Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) by Laura Anne Gilman Page A

rye in his glass seemed like an excellent idea.
    “Izzy.” Just that one word was enough to close her down. Gabriel cast his gaze back down into his now-empty glass, damned himself for a coward, and looked back at the pair.
    “You will ride circuit for me, be my ears and eyes beyond Flood,” the devil said. “Mister Kasun will teach you what you need to know. You seemed open to his suggestion the night before; has something changed?”
    Gabriel would’ve rather run forward into a saguaro, with his face , than say a damned thing at that moment.
    The girl—Isobel—looked as though she were more foolhardy than he, then she closed her mouth, swallowed, and shook her head. “No, boss.”
    A brief, too-white smile, deeply unnerving, flashed across his face and was gone. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted, then. Get a good night’s sleep, Isobel. You’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”
    And then the bastard left him with Isobel, who still looked as though someone had drowned her kitten rather than given her the chance of a lifetime.

    Izzy heard the boss’s words, but it was fuzzy, like there were a dozen people yelling at her all at once, until she couldn’t hear anything at all. And then he was gone, and she’d agreed to leave. Agreed to go away.
    “Buy you a drink?”
    “What?” She looked blankly at the man, as though she’d never seen him before, then the words settled into something comprehensible. “Yes. All right. Tea, please, Iktan?” The boss never forbade them anything stronger, but Marie frowned on the girls drinking while they were working, saying men could make themselves foolish, but a woman never should. She slid onto the chair next to the stranger—not a stranger, Gabriel his name was, Gabriel Kasun—and accepted the glass the bartender slid toward her. The dark, astringent liquid was familiar on her tongue, pushing away the noise, the odd sensations, and leaving her firmly seated and utterly flummoxed.
    And, she admitted, tasting it on the edge of her tongue, like a pepper in her tea, angry. Incredibly, unutterably angry.
    “So.” Mister Kasun looked uncomfortable, but she couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry for him. “This was a surprise to you.”
    “Yes.” All of it, a surprise. Being tossed out of her home, told to go away . . . when she chose to stay, she’d thought that she would be staying . “I mean, I . . .” She took a deep breath, sipped her tea, thenstarted again. “The boss has his reasons. And I do appreciate your willingness to mentor me.”
    Nobody did anything without a reason, and nobody did anything without exchange. And the way the boss had spoken to him . . . No, whatever Bargain had been made, it was between him and the boss; Izzy wasn’t fool enough to ask. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t deadly curious.
    “Your boss took care of the details—including, apparently, where we’re to go.” His voice was lacking the humor she’d heard in it before, his gaze somehow harder. “You know how to pack for the road?”
    “No. I . . . No.”
    “Light, and dense,” he told her. “If it’s purely sentimental and won’t fit in your pocket, leave it here. If it serves no purpose, leave it here. No fripperies, nothing breakable. Boots, not shoes. Durable. No fancy dresses.”
    Izzy thought of the remade dress Molly had just given her, pale pink with lace at the trim, and nodded.
    “Bring only the extras that’re important. A book. A memento you can’t be without. The things that’ll get you through a long cold night, or a day where all you see is mud and rain.”
    “You’re talking from experience?” The question slipped out despite her sulk.
    He laughed. She liked this laugh; it wasn’t mean or even really amused. More thoughtful, remembering. “You get out on the trail, a gullywasher comes through and you’re up to your hocks in water. If you can’t find shelter, you’re either sleeping in the mud or you climb a