The Spring Between Us

Chapter 75: Hank's Pack Doubts Him

We slept in the Çöl pack house that night because it was closest to the quarry and because nobody wanted to ride up the mesa road in the dark.

I woke at dawn in the small warm room at the end of the passage with Hank's arm across me and the mark on my arm warm and quiet, and I lay there for a while and listened to the pack house. Somebody was moving pots in the kitchen. A horse stamped in the yard. Cal's voice came up from the hall, arguing about something with Berik, and it was an ordinary argument and neither of them was angry.

I got up and got my clothes on and went out into the hall.

The hall was full of the smell of bread and the two packs were at the long tables and the town was at the benches along the wall and the whole of it was quiet and ordinary. Sten was at the far end with a cup in his hand. Nora was by the fire. Cal was at the near end with his sandy hair standing up and a piece of bread in his mouth. And the Çöl wolves were at their own table and there were four of them who were not eating.

I saw them before I sat down. They were at the end of the Çöl table and their heads were together and they stopped talking when I came into the hall.

I went and sat down next to Hank and did not say anything about it.

It came at noon.

We were in the yard with the wagons being loaded for the capital when Ryland came out of the pack house with his hat in his hands and four wolves behind him and said, "Alpha. I have a thing to say and I am going to say it in front of the pack."

Hank was on the wagon with a rope in his hands. He stopped and looked down at Ryland.

"Say it," he said.

Ryland put his hat on the wagon wheel. "I am the Beta of this pack and I have been the Beta for four years and I have not been a good one. I have taken money and I have sent letters and I have put this pack at risk and I have confessed it in front of the canyon and I am going to the autumn gathering to say it again. But there is a thing that has to be said before we go and it is not about me." He looked at the four wolves behind him and then at Hank. "Alpha. You have been at the side of the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack for a month. You have stood in her hall and fought her wolves and declared a bond with her and taken her part in a Council hearing. And the wolves of this pack have been asking themselves a question and I am going to ask it for them. Whose Alpha are you?"

The yard went quiet.

"Say the rest of it," Hank said.

"The rest of it is that you are the Alpha of the Çöl pack and you have not been in this pack house for a month. You have been on the mesa and in the Kızıltaş hall and in the quarry yard and in a cave in the creek bed. The spring house has been tended by your mother. The warriors have been led by me and by Sten. The pack has been fed by the women and by the town." Ryland's jaw was set. "And there are wolves in this pack who are saying that the Alpha has found a Luna and lost a pack. That he is the Alpha of the Çöl pack in name and the mate of the Kızıltaş Luna in fact, and that if the Council rules on the seats at the autumn gathering he will choose her and not us."

The yard was silent.

Hank got down off the wagon.

"That is a fair question," he said. "It is a fair question and I am going to answer it in front of the pack. But first I am going to ask you a question, Ryland, and I want you to answer it with the whole pack listening. Who put the doubt in your head?"

Ryland's face did not change. "No one put it in my head. I have been thinking about it for a week."

"You have been thinking about it for a week and you have been talking to four wolves in the corner of my hall since dawn. And one of those four wolves was at the gate last night talking to a Council soldier." Hank looked at the four wolves behind Ryland. "Which one of you was at the gate?"

The four wolves shifted. Then one of them, a lean man with a red beard, came forward and said, "I was at the gate. The soldier was on the road and he called me over and he said a thing and I listened to him. He said the Council would rule on the seats at the autumn gathering and that if the Çöl pack wanted to keep its Alpha it should ask him which seat he meant to hold."

The yard made a sound.

Hank looked at him. "And you brought that back to the pack and not to me."

"You have not been here," the lean man said. "That is the whole of it, Alpha. You have not been here."

Hank was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You are right. I have not been here. I have been at the side of the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack because a Council envoy has been tearing this canyon apart and because a rogue was putting ropes on wolves and because the water was being sold out from under us and because the pair is the only thing that stands between this canyon and a Council trustee." He looked around the yard. "But I have not been here. And a pack that is not led is a pack that listens to Council soldiers at the gate."

He turned to Ryland.

"You have asked me whose Alpha I am," he said. "And I am going to answer it. I am the Alpha of the Çöl pack and I am the mate of the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack and I am not going to give up either of them. Not at the autumn gathering and not after it. If the Council rules that the pair must give up one seat, then the Council and I will argue about it in the open hall. But I am not going to stand in this yard and let a Council soldier at the gate tell this pack that I have chosen her over you, because it is not true and it has never been true."

