April had been a fool—not for wanting the things civilization could bring, but for not understanding what else they would bring with them. He had the flash of a dry, cracked riverbed, a cold sun, and rubbed one hand against his leg, feeling sweat that had nothing to do with the heat of the day.
“My letters were to a friend. Someone I trusted. What he did with the things I told him could not have given injury.” He had passed along nothing of the devil, nothing of magicians, only tales of long rides and small towns, of ten ways to cook beans and the pleasure of the open skies, compared to the cramped quarters of Philadelphia and Boston. Even if such things had been shared . . . No.
“Are you certain?”
It would have been kinder if her voice were accusing, angry, rather than curious. Accusations and anger he could counter, deflect, defuse.
They rode without speaking after that, birds calling and insects singing, and the occasional relief of a doe and fauns lifting their head to watch them ride past, until the weight of it all pressed too heavily on him. He had shared nothing untoward across the river—and he had not shared everything that came back to him. He had thought—had decided?—that it was nothing to do with him, no matter of his, what games others played in distant places.
He had been wrong, and the fact burned in his gullet like rotgut. The snakes had warned him, over and again: enemies and friends would tangle and be confused. Be careful, Old Woman had said. Even Graciendo had warned him indirectly; the old bear had known that traveling with Isobel—with who she was—would endanger him, claw at his refusal to give in, drag him into the very involvement he had run from.
Not of any thing she would do or say, but simply by being what she was . . . and him being what he couldn’t help but be.
The Territory had never let him go.
The moment he had looked into those eyes and offered, on a whim, to mentor the potential he saw there, he had been found.
“The letter you carried. It was from that friend. He heard a thing that worried him, and he spoke of it to me, I think to ease his mind, to somehow pass word along into the Territory the only way he knew how.”
Gabriel had spent years in the States, pretending to fit, making himself fit, but he’d never been able to let go, either. Abner had known that before he had. Had not been surprised when Gabriel packed up one night and boarded a coach, not stopping until he hit Saint Louis. The letter hadn’t been guilt speaking; it had been a warning.
“The new president, Jefferson. He’s a smart man, ambitious. And he’s been given authority, given funding to send a mapping expedition into the Territory. Maps are a kind of power too, Iz. They change the unknown into known, and once a thing is known, it can be taken.”
She was listening to him, chewing his words. “And something like that, an expedition, it would be allowed. They’d pass the Mudwater unmolested. The boss wouldn’t even notice it, because it’s not military, not force. Like the monks.”
The Spanish monks, who had been chasing down an unholy magic unleashed by their masters. The magic itself had carried no intent; the monks had not cared about the Territory, only themselves. There were holes in the devil’s protections, holes that her boss did not seem to care about.
Or wasn’t aware of. Gabriel wasn’t sure which thought unnerved him more.
“Only way to stop them would be to shut the border entirely.” He swallowed, and Steady shifted underneath him, dancing sideways, picking up on his discomfort. He stroked Steady’s neck to calm the horse, trying to imagine that, the inevitable and likely immediate results of such an act on the devil’s part. “He’d have to shut all the borders.” Allowing settlers from all three borders meant no one nation could claim insult—not the Spanish crown nor the British, not the Americans. Nor the French, although they seemed to care little for what happened here, the trappers and woodsmen who remained so well-mingled with the tribes, he suspected they thought themselves other than French. If he didn’t shut all the borders, the ones who were affected would take that as excuse?. The Territory standing alone was a potential prize yet to be won. The Territory possibly allying with another nation became a threat.
“He can’t,” Isobel said, and she had that tone again, telling him that although her mouth shaped the words, the knowing came from another source entirely.
He didn’t know if it meant the devil couldn’t because it would cause more problems than it solved, or if he couldn’t, quite literally.
The why didn’t matter, only the end result: the Territory remained open for Jefferson’s handpicked spies to continue poking into it, causing trouble they were entirely unprepared to understand, much less survive.
Gabriel didn’t need a spirit-dream to tell him who would be tasked to deal with the results.
“You could leave.” Her voice was small but solid, and he had the uncomfortable thought that he might as well have spoken his thoughts out loud. “I’m not sure what’s considered usual for a mentorship ride, but I’m reasonably certain this isn’t it.”