The Spring Between Us

Chapter 78: The Healer's Confession

Mira did not get her bag.

She stood up from the table and went to the back of the hut and knelt down on the floorboards and counted along the wall with her hand the way she had done the night she gave me the bundle, and she lifted a board.

There was a space under it and the space was not empty. There was a small wooden box in it and a cloth bundle and a jar.

She brought them out and put them on the table.

"Before we go to the graveyard," she said. "There is a thing I have to give you and then I am going to say the rest of it and then I am going to do whatever you tell me to do."

I sat down at the table.

"The jar is the wolfsbane," Mira said. "It is the jar I took out of the box in my hut. There is a handful and a half left in it and I have not touched it since the night Arne died. The cloth bundle is the packet Ruth gave me back after you poured the first one out, and it is wrapped the way she wrapped it and it has her thumbprint in the wax if you want to look." She put her hand on the wooden box. "And this is the thing I have been hiding since the spring."

She opened the box.

Inside there was a vial. It was glass and it was small and it had a cork in it and there was a brown stain in the bottom of it, and beside it there was a folded paper.

"This is the vial I took from your mother's body," Mira said. "I drew it out of her throat the night she died and I put it in this box and I have kept it under the floor for four weeks. The paper is my own writing. It says where I took it from and when and what I found and I have signed it and dated it."

I picked up the vial and held it to the lamplight. The stain in the bottom was dark and it was dry and it had gone the colour of old tea.

"Wolfsbane," I said.

"Wolfsbane. And there is a thing about this vial that I have not told you." Mira's voice was steady and her hands were still on the table. "This is not the wolfsbane from my jar. My jar is grey and it is a powder and it comes from a plant that grows in the canyon. This is darker and it has a different smell and I have smelled it before. It is the wolfsbane that comes out of the Council's own stores. It is kept in the Council hall for the healer and it is measured out in vials just like this one and it has a mark on the cork."

She turned the vial over. There was a mark stamped into the wax of the cork. It was small and it was a crescent with a line through it and I had seen it before.

"The plate," I said. "The iron plate over the welling hole. It had that mark on it."

"It is the Council's mark for its own stores," Mira said. "The plate was a Council plate and the vial is a Council vial and the wolfsbane that killed your mother came out of the Council's own hall."

I put the vial down on the table.

"Then Ruth did not get the poison from your jar," I said.

"Ruth got the packet from my jar and she gave it back to me and I put it back in my box. That packet was a small thing. It would make a wolf sick for a week and it would not kill him." Mira looked at the vial. "This is not that. This is the strength the Council keeps for the wolves it wants to be certain about. And Ruth did not have it. Ruth could not get into the Council hall and she could not get into the healer's stores. So somebody else put this in your mother's cup."

"Who?"

"The Council healer," Mira said. "She is the only wolf in this canyon who can open the Council stores. She has been in this canyon for a week and she came down from the capital with the envoy and she has been standing beside the clerk at every hearing and she has signed the paper on your mother's body and she has signed the paper on Arne." She put her hand flat on the table. "Luna. The Council healer is the one who put the wolfsbane in your mother's cup. And she is the one who has been going through the burial records and who sent you the letter about the false stone."

The hut was very quiet.

"Then the letter is a trap," I said.

"The letter is a trap or the letter is a frightened wolf trying to make amends or the letter is both. I do not know." Mira's hands were shaking now. "But I know this. The Council healer is the only wolf in this canyon who could have put Council wolfsbane in your mother's cup and she is the only wolf who could have signed a paper that said a broken neck was a fall. And she is standing in the Council hall tonight with the clerk and the soldiers and she has asked you to come to a graveyard."

I stood up.

"Sten," I said.

He was at the door before I called him.

"Luna."

"The Council healer. Where is she?"

"She is in the Council hall at the quarry. She has been there all day with the clerk."

"Put six warriors on the road to the quarry and do not let her leave. And put four on the gate here. And tell Berik to bring the horses." I picked up the vial and the paper and the jar and put them in my jacket. "We are going to the graveyard tonight and we are going to take the Council healer with us."

We went down the mesa road at moonrise with twenty warriors and the whole of the pack behind us and the town coming up the canyon road, and we came into the yard of the Council hall with the lanterns swinging, and the clerk was on the steps with his book and the Council healer was beside him with her bag.

"Luna," the clerk said. "It is late. The hearing is closed and the record is sealed."

"The record is not sealed," I said. "There is a thing in this canyon that has not been written down and it is going to be written down tonight." I held up the vial. "This is the vial the healer of the Kızıltaş pack took from my mother's throat the night she died. It has the Council mark on the cork and it has Council wolfsbane in it and it is not the wolfsbane that grows in this canyon."

The clerk looked at the vial and then at the Council healer.

The Council healer was a thin woman with grey hair and a plain face and she looked at the vial and her face did not change.

"That is a vial from my stores," she said. "It is one of the vials I brought down from the capital. I have four of them and I have counted them every morning since I came to this canyon and they are all accounted for."

"Then count them now," I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she opened her bag and took out a small wooden case and opened it and there were four holes in the case where four vials should have been.

There were three.

The yard was silent.

The Council healer looked at the empty hole in the case.

"I counted them this morning," she said. "There were four."

"There were four this morning and there are three tonight and there is a fourth in my hand with your mark on the cork and my mother's blood in the glass." I put the vial on the steps beside her case. "So you can tell this canyon that you counted them and they were all accounted for, or you can tell this canyon the truth. And I will tell you before you choose that the healer of the Kızıltaş pack has signed a paper saying where she took this vial from and when, and the clerk will write it down, and the whole canyon is standing in this yard."

The Council healer looked at the vial. Then she looked at the clerk. Then she looked at the whole canyon standing in the yard with lanterns.

"I did not put it in the cup," she said. "I gave it to the Beta."

The yard made a sound.

"Say the rest of it," I said.

"The Beta came to me the night before the Luna died," the Council healer said. "She came to my room in the Council hall and she said the envoy had sent her and that she needed a vial of wolfsbane for a wolf in the pack who was sick. And I gave it to her because the envoy had sent her and because I had no reason to doubt her. And then the Luna died and I signed the paper and I did not think about the vial again until the healer of the Kızıltaş pack put it in my hand tonight."

"Ruth," I said.

"Ruth," the Council healer said. "It was Ruth."

I stood in the yard of the Council hall with the vial on the steps and the whole canyon behind me.

"Then it is written down," I said. "And in three days we go to the capital and we put the whole of it in the open hall, and the Council will hear what its own healer gave to a Beta and what that Beta did with it."

The clerk picked up his pen.

And out on the canyon road a rider came up at a gallop with a lantern and a letter, and he pulled up in the yard and said, "Luna. The Council in the capital has ruled on the matter of the Kızıltaş succession. The ruling has come by wire to Green River and a rider brought it up. The Council has stripped you of the Luna title and it has named Ruth as interim Luna and it has ordered the pack to appear before the autumn gathering to answer for the conduct of its Luna."

The yard went silent.

I looked at the clerk.

"Ruth is dead," I said.

The rider looked at his letter.

"The ruling does not know that," he said.