The Spring Between Us

Chapter 81: Hank Comes for Me

The old man looked at me across the hall and I looked at him.

He was tall and thin and his hair was silver and combed back and his coat was good cloth and his hands were folded in front of him. His face was the envoy's face grown old. The same narrow nose and the same thin mouth and the same pale blue eyes.

"Luna," he said. "I have been waiting for you. I have heard a great deal about you from my son."

"I am not the Luna," I said. "The Council has stripped me."

"The Council has stripped you and the Council has named a dead woman in your place and the Council has been made to look very foolish in front of the whole of the autumn gathering." He looked at the Chancellor. "Which is why the Chancellor has asked me to come out of my retirement and stand in this hall and tell the Council what is true and what is not."

The Chancellor was an old woman with white hair and a square jaw and she said, "The autumn gathering is open. The Council of Alphas will hear the matter of the Kızıltaş canyon. The former envoy's father has been called as a witness and has been sworn."

The old man put his hand on his heart. "I am Silas, Council clerk for forty years and retired these ten. I am here to tell this hall that the papers the girl has brought are forgeries and the first volume is a fake and the pair is a fraud."

The hall stirred.

I stood at the door with the whole of the canyon behind me and the first volume inside my jacket and the mark on my arm bright.

"Sworn," I said. "You have been sworn and you are standing in this hall and calling me a liar. Then I will stand in this hall and call you a murderer." I came down the hall. "Your name is on the stone that came up out of the spring. Your name is on the burial record that hid the first Luna for forty years. Your name is on the papers your son signed and the letters your son wrote and the water order and the ore receipts. And there is a rogue in a cell in the canyon who will tell this hall that a man with silver hair and pale blue eyes paid her to put a rope on my mother's wrists."

The old man did not move.

"My son paid her," he said. "My son has confessed it. My son is in irons in the canyon and I have disowned him. I have come out of my retirement to say so in this hall. I am an old man and I have spent my life in the service of the Council and I will not have my name dragged through the mud by a girl who has been reading a book she found in a hole in the ground."

"You put the rope on my mother's wrists," I said. "You and nobody else. And your son has been finishing your work for forty years and he did not know he was doing it and he has told the clerk so."

The hall went loud. The Chancellor struck the table with her hand.

"Order," she said. "The hall will hear the papers and the record and the witnesses. The girl will put her papers on the table and the clerk will read them out and the hall will judge them."

I put the papers on the table.

It took the afternoon. The clerk read the water order and the ore receipts and the assay shed papers and the lease and the list my mother wrote and the page out of the quarry ledger. He read the burial record and the healer's letter and the paper Mira had signed about the vial. He read the confession of the rogue Nell and the testimony of Owen and the doctor and the sick man's wife and the clerk's own record of the hearings in the canyon. And then he read the first volume.

The hall went silent when he read the first volume.

He read it slowly and he read it twice and when he read the line that said the pair may set aside a Council that breaks the pact, the Chancellor sat forward in her chair and put her hand on the table.

"That is a forgery," the old Silas said. "That line is not in the first volume. I have read the first volume. It is in the vault and it does not say that."

The clerk looked at him.

"Clerk," I said. "The Council has a vault. The Council has a copy of the first volume. Bring it into this hall and read it out and let the hall compare the two."

The Chancellor looked at the old man and then at me.

"The vault will be opened," she said.

It took an hour. Four Council soldiers went down to the vault and came back with a box and a book in the box. The book was older than mine and the leather had gone black and it had a lock on it and the Chancellor opened it with a key from her own neck.

She read it out herself.

It was the same book. It was the same hand and the same words and the same pact. 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 be one wolf and shall hold both packs. It said the pair shall be declared in the open hall once and once only.

And it said the pair may set aside a Council that breaks the pact.

The hall was silent.

The Chancellor put the book down on the table and looked at the old man.

"Council clerk Silas," she said. "The first volume is not a forgery. It has been in the Council's own vault for a hundred and forty years and it says exactly what the girl says it says. So you will stand in this hall and explain to me why a retired clerk of this Council swore on his honor that it said something else."

The old man's face did not change.

"I have not read it in forty years," he said.

"You wrote the report that put it in the vault," the Chancellor said. "I have the report here. It was written by you in the year the first pair died and it says the first volume is a forgery and should be kept in the vault and never read. And under it there is the seal of the Council and the signature of the Chancellor of that year, who is dead, and the signature of the clerk, which is yours." She looked at him. "So you will explain to this hall how you came to write a report that called the first volume a forgery forty years before the girl brought it into this hall."

The old man did not say anything.

And out in the yard there was a sound of horses and boots and a voice I knew, and the hall doors opened and Sten came in with four warriors and a prisoner in irons between them.

It was the envoy.

He was grey and thin and his coat was torn and he had been on the road for three days in irons, and he came into the hall with his wrists chained and his head up and he looked at his father.

"Father," he said.

The old man looked at him.

"I told them," the envoy said. "I told them everything. The clerk has it in his book and the healer has signed it and the rogue has confessed it. I have been finishing your work for forty years and I did not know it and I have told them so." He stopped in the middle of the hall. "And there is a thing I have not told them and I am going to tell them now in front of the whole Council. My father wrote the report that hid the first volume. My father paid the rogue who put the rope on the Luna's mother's wrists. And my father put the wolfsbane in the cup of the Kızıltaş Alpha nineteen years ago and in the cup of the Çöl Alpha twenty years ago and in the cup of the Luna four weeks ago."

The hall went silent.

The old man looked at his son for a long moment. Then he said, "You are a fool."

"I am a fool," the envoy said. "I am a fool and I am your son and I have been your hand for forty years and I did not know it."

The Chancellor stood up.

"Council clerk Silas," she said. "You are under arrest for the murder of three wolves of this canyon and for the corruption of this Council and for forty years of lies. Take him."

The soldiers came forward. The old man did not resist. He put his hands behind his back and the irons went on his wrists and he looked at me as they took him past.

"You are a girl with a book," he said. "And you have won today. But the Council is not the book and the book is not the Council and this hall is full of wolves who will read the book and do exactly what I did."

"Then I will come back and read it again," I said.

They took him out.

The hall was silent for a moment.

Then the Chancellor sat down and put her hands flat on the table and said, "The Council of Alphas will now rule on the matter of the Kızıltaş canyon."