“Following their guidance, we rode further and came to a valley where . . .” She hesitated, suddenly wishing for the mug to be back in her hands, to give her something to hold on to, clench her fingers around. Instead, her fingers dug into her palms, feeling the cool lines of the sigil on her left, the warm, unmarked flesh on her right. “Some terrible medicine had been worked there,” she said finally. “A circle of power, a trap set . . . and death.”
So far, nothing she had said had made the judge react; she did not know if that meant her words matched the marshal’s or he simply had the ability to keep his thoughts from showing in his face or body.
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?”