Marshals were trained, Gabriel said. If a marshal had ridden here, would they have sensed something was wrong, known what was wrong?
Isobel glanced at the sigil in her palm, then down to the sigil she was tracing in the grass. The circle-and-tree badge of a road marshal tied them to the Road; they were bound to the Territory by their oath. Her sigil obligated her to the devil directly. But Gabriel’s comment, that even if she left the Territory, she would not be able to stay away, had felt too true to ignore. Something within her echoed with it, the rolling plains and jagged mountains, the woods and the creeks, the pulse that she’d felt the first time she touched the bones, felt the Road, saw a buffalo herd, heard the cry of an owl in the dawn.
“You bear the mark, and the weight of that obligation,” the wapiti had said, in this same place, not a day before. “The Territory must be protected.”
Because she was the Hand? Because she was the nearest it could find? Because she was fool enough to listen?
Even as she drew the wards in the grass, prepared herself for what was to be done, the Reaper hawk’s warning lingered. The doings of magicians were none of the devil’s concern, and the welfare of natives was none of the devil’s agreement; they had their own medicine folk for such things. What had the Broken Tongue’s people done when the ground shook? They had run.
Isobel very badly wanted to run.
Instead, she completed her circuit, the boneyard markings unfinished to allow the dead to enter, then waited while Gabriel echoed the external circle with salt twice.
“If anything breaks through one line, do you think a second will stop it?”
The look he gave her could have stopped a hungry bear in its tracks.
“If I had the salt for a dozen lines, I would draw them,” he said, his words tightly bitten off. “And shift a stream alongside to boot. This is a fool’s idea, you’re a fool for doing it, and I’m a fool for allowing it.”
He wasn’t angry, though he sounded it; he was worried. Fools die. It was a joke, a curse, a warning. A reminder.
“Ward yourself and the animals, too,” she said. “Just to be safe.”
He nodded, holding up the flap of cloth to show that he’d crumbled enough salt for that, too.
She waited until he had hobbled the animals and warded the circle around them, before she settled herself at the center of her own warding, her legs tucked under her, skirt wrapped around her legs to keep them warm, her spine as relaxed as she could make it, shoulders rounded and soft, head bowed until the line from the back of her neck to her hips was a soft arc. Her hands rested palms-down on her knees as she breathed in and out, in and out, feeling her heart ease and her pulse steady and slow, feeling her blood rise and fall with the movement of her chest, her thoughts thickening and clearing, leaving her soft and strong.
She thought Gabriel was wrong, but he had a point about being careful. Too often they’d been unready, unprepared when she needed to act. This time, she would be settled, as secure in herself as she would be in the saddle before a gallop.
Her hands slipped from her knees to the grass in front of her, fingertips curling into the ground below. Her body followed, leaning forward until she was bent over her knees, her head bowed, her breath barely moving the grasses in front of her.
The boss’s voice rolled in the back of her memories, the lessons she hadn’t realized were lessons, listening to him speak while they did their chores, at night after the saloon had closed. Power—medicine, magic?—lingered where it had been used, like ash after a fire. Anyone with a patch of silver and some sense could tell if power lingered and avoid it. Avoid anything that used it. Like magicians.
Like her. The thought was bitter in her mouth.
But magicians took from more than crossroads. They took from one another—no loss to the rest of the Territory, so long as they kept their battles somewhere isolated. But they were greedy, hungry. They’d take from anything they could. Farron had been ready to consume the spell-beast they’d found if Isobel hadn’t warned him off. He’d threatened to consume her if she faltered.
She might have been able to fend him off. One magician. Maybe.
Isobel let that thought go, feeling it ease out of her, sliding down her spine and fading away, leaving her thoughts thick and clear again. She wasn’t trying to defeat magicians nor steal from them. She wanted to help them.
Even they, even crazed, would not be so foolish as to try to steal from the devil once they recognized the source. But the power within her would draw them close enough.
Her palms made contact with the grass, then the dirt below. There was a sting against her, like a sharp blade slicing down to bone, a queasy shock, and she had learned not to push too deep, half-anticipating that void, that refusal again.