That brought him up in a rush, and he stepped out into the open, facing the dark mouth of the unsealed claim. It yawned, a fracture in the hillside full of spilled-ink darkness even broad daylight wouldn’t penetrate, and the cold struck him like a wall of flash-flood water in a gully.
And Jack Gabriel, who had once been a priest, went about his holy work.
He slumped in the saddle instead of riding straight. Hathorn knew her way home, but he should have been more alert. Instead he was thinking through cotton. The chill exhaling from the mouth of the seal-cracked claim got into a man’s bones.
Think about something warm, then.
His thinking wouldn’t listen. Instead, it hitched on the boy. What was his name?
He couldn’t pull it out of his memory at first, and that was odd. More than odd, since he had a suspicion it wasn’t the first time. It was downright unnatural, the way the boy’s name kept slipping through the cracks.
Jack’s fingers were strips of ice; he had long ago ceased shivering. The sky was a congested mass, dust billowing as Hathorn picked her way carefully, the fan-shaped charmhood on her sleek head bobbing. A good horse, even if he was getting on in—
There it is again. Getting distracted.
Devilpine trees shook as the wind rattled them. Soon they’d be in the flats, heading for town, and he would see Catherine’s face again. Those wide dark eyes, and the sweet way her mouth turned down at the corners when she tried to put on a prim face. The single dimple in one soft cheek when she forgot herself and smiled.
There. That’s it.
“Robbie Browne.” His feet were numb and his hands, too. The cold was all through him, except for the flame in his chest that was the light in a pair of dark eyes. Such a small, still spark to hold back that ice. “That was him.”
Just a greenhorn, a boy with a quick tongue and deft hands at cards. An expensive charing and good cloth, but he slid around trouble like grease on a griddle. Dark eyes, a stubborn wave to his dark hair, and a jaw just begging to be set right with a fist when he smiled that easy smile.
With so much other trouble to keep in check, though, Gabe hadn’t worried about him. Just another dreamer come Westronward without the sense God gave a mule.
Like Catherine?
Damn the woman, dancing into his thoughts all the time. But the thought of her pushed the ice back, gave him space to breathe. He lifted his head slightly, checked his surroundings. The hills were behind him, falling away like a sodden coat.
When Robbie Browne showed up with gold bars and a mysterious smile, there was a certain amount of grumbling. But there was grumbling any time a miner struck anything worthwhile out there. But then there had been the incursion, the circuit broken and something deadly lurking in the junip and wild tabac, something whose breath brought the corpses up out of sandy soil and gave both Russ and Gabe plenty of trouble.
It was the claim, of course. Just sitting there waiting for someone, and the boy had stumbled across it. Tracing the incursion of bad mancy to its source had led Gabe straight to the claim, and he and Russ had arrived just in time to see the boy vanishing into the dark crack in the hillside. Waiting for Browne to come out had been nerve-wracking, but Gabe had been sure he would.
And lo, he had. Seeing a sheriff waiting for him, though, the boy had drawn, and Gabe’s gun spoke first.
At least they had buried the kid right. It had…bothered Gabe, a bit, to see Robbie Browne’s charing gone. It could have been lost in the claim, true. The thing that had chased Browne out into the fading dust-choked light of that long-ago afternoon could have broken the chain of his charing-charm.
Still, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all, so he had gone out that night and made sure the earth around the hasty grave was blessed as one of the Ordo Templis could make it. If he had enough grace to seal up that hole in the hill again, and enough to take care of the death-charm left on Catherine’s porch, then Robbie Browne was sleeping safely.
Jack Gabriel’s head came up. The cold receded, its fingers scraping his shoulders and trickling down his spine.
The thought of her just kept coming back. The exact sound of her steps, her point-toe boots clipping along with authority. The graceful lift of her arm as she pointed to the large slate board and helped a child along with a recitation. Her inviting Mercy Tiergale in to tea, as if it were no great shakes. And her holding Li Ang’s baby, a disbelieving smile like sunlight on her wan face as she looked at Jack Gabriel.
A look like that could go straight through a man.
The smudge on the horizon was Damnation, and Hathorn picked up her pace a little as the wind’s moan mounted. The simoun had just been taking a breather, not spent yet.
If he made it back to town in time, he could see her. Might even tell Russ he’d take the wagon out himself, though with Hathorn’s gait that wasn’t too likely. It didn’t matter; Russ would see her home safe. One of the Bradford boys was riding the circuit with the chartermage tonight, so Gabe didn’t have to worry about that.
And tonight was also their weekly game at the Lucky Star. Maybe his luck had changed.
Gabe set his shoulders and rode on, the cold fading even as the hot rasping wind rose.
Chapter 20
Sleep hovered just out of reach, held off by little Jonathan’s fractious wailing and the wind scraping at the corners of the house. Pops and sparks of stray mancy danced in the charged air, and Cat’s nerves were worn clear through.
She rolled over, pushing down the sheet. At least she had returned to her own bed; Li Ang’s cot and the new crib were both in the small room down the hall. The evening was stifling, clammy-hot even though the dust sucked moisture from every blessed thing under its lash. Her hair was misbehaving as well, curls springing free instead of lying in a sleek decorous braid.
The locket was warm against her breastbone. It would rest under her dress, the mended chain longer to accommodate Robbie’s larger frame, and the secret of its presence was oddly comforting. After the sun had reached a comfortable distance above the horizon, she could unleash her Practicality on the metal; a simple finding-charm would at least show her what direction to take.
If Robbie had moved on to another town, well, Damnation would be missing its new schoolmarm. She suspected the town would be relieved, and no doubt Cat herself would share that relief. This was not what she had expected.
Well, honestly, what had she expected? To come sailing into town and find Robbie in some small bit of foolish trouble, and to have everything smoothed over by teatime? An adventure from a novel, full of Virtue overcoming Vice and rescuing the Foolish? A penitent Robert Heath Edward Barrowe-Browne, ready to return home to Boston to take up the reins of the family fortune and, not so incidentally, take some of the onus of being In Society from the shoulders of his younger sister?
Cat sighed, moved restlessly again. Jonathan’s cries vanished under the sound of the grit-laden moan of simoun, and she understood now what Mr. Overton had said about becoming crazed by the wind. It was certainly possible.
Poison wind. What a terrible name.
It was no use. Whether it was the locket against her skin or the baby’s fussing, the wind’s sliding scrape or the heat, sleep was impossible. No matter if she would need it for whatever tomorrow held.
There was a thumping rattle from downstairs, and baby Jonathan set up another thin cry. This one sounded frantic, and Cat sighed. Perhaps Li Ang had dropped something. In any case, she was awake; she might as well go downstairs.