The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)

Lou shook her head again. “They were a small tribe even then, story says. Most of ’em married out into other tribes or just . . . wandered off.”

Gabriel didn’t often sigh, but when he did, it spoke measures. “Most of what I know’s from east of here; I’d be more likely to foul it than fix if I poke around. You might take a look-see, check if anything needs remaking.”

Isobel started to protest that she wouldn’t know the first thing about a town boundary that old, one that someone else set, that she hadn’t ever studied wards, and what she’d done to bind the magicians wasn’t anything like, but Gabriel’s look held her cold.

He was telling her she was the only maker they had, never mind she was no maker at all.

She bit her lip and nodded, telling him she understood. More bluffing, and hope no one called them on it.

If she weren’t feeling so queasy and worn, Isobel thought, it might be funny. Wasn’t so long ago she’d thought just being the Hand meant folk would respect her, thought bearing the devil’s sigil meant she could do whatever was needed?—she’d known how to close off the infected homestead, hadn’t she? Had been able to find the spell-beast, to stop the Spanish monks from making things worse, to feel not just the Road underfoot but the whole of the territory rolling like thunder in her bones. She might not be a maker, but she had power.

But the truth of it was that none of that knowing had come from her, and the moment she’d been cut off . . . she’d been useless. Helpless. An old man’d had to save her from the spirit’s anger. A road marshal had been the one to capture the magicians, bring the Easterners in for judgment.

A whisper had to come tell her where the problems lay.

“You’re a ward-maker?” The words were dubious that anyone of Isobel’s youth could be useful, the question digging into Isobel’s own doubts like a spade to dirt, but making Gabriel’s silent warning more urgent as well.

When Isobel didn’t object to the title or deny it, Lou pursed her lips but said only, “Well, don’t go fussing with ours too much unless’n you must; we’ve got to be able to raise it again come winter.”

“I . . . what?” Isobel wasn’t sure she’d heard Lou’s words correctly, but the two men returned with the sledge before she had a chance to ask the woman to repeat herself.

The sledge was nothing more than a heavy wooden slab set on runners that curled up in front. Isobel took a closer look: there were narrow sheets of iron hammered along the edges of the runners, gripping the wood tightly on either side.

“To cut through the snow,” Gabriel explained, then gestured to one of the men who brought it out to help him lift the first magician onto it. The wood was old, polished smooth with use, with leather straps that buckled over it to keep the load in place. “You’ll be able to pull this?” he asked the other man. “Fully loaded, I mean.”

“Can haul a full hunt’s worth back through mud if need be.” The man Gabriel spoke to was barely Isobel’s height but twice her width, and she thought, glancing at his shoulders and back, he might be able to pull the entire Territory, given enough rope.

While the men were fussing with the bodies, Isobel touched Lou’s shoulder lightly, pulling her attention away. “In winter?” Isobel asked, then off the woman’s puzzled glance, clarified, “You said you have to raise the wards again, come winter?” The thought of easing a town’s wards at all seemed mad to Isobel, but surely there must be a reason.

“Well, yes. Andreas’s here year round, but most of the folk in it . . . We go out to the fields in the day, spring through autumn, or out on hunt for a while at a time.” Lou’s tone made it clear that she thought explaining this was akin to explaining the sun rising, but Isobel tried not to take offense. “Once winter comes, though, neither beast nor man’s got cause to go beyond the walls. We get wolf packs up here; by midwinter, sometimes they’re hungry enough to do foolish things. And that’s only the ones on four legs. So, yah, come the first snow, we raise ’em up and settle in.”

Wards were not curtains, to be taken down and rehung. They were . . . part of the town, woven into every structure, every soul. . . . Surely, Lou was mistaken somehow.

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