The Spring Between Us

Chapter 69: The Second Grave

We did not put my mother back in the ground that night.

We put the coffin in the hall on the long table with two candles at the head and two warriors on the door and the whole pack came and stood by it and went away again. Old Tomas came and stood by it for a long time and did not say anything. Arne's wife came with her children and put a sprig of juniper on the lid. Mira sat with her until dawn.

I did not sit with her. I was in the record room with Hank and Nora and Sten and the first volume and the pack book and the list, and we were doing the thing that had to be done before the sun came up.

"The second grave," I said. "My mother said it. Elias said it. There is a second grave and the pattern is twenty years old."

Nora was at the table with the first volume open in front of her. "The second pair," she said. "Your father and my mate. They are buried in two different graveyards. Your father is here behind the water tower and my mate is in the Çöl graveyard on the ridge."

"Then we open both," I said. "Tomorrow. In daylight. With both healers and the Council healer and the whole canyon."

Sten said, "Luna. You have just arrested a Council envoy and put him in a cell. The Council will send soldiers."

"The Council has suspended him and confined him to this canyon and ordered the two packs to guard him," I said. "And the two packs have guarded him and the two packs have arrested him on a charge of murder supported by the evidence of a rogue and a healer and the Council's own healer's signature. The Council can send soldiers if it likes. But it will have to explain to the autumn gathering why it sent soldiers to a canyon where a Council envoy was arrested for murder on the evidence of a Council healer."

Sten looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "I will put the warriors on the gates."

We opened my father's grave at noon.

The graveyard behind the water tower was full. The Kızıltaş pack was there and half the Çöl pack and the town and the Council healer and the Council clerk with his book and Silas in irons with two warriors on either side of him.

They dug and they brought up the coffin and it was older than my mother's and the pine had gone black and Berik got the lid off with the pry bar and Mira knelt down beside it with her bag.

She worked for a long time. Then she sat back on her heels and said, "Luna. Your father's neck was broken. It was broken from the front and it was broken before the rock came down on him. And there is a stain in the mouth and the throat and I have scraped it and smelled it and it is wolfsbane." She looked up. "He was poisoned first and then his neck was broken and then the mine came down on him. The collapse was to hide the body."

The graveyard was silent.

Hank said, "My father. We open my father's grave today."

We went up the ridge to the Çöl graveyard with the whole canyon behind us and we opened the second grave.

The coffin was the same. The pine had gone black. Berik got the lid off and Mira knelt down and worked for a long time and then she sat back and said, "The same. The neck broken from the front and the wolfsbane in the mouth and the throat. And the fever the pack was told about was the wolfsbane. He was given it for a week and then his neck was broken and then the pack was told he died of a fever."

Nora stood at the head of the grave with her white hair and her dark brown eyes and did not cry.

"Twenty years," she said. "I have been a widow for twenty years and I have been told my mate died of a fever and it was wolfsbane in his cup and a hand on his neck." She turned to Silas. "Was it you?"

Silas stood in irons in the graveyard with two warriors on either side of him. His silver hair was not combed anymore and his coat was dusty and his pleasant face was gone.

"It was my father," he said. "I was nine years old. I was in the capital and I was at my lessons. I did not come to this canyon until I was a man."

"Then it was your father who did this," I said, "and it is you who has been doing it since."

Silas looked at me. "I have been taking water from this canyon for twenty years. I have been taking ore out of the north face and shipping it in water wagons. I have been paying wolves to look the other way and I have been writing reports that said the packs were savages and the canyon needed a Council trustee." He looked at the graves. "I did not kill these wolves. I have never put my hands on anyone in this canyon. But my father did and I have been finishing his work and I have known it since I was a boy and I have told myself it was the water and not the wolves."

Mira stood up from the coffin with the scraping knife in her hand.

"Envoy," she said. "There is a thing I have not said yet and I am going to say it now in front of the whole canyon. Both of these wolves were given wolfsbane for a week before they died and both of them were killed by a hand that knew where the neck breaks. That is not a Council man's work. That is the work of a wolf who has been a healer or a butcher or a warrior. And there is one wolf in this canyon who has been a healer for thirty years and who knew both of them and who had the wolfsbane in her hut and who signed the paper that said they died of a fall and a fever."

The graveyard went silent.

Mira turned and looked at me.

"Luna," she said. "I am going to say a thing that will hurt you and I am going to say it because I have been carrying it since the night your mother died. Your mother was not killed by the Council man. She was killed by a wolf in her own pack house who had been putting wolfsbane in her food and who knew where to put the rope. And that wolf is not Silas and that wolf is not Ruth." She took a breath. "That wolf is me."

The whole canyon turned to look at her.

"Mira," I said.

"I did not do it," she said. "But I am the one who could have done it and I am the one the Council will point to when it looks for a killer. I had the wolfsbane. I had the knowledge. I had the trust of the pack and I was in the pack house the night your mother died. And the Council man has been sitting in his cell since last night thinking about exactly that."

She looked at Silas.

"Am I right, envoy?" she said. "If you cannot hang the Luna and you cannot hang the Alpha and you cannot hang the Beta because she is dead, then you will hang the old healer who had the poison in her hut and the trust of the pack and no children to fight for her."

Silas looked at her for a long moment.

"Yes," he said. "That is exactly what I will do."

I stood in the graveyard with the two open coffins and the whole canyon and my healer and my friend standing in front of me with her hands at her sides and her chin up, and I said, "Nobody is hanging anybody. Not today. Not in this canyon. Not while I am Luna."