The Spring Between Us

Chapter 63: The Debt My Beta Owes

Silas went back into the hall and shut the doors.

That was all he did. He did not argue and he did not threaten and he did not send a soldier to take the tank. He went up the steps and the doors shut behind him and the clerk followed him and the soldiers along the fence stayed where they were and looked at each other.

The yard began to break up. The town went back down the canyon road with the doctor and the sick man's wife and the cart with the cask on it, and the packs went up the ore track to the pack house, and Sten brought Cal back from the creek bed at moonrise with his tongue out and his tail up and his sandy coat full of dust.

I put Cal in the hall with Mira and a blanket and a bowl of water and he lay down by the fire and put his head on his paws and went to sleep.

Then I went to the record room and sat down with the list and the ledgers and the pact and the rings and the letter, and I read them all again.

Hank came in at midnight with a file under his arm.

"Ryland," he said. "He asked to see me. He is in the warriors' quarters with a guard and he has been sitting there since the vote and he says he has a thing to tell me that he could not say in front of the pack." He put the file on the table. "He told me about Ruth."

I looked up.

"Ruth," I said.

"Ruth saved his life." Hank sat down across from me. "Six years ago. Ryland came to my pack from the north and before he came to my pack he was in the Kızıltaş pack for a winter. He was a young wolf and he got into a fight at the autumn gathering and he was hurt badly and left on the road. Ruth found him on the road and put him on her horse and took him to a healer and paid the healer out of her own pocket. She did not tell anyone. She did not ask him for anything. She just did it." Hank put his hand flat on the table. "And two years later when Silas came to him with money and letters, Ryland went to Ruth and told her what Silas wanted. And Ruth told him to do it."

I sat back in the chair.

"Ruth told him to take the money," I said.

"Ruth told him to take the money and to report to her everything Silas asked for and to keep a copy of every letter." Hank opened the file and took out a folded paper. "He kept the letters. He gave them to Ruth. And Ruth kept them in a box in her quarters with a lock on it and told Ryland that if Silas ever tried to hang him she would bring the box to the Council and hang Silas instead." He put the paper down. "And then Ruth died and Ryland did not know where the box was."

"The box is in Ruth's quarters and Wren has been in Ruth's quarters since the funeral." I stood up. "Hank. If Wren has that box she has every letter Silas ever wrote to Ryland and she has the proof that Ruth was working against Silas and she has the proof that Silas was paying a Beta of the Çöl pack to report on his own Alpha. That box is worth more than the ledgers."

"Wren does not have it." Hank pushed the paper across the table. "Ryland went into Ruth's quarters himself the night she died. Before Wren got there. He took the box out from under the floor and put it in the stable loft under the grain sacks and he has been sitting on it for a week because he was too frightened to tell anyone he had it."

I looked at the paper. It was a list in Ruth's hand, names and dates and sums, and at the bottom of it there was a line in her neat firm writing.

If I am dead, give this to the Luna. She is young and she is angry and she will not want it, but she is the only wolf in this canyon who can read it and not be bought.

I sat down again.

"She wrote that," I said.

"She wrote that." Hank leaned back. "Derya. Ryland has been carrying this since the funeral and he did not bring it to you because he was afraid you would hang him for the letters. He brought it to me tonight because I am his Alpha and because he has finally understood that the man who paid him was never going to let him live." He looked at the paper. "He wants to testify. In front of the Council. He wants to stand up in the autumn gathering and say what he did and who paid him and what Ruth told him to do."

"Then he will testify." I folded the paper and put it in my jacket. "But first we are going to the spring tonight. The moon changes at moonrise and moonrise is in an hour and I am going to read that pact at the spring with both packs and whoever from the town wants to come."

Hank looked at me. "You are still going to do it. After everything Silas said."

"I am going to do it because of everything Silas said." I stood up. "He told me the rings were copies and the pact was void and the Council had the law. And then he went into that hall and shut the door. He did not send a soldier and he did not take the tank and he did not arrest me. He shut the door. That is a wolf who has run out of papers." I picked up the pact. "So we go to the spring and we read it and we see what the water does."

We went out of the record room and into the hall. Cal was asleep by the fire. Sten was at the door with his sword. Berik was on the porch. Nora was in the yard with her white hair and her dark brown eyes and the chain around her neck, and the two packs were in the yard behind her with lanterns and horses.

"Where is the town?" I said.

"Half of it is on the canyon road and the other half is at the gate," Sten said. "They heard you say you were going to read the pact at the spring and they are not going home."

"Then let them come."

We went up the mesa road at moonrise with both packs and half the town and a cart with the tank left in the yard under a lead sheet and two warriors. We went up the long slope to the spring house with the lanterns swinging and the creek running beside us and the mark on my arm warm and bright, and when we came over the last rise the spring house was there in the moonlight with the door open and the water running out of it and down the pipe.

Nora stopped at the door.

"Here," she said. "This is the place. The pact says at the spring, at the change of the moon, and the moon is changing now."

I went in. The basin was full and the welling hole was open and the water was running clear over the stone floor. I stood at the basin with the pact in my hands and the two rings on my thumbs and Hank beside me and Nora on my other side and the whole canyon behind me in the door of the spring house.

And I read it.

I read the top and the middle and the bottom. I read the line about the water and the line about the pair and the line about the spring. I read the line that said the spring shall fail if the pair is broken and the line that said the pair shall be known by the marks on their arms and the rings on their hands. And when I got to the end of it I put the two rings on the rim of the basin and I said, "The pair is standing at the spring. The rings are on the stone. The pact is read. And the spring is running."

The water in the basin moved.

It did not splash. It did not boil. It rose, slowly and evenly, and it came up over the rim of the basin and across the stone floor and out of the door of the spring house and down the slope, and the whole canyon stood in the moonlight and watched the water come out of the spring house and go down the mesa and into the creek.

And in the basin, where the water had been, there was a stone that had not been there before.

It was a flat stone and it was grey and it had writing on it, and Hank got down on his knees in the water and put the lantern close and read it.

"Derya," he said. His voice had gone strange. "This is a grave marker. This is the marker of the first Luna and it has been under the welling hole for forty years and the water has pushed it up."

I got down on my knees beside him in the water and read the stone.

Here lies the first Luna of the Kızıltaş pack. Bonded to the Luna of the Çöl pack. Both were murdered by the Council of Alphas in the winter of the year the pact was broken. The Council took their rings and buried them here and told the packs they died of a fever.

And under that, in a smaller hand, there was a line that had been cut into the stone with a knife.

The Council man who ordered it was named Silas. His son is named Silas and he is still in this canyon.

The canyon was silent. Then somebody in the crowd behind us said, "The Luna they buried."

And the spring kept running.