The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)
Laura Anne Gilman
PART ONE
UNCERTAIN GROUND
There was a well-ordered murmur to the saloon in Flood that evening, some combination of chairs scraping and glassware clinking, laid against the flickerthwack of cards against felt, and the self-assured calls of the dealers. Marie cast her gaze around her domain, confirming that all was well, then moved through the crowd to stand behind the dealer at the main table.
“Gentleman in the far corner wishes to have a word with you when you’re done dealing for the evening.”
She waited until the boss nodded, the barest hint of a chin drop, and moved along to the next table, a smile on her lips, eyes bright and alert. The carmine she’d rubbed on her cheeks had been replaced by the flush of warmth and hard work, the ache of ankle and hip joined by the soreness of elbow and knee. It was entirely possible, Marie thought, that she was finally growing too old for this.
A dry snort behind her gave the boss’s opinion of that, and her smile warmed for a heartbeat.
Still and all, there was no gainsaying she’d earned her aches. Five tables full, and Iktan busy at the bar, her people coming and going in a well-choreographed dance. She should feel satisfied. She did feel satisfied. It was near impossible for her not to take satisfaction, being who and what she was, when things went well and needs were gratified.
But her ankle and hip ached, and her elbows and knees were sore, and she worked to keep her smile in place as she nodded to strangers and placed warm hands on the shoulders of regulars. The responsibilities of the Devil’s Right Hand were hers: the gathering-in and the granting, ensuring that all who came to him were noted and heard.
“We dance to his tune,” she’d told Izzy. So you put your smile on and left the aches until later.
“Cardsharp at Jack’s table,” Molly said as she passed, her tray filled with empty glasses needing refills or cleaning. “Black-haired gent in the kersey weave. He’s not started cheating yet, but he has a look about him.”
Marie slanted a look in that direction. “Give him one more drink and have Iktan settle his tab,” she said. Cardsharps came regular, either to see the devil deal cards or to test themselves on his table. She’d seen the boss spend all evening with one, the two of them grinning like a pair of schoolboys as the stakes grew higher and the cheats wilder, all other games abandoned until they ended with a bottle between them after hours, talking until dawn. But to come with intent to cheat others . . . The devil ran an honest game, and an honest house, and she’d sweep out any who tried different.
In the end, the cardsharp went quietly, with a rueful grin that might have amused another woman. Marie forgot him before the door’d snicked shut on his heels, busy with her responsibilities until the last flickerthwack of cards was laid to rest, the last bootheel sounding on hardwood, and all that was left was the whisper of slippers and the sighs of bodies loosed from jumps and hair down from knots in the rooms upstairs. The boss disappeared into his private office, and Iktan whistled soundlessly as he cleaned the last of the glassware and stocked up for the night, the kitchen silent and dark.
“Marie?”
She would say the quiet voice startled her, save she’d been expecting it for at least a week now. Rosa: the others had likely elected her, from the way she shuffled forward, hesitant and determined in her night-wrapper, arms crossed against her bosom.
Marie placed her glass of whiskey down on the bar, hearing the glass clink wetly on the hardwood and watching with amusement as Iktan lifted the glass to swipe under it with his cloth, replacing the glass more quietly.
“Have you . . . have you heard anything from Izzy, recent? I was just wondering; she’s been gone so long, and so sudden . . .”
Overnight, Rosa meant. One evening the girl was among them, clearing drinks and smiling at the players, one of a handful of girls under the boss’s protection. One evening she was there, and the next dawn she was gone. “On the devil’s business,” they’d been told, and nothing more. Because if they needed to be told, they had no need to know.
None of them had seen the quiet depths to that one girl, the hunger they lacked; none had understood the skill they thought could be learned, and not simply trained when it appeared.
“She’ll be home to us soon,” Marie said, and her smile was all that was comforting and sincere, even as she wondered if she lied.
Isobel had been riding alone for three days, two to her destination and one heading back, when she first heard the whisper.
She reined the mare in, listening. In the months since they’d left Flood, she’d learned to sit relaxed in the saddle, aware now of the grass and rocks under Uvnee’s hooves, the distant, steady chitter of insects and the calls of birds, the rustle of the breeze coming cool from the northwest, and the clear, quiet hum of the Road ahead of and below her. But this was something new.
They’d been skirting the western edge of the Territory for weeks, the bare rock and hints of snow on the high jagged peaks to her left still strange to her prairie-born eyes, but she could sense nothing wrong here, could hear no alarm in the breeze or the birds, see no cause for her skin to prickle or the pit of her stomach to tighten.
Another might have dismissed the whisper as discomfort, sweat and dirt itching her skin. Despite the brim of her hat shading her eyes, her jacket rolled and tied to the back of her saddle, the early summer sun was strong, leaving the fabric of her skirt and blouse damp with sweat. But Isobel née Lacoyo Távora was no longer the green girl she’d been, newly made Devil’s Hand, with no idea of what that was or what it meant.