Russ wasn’t listening. “We may have to put her down like a rabid—”
Gabe had him by the jacket-front, up against the wall, his fists turning in the material. How the hell did I get here? “Shut. Up. You hear me, chartermage? Keep your mouth shut. That claim was sealed as of yesterday, and she ain’t gonna break in. You are gonna go check Robbie Browne’s grave and see if her mancy led her there. I am gonna go check that goddamn claim, and if I find her there I am going to make her listen to some sense. One way or another, we are bringin’ her back to Damnation.” And I am not letting her out of my sight until we get a few things settled.
Russ gaped at him. How fast had Jack moved? And it wasn’t like him to hold a man up against a wall. His temper wasn’t certain, and that was a bad sign.
“All right. All right, Jack, just settle down—”
“I ain’t settlin’ until I see my girl’s safe. You just mind me, mage. That damn schoolmarm is…well, you ain’t gonna make any pronouncements about her without my say-so.” And if she does break into that claim…No, she won’t. She can’t.
Except he had an uneasy feeling that can’t wasn’t a word he could apply to his Miss Catherine Barrowe. She didn’t know the meaning of the term. And if the thing in the claim infected her like it had her brother…
What, Jack? You’ll shoot her? Another woman dead because you didn’t do right.
“All right,” Russ was saying, the words under a heavy counterpoint of thunder. “All right, Gabe. We’d better get started.” In the distance, lightning flashed, silver stitches under ink-black billows. And that was a trifle unnatural, though it was hard to tell with the way the storms swept through at this time of year.
She would go out just as the rains were coming in. If there was an easy way to go about things, the damn woman would arrange it the other way ’round just to spite him.
“Reckon so.” His fingers threatened to cramp as he released the chartermage. “You remember the grave, right?”
“I remember.” The weird light did no good by Russ’s complexion. The man was ashen, and staring at Gabe like he was a stranger. “You just be careful up at that claim, Jack. I’d hate to lose you.”
“Got no intention of being lost.” And no intention of losing her, either.
Chapter 26
After the heat, a cool breeze was welcome—until it turned chill, and she realized the clouds were not a good sign. She had not brought a coat—what need, when she hadn’t ceased sweating since she arrived? The wind held a fragrant promise of water, too, just the thing to tamp the dust down.
The bay mare was sweet-tempered and had a good pace, but for a long while the hills due west of the town seemed to grow no closer. She’d struck out from the western charterstone, the brass compass from Father’s desk tucked safely in her skirt pocket and her mother’s watch securely fastened. Her veil kept the dust away, crackling with a charm she had seen Mr. Gabriel perform, and the thought of him was a thin letter-knife turning between her ribs.
Perhaps he had thought Li Ang would be in no danger. Perhaps he thought—
Who cares what he thought? I shall find Robbie, or whatever remains of him. Then…what?
The locket tugged against her fingers, its chain wound around each one. The finding-charm was simple, and as soon as she had uttered its first syllable, the locket had lit with blue-white mancy, strange knots that were not quite charter running under the surface of the metal.
The ride gave her plenty of time to think, though her entire body began to protest that she was no longer practiced in such things. She had ridden with Robbie, of course—pleasure jaunts, and sometimes a hunt when invited to a country house.
If she found a grave at the end of the locket’s urging, what then?
Then I shall shake the dust of this hideous place from my person and leave at once. Perhaps I shall go to San Frances, or return to Boston.
Except the thought of returning to the city of her birth was too bitter to be borne. And there was a certain…well, the sand-dust ground, broken only by hunched figures of thorny plants and stunted junips, tumbleweeds scurrying from the lash of the wind, had a charm about it. The stifled parlours, parquet floors, endless rounds of social calls and charity work, the decisions of dress and etiquette and prestige, did not close about her so here. There was, she decided, a freedom to be had here in the Westron wilderness, but the incivility of Damnation was not the place to seek it.
And if she was quick enough, she would never have to see Jack Gabriel’s face again. Embarrassment all but made her writhe in the saddle. What had she been thinking?
But the heat of him, and the quiet capability in his hands, and that damnable half-smile when he glanced at her. Don’t think on it any further.
Except that was what he would say, wasn’t it? Don’t trouble yourself. And he would quietly go about solving a difficulty.
Like a body on her kitchen floor.
A body Mr. Gabriel probably had not been surprised by. But still… My girl.
A hot flush rose to her cheeks, and Cat muttered a highly impolite term in response. The man was a nuisance, scarcely better than Mr. Tilson and his bestial rage. He had put Cat in the path of murder—and now that she thought on it, the rabbit nailed to her porch must have been a warning to Li Ang, and therefore to Jack.
Not Jack. Mr. Gabriel. Thus he is, and thus he shall remain, world without end, smote it be, amen.
She would do well to remember that. She did not need to feel grateful that he had dealt with such unpleasantness. He was, after all, part of its making. It was his duty, and she knew of duty, did she not? One performed it with head held high and smile cheerfully set, and it was only in the privacy of one’s soul—and sometimes not even there—that one railed against it.
The locket tugged, and she lifted her head. The hills were growing larger, and the sky overhead was full of ink-billows. Flashes of lightning crackled among the clouds farther into the pleated, jagged almost-mountains, and the breeze freshened, tugging at her clothing and her securely pinned hat. The bay was nervous, but Cat’s knees clamped home, and she soothed the horse as best she could.
As soon as she followed the locket’s urging to its source, she would be free. She could do as she pleased at that moment. Both duty and love urged her to make certain of Robbie’s grave, at least. Whatever his ravings of dark things in a cave, or hints of bad mancy, she had to find him.
He was her brother, after all.
Cat clicked her tongue and kneed the bay into a canter. The hills rose around her like teeth, and she suppressed a shiver as she rode into their jaws.
The mare grew increasingly fractious, and Cat sighed inwardly as she held the beast to her task. The locket tugged, and she followed—though finding a path grew more difficult as the sun vanished behind the heavy, ink-dark clouds and the undergrowth thickened. There was evidently some water here, for the junip and devilpine were no longer stunted but thick and clutching. The pines rose, and there was a trail leading up.
Unfortunately, the bay flatly refused to climb past a certain point, and Cat did not blame her much. The trail doubled back on itself in a series of hairpin turns, but a simple charm—one of Miss Bowdler’s—found a spring close by and Cat left the bay tied near its hidden bubbling. The locket wished her to proceed in a straight line up the hillside, which Cat was not prepared to do. So she followed the path, reasoning that it would either lead her where she wished to go…or not.