He Crowned Another Luna, So I Let His Pack Burn

Chapter 3 The Council of Fools

They had given her a seat at the foot of the table.

Not the right hand that was Ilsabet's now, white fur and grave attention, positioned where every wolf in the war council could see the golden girl sitting where the Luna sat. Not the left that was Odran's, as it had always been. The foot. Facing Corvan down the whole scarred length of oak like a petitioner. Someone had thought about it. Someone had measured that distance out deliberately, and Maeryn would have bet the shrine itself on whose lovely, careful hand had drawn the seating.

She sat. She folded her hands. She let them all see how little it moved her.

"a crack the width of a hair," Corvan was saying, "in a stone that has stood two hundred years. Stones crack. Frost cracks them. Roots crack them. I will not have the pack whipped into terror over weather." He was leaning back, easy, commanding, and the council was leaning with him, because he had been right about everything for twelve prosperous years and there was no reason no reason they knew of to think he was wrong now.

"With respect, Alpha." Odran's voice, gravel and care. "Krath says there were marks on the far face. Drag-marks. Weather doesn't claw."

"Krath was rattled and it was dark."

"Then send me in daylight."

"And have the whole territory watch my Beta ride to war against a rock?" A ripple of laughter down the table. Corvan let it settle, then softened, magnanimous. "Double the north patrol if it eases you, old friend. But hear me, all of you the wards have held for twelve years without so much as a scratch. Whatever grace keeps them keeps them still. Hollowmere has never"

"been safer," Maeryn murmured, to her folded hands.

"Luna?" Ilsabet, bright, instant, reasonable. "Did you wish to add something?"

Every head turned. And there it was the trap in its purest form, offered with a smile. Speak, and be the anxious old wife spoiling the new era with fear. Stay silent, and be nothing at all.

Maeryn lifted her eyes and chose a third door.

"Only a question, since the patrols are to double. Which stone anchors the western run?"

Silence.

"There are nine ward-stones," Maeryn went on, mild as morning. "Every patrol route is drawn from them; every fallback line rests on the anchor stone of its run. The warriors you'll be commanding, Lady Ilsabet, will report to you in the language of those stones. So." She tipped her head. "Which anchors the west?"

Ilsabet's smile did not waver the girl was iron under all that gold, Maeryn granted her that but the pause stretched one heartbeat too long, then two, and the council heard it stretch. "I would not presume to command patrols before I've walked every stone myself," Ilsabet said at last, sweetly. "I hope the Luna will teach me."

"The Grey Sister anchors the west," Maeryn said. "The one shaped like a kneeling woman. Your father sheltered his wounded behind her, the night of the ridge. I would have thought you'd know her." She let that sit not cruel, merely true and turned back to Corvan while the table absorbed the fact that the war hero's daughter did not know the ground her father had bled on. "Double the patrols, by all means, Alpha. It can't hurt."

It can't help either, she did not say. Nothing helps but what's in my veins, and none of you have ever once asked.

Corvan was watching her down the length of the table with an expression she hadn't seen on him in years not anger. Attention. As if some instrument in him, long unused, had registered a tremor. "You think it's more than frost," he said.

For a moment one dangerous, weightless moment the truth stood up in her throat. Twelve years, she could say, right here, before them all. Every full moon. Ask me why the wards have held, Corvan. Ask me what I do on that hill.

And then Ilsabet laid her hand on his arm lightly, wifely, already and said, "Whatever it is, we'll face it together. All of us. Won't we, Luna?" and the moment died the way such moments do, politely, in public.

"Of course," said Maeryn.

Restraint. She had twelve years of practice at it. What was nine more days?

The council was rising, the wolves already easing back into their comfort, when the doors banged open hard enough to crack against stone.

Krath stood in the gap, mud to the thigh, chest heaving, and behind him the afternoon had gone the grey-green of coming storm.

"Alpha." His voice cut the room to silence. "The northern stone. The crack's spread hand-wide now, top to base and Alpha, there are marks on the outer face. Fresh. Claw-drag, five points, high as my head." He swallowed. "Weather didn't make them. Something stood on the far side of our border last night, and it took its time, and it wrote on the stone like it was leaving a message."

Down the whole length of the table, no one moved. It was Ilsabet who finally spoke, and her voice was steady and clear and beautifully brave, and only Maeryn was placed to see that her hand, on Corvan's arm, had closed like a talon.

"A message saying what?"

Krath looked at his Alpha, and then Maeryn would remember this at her, at the foot of the table, as if some animal instinct in the boy knew where the answer lived.

"That's the thing, Luna. It's not words. It's a tally." His throat worked. "Twelve marks. Scored deep. Like something out there has been counting the years."