She glanced at the slaughtered remains. “You call that mercy?”
“I felt their death, felt them return to the wind and bones.” He flexed his fingers, the knuckles crackling loud in the silence between them. “The quiet of death is a dream, and I am not allowed to sleep.” He exhaled, as though summoning words, before she could speak in turn. “Will you kill me, Hand?”
She knew, the way she knew what he was, that he had not served his term. And he knew, even as he asked, what her answer must be.
She realized she was still holding the knife in her hand, and slipped it back into its sheath. “Did you see who did this?”
The Jack shook his head. He had no cause to lie, even if he’d dared. “I felt it. A day back, p’raps more. It drew me, same as it drew you.” The lines in his face pulled taut. “That much power, he resents it being gone.”
The near-insult to the boss offended her, but something thrummed under her skin before she could rebuke him, shimmering along her bones to pool hot and sharp in the palm of her left hand. She didn’t bother to look down, merely stretching her fingers as though they had cramped. The sigil etched in her palm pulsed once in response and then subsided, leaving her cold despite the sun still high overhead.
“All right,” she told the mark, the sensation, the anger. “All right. I know.”
Had it been their deaths the whisper warned of? The buffalo were no obligation of the devil’s, no matter what the Jack said. The Territory’s medicine was none of his concern or handling. But there was no arguing with the sigil: it demanded her attention, demanded her action.
“May I have your leave to go, Hand?”
She nodded; she had no use for him here.
The Jack’s boot heels scraped stone underfoot, heavier than Gabriel’s steps, the movement of a man accustomed to walking, not riding, two steps, five, and then gone. And then it was only her, and the buzzards, and the silent heaps of scraped bone and rotting flesh. And the pulse of demand in her left hand.
Isobel could not fix this, could not erase the insult given, and from the smell of the bodies, the killers were long gone, and she was no tracker, to follow and find them.
Gabriel could have done it, most likely. But Gabriel wasn’t with her. Five days back, they’d ridden into La Ramée, only to learn that a post rider had collapsed off his horse, near death with dysentery and not yet recovered, his post undelivered.
Gabriel had volunteered to take the packet on to the next waystation. “It’s good you be seen doing things like this,” he’d told her. “Solving problems that aren’t life-shaking, give ’em confidence the devil’s looking after them, even way out here.”
Isobel was reasonable certain that the Left Hand hadn’t been meant to ride as a post-rider, but she’d a letter of her own to send back to the boss, anyhow. Two birds with one stone, Marie would say, and Isobel was aware she’d a strong streak of the practical in her.
Practical, and aware of the burden of duty and obligations. Something had drawn her here, just as it had the Jack. Unlike him, she was not constrained to wait on specific orders.
Isobel slid off Uvnee’s back, her boots crunching lightly on the dry grass, and tucked the reins up, then walked closer, trusting the mare to stay where she was. Up close?—closer than Isobel had ever been to one of the beasts, living, and closer than she’d ever thought to be?—their size was even more impressive. She counted seven bodies, although the churned-up grass indicated that there had been a few more. Four were full-grown, three were calves, smaller than ponies, their pelts sparse and untouched, their thick skulls broken by the bullets that killed them.
Isobel had seen a great herd only once, but the wonder of it lingered in her own bones, the way it had caught at her, stilled her heart and breath with the drumming of thousands of hooves, holding her captive until the beasts had moved on. Buffalo did not merely live within the Territory; they were part of it, the power flowing from the earth into their hearts and returning through the pounding of their hooves, much as water found its way through stone.
That much power, he resents it being gone. “He” being the boss. But the buffalo were no part of him, no obligation of his, any more than the wind or the rain or . . . or magicians. Their medicine was not one the boss could touch or use. Why would it concern him?
The sigil in her palm pulsed again, the deep black lines stinging as though she’d grasped a handful of berry-bramble. She flexed her fingers, telling it to wait, to be patient.