“Gabriel.” She could read him too well. He was talking the way she was not-thinking, to keep something at bay.
“The magicians are dead. Something got through the wards last night, early this morning, and killed them.” His words were sharp, dropping into the air like knives, slicing at her, opening her.
“What?” Her voice was faint, hollow, echoing the faintness inside her chest, something fluttering faintly in distress.
“This morning, when they opened the wards to bring them out. That’s all they found.”
“Are you certain?”
“Saw it myself, Iz. Wards were intact, magicians were dead. Mind, I’d say fair riddance to the both, but it makes me worry what else is out there now, more powerful than the two of them, and mayhap just as mad.”
Isobel could feel her brow crease, a hard tic twitching in her cheek, and she schooled herself as though she were facing the devil across the card table, refusing to let anything slip free. “Are you sure they didn’t destroy each other once they woke up?”
“Not unless it’s normal for them to rend each other limb from limb and leave only bloodied bits and bone behind,” Gabriel said. “And it’s not, so far as I’ve ever heard.”
Isobel turned her face back to the mule, smoothing a hand over its soft nose to gain time to respond.
“Isobel.”
He was asking her what to do?—not mentor to student, but rider to Devil’s Hand.
Survive. No whisper, no memory, this, but common sense.
“They’re likely far away from us by now,” she said. “If whatever did this meant to strike at us, it would have already. Farron said magicians have much cunning but little patience.”
“?‘And blown by the winds from which they take their names,’ yah, I remember that. So, we’ve no fear, leaving this town in our dust?”
“I see no reason why it should return.” Her voice shook a little, and she firmed it by the end, willing her words to convey confidence without allowing for further questions.
To her relief, he only nodded. “The judge has asked us to carry word of the marshal’s death. He’ll write up whatever report’s needed; we only need take it with us.”
With the mail chain broken until the post rider recovered from the flux or was replaced, it was the least they could do. And Isobel couldn’t deny she’d a fierce need to leave this town and its high walls behind and never return.
“So, we can leave?”
Gabriel hesitated, and she braced herself. “We . . . You should be there when they hand Tousey over. As witness.”
As the Devil’s Hand, he meant. As witness.
They went back to the cabin they’d been given, repacking their kits in silence. A fresh pitcher of water had been left, along with a covered tray holding a corn mush that tasted better than it looked, and what might have been half a small pig, roasted to crackling perfection and cooled so you could eat the strips with your fingers. Isobel might have wished for coffee, but the water was fresh and cool, and sufficed.
She didn’t think being more alert for what was to come would help, anyway.
There were four natives outside the judge’s bench, as though they had been waiting there forever and would wait forever again with equal ease. Isobel was still learning what Gabriel seemed to read easily as breathing, but even she could tell that the quillwork on the moccasins on the older man with two silver braids was a different style from the beading on the vest of the younger man next to him, dark head bent as he listened to what the first man was saying, and the other two, standing at a respectful distance, had shorter hair and broader features, and their leggings and moccasins had no visible bead or quillwork. At least three tribes had sent someone to speak for them. The same three who had followed them here? Likely.
There were two settlers lounging nearby also, younger and bulkier than most of the people she had seen so far, sun-dark, and she thought maybe the judge had called in aid from the nearest fields, although the scene appeared peaceful enough.
She had a passing thought that had he taken such care earlier, the marshal would not have died, but she and Gabriel had both been there and the marshal had died anyway. Isobel had been able to scrub the blood from under her nails but could still feel it when she rubbed her fingertips together, unseen in the whorls of her skin.
The older man with the braids looked up as they approached, and stopped speaking, but he did not acknowledge them. Following Gabriel’s lead, Isobel paused at a distance and stood, waiting.
Then the door to the bench opened, and the judge came out, followed by Tousey. He was bareheaded and disheveled, having spent the night in his clothing, but he walked easily, without visible shame or fear.
The four warriors stood, somehow seeming to come together even though they did not move closer, as the judge and Tousey came to them. Gabriel put his hand on her arm to stop her from joining them.