“Didn’t ask if you were. Eat something.”
She said something uncomplimentary about high-handed riders, but when he turned to look, she was rummaging through her own saddlebag, pulling out a mushcake and biting into it without any enthusiasm whatsoever.
“It could be worse,” he said. “You could be stuck eating grass.”
She contemplated the remaining cake in her hand and gave a shrug. “Without honeycomb on it, I’m not sure there’s much difference.”
Her argument was solid.
She took another bite of the cake, then fed the rest to the mule. “How did they know?”
“Remember what I said about not knowing why a native does something, Isobel? Goes for how they know, too. Some mutter about tricks and medicine; I think they just gossip better than we do.”
She didn’t smile at that, the way he’d hoped.
“Those magicians, the ones who didn’t die . . .” She took a deep breath. “They’re bound to cause trouble. They won’t be able to help themselves. They’ve been broken, their madness no longer controlled. Lacking the power they’d hoped to gain, they’ll scrabble for any they can find, and damn the cost. Not only crossroads, Gabriel. Anything with power. Anyone.”
A tic in her cheek jumped once, twice, and she reached up to touch the two feathers in her braid, fingertips ghosting along their surface.
“You, you mean?”
“Or you.” She turned her head to look at him. “Any rider who can feel the road, any dowser, anyone with planting skills . . . Any dream-walker. White or native. They won’t care; they’ll just take.”
Gabriel drew a breath, considering the ramifications of a magician attacking a native encampment, trying to take the power of one of their elders, one of their medicine folk.
“Magicians are not bound by the Agreement,” he said, but they both knew that wouldn’t matter, not if a tribe were driven to anger by such an insult. Not if the magician were white-born. And hundreds of years of careful, cautious coexistence . . . shattered.
Where the Spanish spell had failed to undermine the devil’s hold on the Territory, that could succeed. The anger Gabriel felt didn’t surprise him, but the guilt did.
“We have no way to find them, save we hear of disaster after the fact. The Territory’s too large to go chasing after rumor, Isobel.”
The look she turned on him, full of a savage, quiet frustration, should not have made him want to laugh so badly.
“I should be able to find them. What use am I if I can’t?”
Something leapt out in front of the horses, causing Uvnee to shy—a brace of rabbits, startled by their approach. Then something swooped overhead, and Gabriel looked up, expecting to see a hawk or eagle looking to catch an easy dinner.
Instead, brown-and-white wings spread over them at an angle, an owl turning slow circles, two beats and soar, two beats and soar, and the faint, sharp sound of oooo-aw ooo-aw in the breeze.
“The poor bastard must be starving to be out during the day.”
Isobel heard Gabriel’s comment, but all of her attention was on the owl swooping overhead. It could not have been the same owl she saw in the trees that morning; there was no way it could have flown this far, no reason for it to have flown this far. Owls did not wander, particularly in daylight, and the likelihood of it following this track in search of prey seemed slim at best.
And yet.
Isobel reined Uvnee to follow the owl’s lead, angling away from the path they’d chosen. Every story she’d ever heard claimed that owls were bringers of bad news, of death, of sorrow. But that was what they’d been following all along, hadn’t it? And all those things . . . the boss always said they were what taught wisdom, too.
Wisdom isn’t knowledge. Knowledge teaches you it’s not wise to risk. Wisdom tells you why you should.
They’d been playing faro after hours. Molly and Jack and the boss, and . . . Suzette, it had been. Isobel had been freshening their drinks, listening to the conversation. They had been talking about death, and loss, something that had happened outside of Flood that Isobel hadn’t been privy to. And the boss had said that about knowledge and wisdom, and the conversation had paused, then moved on to something else.
She’d remembered that, even though she hadn’t understood it. She still wasn’t sure she did. But maybe . . . a Hand needed wisdom even more than knowledge.
“Isobel?” Gabriel’s voice was a question, but she knew he was already following her, the mule snorting its displeasure like an old man told to change chairs just as he got comfortable, as they picked up a slow trot, the horses showing pleasure at the chance to run, even for a bit.
The owl stayed just ahead of them, then dipped and with a fold of its wings, disappeared into a hollow, beyond which a stand of tall narrow pines rose. If it went into the trees, she would lose it. . . . Isobel felt her breath catch, something drawing her on with more urgency, and she dug her heels into Uvnee’s sides, startling the mare into a jouncing lope, Steady and the mule quickly left behind.