The Spring Between Us

Chapter 72: Ruth's Alibi

The rogue's name was Nell and she was nineteen years old.

She was sitting on the bench in the cell with her hands in her lap and her hair tied back with a strip of rag and her face washed for the first time in a week, and she looked up when the door opened and did not look away.

"Luna," she said. "I thought you would come."

I sat down on the stool across from her with the lantern between us.

"Nell," I said. "I am going to ask you a question and I want you to think before you answer, because the answer is going to go into a Council hall at the autumn gathering and it is going to be read out in front of the whole canyon. You have confessed to three ropes. You have said the Council man paid you. I want to know who gave the order."

Nell looked at me.

"The Council man gave the order," she said.

"The Council man is in the next cell and he says he did not. He says he paid for water and ore and reports and he never put his hands on anyone and he never ordered a killing. And I have been thinking about it all night and I think he is telling the truth." I leaned forward. "So I am asking you again. Who came to you? Who put the money in your hand? Who told you which woman and which night and which road?"

Nell was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "A woman came."

The cellar was very quiet.

"A woman in a grey jacket with auburn hair," Nell said. "She came to me at the railhead at Green River. She said she had work for a rogue who could keep her mouth shut and she paid me in Council paper and she gave me a horse and she told me where to wait. And when the night came she came up the mesa road and she opened the pack house door and she took me up the south track and she showed me the woman and she showed me the horse and she stood at the edge of the rim while I did it."

I sat on the stool with my hands in my lap.

"Ruth," I said.

"Ruth." Nell looked at the floor. "She paid me for three and she paid me the same way every time. The woman on the south track. The warrior on the ledge. The Beta in the hall." She looked up. "The Council man never came near me. I have never spoken to the Council man in my life. It was the woman in the grey jacket and it was her from the first night to the last."

I got up. I stood in the cell with the lantern and the stone walls and the whole of it going round in my head.

"The alibi," I said.

"What?"

"Ruth's alibi." I turned to the door. "Ruth told the pack she was in the pack house the night my mother died with a bad knee. Tomas vouched for her. The warriors on the gate vouched for her. And Ruth rode out with the search party at first light and brought the body home. And all of it hung together because there was a witness for every hour of the night except the one hour that mattered." I looked at Nell. "Between midnight and first light. The hour when the pack house was dark and the gate was quiet and Tomas was asleep."

Nell nodded slowly. "She came back through the kitchen door at three in the morning and she was out of breath and her boots were wet and she went up the back stairs and she did not see me because I was in the pantry."

"And the alibi for that hour was the Council man," I said. "Ruth told the pack she was in her quarters. Ruth told the Council she was in her quarters. And the only wolf who could have said otherwise was the Council man and the Council man was her employer and her alibi and her accuser all at once. It was a closed loop. It went round and round and there was no way to break it because every wolf who could have broken it was either dead or paid or Ruth herself."

I went out of the cellar and up the stairs and into the hall. The hall was full. Hank was at the table with the first volume and the paper and the box, and Sten was at the door, and Nora was by the fire, and the whole canyon was in the hall and the yard and the road.

"Ruth killed my mother," I said. "Not the Council man. Ruth. She hired the rogue and she opened the door and she took her up the track and she stood at the edge of the rim while it was done. And she was in the pack house at midnight with a bad knee and the whole pack vouched for her and the only witness to the hour that mattered was the Council man, who was her employer and her alibi and the wolf she was frightened of." I put the lantern down. "It was a closed loop. She built it herself and she built it so well that it took a rogue in a cell and an old man on his deathbed to break it."

The hall was silent.

Nora said, "Then Silas did not order your mother killed."

"Silas did not order my mother killed. Silas ordered the water and the ore and the reports and the lies. Ruth ordered the killing and she did it on her own and she told Silas about it after the fact and Silas paid her to keep quiet." I sat down at the table. "And that is what is going into the open hall at the autumn gathering. Not a Council man who killed a Luna. A Council man who stole a canyon and a Beta who killed her own Alpha and a pack that was told a story for four weeks and believed it."

Hank said, "Then the case against Silas is the water and the ore and the reports."

"The case against Silas is the water and the ore and the reports and the tank and the town and the twenty years," I said. "And it is enough. It is more than enough. It is a case that will bring down a Council man and a company and maybe a Council. But it is not a murder case and I am not going to hang him for a murder he did not do."

Sten said, "And Ruth?"

"Ruth is dead and she died badly and she died confessing. She rode down that mesa road and put her own neck in it and left a box under her floor with the Council man's name in it. She was frightened and she was bought and she did one good thing at the end and it was not enough." I looked at the hall. "So we are going to say all of it in the open hall. The whole of it. Ruth and Silas and the pack and the four weeks and the lies. And the Council can do what it likes with the truth, because the truth is the only thing in this canyon that nobody has been able to buy."

The hall was quiet.

Then Cal came in from the yard at a run.

"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 and he says the Council has heard of the arrest of the envoy and the Council has ordered a hearing at the quarry at dawn."

I looked at him.

"The Council has ordered a hearing at the quarry at dawn," I said. "The Council is four hundred miles away."

"The letter says the hearing will be held by the Council's own clerk in the Council hall at the quarry and that the clerk has been given the Council's authority for this matter and that the whole canyon is summoned and that the envoy is to be brought in irons." Cal held out the letter. "And it says at the bottom that if the Luna does not attend, the Council will rule in her absence and the ruling will be final."

I took the letter.

"He has done it again," I said. "Silas has got a letter out to the Council and the Council has answered and the answer is a hearing in his own hall with his own clerk and his own soldiers and a ruling that will be final."

Hank was reading over my shoulder. "The clerk is a Council clerk. He was in the hall when the first stone came up and when the vote was taken and when the healer signed the paper. He has been writing down everything and he has been writing it down honestly because he is a clerk and not a wolf." He looked at me. "Derya. The clerk is the one wolf in this canyon who has been at every hearing and written down every word and never taken a side."

I stood in the hall with the letter in my hand.

"Then we go to the quarry at dawn," I said, "and we put the whole of it in front of the clerk, and we see which side he writes down."