It was difficult to relax entirely into the saddle with his ribs still sore, but he had enough trust in Steady’s nature that his body eased a little more and his breathing slowed until only years of experience kept him upright in the saddle. It wasn’t quite like sleeping, or even dozing, but his thoughts quieted and his eyes shut, letting other senses take over. First, feel. The sway of Steady underneath him, the feel of the reins through his fingers, leather worn smooth, and the press of his legs against the saddle, the weight of his bootheels in the stirrups.
Then sound. The syncopated clop of eight hooves on grass and dirt and occasional stone. The breath of wind against his skin, passing over the rise and fall of the folded hills. Birdsong, and the buzzing clatter of insects, and the distant wow-ooo-wow of a coyote pack greeting each other. Only coyote, no wolves, and his fingers eased away from the stock of his flintlock where it was strapped near his saddle. There wasn’t much risk of a coyote being fool enough to attack a man on horseback, not in summer, when easier prey abounded. In winter, it would have been a different story. But in winter, he’d never have let her go out on her own.
He hushed his own thoughts, blanking them under the quiet sound of water. Smell came last: First, the ever-present, soothingly familiar smell of horse and leather and human sweat. Then the tang of sagebrush and green pine, and the faint tickle of maidenflower. And under that, once his entire self lay open and waiting, came the scent of water, from the quicksilver lightness of the creeks to the slower, stone-wet deepness below. The ability to dowse: his medicine, his curse, the thing tying him to the Territory, marking him as one of its own, finding water as easily as he could find the Road.
And then, going deeper still, finding the feel of specific water. The water warmed by familiar scent, the warmth of her body shaping it, the exhale of her breath scenting it.
Years and lives ago, he had spent time with a band of Hochunk, regaining his health, regaining his strength, when all he could do was listen to stories. There had been an old man once among them, one story claimed, who could find a single person lost in the Underworlds by the scent of their spit. Gabriel, who mocked no story, did not believe such a thing was possible. But this . . . this he thought he could do, after months of sharing canteens and coffee and the dampness of morning air with her. Enough to ensure he could find her like a freshwater spring in a dry plain.
“Hey, Iz,” he said, pitching his voice as though to carry just a little ways away, as though she were still riding next to him. “Whatever trouble you’ve found, just hold tight. We’re coming.”
Isobel was flummoxed. Everything she had been taught, all the things she had learned, told her that it was not possible for the land to be barren of power. Water flowed, wind breathed, people moved, and therefore power was.
Kneeling by the table without explanation, she placed her left palm down on the ground, sinking inside herself in that way she never could explain to Gabriel, opening herself to whatever the Territory wanted to tell her.
Silence.
It went beyond the cleansing she had felt: this little settlement had no connections to anything. There was no well-trod Road here, no familiar pull of the bone-deep ribbon that connected the Territory. Nothing.
Three times she tried skin to dirt, sending herself as deep as she dared, opening as far as she dared without Gabriel to watch over her, among strangers, however kind.
Nothing. Worse than silence: an emptiness where silence might be, a hollow unfilled, unfillable, driving her out and back into herself.
Fingers clenched, jaw tight enough to ache, Isobel was uncertain how much time had gone, save they all still waited, the men looking away, the women staring, near rude but so hesitantly hopeful, she could not take offense. Not for the first time, she wondered why the boss had sent her out so woefully unprepared?—and how she was supposed to function once her time with Gabriel was done and he moved on.
“Something happened here,” she said. “Tell me.”
They all looked at Duck, who merely shook her head and lowered her gaze to her hands twined together in her lap. Isobel felt a snap of impatience: how was she to help if they would not tell her? Was this yet another test? Was she supposed to know?
The tension stretched, filling the air until it became hard to breathe, Isobel’s impatience becoming a thing she could feel, knocking at her bones. The older woman was their leader, they would not say anything if she would not. And Isobel could do nothing if they did not speak.
“Jumping-Up Duck. Please.”
“The ground rumbled,” the woman said finally, not looking up from her hands, rough-skinned knuckles clenched tight.
“A quake?” They were not common in Flood, but they happened, and the boss had said that the ground had once rocked hard enough, farther west, that those who lived there told stories of it a hundred years later, of ground crumbling and waters rising, and those who could not run, died.
“Jordskalv,” Karl said. “As though waves underfoot, on a ship, in solid ground. Three times yesterday, one after another.”