The Spring Between Us

Chapter 83: Two Wolves in the Dark

I did not shout.

I sat on the sand with Hank beside me and the lantern between us and Ruth across from us with her hands folded, and I looked at her face in the lamplight and it was her and it was not her. The auburn hair was pinned up and the grey jacket was buttoned and the grey eyes were steady, but there was something in the set of her mouth that had not been there before.

"You are dead," I said. "I buried you. I stood at the grave and the whole pack stood with me and I said the words."

"You buried a wolf from the mine who had been dead in the spring and had nobody to claim him," Ruth said. "The Council man had him put in a Council coat and wrapped in a tarp and the healer of the Council signed the paper and I went into a cellar under the Council hall and stayed there."

"The crate. The body in the crate."

"Another wolf from the mine. There were two of them, in the spring, and the Council man kept them both." Ruth's hands were still in her lap. "The Council man did not hang me. He put me in the cellar and told me that if I came out he would hang me in earnest and that if I stayed in the cellar and let the canyon think I was dead he would let me go when the autumn gathering was over. And I believed him because I was frightened and because I had confessed to a murder I did not do and because a cell in a cellar is better than a rope in a hall."

Hank said, "You confessed to the murder of the Luna's mother in front of two witnesses and a clerk."

"I confessed to the murder of the Luna's mother because the Council man told me that if I did not he would put the rope on the Luna and on the Alpha and on the boy and on the whole of the pack." Ruth's voice did not rise. "He told me that the rogue would say whatever he paid her to say and that the healer would sign whatever he paid her to sign and that the only way to stop it was for one wolf to take the blame. So I took it. And then he put me in a cellar and told me the canyon thought I was dead and that I would be let go when it was over."

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

"Ruth," I said. "You put the rope on my mother's wrists."

Ruth looked at me.

"Yes," she said.

The river went past outside. Hank did not move.

"Say the rest of it," I said.

"I went to the Council healer the night before your mother died and I told her the envoy had sent me for a vial of wolfsbane and she gave it to me and I put it in your mother's cup for a week and I watched her get slow and confused and I told the pack she was grieving." Ruth's hands were still. "And then I hired the rogue and I opened the pack house door and I took her up the south track and I stood at the edge of the rim while the rope went on and while the horse went over. And then I came back down and I put the rope burns on her wrists in my own mind as a thing I would never say and I told the pack she had fallen and I rode out at first light with the search party and I brought her body home."

The cave was silent.

"Why?" I said.

"Because the envoy paid me and because I wanted the seat." Ruth's grey eyes did not move from my face. "Not because I hated your mother. I loved your mother. I served her for eleven years and I loved her and I put wolfsbane in her cup because a Council man told me the seat would be mine and because I had been the Beta of that pack for eleven years and I had done the work and I had held the pack together and I had never once been given the chair." She stopped. "And then I sat in the chair for four weeks and the pack hated me and the Council man owned me and I could not sleep and I could not eat and there was a dead woman in my dreams every night. And then I rode down that mesa road and confessed to a murder I did not do to save a pack that I had already ruined."

I got up.

I stood in the cave with my back to her and my hands at my sides.

"You are the reason my mother is dead," I said.

"I am the reason your mother is dead."

"You are the reason Elias is dead and Helle is dead and Arne is dead and my Beta is a story that the pack tells."

"I am the reason for all of it."

I turned around.

"Then why are you here?" I said. "You could have stayed in that cellar and let the autumn gathering end and walked out of the canyon when it was over and nobody would ever have known. Why did you come to this cave?"

Ruth put her hand into her coat and brought out a paper.

"Because the Council man's father came out of his retirement," she said. "And because I have been in the capital for three days and I have been in the hall and I have heard the old man speak. And because the old man is going to stand in that hall at dawn and he is going to say a thing that will make the Chancellor rule against you." She held out the paper. "This is a copy of the report he wrote forty years ago. The one that put the first volume in the vault. And it does not say what the Chancellor read out in the hall today. It says something else."

I took the paper.

"The Chancellor read the report from the Council's own records," I said. "It said the first volume was a forgery."

"That is the copy the old man left in the Council records. This is the copy he kept for himself." Ruth's voice was quiet. "Read the last page."

