Her brow wrinkled in confusion—the marshal’s sigil was the Tree within the Circle, not this.
Gabriel gestured to the badge. “The name’s the same, but they’re . . . more prescribed, and at the same time, with a wider—” He broke off as though suddenly realizing that he was lecturing her. “Sorry.” His smile was weak but rueful, and real. “The marshals in the States are more than peacekeepers. They’re answerable to the federal government rather than the states themselves.”
Isobel shook her head, not understanding half of what he was saying, save that the owner of this badge, the man who had somehow convinced magicians to destroy themselves, had come from the East. On orders of their leaders.
Bitterness and bile rose in her, and she flung the badge away, hearing it land in the fire with a sick satisfaction, although she knew the flames were not enough to destroy it.
“Pushing, always pushing, if not Spain, then them. Can’t they leave us alone?”
Gabriel laughed then, and the sound was so clear, so pure, and so lacking in humor, it reached through her rage.
“No,” he said. “They can’t. They never have and they never will. Borders are uneasy things even at the best of times, Isobel. And to them, the Territory . . . It’s a fruit they want nothing more than to bite into and consume.
“But this . . .” He reached for a stick, using it to fish the badge out of the fire, then left it on the ground to cool off. She stared at it, half-resentful that he had rescued it, half-fascinated by it. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
She found it difficult to care. “He led them to their death.” A horrible, unending death she would not wish on any, not even the already-mad.
“Magicians can’t be led to anything, Isobel. You know that every bit as well as I. They can’t be controlled; they can’t even be properly aimed. Whatever they did, they chose to do. And they all paid the price.”
“Why are you defending him?” There was something in his voice, something that wasn’t grief, wasn’t anger. Isobel knew she could dig it from him, could study him and read it off his face, his body, but she couldn’t find the energy to turn and look at him.
“Everything’s paid the price,” she said instead, letting it drop. “The ancient one is trapped, the dead are trapped . . . this meadow, the entire valley, maybe all the way down to Duck’s settlement, who knows how far north . . . ruined.” Poisoned. The scraped lands would never recover, not while the haint—the haints, trapped together—remained. And they were too powerful to bind and ease into rest.
“The tremors?” Gabriel spoke her thought before she could.
She licked her lips, surprised to feel skin peeling from them, as though she’d bitten them raw and not realized. “If the cage holds. I do not think they will worsen.” She reached for certainty, but every certainty Isobel had held now felt like salt between her fingers, sliding out of her grasp.
And tangled in all of that, the memory of claws digging into her, trying to consume her. Claws—and the burning heat of silver, the spirit that lived here scraping out her marrow, curling inside the hollowed-out bones.
“There’s nothing more I can do here.” Admitting it hurt, an unaccustomed failure. “If I try again—I would make things worse.”
The presence, the trapped shape of the ancient spirit and the remnants of the dead magicians: they were aware of her now. She was a reminder of what they could never be again. To remain would be a taunt; it would be dangerous and cruel.
She should have heeded the warnings and never come here at all.
PART FOUR
FALSE CROSSROADS
It took Isobel longer to find the strength to stand than it did for Gabriel to pack up the remains of their camp. She watched him, uncertain in her own skin, shifting uneasily, curling her arms over her knees, her spine crackling when she moved, toes too thick for her boots, elbows and fingers awkward, as though they belonged to someone else, stuck onto her body as an afterthought.
She should get up, help Gabriel. His own wounds were still causing him pain; he paused after saddling Uvnee, placing his hand against his side with a wince. But she saw that the ache did not stop him from bending again to pick up the now-cooled bit of metal from the ashes, sliding it back into his pocket, and something within Isobel sparked with bitterness that he would touch it, claim it, the last remnant of the man who had caused all this.