The Spring Between Us

Chapter 67: The Hearing Begins

We went up the mesa road at dawn with the whole of the pack and the town behind us.

The spring house was the same as it had been the night before. The water was running over the rim of the basin and across the stone floor and out of the door. The lantern light went around the walls and the pipe and the basin, and the basin was full and clear and the welling hole was a dark mouth at the bottom of it.

I got down on my knees and rolled up my sleeve and put my whole arm down into the water.

The water was cold and my fingers found the lip of the welling hole and went over it and down. The rock was smooth and it went down further than my arm could reach, and I felt around the lip with my fingers and found nothing. I went further. My shoulder was in the water and my cheek was against the rim of the basin and my fingers were going numb, and I felt it.

A ledge. A shelf of rock cut into the side of the welling hole, a hand's width under the lip, and on the shelf there was something.

I got my fingers around it and pulled it up.

It was a box. It was iron and it was small, about the size of a man's two fists together, and it was rusted at the corners and it had a lid and a clasp and a lock on it that had gone green with age. I put it on the floor of the spring house and knelt over it and my hands were so cold I could not get them to work.

Hank was beside me with his knife. "May I?"

I nodded. He put the blade under the clasp and twisted and the clasp came off and the lid came up.

Inside the box there was a book.

It was small and it was bound in leather that had gone hard with age and it had a strap around it and it was wrapped in oilcloth. I unwrapped it and opened it and the pages were thin and brown and the writing on them was old and small.

It was the first volume.

"Read it," Nora said. Her voice was shaking. "Derya. Read it out loud."

I read it out loud in the spring house with the water running over the floor and the whole of the pack in the doorway.

It was the pact written the first time, and the hand was old and the words were plain. It said the spring is the heart of the canyon and the water belongs to the land and the packs and to no one else. It said the pair shall guard the spring and read the pact at every change of the moon. It said the pair is one wolf and that one wolf shall hold both packs and that the two packs shall be one people under the pair.

And then it said the thing Silas had not read.

It said, the pair shall be declared in the open hall of the Council of Alphas once, and once only, and after the declaration the Council shall not sit in judgment on the pair again. It said the Council was made to keep the peace between packs and not to rule them, and that a Council that ruled the packs had broken the pact and was no Council. And it said that a Council that broke the pact might be set aside by the pair in the open hall, and that the packs would answer to the pair and not to the Council.

The spring house was very quiet.

Nora put her hand over her mouth.

"Read that again," she said.

I read it again.

Hank was standing over me with the lantern. "The pair may set aside a Council that breaks the pact," he said. "In the open hall. In front of the packs."

"That is what it says." I turned the page. There was more. The hand went on for three more pages and it was a list of the things the Council must not do: must not take the water, must not sell the water, must not put a ring on a wolf's hand, must not name a trustee over a pack, must not sit in judgment on a pair. And under each of them the first pair had written a line in the same old hand.

The Council that does these things is a Council that has broken the pact. The pair shall say so in the open hall and the packs shall hear it and the Council shall answer to the packs.

I closed the book.

The whole of the canyon was in the doorway of the spring house and the water was running over the floor.

"Then we go to the autumn gathering," I said, "and we declare the bond in the open hall, once and once only, and then we say what the Council has done in this canyon and we set it aside."

Sten said, "Luna. The Council will not let you set it aside."

"The Council has no choice. The pact is older than the Council and the Council has known it for a hundred and forty years and it has been hiding this book in a vault and this book in a welling hole. And now both of them are out." I stood up. "We go to the capital. All of us. Both packs and the town and the stone and the tank and the pact and the rings and the first volume. And we do not go as supplicants. We go as a canyon that has read its own law."

We went back down the mesa road at noon and the pack went to the hall and I went to the record room with Hank and Nora and Sten and put the first volume on the table with the pact and the stone and the rings.

And then Cal came in with his face grey.

"Luna," he said. "There is a rider come up the mesa road from the quarry. It is a Council rider and he has a letter and a summons. The Council of Alphas has called a hearing at the quarry at sundown. It is a hearing on the matter of the mate bond and it will be held in the Council hall and the envoy will present the case for the Council."

I looked at the first volume on the table.

"The envoy is suspended," I said.

"The letter says the Council has lifted the suspension for the hearing and that the envoy will present the Council's case and that the pair is summoned to appear and declare the bond in the open hall before the Council." Cal held out the letter. "And it says at the bottom that the Council has ordered the healer of the Kızıltaş pack to attend and to examine the mark on the Luna's arm in front of the hall, and that if the mark is found the bond will be declared and the Council will rule on the seats."

I took the letter.

"He has done it," I said. "He has got the Council to order the declaration here, tonight, before the autumn gathering. He wants the bond declared in his hall with his clerk and his healer and his soldiers and no time for us to read the first volume."

Hank was reading over my shoulder. "The declaration here is the once and only declaration. If it is made in his hall tonight, then we cannot make it at the autumn gathering. And then he rules on the seats in his hall tonight and it is finished."

I put the letter down on the table.

"Then we go down to that hall tonight," I said, "and we declare the bond, and then we read the first volume out loud in front of him and his clerk and his soldiers and the whole canyon, and we set the Council aside."

Sten said, "And if he will not let you read it?"

I picked up the first volume and put it inside my jacket.

"Then we read it anyway," I said.