.

“No bodies, no stink, no new graves less’n a few months old. I’d say no.”

Some of her fear eased then. Two instances of a fast-moving and
deadly illness, this far apart, would have been terribly bad news. Not that this puzzle wasn’t worrisome too.

Gabriel took off his hat, running his hands through his hair until it stuck up in tufts. He’d shaved before they left the farmstead, but his chin was covered in thick dark stubble again, and there were shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there when she met him. She didn’t know if that was normal for being on the road, or if all this was more trouble than he’d been expecting. If she were placing a bet, she’d say the latter.

She also suspected she didn’t look much better. Not having a mirror might have been a blessing after all.

“I’d been counting on resupplying here,” he said. “Their well was clean, so I refilled my canteens, but I’m not going back in there with the rest, and we’re too low on supplies to continue on into the mountains. We need to get back into the plains, let me do some hunting, maybe find the nearest tribal encampment and see if they’re open to trading. I don’t suppose you have any extra shiny we could use?”

“You told me not to bring fripperies,” she said tartly.

“That’ll teach you to listen to me.” He smiled, but it clearly took an effort, the surface charm of the man she’d first met scraped dry to the bone.

Her hand ached again, as though someone’d jabbed her deep in the palm, and she rubbed it, frowning at the skin as though it were to blame for everything. Her thoughts chased each other until she forced them into order, looking back up at him. “We can’t go yet. We need to know what happened.” It was just common sense: This town was too close to the southern border, a waypost, Gabriel had said. If something were causing trouble here, the Spanish viceroy, de Marquina, would hear of it, use it to his advantage.

She might be called the Devil’s Hand, but she was his eye and ear, too. Same as any who worked for him. And she was the only one
there
.

“What happened is that nearly a half hundred souls are gone,”
Gabriel said, his voice harsh, “and we don’t know why or how, or if whatever spooked ’em is going to come back around again while we’re waiting here.”

“If I’m to be the Hand . . .”

“You need to know what’s happening. Yah, I get that.” Gabriel threw his hat to the ground, then stared at it, bent, and retrieved it, slapping the dust off against his leg. He wanted to saddle up and ride away; she could see that in him. Every bone in his body yearned to be away from there as fast as Steady could carry him. But he wouldn’t. Not if she said no. The sense of power she’d expected to feel didn’t come; she just felt tired. Sad. Scared.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “That maybe this is related to what Devorah said? About things getting worse near the border?’

“I don’t know.” Izzy realized she was still rubbing at the palm of her hand, and forced herself to stop, willing the ache away. “But the boss would say that’s a suspicious hand.”

He sighed and stared at the ground, like it would tell him something useful. “Yah,” he said finally. “Yah. You’re right. All right. So, what now?”

He was asking her? Izzy shook her head. She’d called rank as the Devil’s Hand; what else
would he do?

“I need to know what happened,” she said, not so much to Gabriel, or even herself, but that
sense
inside her. The one that had told her what to do outside Widder Creek. “I need to know . . .”

She had to be careful. If that knowing was from the boss, odds were it worked the same as anything the boss gave away: you had to know what you wanted and what you were willing to give, and you mostly only ever got one shot to make it right. And if it wasn’t, if it was some other medicine . . . well, all the more reason to be careful with what she asked for.

The salt-stick was where she’d replaced it in the pack, and she took it out, holding it uncertainly and yet certain that this was what she’d need. The silver band on her finger seemed to weigh more all of a
sudden, curling her little finger in toward her palm. Silver and salt—they were protection, not weapons.

“But knowing is protection, isn’t it? And I need to know why they left the way they did.” She crumbled a little of the salt off the stick, letting the grains rest in her left hand, and curled the finger with the ring inward. “
Maleh mishpat
,” she told it, the words forming in her mouth without conscious thought. She didn’t know what they meant, but the
sense
told her they were important. “I am the strength of the Territory, the cold eye and the final word. And I
must know what happened.
”

Gabriel was speaking behind her, but she was aware of the sounds rather than hearing them. The mule was directly in front of her, dark brown hide shuddering as it flicked a fly off its hindquarters, but it seemed far away, not within arm’s reach. The world spun around her, and she was spun within it, her arms too heavy to hold up, her head too large to stay on her shoulders, her knees too wobbly to support her.

“Isobel? Izzy!”

The words were distant, impossible, incomprehensible, nothing to do with her. She was stone and bone, dust and wind, the steady roar of water deep underground, the cold bitter bite and stifling heat. . . .

Darkness came, sweeping low over the western horizon. Storm clouds spread too far, piled too deep, hiding something within.
Does not belong
, something told her.
Does not belong.
And the darkness slid through the jagged mountain peaks, sliced into thick ribbons, still rushing forward, dispersing into the sky, soaring up and dipping down, down, and one of the ribbons fell onto Clear Rock and ate it whole. . . .

“Izzy!”

She was being shaken roughly, hands gripping her arms hard enough to bring her back to her flesh, eyes focusing, letting go, and remembering who she was . . .

“Izzy?”

“Yes,” she said, answering the unasked question. “Yes.”

“What did you see?”

“Something came . . . out of the sky. Something fearsome and dark, and . . . ”

And consumed every living thing in the town.

“What now?”

Izzy blinked at him, her jaw dropping slightly. “You’re asking me?”

He made a sound of exasperation and ran his hands through his hair again before flinging them wide. “I’m out of my depths here, Isobel. Natives? Rockfalls? Sickness? I can handle all those and more. Mysterious storms that leave behind empty towns? I’ve got nothing. So, I’m asking you, Devil’s Hand: what do we do?”

The panic that had quieted when Gabriel returned roused again at his words, pressing against her ribs and her throat. Her heart beat too quickly, her blood raced as though she’d been running too hard, and she realized suddenly she’d clenched both hands so tightly, there were red marks from her nails on the flesh of her palms. She wasn’t the Hand, not properly, never mind that she’d been able to
see
what happened, all the confidence she’d had when they rode out sucked away by weeks in the saddle, weeks of people not being impressed by her at all, by not being able to do something as simple as collect eggs from chickens or save people from being ill.

She looked up at Gabriel, intending to throw the question back to him—he was her mentor; he was supposed to
know
things. But what she saw there stopped her cold.

His face was calm now, only the slightest pinch between his brows. His jaw was unclenched, his head tilted just slightly to the right, and his eyes . . . his eyes were half-lidded but alert, curious. Waiting.

He trusted her to know what to do. He had confidence that she would be able to think of what to do.

She shook her head, panic replaced by lingering confusion and helplessness. “I don’t know.”

That seemed to turn a key in him. “All right. What do you
think
we should do?”

She swallowed, still feeling the panic pressure, still queasy from being spun around by the vision. But his certainty didn’t allow her to question herself, didn’t give her room to back out.