Ryland said, "Then prove it."

"How?"

"Stay," Ryland said. "Stay in this pack house tonight and tomorrow and the day after. Let the Luna go up the mesa road without you and let this pack see its Alpha in its own hall for a week before the autumn gathering. And if you will not do that, then I will ask the pack for a challenge and I will take the seat and I will lead them to the capital myself."

The yard went silent.

Hank looked at Ryland for a long moment. Then he looked at me.

I was standing by the wagon with my hands at my sides and the mark on my arm warm and steady.

"Derya," Hank said. "Say what you think."

I looked at the four wolves and the lean man with the red beard and the whole of the Çöl pack in the yard, and I said, "Ryland is right about one thing. A pack that is not led is a pack that listens to soldiers at the gate. And a Council soldier at the gate is exactly the thing that has been splitting this canyon for forty years." I came down off the step. "But Ryland is wrong about another thing. The Alpha of the Çöl pack has not been away from his pack. He has been in this canyon fighting for it. He has been in a mine tunnel with his mouth on a Kızıltaş wolf's mouth and his hands on his chest. He has been in a Council yard with his shirt off and his mark bare in front of a hundred wolves. He has been in a graveyard with his own father's coffin open. And every wolf in this canyon has seen him do it."

The yard was quiet.

"Stay," I said to Hank. "Stay in this pack house for a week and let them see you. I will go up the mesa road and I will hold the Kızıltaş pack and I will come down in a week and we will go to the capital together." I looked at Ryland. "And the challenge is not needed. The Alpha has answered you in front of the pack and the pack can judge him at the autumn gathering with the whole canyon watching. If he has lost you, you will know it then."

Ryland looked at me for a long moment. Then he picked up his hat off the wagon wheel.

"A week," he said.

"A week," Hank said.

The yard began to move again. The wagons were unloaded and the horses were put in the stable and the pack went back to its work, and I went into the small room at the end of the passage to get my coat and my saddlebag.

Hank came in behind me.

"You did not have to do that," he said.

"I did have to. He was right. A pack that is not led is a pack that listens to soldiers at the gate." I turned to him. "And there is a thing I have not told you. The Council soldier at the gate last night. He was not just talking to the Çöl wolves. Cal told me he was talking to a Kızıltaş wolf too, at the south gate, and he was saying the same thing. That the pair has too much power and that at the autumn gathering the Council will take one seat and that the Kızıltaş pack should be asking itself which seat the Luna will choose."

Hank's face changed.

"So we are both being played," he said.

"We are both being played." I put my hand on his chest over the mark. "So you stay here and hold your pack and I will go up the mesa road and hold mine. And in a week we go down that road together and we walk into the open hall and we read the first volume and we see who is still standing behind us."

He put his hand over mine.

"A week," he said.

I went up the mesa road that afternoon with Sten and Berik and Cal and the whole of the Kızıltaş pack, and Hank stood at the gate of the Çöl pack house with his wolves around him and watched us go.

We were halfway up the road when Cal came alongside me and said, "Luna. There is a rider on the road ahead. It is a Council soldier and he has a white flag and he is asking for the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack."

I looked up the road. The soldier was sitting on his horse in the middle of the road with a white cloth tied to his saddle horn.

"Let him come," I said.

He came. He took off his hat and held out a letter.

"Luna," he said. "From the Council hall at the quarry. The clerk has finished his record and he has sent it to the capital and he has asked me to give you this." He held out the letter. "It is not from the Council. It is from the Council's own healer. She has been going through the old records in the Council hall and she has found a thing she says you should see before the autumn gathering."

I took the letter and opened it.

It was short. The healer wrote that she had been reading the burial records of the canyon and that there was a discrepancy in the record for the year the first pair died. She wrote that the Council record said the first Luna was buried in the Çöl graveyard on the ridge and that the grave there was marked with a stone. And she wrote that when she went to look at the stone she found that the name on it was not the first Luna's name. It was the name of a wolf who had died twenty years later and who had no connection to the first pair at all.

The first Luna was not in the grave the Council had recorded. And the stone in the Çöl graveyard was a false stone put there to hide it.

I read it twice.

"Cal," I said. "Turn the pack around. We are going back to the Çöl graveyard."

"What is it?" Cal said.

"The first Luna," I said. "She is not where the Council said she was. And if the Council has been lying about where she is buried for forty years, then there is a grave in this canyon with no name on it and a stone in a graveyard with the wrong name on it, and I am going to find out which is which before we go to the capital."