“I don’t know. How can it be? I promised them I’d do what I could. But there isn’t anything I can do, is there? They’re already dead; I can’t make their lives less wasted. Their blood was used for . . . for a terrible thing, and I can’t make it right—”
“Isobel. Stop.” He stretched out one leg and kicked her gently in the shin. “You’re right; there’s nothing you could do. You were there too late, and even if you had been there . . .” He picked up his own plate, then hers, once she indicated that she was finished, and put them aside for washing. “If you’d been there, you’d be dead now, Iz. You’d have tried to stop them and you’d have failed. And you can’t take the entire chain of events on your shoulders, because, well, you just can’t. People?—even wind-mad magicians—make their own choices, wise and foolish, and there’s nothing you or I or the devil can do about that.
“If it makes you feel better, when all this is sorted, we’ll go back and burn the bones. That way they can return to the dust properly.”
She exhaled, a little shaky still, half-expecting something to happen, something to speak or appear. But she was alone inside her skin. “When this is sorted.”
“And speaking of which. How are we to accomplish that?” His foot remained pushed up against her leg, and it reminded her of the way Flatfoot had leaned against her before. The thought made her smile, even though there was nothing amusing in what she was about to say, and she thought that smile might look a bit like the boss’s when he was particularly unamused.
“I haven’t any idea. I’ll make something up when we get there.”
Gabriel had made his bed up that night with Isobel’s words rattling between his ears, aware for the first time in years of every rock and root under his bedroll, the rough leather of his pack under his cheek, and every noise and silence of the night, until finally the stars dimmed and he was able to sleep.
They were both up before the sun lifted over the hills behind them, casting pale red rays over the higher mountains directly ahead.
“We could always . . . go back.”
“To Andreas?” The look Isobel gave him made it clear she thought he’d lost his wits.
“To Flood.”
Her face went flat, only the fluttering blink showing her surprise.
“That was what you had wanted, wasn’t it? To go back to Flood?”
“To make sure you were healed properly,” she said, going back to saddling her mare. “You’re moving well now. I saw you hadn’t rebandaged the claw marks; they’re scabbed up cleanly.”
“Iz.”
“So, there’s no need to ride all the way back there, and you were correct; it would have been foolish anyhow, so?—”
“Isobel!” He couldn’t recall the last time he’d raised his voice, and certainly not to a woman. Mayhap back when he was young and still living with his sisters . . . “Isobel,” he said more quietly, seeing that she had paused in her actions, arms frozen in place over Uvnee’s nose, the bridle half-on, her back straight and too stiff. “There’s no shame in asking for help. You’re just one woman; we’re both just . . . If you think this is too much for us to manage, then there’s no shame in handing this over to the devil. It’s—”
“No.”
“All right.” He swung up into Steady’s saddle and waited for her to do the same with Uvnee, tucking the edges of her skirt under her legs and adjusting her hat before picking up the reins again. “Onward and upward and on to glory, then.”
They’d gone barely ten paces from their campsite before he nearly tore his shoulder out of its socket trying to grab the carbine and load it while also reaching for his boot knife. The conflicting instincts slowed him down enough to realize that the shadow at their shoulder wasn’t a maddened magician, a ghost cat, or another irritatingly useless spirit-animal, but the elder Isobel had half-mockingly named Broken Tongue.
“Grandpapa,” he said finally, hoping that his voice was calm enough to be polite, switching to French with an effort. “We did not expect to see you again.”
The old man sniffed once, with unmistakable emphasis. “I did not think you to be fools.”
“I am a fool traveling with a woman.”
“You say the same thing twice.”
Gabriel was not going to translate any of that for Isobel, riding on his other side. She seemed to have taken the old man’s reappearance more calmly than he had, or maybe he’d simply missed her reaction. Or, he thought, at this point Isobel had gone beyond surprise or dismay at anything. That was not a comfortable thought.
“Tell him we go to cleanse the valley,” she said, looking up along the path they’d been following, rather than at either one of them. “If it is possible.”