Wake, Hand.
The voice was insistent, the shape of it poking, prodding. “I am awake,” she tried to tell it, then realized that she wasn’t. She was dreaming, and the voice needed her to wake.
Her eyes opened, the stickiness on her eyelashes evidence that she had been asleep for several hours. The belly-rounded sliver of the moon was sinking, the stars beginning to fade, and she estimated, groggily, that it was a few hours before sunrise. The coalstone glimmered faintly within its circle of rocks, and she could hear Uvnee shifting, but it was a peaceful, sleepy shift; whatever had woken Isobel had not disturbed the mare or roused her to defense.
What had woken her?
Gut feeling made Isobel turn her head away from the coalstone, scanning the dark air next to her for the shadow of a snake, its tongue flickering secrets; a native stepping quietly through the night; a demon lurking, intent on mischief. But there was nothing there save grass. Nothing came visiting tonight.
You must go.
Her bedroll was packed away and the coalstone cooled before Isobel realized she had been directed to do so. She paused, drawing a sharp, shocked breath. An owl called twice in the darkness, and she waited, half-expecting a third call that never came. If an owl called three times in the night, it meant medicine was being worked. Two calls, it merely hunted unsuspecting mice.
Beyond that, there was only an echoing silence, the night creatures stilling, the dawn birds not yet singing.
An empty space in the world, through which other voices could be heard.
Go.
It did not feel the same as what had drawn her to the slaughtered buffalo. That had been a feeling, a pressure, a pull. This was . . . like the boss, when he used a particular tone, but nothing at all of that warm, familiar voice. There was nothing human in this at all, and it would not be refused.
Isobel finished breaking her simple camp, waking Uvnee and replacing her blanket and saddle with a soft apology. “We’ll make up breakfast later,” she said as she mounted. “We need to be on our way now.”
The sigil in her palm remained cool in her skin, the black lines invisible in the darkness, and yet she knew the way she knew things now that the whispering voice was a summons she could not refuse.
Was it about the buffalo? The spirits of the dead lingered until they were laid to rest, protected. Did the spirits of animals do the same? She had made a promise . . . Was she now being driven to satisfy it?
“Boss?” She knew he couldn’t hear her. The devil might have long ears, but there were none that long, to cover the breadth of the Territory; she was months from home, and he had more to do than listen for her.
Uvnee snorted, her warm breath almost visible in the chill air, and turned her head to nip at Isobel’s skirt, as though asking why she’d been woken and saddled if they weren’t going to go anywhere. Isobel patted the mare’s neck with the hand not holding the reins, reassured by the solid warmth of muscle and flesh. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She buttoned her jacket and tucked the fabric of her skirts under her legs, then gave the mare the signal to move forward, both of them keeping their eyes on the grass in front of them: traveling in the dark was always dangerous, and the grass could hide any of a dozen threats, from gopher holes to snakes, to ground suddenly wet and slippery from a hidden creek.
The stock of her gun, a new acquisition in La Ramée, rubbed against her leg, but its presence gave her little comfort. Gabriel was the sureshot of the two of them. She could hit things most times out of ten, but not always, and she’d never yet had to shoot at a thing that went on two legs.
Only a fool would be riding before dawn, alone, driven by a whisper in the dark. But her life was not her own. She kept riding, north and west of where she’d planned to go, farther away from the campsite where Gabriel was waiting, until the sky began to shift from black to purple, and from purple to streaky red ahead of the sun.
It was full dawn when Isobel rode over yet another low, undulating hill and saw a narrow river cutting through the shallow valley below, the outline of a small farmstead a little ways uphill from it, on the other side. Her destination?
No answer came, either by whisper or sigil-burn.
There were three buildings set in a grassy clearing: two square, low-roofed houses and a barn set around a trampled-down center. Beyond that, there was what looked like an icehouse, half-hidden under the turf, the buildings weathered from both winter’s wind and summer’s sun, doors shut and windows shuttered.