Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (5 page)

He wasn’t going to make this any easier, reverting to the formal posture and voice he used when someone came calling for a Bargain. “What is it that you want, Isobel Lacoyo Távora?”

The sound of her family name, her birth name, brought a flash of memory, voices and warmth, but she pushed it away. The past was past. Her future was what mattered now.

“Respect.” There was no thought of lying to him or shading the desire. There was no point: if she were to bargain with the devil, she needed to be honest. This was what she wanted, what she had been bought and trained for. “Power, maybe.” You could not have the first without the second; she knew that. “To be part of what you do. To help . . .” Her mouth was so dry, but she managed to get the words out. “To be part of all this.”

“And you think to find that here, in this House? To be my faithful right hand in all doings?” He smiled, and it was both sweet and cold. “You want Marie’s job?”

“I . . . Maybe? Someday, yes.” Izzy licked her lips nervously. This wasn’t going the way she’d thought it would. In her imagining, the boss had laughed and told her he’d been waiting for her to say that,
and Marie welcomed her, saying her help would be priceless, and . . .

In daylight, she saw how foolish that had been. The devil was honest, but he gave nothing away, and Marie had no reason to share, no need of help.

“Or something else,” she said. “Some way I can help . . .”

“Help what?” He was still watching her, still with that smile. It should have made her angry or uneasy, but instead, her nerves steadied. She was a free woman come to make a Bargain. She knew that look, knew
him
, as much as any soul might. Izzy waited, and watched him in return, the way she had watched the woman in black the last night, the way she’d watched so many other people come and go over the years. She had lived her entire life in the devil’s house, and she had no fear of him. He had taught her that, as well.

“Help you do what you’ve been training me to do all these years,” she said finally. “To see what people are, what they want. What they need. And how to give it to them.”

She was right; she knew she was. She
had
to be right.

He leaned back, his left index finger tapping thoughtfully at his lips, his gaze unblinking as ever as they regarded her, looking bone-deep in that way he had.

“Marie runs this house,” he said. “She is my steady right hand and will continue to be so for many more years.”

Izzy refused to let her shoulders slump, but inwardly, all of her hopes and courage crumbled. If he had no need of her, then what?

The boss sighed, then brought both of his hands up in front of him and held them up, turning them back and forth as though to show he held nothing in his palm, nothing up his sleeve. He had strong hands, long-fingered and supple, and his right hand was unadorned, while his left bore a silver-and-black signet ring on his index finger. She had never seen that ring before—but a similar one, with a clear stone, encircled Maria’s right thumb.

“We each have two hands, of equal strength and dexterity. Each with things it does well, better than the other. All this time, you’ve
seen the day-to-day business, the gathering-in and the granting, the bargaining and the dealing, the work of my right hand.” His voice changed again, slipping to a soft growl she had never heard before. “Did you never think beyond that, Isobel? Did you never wonder what the other hand held?”

“I . . . No.” She never had.

“Most don’t. I prefer it that way.” He let his hands fall, resting them palm-down on the desk, graceful even in stillness. The growl was gone, but his voice remained sharp. “The States see us as some empty wilderness to be claimed and tamed, while Spain and their holdings call us evil, a cluster of heathens and sinners in need of cleansing—by sword and fire, if they had their way. Both sides press on us, coveting us. Those who leave their homes and come here, who cross into our borders in search of something, even if they never make their way to Flood, they see more clearly what the Territory means, but even so, they see only the one side . . . until they need the other. Then they grab onto it, with desperate strength.

“The right hand gathers and gives, visible to all. But the left hand, Isobel, the
manu sinistra
? It moves in shadows, unseen, unheard . . . until I deem it time for it to be seen and heard. And when it moves, its work cannot be undone. It is the strength of the Territory, the quick knife in the darkness, the cold eye and the final word.”

She looked up, away from his hands, and was caught by a gaze the burnt gold of the morning sun.

“I have been lacking a left hand for too long. Are you strong enough for that, Isobel née Lacoyo Távora? Is the iron in your spine, the fire in your blood, ready for my forging?”

Née? Marie was née too when she introduced herself. Marie née Aubertin. Izzy didn’t let herself hesitate, didn’t let herself feel fear. “Yes.”

“And what do you have to offer in return?”

She had nothing. Everything she owned, everything she carried, belonged to him. “Myself,” she said. “All I have is myself.”

“I accept your terms,” he said abruptly. “Marie will write up your new papers.”

Then his eyes faded to the more soothing, familiar brownish-gold, and the smile in them was familiar, and fond. “They won’t be ready for several hours. You have this day of freedom, dearling. Go, enjoy it.”

Marie, doing her predawn rounds, had seen Izzy go downstairs dressed as though for battle, her hair braided and coiled, and her boots laced. She had leaned over the railing and watched as the girl paused, then found her courage, and went to the boss’s office, not bothering to knock. Despite her worries, Marie smiled. It wasn’t guts the girl lacked, for certain.

She went back into her room and finished her morning preparations, keeping an eye on the sunlight rising through her window. When she thought enough time had gone by, she draped a shawl around her shoulders and went to check on how things were progressing.

The office door was still closed. Normally by then, she would be meeting with the boss, discussing the day over her first cup of coffee, but that could wait a bit yet. There would be another pot of coffee in the kitchen, and Ree wouldn’t dare smack her fingers if she snitched a piece of the fry bread she could smell cooking. But even as she thought that, the door opened and Izzy walked out.

