The abandoned campsite was soon out of sight but not out of Isobel’s thoughts, keeping them shadowed and sharp. But the land around her tugged her back as the trail wound its way higher. The air felt thinner, dryer, but the scent of things warm and growing filled it, butterflies clustering around them whenever they paused, flitting through the air as they rode past, and Isobel thought that, under other circumstances, she might have enjoyed this ride.
Had she not been woken out of sleep and driven to a place where the land shook, the animals fled, and the bones went silent under her touch. If not for the fact that butterflies and insects were the only other life they now saw. If not for the fact that she felt the prickling against the back of her neck again.
“We’re being followed.”
“I’d be more surprised if someone wasn’t following,” Gabriel said, his gaze sweeping the surrounding hills without an outward show of concern. “We’re strangers, whites, and whoever lives here was spooked enough to abandon a hunting camp mid-summer.” There was a bite of something in his tone at odds with his outward calm. “If anyone’s remained in these hills, they’d be fools not to keep an eye on us.”
“Natives, you mean.”
“Likely, although I wouldn’t rule out a trapper or two, maybe done with civilization and looking to be left alone. If so, they’ll likely just watch us and not interfere. If we’re on tribe lands, though, they may take a greater interest.”
“Why don’t they ever just come out and say what they have to say, instead of stalking us like . . . like rabbits?” Her voice rose as she spoke, until the last words were more a challenge, thrown out into the landscape.
“Because they don’t.” Gabriel’s voice was still terse, but she could hear the faint tinge of amusement underneath, and it infuriated her. The need to do something pressed from the inside, struggling to reach into the bones below her, even knowing that it would push back, that she was somehow unwelcome, unwanted, despite being a rider, despite the sigil in her palm.
And yet Gabriel rode as if nothing had ever bothered him, shoulders loose, his entire body practically melting in the saddle, like the ground might not shake under them at any moment, nor some beast or native leap out.
Isobel reined herself in, Marie’s voice in her memory schooling her. If Gabriel was calm, there was a reason. If he was amused by her worry, then there was a reason. It might not be one she liked, but there was much that she did not like, and that did not change the fact of it.
She exhaled through her mouth, reaching out to stroke Uvnee’s neck, tangling her fingers in the mane briefly for comfort. Learn, she told herself. That is why you are riding with him.
“Fine. Why don’t they?”
His shoulder raised in a shrug. “Because they don’t. If you’re aiming to ask me the whys and wherefores of how a native behaves, Isobel, I’m going to think you haven’t learned a thing in all this time. They do as they will, and each tribe does it different, and none of them do it as we might.”
He laughed a little, a faint chuckle. “If it makes it sting less, I’ve observed we confuse and confound them equally as much.”
“The boss understands them.” She knew she sounded like a sulking child, but it seemed unfair, that this was the way it was.
“Wiser men than I have failed to understand what the devil knows or why he does as he does. No one even knows why he came here, Isobel, nor why he cares what happens to us. Let it be enough that he chose and trusted you to act in his stead. Trust that; it’s carried you through so far.” He paused. “Well, that and me.”
“You have a high opinion of yourself, even for a rider,” she said, and had the pleasure of seeing a flicker of amusement on his face, fading into an expression that reminded her of the man she’d met that first night, wryly amused, his attention split between the cards in his hand and the girl bringing him drinks.
Isobel still did not understand why he’d noted her, or what had driven a passing stranger to offer mentoring, or why the boss had decided to intervene after she had turned his original offer down, but she could not imagine taking the Road with anyone else?—or worse, alone.
That gratitude did not ease her unhappy sense of misuse. “But why won’t they speak to us? They know we’re here to help.”
Gabriel slowed Steady down a pace so that the horses were side by side. His profile was the same as it ever was, dark blue eyes and dark-stubbled cheek, deep lines around his eyes, the narrow white scar from the spell-beast’s claws clearly visible in the sunlight. She still thought him a handsome man, card-slick when he chose to be, but he was Gabriel now.
“Are we?” he finally said.