Her feet carried her to the left, the two men following her, until she came back to where the horses and mule waited, clustered together and watchful, well aware of the threat overhead. Only then did Isobel realize she had paced off a circle, large enough for a decent-sized camp, room for people and a fire and horses to move comfortably—but she would no sooner set up camp within that circle than she would walk into a fire. Nothing within the confines seemed any different from outside: the same grasses and flowers, the same ground underneath, the same . . .
She blinked, half-expecting that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Something had moved within that circle. Something unseen, and yet she could see it, indirectly, out of the corner of her gaze, the turn of her head. Directly, it was not there.
Underneath the surface of that circle. Something . . . seethed.
The old man grunted once, a satisfied noise. “Ici, came,” he said, the first word he’d spoken in English, and then he used a word she didn’t understand. From Gabriel’s expression, neither did he. The old man said it again, then made a complicated gesture with both hands, ending with a move as though tossing his hands away in disgust.
“Strangers,” Gabriel said. “Strangers with . . . Strangers coming with harm. He says that this is where men came, with intent to do harm. I think.”
“Strangers . . . Who?”
Gabriel slapped his hands against his thighs, and turned to the old man again. “Qui, grandpapa? Qui ai venu? Absáalooke? Sutaio? Des blancs?”
He got a grunting assent then, and another hand gesture, this one looping like a bird’s flight.
“Des blancs . . . Avec les couleurs de qui? Ont-ils portent des bannières?”
Another series of hand movements, and then the old man fell still again, his dark eyes intent on Gabriel’s face. He had yet to acknowledge Isobel’s existence at all.
“Many men,” Gabriel said. “I think that’s what he says. White men, but not together, not one band . . . not one tribe. Many white men gathered here. Meaning harm.”
“A fight?” That was all she could think of, to have that many men in one place, not coming together. A fight or a gathering to avoid a fight, the way men came to talk to the boss, some years, late nights with whiskey and Marie bringing trays of food into the boss’s office, low voices talking and then leaving, and the boss looking tired the rest of the day, as though they’d taken something out of him.
She’d thought that’s what she’d be doing when she’d gone to the boss: bringing in trays and helping soothe tempers, not . . . not standing on a mountain with a Reaper hawk circling overhead, without any idea what she was supposed to be doing.
“Does it look like a fight took place here?” Gabriel asked, and she bristled before she realized that he wasn’t making fun of her; he was asking her.
Isobel stilled her temper, forced her heart to slow. It was not Gabriel’s fault she was upset, not Gabriel’s fault the bones had rebuffed her, that the sigil was silent, that her doubts tried to strangle her. He was her mentor; he was here to help.
When she felt calm enough, she turned to look at the circle again.
It was only grass, undisturbed, unbroken. Browning in places from lack of rain, likely, but nothing that should catch the eye. What had she sensed? She could not bring herself to touch it, would not cross the line of the circle she had walked, but moved along the outside, her feet knowing where to step, as they had before.
Nothing above, where men would stand. Something below the surface, but something above as well, some movement in the air, unseen yet present. Lingering.
Some haint, not yet bound to a boneyard? Some mountain version of a dust-dancer, driven by instinct to move, destroy? No. It didn’t feel right to her in the marrow and gut, where she’d known other things, and she had to trust herself, especially now, when other strengths were kept from her.
The devil had chosen her, Gabriel’d said. She needed to trust that.
Their guide had said white men. Coming down from the north? Trappers and hunters came down often enough but rarely meaning harm, unless one were a wolf or beaver. And she could think of nothing a trapper might do to cause the earth sorrow or anger. She thought again of the buffalo she had seen, and shook her head. The coureurs des bois were not so foolish, nor would their métis cousins be so wasteful, and even if they were, that had happened days from here, where the earth did not quake, days before Duck’s people said the first quake had struck. She could not see how it was related.
And yet. She could feel a cord running through them all, a thread stitching the fabric, connecting them . . . and she had been stitched into the cloth as well, drawing her to this place.
Were these more men of Spain come across the border, from the northernmost of their lands? She had allowed the surviving monks to depart the territory unscathed; had that been a mistake? Or had the strangers come from the east? It was not unknown for scouts to venture in from the States—she and Gabriel had seen a rider wearing American colors, not so long ago?—but to ride so far from their shared borders? Unlikely, but not impossible, and if it was possible . . .
Isobel felt something curl inside her, and she recognized it for anger, hot lashings needing expression, a target.