Marie studied the girl’s face. She didn’t look angry, or happy for that matter. She looked as though a horse had kicked her, and she wasn’t yet sure if it hurt. Her heart ached for the girl, but she held her tongue as Alice came out of the kitchen, an apron two sizes too large for her wrapped around her middle. Clearly, Ree had her in search of something, because Izzy directed the child to look behind the bar before the older girl pushed open the front door and disappeared outside.

Marie waited a hand’s count to make sure that the girl wasn’t coming back before descending the stairs herself, nodding to Alice in
passing, and entering the office without knocking. The boss was writing, his fountain pen making faint noises as it scratched its way across the paper. He didn’t look up, but he didn’t tell her to go away, either.

She gathered her skirt in one hand, sorting it out of the way, and perched herself on the edge of the desk. “Are you sure about this?”

He didn’t bother asking how she knew; he’d trained her to know what went on within the walls of the saloon, given her the ears to hear, and had only himself to blame when she used those skills on him. “The only question was if she was certain. And she was.”

Marie frowned at him, unable to argue and yet unsatisfied with the response. “I know she’s not a child any more, not legally, but she’s still so young.”

“Old enough. And she came to me, quite clear in what she desired.” He looked up from the ledger and studied his Right Hand. “You doubt her capabilities?”

“She is quick-witted and steady-minded,” Marie said, taking the question seriously. “And her heart is neither tender nor cold. She listens as well as any girl her age and has a healthy dose of doubt for what she hears. She was born to the Territory, feels it in her blood and bones. No, I don’t doubt her capabilities or her desire.” How could she, when she too had quietly fed and encouraged it all these years?

“And yet you question my decision?”

Marie leaned past him, picking up the paperwork, buying herself time. She looked at the cream-colored paper, reading the words inked there with an odd expression, part resignation, part hope, and then handed the sheet back. “I suppose I’m too fond of the girl,” she said. “I may have hoped that she’d find a nice farmer, or maybe the blacksmith’s boy, and settle down somewhere nearby.”

The boss laughed. “Our Izzy? Woman, get out of my office; stop wasting my time. And if that boy is still around, the northern cardsharp from last night? Find him for me.”

She knew better than to ask what he had in mind. Whatever it was, they’d all learn soon enough.

When the young boy knocked on the door of his hired room about midmorning, Gabriel was already packed and ready to ride out.

“Sir? The boss would like to see you. Right now, if’n it’s convenient.”

“The boss?” Even as he asked, Gabriel knew. The master of the saloon. The master of this town. The Master of the Territory, some said.

Gabriel hadn’t moved to the main table the night before, although that had been his intention when he arrived. Every man jack thought, in his heart of hearts, that he could face the devil across the green felt and come out the winner, or at least hold his own long enough for bragging rights. Gabriel had played out his hands and waited for the tables to shift, for his turn to come along, but somewhere midway through the evening, he’d discovered that it was enough to be there, to see the way the man worked, to feel the power that shimmered around him, steady as the wind and old as the stone.

Gabriel had questions; there wasn’t a man alive as didn’t. But he’d realized the last night that he could find the answers on his own or he’d never know, and that would have to do. The devil, it turned out, had nothing he would bargain for.

So, to be summoned now, when he was preparing to leave? That was . . . disturbing.

“Give me a minute,” he told the boy, and got his hat and coat from the rack, leaving his bags on the bed.

The boardinghouse was only a few steps down from the saloon, and in that time, Gabriel considered and rejected half a dozen reasons why he might have been summoned. The only one that held water was his conversation with the girl the night before; what had been her name? Isobel, that was it. A cheeky smile and a serious eye, and he’d made the offer without thinking, but surely that wouldn’t be enough to bring him to such notice? If the girl was thinking of riding
out, there was no reason she shouldn’t, unless she’d made a Bargain preventing it. He couldn’t have given offense just for offering, if he hadn’t known. Could he?

His blood chilled, but he kept his hat at a jaunty angle, the brim shading his eyes from the sun but also keeping them from view. The weight of the knife in his boot was no comfort, for once. Weapons of steel and bone couldn’t defend him here. Still, he’d noted that the devil kept an honest house, and he had no reason to doubt that yet.

Gabriel had never been in a saloon or gambling house before opening hours. To his surprise, it was busy even in the daylight, as innocuous as a storefront, with a handful of youngsters underfoot sweeping the floor and washing glassware, carrying linens and laundry to and from, and generally keeping busy. An older woman, dressed in her night-wrapper, was seated at the bar, swinging her legs gently, a hint of bare flesh showing as she moved. She winked at him, and Gabriel felt himself blush like a schoolboy, but he touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment and was rewarded with a laugh.

The boy didn’t pause but led him across the main floor to a door in the back and knocked once on the frame.

“Send him in, Aaron,” a voice called.

The door opened, and Gabriel walked into the devil’s lair.

The man behind the desk had blond hair and a square, clean-shaven chin that did not match Gabriel’s memory of the man he had seen at the tables the night before, but by the time he took the indicated seat, removed his hat, and looked up again, that first impression changed again, angular features softening, chin and lip now covered with morning stubble, although the eyes, keen and golden brown, remained the same.