She tried again. “Hello? I have come to buy.”
Perhaps he was at luncheon?
At the counter in the back, something glittered in response.
Cat glanced in the window, and the oddity caught her attention. The bed of fabric, where shiny wares would be displayed to tempt passersby, was empty.
Her throat closed. Was there no one here?
She glanced at the gleam on the back counter again. Pillows of that same moth-eaten velvet, and the locket glittered, recognizing her. Its mancy sparked faintly; a thrill ran along Cat’s nerves.
Her breathing came fast and high. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Perhaps he is at luncheon. It would be the civilized thing to be doing at this hour.
But sure instinct told her that was ridiculous. Such a businessman would not leave his door unlocked and his wares half-secured, chartershadow or no. And, strictly speaking, the locket was hers by right. Surely the need to find her brother outweighed what she was about to do?
I have sliced a man in the face with mancy and a stick; I am spending every afternoon with frail women; last night I was in the arms of a man who now calls me by my charing-name; and now I am about to steal. Mother would be very disappointed.
Would Cat’s mother even recognize her daughter now?
She inched across the floorboards, holding her breath until darkness clouded her vision. Finally remembering to inhale, she reached out a trembling gloved finger and touched the locket’s gleam. Snatched her hand back, glancing about as if she expected a reprimand.
Nothing happened. The pawnshop was silent as a crypt.
Avert, she thought, and brushed ill-luck aside with a quick motion.
A few moments later, Robbie’s locket and its broken chain tucked in her reticule and her satchel swinging, Cat Barrowe closed the pawnshop door behind her with a soft snick. There was nobody on the street, and the wind inched its way up from a low whisper to a soft chuckle, sliding dust along the boardwalks with brisk broom-strokes. A skeletal tumbleweed rolled past, and Cat hurried along in the precarious shade of flapping awnings toward Capran’s Dry Goods. She could enquire after the delivery of items for little Jonathan and engage one of the store’s boys to take a message to Miss Tiergale that school was canceled for the afternoon.
Her heart refused to slow its mad pounding, her hands trembled. But she put her chin up and hurried along, hoping no one had seen her.
Dear Robbie, I am now a thief. If you are alive when I find you, I am just going to pinch you.
Chapter 19
Hathorn was no longer the youngest horse, but she was dependable and Gabe had ridden her out of town before. She didn’t get excited easily, but when she did she was fleet and smarter than the average equine. She was also prickly-tempered, and didn’t respect a rider who would put up with any foolishness.
Well now, that reminded him of a certain miss, didn’t it.
Don’t think about her.
There was plenty of other thinking to do, and he did it best when he was alone, scanning the horizon and eyeing the tops of ridges for any silhouette that didn’t belong. It was daylight, but the sky was too clouded for his comfort.
Still, he wouldn’t be able to rest until he checked that goddamn claim.
The dangers out here weren’t merely wildlife or some of the miners and panners getting a bit twitchy with a stranger. There were harpies higher up in the hills, and other, fouler things in some of the deep-scored gullies and valleys. The wild mancy out here, without a chartermage or people using its flood to shape and tame it, gave birth to oddities. Even the few remaining survivors of the Red Tribes wouldn’t come near this slice of the Territory, and they had coexisted with this continent and its oddities before Gabe’s kind had sailed west to find the spices of the Sun.
Disease and war had all but wiped out the tribes, though there was some talk of a hole in the world they had escaped through, into a paradise without invaders. Privately, Gabe hoped they had, and wished they hadn’t left any of their kind behind, given how his kind by and large dealt with those survivors. All the same, this was a fine land, and he’d been born on its shores. Working another country’s mancy would be problematic at best.
He didn’t mind. Much. The Ordo Templis was far more active across the Atlantica, and escaping to a country they didn’t have their fingers in would be a trick indeed. Unless he wanted to take Chinoisie lessons from Li Ang and keep heading West until it became East.
He found the lightning-blasted tree silhouetted against the sky, and suppressed a shiver as he turned Hathorn’s black head toward a thicket of spinesage. She didn’t like it, but she went, and when he left her at the edge of the hidden spring with its sweet-crystal bubbling top swirling with blown dust, she was content enough.
From there it was slogging through fragrant junip and wild tabac wilting under the heat, underground water heaving the devilpine trees up to clutch at the sky with their bony fingers. He was sweating by the time he was halfway up the side of the wash, and the midges had found him.
Damn biters. He didn’t risk a charm to shake them off, though. No need to announce his presence any more than he already had, or any more than the grace on him would.
The going became a little easier, but he slowed as it did. Something had come this way lately, breaking branches and scuffing the ground. Didn’t take a genius to read those signs, or to see the mark of a bootheel with nails crossed to ward off bad luck. Didn’t prove much, but he went cautiously, his breathing slow and even and a trickle of sweat tracing its way down his spine.
A sharp hairpin bend even a mountain goat would have trouble with, but Gabe knew its trick and leapt lightly. Landed catfoot, and crouched, hard up against an old devilpine whose bark smelled of crushed cinnamon when he leaned into its shade. He was leaving sign too; no way to avoid it. Damn the whole thing.
It was too quiet in this little defile. No bird sang here, and even the wind was muted. The dust didn’t reach too far up, the devilpines sheltering the hillsides wherever there was enough water for them to cling to. Nothing slithered in the undergrowth, nothing nested in the trees, and even the midges hung back.
That would have been a mercy, if not for the cold. His breath didn’t frost when it left him, but it felt like it should. The chill wasn’t physical. It was inside.
He crouched there near the tree, taking his time. Then he inched forward, using his shoulder on the trunk to brace himself, and took a peek.
And ducked back behind the devilpine, swearing internally, clear beads of sweat standing out on his forehead and cheeks, wetting his underarms and making his woolen stockings slippery inside his well-worn boots.
Oh God, protect a sinner, now and forever. Shine Your light on us, dear Lord, and let us be as lamps in darkness. I am a sword of the righteous and You are my shield.
Funny how the urge to pray returned, even though he’d sworn never to do it again after Annie died, screaming an undead’s unholy grinding cry. Only it was a pair of dark eyes he thought of now, and curls knocked loose, and her trembling against him.
He was shaking, but his hands knew what to do. One of them touched a pistol’s butt, the other drew a knife.
Another look, just to be sure. He ducked back again, and this time the fear was high and hard and sharp, bitter copper against his tongue and his heart pounding in his temples and wrists and ankles so hard he thought he might slide into unconsciousness right there on the hillside. And lie there, vulnerable and alone, with the unphysical coldness breathing over him.