“And to think I could have stayed home as a child and been a farmer,” Gabriel said dryly, not asking who watched or how she knew.
“Or stayed out of Flood entire as an adult and been none the wiser,” she retorted. “If fate did not force you to ride into the devil’s town and offer to mentor one of his workers.”
“No, that was purely my own folly and good fortune,” he agreed. The urge to throw something at him came and passed, luckily for him, as the only things close at hand were her canteen and her knife.
“Tell me a story.” At the very least, that would distract her from where they were heading and what she would have to do once they were there. . . .
“About what?”
“Demons.” Of all the things to suggest . . . but demons, at least, were not their problem here. “How many are there? Where did they come from?”
Gabriel shrugged. “How many peaks are there in the Mother’s Knife? How many buffalo in the northern plains? More than anyone has ever counted, possibly fewer than we think. Nobody’s ever seen anything but a full-grown one; we don’t even know if they spawn or appear full-blown out of a winter’s sneeze.”
“You don’t have any stories?” It was a challenge: Gabriel had stories for everything, gathered over the years.
“Some say they’re the children of the living silver who came to the surface but were so disappointed in what they found here, they turned around to go back, only to find the gateways had been closed, leaving them trapped on the surface, growing dryer and dryer with every year.
“Another story says that the first demon was born of wind and stone, and raised by the night bird to help it scour the bones, but it refused to limit itself to the dead, and so the night bird cast it out, breaking it into a hundred hundred pieces.”
“None of that is comforting.”
“None of them were meant to be.”
They rode the rest of the day without discussing demon or magicians, what Isobel hoped to do once she returned to the valley, or what had happened back at Andreas. Gabriel made her practice dropping from the saddle at a trot, until her toes were sore from landing, and then, lacking other distraction, she taught him how to braid the rough strands of Steady’s mane into a credible plait. They paused at the spot where they’d made camp before, although Isobel refused to believe it was the exact same spot until she kicked up the still-fresh char from their fire pit as she was setting down her bedroll.
“You need to look more closely,” he said in response to her glare at the fire pit. “The ground will tell you whatever you need to know, if you look and listen properly.”
The thought that she still had more to learn should have been depressing, and yet Isobel found a measure of comfort in it. If she was still ignorant, it was because she was still Isobel, not . . . something else.
She rubbed at her forehead and crawled into her bedroll before the night was fully dark, determined to not think at all about anything.
But sleep that night was fitful, despite exhaustion. Isobel finally gave up, moving to sit by the remains of the fire, watching the stars wheel across the sky above them, the faint glimmer of a crescent moon barely visible for their brightness.
In the shadows, Gabriel’s soft rumbling breath was almost a snore, counterpoint to the sleepy rustlings of the animals, and the soft noise of the night-hunters in the air and on the ground around her.
It all felt familiar, comforting . . . safe. But Isobel could feel the storm caught within the bones, the closer they came to the valley, and she knew better.
The first sign of trouble came the next morning, when they reached the narrow climb into the pass that led to the valley, and the mule decided he wasn’t going back. Long ears flattened back, eyes rolling, and gums pulling back from flat teeth in a clear threat to bite anyone who tried to pull him forward. Flatfoot lived up to his name finally, digging in and refusing to move.
“That beast’s smarter than us both,” Gabriel said. He had picked up a length of twig as a switch but seemed loath to put it to use, reluctant to punish the animal for not wanting to do what none of them wanted to do.
The horses waited patiently; they might be no happier, but they were willing to trust where the humans led, at least for now.
“If we leave him here, the odds that our belongings will still be here when we return?” She firmly believed that they would return; she had to believe that they would return.
Gabriel huffed, running the back of his neck as though it pained him. “There is no honor in stealing from someone trying to help you.” But he pitched his voice so that it carried past the two of them, lingering in the mid-day air.
Isobel let a few breaths go by, but nothing sounded in response. “He’s your mule,” she said, “and most of what he carries is yours too.”