Isobel had been riding alone for three days, two to her destination and one heading back, when she first heard the whisper.
She reined the mare in, listening. In the months since they’d left Flood, she’d learned to sit relaxed in the saddle, aware now of the grass and rocks under Uvnee’s hooves, the distant, steady chitter of insects and the calls of birds, the rustle of the breeze coming cool from the northwest, and the clear, quiet hum of the Road ahead of and below her. But this was something new.
They’d been skirting the western edge of the Territory for weeks, the bare rock and hints of snow on the high jagged peaks to her left still strange to her prairie-born eyes, but she could sense nothing wrong here, could hear no alarm in the breeze or the birds, see no cause for her skin to prickle or the pit of her stomach to tighten.
Another might have dismissed the whisper as discomfort, sweat and dirt itching her skin. Despite the brim of her hat shading her eyes, her jacket rolled and tied to the back of her saddle, the early summer sun was strong, leaving the fabric of her skirt and blouse damp with sweat. But Isobel née Lacoyo Távora was no longer the green girl she’d been, newly made Devil’s Hand, with no idea of what that was or what it meant.
And Isobel had heard whispers before. Not a voice, not a word, but a sensation, curling not within her ears but inside her bones, and it rarely brought pleasant news. But always before, Gabriel had been with her, his steady presence a comfort, his experience a guide. That was why the boss had chosen him, to mentor her while she learned.
She was alone now, Gabriel waiting back at camp, a day’s ride on.
The whisper came again, skitter-cool under her skin, scraping and pulling her, until she nearly swayed in the saddle.
Two days’ ride out, two days’ ride back. She dared not divert her course. If she was late returning, Gabriel would worry.
Isobel stiffened her spine against that thought. She was the Devil’s Hand, his proxy in the Territory, and her Bargain did not allow her to ignore a call for aid, no matter its source. She licked her lips, rubbed her left palm, with its black-lined sigil, against her skirt, and adjusted the brim of her hat, and when she spoke, her voice was firm.
“Yes.”
The whisper yanked her forward, knees pressing Uvnee off the trail they’d been following, hooves clattering on rock, up over a long, narrow rise northwest of where she’d meant to be, the tug-tug-tug a steady ache until they crested the rise and could see what waited for them.
A sudden shock of wrongness flashed in her bones and rocked her back into her saddle, making her reach instinctively for the long knife sheathed above her knee. But even as she did so, Isobel knew that the wrongness was not a threat to her, and nothing a knife could defend against.
Uvnee shifted, clearly wanting to be gone. Isobel calmed the mare and forced herself to study the scene below her, nostrils flaring to catch the hint of anything more than decay in the air, her ears alert to noise from above or behind. But she was, save for Uvnee, alone.
Alone, save for the buzzards who lifted their heads to study the newcomers as she rode closer, and then, once it was clear she had no interest in chasing them from their meal, dropped bald heads to their grisly business once more.
Corpses. Hillocks of flesh, draped across the grass, white bones showing through here and there where the buzzards and foxes had already been.
She felt bile rise in her throat. Not at the sight or smell of dead flesh—any delicacy she’d been born with had been extinguished, if not from her years living under the devil’s roof, then certainly in the past months of riding the Road?—but from the sheer waste of it all. The buffalo carcasses had been shorn of their hides and horns, but the flesh had been left on the bone, rotting under the sun.
Anger did not replace the disgust but fitted itself alongside, curling along her spine, making her head dizzy. This was wrong, it snarled. This was wrongness.
“What a blasted waste.”
Isobel’s knife was ready in her hand even as Uvnee spooked sideways, her hooves scraping against stone. The man who had spoken did not react to the threat, his gaze resting on the piles of flesh below them. He was slight-built, dressed in a rider’s long oilcloth coat, worn brown boots on his feet, and a battered hat on his head, the skin of his face and hands sun-brown and spotted.
She knew him, although she had never seen him before.
“Jack.”
“Hand.”
He met her gaze then, the lines of his face etched around a thin mouth, and stone-grey eyes deep-set under the shadow of his hat’s brim. A Jack. Men—and some women—who’d sat down at the devil’s table and wagered more than they could afford to lose. Sworn for seven times seven and seven again, to serve the boss until their debt was cleared.
“Even dumb beasts are given mercy denied me,” he went on, returning his gaze to the scene below.