That surprised a laugh out of him, and he took a swig off his canteen to buy himself time to answer.
Guilt alone didn’t explain it. Nor duty—he had little enough of either, and she knew that.
He remembered the dream of a cracked creek bed, the cold sun, and further back, the fish swimming at his feet, passing over him as though he were not there. He remembered the snake’s hissed amusement, and Old Woman’s frown, following him every step deeper into the very thing he’d sought to escape.
Isobel had been confused by the wapiti and Reaper hawk giving her conflicting advice. He’d been dealing with that since he’d returned from the States, Graciendo telling him how to remain apart, while Old Woman’s teachings followed down into his dreams.
He could do both. He could remain himself and still be Isobel’s mentor properly. He simply had to make her understand.
“All my life, I wanted nothing but to leave. I wasn’t a farmer; that was clear from the beginning. My siblings were born with their hands in the dirt, but I . . . It wasn’t for me. When my parents agreed to send me East, for schooling, I thought it was the beginning of my true life, my real life. I was sixteen, a man, and the world lay at my feet.”
“But you didn’t like it there.”
“The city . . . There were so many people, even in my classes, it took me months to walk through them and not flinch. But the things I learned, the things I heard, saw . . . I made friends there, friends who had plans, wanted to shape the world. I thought I could be part of that too, in my own way. But the Territory is possessive, Isobel. It will let us go only so long.
“I fell ill. Soul-sick. I barely made it to the Mudwater before collapsing. If it weren’t for the Old Woman . . .”
He had told her some of this, but only some: she had no need to know of the weeks he’d spent recovering, too weak to move, too weak to not listen as the Old Woman poured stories into his ears, waited by his side while the dreams came. “Most folk who live on that side of the river, they plug their ears and blinder their eyes. They don’t want to see there’s a difference between the banks, don’t feel the way things change. But the folk who cross back and forth, the ones who work the waterways . . . They know. They knew they had to get me back across, soon’s I was strong enough.”
“And you were angry about that.”
“Furious. I raged as best I could, being weak as a newborn babe. I cursed and I swore, and then I learned new words to better curse. But that changed nothing. The Territory had decided where I would belong.
“But it couldn’t claim me, either. Not if I didn’t let it.”
He waited, but Isobel didn’t ask.
“And you kept in touch with your friends there all this time?”
“It’s part of how I resist. How I bite my thumb at it.” He reined Steady in, blocking Uvnee from walking on. “But I swear to you, Isobel Devil’s Hand. I did nothing with intent to harm the Territory, or those within.”
She studied him, her face blank, her eyes flat under the shadow of the hat’s brim, and something flickered in those dark orbs, a trick of the light.
Then she looked away, and he could tell himself it was nothing.
“Why do you think it wouldn’t let you go? Is it like that for all of us?”
“I don’t know. And no?—some come and go without issue. I’ve no idea why I’m so fortunate.”
She let the bitterness pass unremarked. “But you were here, and you were in Flood on my birthday and thought to offer me mentoring.”
He could see where she was going with that, even blindfolded in the mid-night. “I don’t believe in fate, Iz. We make our own choices.”
“Yes. And your choices led you there, on that day.” That suddenly, the blankness was gone, her face still somber but her eyes holding that familiar sharp spark of life, as though she’d finally bested him. “And that road led to this one, and this particular mess.”
He moved Steady out of her way, pressing his heels into the gelding’s side. “Wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Much to his dismay, he meant it. Even though she had never answered his original question.
Which of itself was answer enough.
Her heart had nearly stopped when Gabriel asked her, blunt as a bullet, if she’d killed the magicians. The words had coiled in her throat, but instead she had turned it back on him, pushing her own questions until he had no choice but to retreat.
She had known some of it before, half-told stories and confessions, a life left on the other side of the border, threads of it still tying him there. But the idea that leaving had made him so ill, that had been new. Disturbing.
She looked at the sigil in her palm, tracing the thick black lines and curves with a delicate finger. There were times she’d swear she could feel them, like a scar, but the skin was smooth under her touch now, the loops as familiar as her own breath.
And now, if she let it, she could feel that warmth in her bones, imagine the white traced with faint, glittering strands of silver.