He risked looking away from Isobel to take in LaFlesche and the judge. “I didn’t feel anything flicker in the wards,” Gabriel said. “But this isn’t my town; I might not’ve. You two?”
LaFlesche shook her head, sucked her cheeks in before responding. “No. But we were already in here when it must have happened.”
Judges’ quarters were sigil-warded, same as a marshal’s badge-house and?—he realized suddenly—the lockhouse. Had his being close to Possum’s work kept him from feeling trouble when it reached out?
“She didn’t even touch them; I don’t see how—”
“Touch?”
“The bones.” Lou took in his expression, then turned to look at the judge as though for support, but he shook his head, as confused as she by his reaction.
“Your wards are set in bone?”
“Well, yes. We saw no need to?—” The judge stopped and looked at LaFlesche, as though expecting her to explain, but she merely shrugged.
“The wards were a gift,” Lou said, her voice quavering. “From the natives who lived here at the time. I told her. We’ve used ’em ever since.”
The judge nodded. “Way I heard the story, there wasn’t much choice. To not use them would have given insult.”
Gabriel was putting pieces together, and he didn’t like the shape of any of them. Trusting your safety to someone else, someone else’s long-dead-and-gone . . . it made Gabriel’s skin crawl, but he supposed out here, deep in the winter, you had to trust someone. And it seemed to work for them.
But it would explain why Possum wouldn’t show him what he’d done, why nobody here seemed interested in news from the rest of the Territory, and maybe why Isobel’s poking at the wards had caused them to strike back—the devil’s mark on her might have been seen as an attack or insult.
Or it could be something else entirely; he didn’t know. Couldn’t know until Isobel woke up.
“Iz?” He patted her cheek gently, brushed a fingertip across her neck, testing the heat of her skin, the throb of her pulse, then lightly touched her closed eyelids to see if there was any reaction at all.
She stirred restlessly under his hand, then sneezed, turning her head away from him.
“Hey, there.” He sat back on his heels in relief, slipping his hat off and placing it on the floor next to him. The trickle of blood from her nose was only a drop now, and he cupped the side of her face, turning her head gently to look at him.
Her eyes were half slitted, as though the dim light from the lamps hurt them, but she seemed to be tracking and aware.
“Welcome back.”
“The wards . . .”
“Yah. Do you know what happened? You fell . . .”
“Bones.” The word seemed to exhaust her. “Their wards . . .”
“Tribal warding. So I heard. Is there a problem?”
Was there a problem that the Devil’s Hand needed to deal with, he meant.
She closed her eyes, then nodded once.
“Blast and tarnish.” Magicians and American interference, shaking ground and unhappy natives, a vicious haint, and now this . . . He was remembering why he rarely rode this far north, beyond civilized behaviors. “Is it on fire?”
A hesitation, then a single shake of her head. They had time to deal with it. He combed his fingers through her hair, loosened from its braid, and said the very last thing he wanted to tell her just then.
“Iz. I think one of the magicians woke up.”
Her eyes opened, that forthright stare filled with such exhaustion, he almost told her not to bother, that they could deal with this without her.
But they couldn’t.
There was nothing, then faint, muted noises, like listening from under a heavy blanket, voices from far away and downstairs. Then Isobel was vaguely aware of the flurry of activity around her, the voices clearer, urgent, and she was being moved, being lifted, a blanket over her shoulders she didn’t need, and a mug in her fingers that she didn’t want.
The liquid in the mug was warm, though, and when she sipped the broth, she found that she was starving.
“Slowly,” Gabriel warned her when she would have drained the mug. “A sip at a time.”
She nodded and took another sip, blinking as her vision cleared. Plank floors, worn smooth underfoot. Four walls around them, also plank; a large room, almost a hall, unfamiliar and yet—
She realized with a sudden shock that the room reminded her of the main room back in Flood, early in the morning before the tables were set up, the floors swept clean: that same sense of a space waiting to be used. The sensation was so strong, she found herself looking for the boss, flaring her nostrils to catch the warm, familiar smell of spice and whiskey and smoke that always accompanied him.
Gabriel’s scent filled her nose instead, and an odd, acrid tang of something metallic. She raised the hand that wasn’t holding the mug and touched under her nostrils. Her fingertips came away stained pink.
“Nosebleed,” Gabriel told her. “It’s stopped now.”