The Spring Between Us

Chapter 57: A Truce with Teeth

We did not find the pump before noon.

We rode east at first light with the whole of both packs and followed the line where it came out of the canyon, and the line went into the ground and came up under the company road and ran east along it for six miles, and then it turned north into the rocks and we lost it. We spent the morning on our hands and knees in the dust with the sun on our backs and the packs strung out along the road behind us, and by noon we had found nothing but a lot of pipe and a lot of rock and a wolf of the Çöl pack who had been bitten by a snake.

We came back to the pack house at two in the afternoon. The Council's noon hearing had come and gone and we had not been in the yard for it, and the letter said that if the packs did not come the Council would close the canyon road, and nobody had come up the mesa road all afternoon to tell us whether they had done it.

"They have closed it," Sten said. He was sitting on the porch step with his boots off and his face grey with dust. "They closed it at noon and they are standing on it with soldiers and the town is on the other side of them."

I stood in the yard with my hands on my hips and looked at the canyon.

"Then we do not go down the road," I said. "We go down the old ore track. It comes out on the western side of the quarry and it does not touch the canyon road."

"The ore track is a goat path."

"The ore track is a goat path and it comes out on the western side of the quarry and the Council soldiers are on the road." I turned. "Sten. I want every warrior in both packs in this yard by sundown. I want the pact and the ledgers and the rings and the list. And I want the town."

"The town is behind the road."

"The town has been coming up the canyon for a week. They know the goat paths." I looked at Hank. "Owen. He grew up in that town and he knows every trail in this canyon. Send a rider down the creek bed to the town and tell Owen to bring the town up the old ore track at nightfall."

Hank nodded and went. I stood on the porch with the sun going down and the creek running and the two packs in the yard below me, and I thought about my mother.

She had gone up to the spring house alone. She had gone up there with a gauge and a notebook and a fear she could not name and she had measured a plate over a welling hole and written it down and taken it to the Council and died for it.

I had a pact and a list and a map and two rings and a key and two packs and a town and a river running through my yard. I was not going to go up that road alone.

At sundown Sten called the yard.

The whole of both packs was in it, and the yard was full of the sound of forty wolves and their horses and their weapons, and Sten stood on the porch step with a paper in his hand and said, "Luna. Before we go down that road there is a thing that has to be done and it has to be done in front of both packs."

I came out of the hall. "What thing?"

"Every wolf in this canyon has been told for forty years that the Çöl pack is the enemy. My father was killed at that border. Helle's father was killed at that border. There are wolves in this yard tonight who have lost brothers and mothers and children to the Çöl pack and there are wolves in the Çöl pack who have lost the same." He held up the paper. "So I have written a truce. It says that from tonight until the Council has ruled and the water is settled, the Kızıltaş pack and the Çöl pack will not raise a hand against each other. It says that a wolf of either pack who breaks it will be judged by both packs together. It says the water of this canyon belongs to both packs and will be shared by both packs. And it says that the pair stands at the head of it."

The yard was silent.

"And it has to be signed," Sten said. "By every warrior in both packs. Tonight. Under the moon. In this yard. And then we go down that road together."

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I said, "Give me the pen."

I signed it at the top under my own name. Hank signed beside me. Nora signed under Hank. Sten signed under me and Berik signed under Sten and then the warriors came up one by one, the Kızıltaş and the Çöl together, and put their names on the paper, and it took an hour and the moon came up over the eastern rim while they were doing it and the creek ran beside them and nobody said a word they did not mean.

When it was done Sten nailed the paper to the door of the hall.

"There," he said. "Now every wolf who walks into that hall tonight will walk past it and will know what he signed."

The moon was full and high when the town came up the ore track.

Owen came first with a lantern and his clipboard under his arm, and behind him came the men of the town, forty of them and then sixty and then a hundred, with their caps in their hands and their work boots on and a cart with a cask on it that had been painted with the word water and a line through it.

Owen stopped in front of me and took his cap off.

"Luna," he said. "The town has come. We have closed the company office and we have sent the clerk home and we have brought the cask of the water the company has been selling us and we are going to pour it out in the yard of the Council hall in front of the Council man." He looked at the yard and the two packs and the truce on the door. "And there is a thing I have to tell you before we go down that road. The company did not pay for the lease on the south section. The company does not have that kind of money. The money for that lease came through the Council and it came from a man in the capital and it was paid to the company and the company paid your Beta." He looked at me. "Luna. It was the Council man's money all along. The company is only a name on a paper."

I stood in the yard with the moon on the truce and the town at the gate and the two packs behind me.

"Then we are not fighting a company," I said. "We are fighting the Council."

Owen nodded. "You are fighting the Council. And the Council has the road and the pump and the law. But the Council does not have the water and it does not have the packs and it does not have the town." He put his cap on. "And it does not have the pair. I have been in this canyon for twenty years and I have never seen a pair before. I would like to see what one can do."

I turned to the yard.

"Mount up," I said. "We go down the ore track at moonrise and we do not stop until we are standing in that yard."

The yard came alive. The horses went out and the warriors went after them and the town came up through the gate and put its cart in the line, and I went into the hall and took the pact off the shelf and the ledgers out of the record room and the rings off the nail by the fire and the list out of my jacket, and I put the key around my neck and went out onto the porch.

Hank was waiting at the bottom of the steps with his horse and mine.

"Ready?" he said.

I looked at the truce on the door and the moon and the yard full of wolves and men.

"Not yet," I said. "There is one more thing."

I went to the old ore shaft.

It was a mile down the track behind the pack house and it had a timber frame over it and a rusted wheel and a ladder going down into the dark. I had the second key around my neck and my mother's letter in my jacket and the map in my hand, and I stood at the top of the shaft with a lantern and looked down.

Hank came and stood beside me.

"The door," he said.

"The door." I put my foot on the ladder. "If we are going down that ore track tonight to stand in front of the Council, I am not going without the second ring. My mother said it was behind that door and my mother did not lie to me. So we go down now and we get it and then we go down that road."

Hank swung his leg over the shaft head and started down the ladder after me.