I read the last page.

It was in the old man's hand and it was dated forty years ago and it said that the first volume had been examined and found to be genuine and that it must be kept in the vault and never read and that the Council must never allow the pair to be declared in the open hall, because a pair declared in the open hall could set the Council aside and the Council would have no power over the canyon again.

And under that, in the same hand, there was a line that made the cave go cold.

The first pair must be removed before the third pair is born. The Luna is with child.

I sat down on the sand.

"Your mother was not the third pair," Ruth said. "Your grandmother was. She was carrying your mother when the first pair died and the old man knew it and he wrote it down and he had the first pair killed to stop the child being born into a pair." She looked at me. "And then your mother was born and she grew up and she had you. And the old man has been watching this canyon for forty years waiting for the third pair to show. And now the third pair is standing in a cave in the capital with the first volume and the mark on her arm."

I looked at the paper.

"Why are you telling me this?" I said.

Ruth looked at me for a long moment.

"Because I killed your mother," she said. "And I cannot give her back. And I have been sitting in a cellar for three days with nothing to do but think, and I have decided that I would rather stand in that hall at dawn and say what I did in front of the whole Council than sit in a cellar and let an old man finish what he started." She put her hands on her knees. "So I am going to walk into that hall at dawn with you. And I am going to stand in front of the Chancellor and the whole autumn gathering and I am going to say that I put the wolfsbane in the cup and the rope on the wrists and that the Council man paid me and that the Council man's father ordered the first pair killed. And then the Council can hang me in the hall and I will not say a word against it."

The river went past outside. The lantern burned. Hank was beside me with his hand on my back.

"Ruth," I said. "If you walk into that hall at dawn, the Council will hang you."

"I know."

"And if you do not, you can walk out of this canyon tonight and nobody will ever find you."

"I know."

I looked at her.

"Then why?" I said.

Ruth's grey eyes were steady.

"Because I want to be the wolf who told the truth at the end," she said. "I have been the wolf who lied for eleven years and I have been the wolf who killed her own Alpha and I have been the wolf who was hanged in a crate and buried in a graveyard. And I am tired, Derya. I am so tired. I would rather be the wolf who stood in the open hall and told the truth and was hanged for it than the wolf who sat in a cellar and let an old man win."

I stood up.

"Then get up," I said. "And come out of this cave. The hall sits at dawn and we have three hours."

Ruth got up. She picked up the lantern and stood in the mouth of the cave with the light in her hand and her grey jacket buttoned and her auburn hair pinned up.

"Luna," she said. "There is one more thing. The old man is going to stand in that hall at dawn and he is going to say that the first volume is a forgery and that the report says so. And when the Chancellor reads the report from the Council records it will say what he wrote in it. But this paper says what he really found. So put this paper in front of the Chancellor before he speaks and the whole of it comes down on him at once."

I took the paper and put it inside my jacket.

"Then we go," I said. "And Ruth. You will walk into that hall in front of me and you will not run and you will not stop and you will not say a word until the Chancellor calls you. And if you do run, I will not come after you. I will let you go. But I will tell the whole hall what you did and there will be no place in this world where you can stand and not hear it."

Ruth nodded.

"I will not run," she said.

We went out of the cave into the grey light and down the bank to the horses, and Hank walked beside me with his hand on my back, and the mark on my arm was warm and steady and my wolf was awake and quiet and ready.

And across the river, on the road that came down to the bridge, there were soldiers on horses and a wagon, and they were coming toward the bridge, and the man at the front of them had silver hair.

"Ruth," I said. "Did you come alone?"

Ruth looked at the road.

"No," she said. "I came with the Council man's father. He has been in the capital for three days and he has been in the hall and he has a wagon and six soldiers and he told me he was going to the bridge to wait for the dawn." She looked at me. "Luna. He does not know I came to find you."

The soldiers came onto the bridge with the wagon behind them and the old man at the front on a grey horse, and he stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked down the bank at the three of us standing by the horses.

"Ah," he said. "The girl with the book. And the Beta who is dead." He gathered his reins. "I thought you might be here. Come up to the road. I have a thing to say to you before the hall sits."