Gabriel took second watch, neither of them comfortable enough to trust circle or wards alone. As the night previous, it had been quiet—too quiet without the calling of coyotes or wolves, the snuffling of night-squirrels or foxes, the crackling branches of night-grazers passing wide around the fire. He felt himself begin to doze, eyelids slipping shut even as he fought against it, tension and exhaustion weighting them down. He would have traded his best knife for a cold rushing stream to dunk his head in, if only to wake himself up again.
Half-awake, he became aware of something murmuring in the distance, as though someone spoke softly in another room. He held himself still, feeling the press of a rock into his thigh, the dampness of the morning air, the scratch of his blanket over exposed skin, and the press of his bladder where he needed desperately to relieve himself, and waited.
The sun pulled itself over the horizon, but the sound did not come closer, nor did it resolve itself into distinct words, merely a susurration of sound replacing the liquid chirping of birds. He breathed deeply into his chest, eyes closed, and waited. He’d been dreaming in that half-awake state, he thought. A twilight dream was not to be ignored, but the details skittered out of reach, crumbling like old wood at his touch.
Old Woman had been there, cross-legged on a rock. She had been ageless eleven years back when he’d stumbled blindly into a campement de nomades of the Hochunk, on his ignominious return to the Territory, and she had not changed since.
“Be wary,” he thought she had said, looking down at the long pipe between her hands, unlit, unsmoking. “Be wary and step lightly.”
Old Woman Who Never Dies had been the one to show him how to dream true, to not fear what the voices had to say but to listen. Not all dreams were true dreams, but there were threads that wove through them all recently, red like the quills in his pocket, catching his eye and drawing him back to them each time.
“Be wary and beware,” the snake said months before. “Your enemies are not who you think. But then, neither are your friends. The land twists.”
He had thought it referred to the magician, Farron—no friend, but no enemy either, at that time and in that place. Or Graciendo, the ancient bear, who might turn on him as easily as he aided. Or even the snake itself, wise but with its own purpose, its own concerns.
Now, half-asleep and his brain filled with that susurration, he thought of the one he had not considered: Isobel.
Gabriel rejected the thought even as it crept in, yet it lingered on the threshold, refusing to fade. Not that Isobel might be an enemy; he knew the girl, even if he did not always understand her, and she was faithful and true. But every soul in the Territory knew what the devil was, even if they never spoke it out loud, and she was bound to him, his Left Hand.
The title alone should have chilled him. He thought of the woman who held the title of Right Hand: slender and dark, soft to the eye but with a voice of corded iron; when she suggested something, others made it happen. A woman to respect but never to fear.
But the Left? Like any rider worth their salt, he knew his stories. The Left Hand dispensed justice, not favors. The Left held a fire that burned rather than warmed. He rode with the most terrifying thing in the Territory and called it a girl.
“Gabriel?”
Isobel’s voice cut through the near-constant murmur, silencing it.
“Yeah.” His voice was sleep-rough, as shaken as his thoughts.
“Did you hear it? The whisper?”
He would not have called it that, but . . . “Yes.”
He waited for her to say something else, but she was silent again. The noise did not resume.
He lifted his hands to his face, feeling the scratch of bristle, the crust of sleep in his eyes. His hair was sweat-matted, and he ran his fingers through it, thinking his mother would sigh to see it at such a length. She would sigh to see him anyway. How long had it been?
He forced himself into movement, throwing back the cover and reaching for his trousers, pulling them up over his flannels. Shaking his boots out, he could hear the sounds of Isobel doing the same across the fire pit. When he turned to face her, his lips already forming the suggestion that they not linger here, the sight of another body warming their hands on the remains of their small fire stole his words away.