“She says the devil’s hand will rest upon us, shelter against what comes.”
Isobel licked her lips once, and decided that yes, that had been a question. Apprehension shivered through her, cold prickles of doubt that made her bowels clench and her upper lip sweat. What was coming? The Spanish king had set loose a spellwork on the Territory months before. She and Gabriel had dealt with one creature that came of that; Gabriel was still recovering from the wounds he had taken, and she?—
No. She forced her emotions down, her thumb stroking the silver ring on her littlest finger, the surface fresh-polished, untarnished. She’d faced plague and monsters and Spanish monks who hated her, had forced a spell-creature into obedience with the Territory. If this was more illness from the spell’s influence, she would recognize it. All she had to do was look.
Isobel left her hands resting on the table, feeling the roughhewn surface against her skin. She only intended to skim the surface, fingers trailing over dust, a leaf floating on water, skin held up for the breeze to brush past it. Isobel held herself back, resisting the deep call of the bones to simply breathe in the power that pooled and grew at even the faintest of crossroads, the soft-worn path between the buildings where feet trod each and every day. If anything of ill intent lingered, she would feel it.
But nothing lingered at all, no power at all beyond the wards she already sensed. Something had come through here already and swept the crossroads clean.
Isobel had been gone four days now. Not that Gabriel was counting, he told himself as he splashed water on his face, willing it to chase away the night’s unease. It was only because there wasn’t much else to do, short of re-sort their supplies, groom his horse and mule until they tried to nip at him in irritation, and wait for his strength to come back.
Gabriel was tired of waiting.
He reached for his boots, checking to make sure nothing had crawled into them overnight, then put them on. Their usual stop-a-night austerity had expanded over the days he’d been trapped there, clothing hung to dry over a series of mostly-flat rocks, Steady’s bridle taken apart for a thorough cleaning and not yet reassembled, the area where the animals had been grazing hoof-worn, the pit a ways off where he’d been burying his refuse marked by raw earth mounded over it.
He stretched his legs out, sitting by the banked fire while waiting for the coffee to boil, and pulled off his shirt, poked gingerly at the scabbing on his ribs. Some of it crumbled off, flaking away and leaving a pale red seam on the flesh underneath, but the rest still clung firmly to his skin, the wound beneath not yet entirely healed. He’d told Isobel it looked worse than it had been, but it had looked bad enough. Thankfully, nothing had taken infection, likely due to the efforts of the Spanish monk rather than the cleanliness of the monster claws that had inflicted the wounds.
He rubbed two fingers over the thickest of the scabs, and winced. The otter-beast—the massive otter-beast, he corrected himself—had scored three strips across his ribs and one on his face, and despite his assurances to Isobel, he knew full well he was lucky not to be dead.
He did not feel lucky, constrained to camp while she went off, blithely promising not to find any trouble along the way.
He laughed, and if the noise was bitter, there was no one there to tell. Isobel née Lacoyo Távora of Flood. The Devil’s Left Hand. The weight and the might of the devil, Master of the Territory. Finding trouble? Isobel was trouble. But she was also a sixteen-year-old girl who was supposed to be under his mentorship and protection, not go off riding on her own because he was too weak to ride with her.
If you don’t accept it gracefully, I’ll tie you to a post while you sleep. That would be difficult to explain to any riders who came by, wouldn’t it?
“Brassy child,” he muttered at the memory, rubbing his hands over his face, feeling the other still-healing scar, running against his cheekbone, scratch at his palm. His own fault for teaching her to tie knots, and to praise her for learning them so well. The fact that she had been right about his need to rest made it no less irritating to bear.
“Ho the campment!”
Gabriel was injured, but he could still move swiftly at need; by the time the speaker had come into sight, he’d gotten to his feet, his long knife loose in its sheath and the flintlock in clear sight and within arm’s reach, if still unloaded.
The stranger was scrawny and trail-rough, his long coat stained, his hat a crushed, battered thing more crown than brim, and Gabriel would be damned if he could find a single weapon on the man, overt or hidden.