The Spring Between Us

Chapter 89: The Pact Broken Twice

Nora took us down through the town to a stone building at the back of the Council hall, low and long and windowless, with a door that had a Council seal pressed into the wood.

"The record house," she said. "The old records are kept here. The new ones go to the capital. The old ones never leave."

The door was locked. Nora took a key out of her coat and put it in the lock and it turned.

"Where did you get that?" Hank said.

"From the Chancellor. She gave it to me in the small room while you were fetching the letter." Nora pushed the door open. "She said if the pair is going to be beyond the Council, the pair should know what the Council has been doing with the law."

The record house was cold and it smelled of dust and old paper. There were shelves from the floor to the ceiling and they were full of books and boxes and rolls of paper tied with string, and there was a table at the end with a lamp on it and a chair.

Nora lit the lamp and set it on the table and went to the far shelf. She ran her finger along the spines and stopped and pulled out a book.

"This is the Council law book," she said. "The first volume of the Council's own law, written a hundred and forty years ago. It is the book the Council keeps its own law in." She put it on the table. "And this is the copy of the pact that the Council made in the same year."

She put a second book beside it. It was the same size and the same binding and the same age.

"Two books," I said.

"Two books," Nora said. "The first pair wrote the pact and the Council wrote the law in the same year. And the Council's law was supposed to be the same as the pact. It was supposed to say what the pact says. Read the law book and you will see."

I opened the law book. It was old and the pages were soft and the hand was small and square, and it was written in the same style as the first volume.

It said the Council of Alphas is made to keep the peace between packs and not to rule them. It said a Council that rules the packs has broken the pact. It said the water of a canyon belongs to the land and the packs and to no one else. It said the pair shall guard the spring and shall be declared in the open hall and that after the declaration the Council shall not sit in judgment on the pair.

And then it said something the first volume did not say.

It said the pair shall be one wolf and that one wolf shall hold both packs and that the two packs shall be one people under the pair.

"That is what the first volume says," I said.

"That is what the first volume says. And now read the second half of the book."

I turned the pages. The second half of the book was in a different hand and it was newer and it had been written over the top of the old writing, and the old writing had been scraped away and the new writing put in its place.

The new writing said the Council of Alphas is the highest law in the land and that the packs answer to the Council. It said a pair between rival packs is a danger to the peace and that the Council shall rule on any such pair and may void it. It said the water of a canyon belongs to the Council and may be sold and pumped and licensed. It said the pair shall be declared in the open hall and that after the declaration the Council shall sit in judgment on the pair for one year and may separate them.

I sat down in the chair.

"They rewrote it," I said. "They scraped the old law off the page and wrote a new law on top of it."

"They rewrote it a hundred and forty years ago," Nora said. "The old clerk's father did it and the Council of that year signed it and the Council has been reading the new law ever since and calling it the old law." She put her finger on the scraped page. "Look at the date. It is the year the first pair died. They killed the pair and then they rewrote the law that made the pair and then they put the first volume in the vault and the false report on top of it."

Hank was reading over my shoulder. "And the rewritten law is the law the Council has been using ever since. The pumping orders and the trustees and the water licences and the ruling on the bond. All of it is built on a law that was written over the top of the real one."

I sat in the record house with the lamp and the two books and my hands on the table.

"There is more," Nora said. She pulled a box off the shelf and put it on the table and opened it. It was full of papers and they were old and they were tied in bundles with string and each bundle had a year on it. "These are the Council's own copies of its rulings. Every ruling the Council has made about a canyon or a pair or a spring for a hundred and forty years. And I have been going through them for a week and there is a pattern."

She untied a bundle and spread the papers on the table.

"Every twenty years," she said. "Every twenty years the Council rules on a pair and finds it void and separates it and the pair dies. The first pair was in the year of the rewriting. The second pair was twenty years ago and it was your father and my mate. And there is a ruling in this box from forty years before that and another from forty years before that and each of them names a pair and voids it and separates it."

I looked at the papers. There were eleven of them. Eleven rulings and eleven pairs and eleven voids and separations, going back a hundred and forty years.

"Eleven pairs," I said.

"Eleven pairs and eleven voidings and every one of them died within a year of the ruling." Nora put her hand on the papers. "The Council has been hunting the pair for a hundred and forty years. Every twenty years a pair is born in a canyon somewhere and the Council finds it and voids it and the pair dies. This is not a thing that happened to my family and to yours. This is a thing the Council has been doing since the year it rewrote the law."

The record house was very quiet.

"The pact was broken twice," I said. "Once when they rewrote the law and once when they killed the first pair. And then they kept breaking it every twenty years and calling it law."

"And the old clerk is the last of them," Hank said. "He has been the Council's hand for forty years and he has signed two of these rulings himself and he is sitting in a cell in the capital tonight waiting for a trial." He looked at me. "Derya. If the pair is declared tomorrow and the Council is set aside, this is the thing we put in front of the autumn gathering. Not just the water and the ore and the murders. This. Eleven rulings and eleven pairs and a law that was scraped off a page and written over."

I picked up the law book and the box of rulings and held them.

"Then we take them to the hall tomorrow at dawn," I said. "And we put them in front of the Chancellor and the autumn gathering and we say this is what the Council has been. And then we go to the spring and we call it."

Nora put her hand on my arm.

"Luna," she said. "There is a thing in this box that I have not shown you yet. It is the last ruling in the bundle. It is twenty years old and it is about your father and my mate and it has the old clerk's signature on it." She looked at me. "And there is a note pinned to it in the old clerk's hand. It says, the second pair is dead but the blood is not. Watch the daughter. She will bear the third."

The lamp guttered. The record house was cold and full of paper.

"He has been watching me since before I was born," I said.

"He has been watching you since before you were born." Nora put her hand on mine. "And there is one thing more. The note says watch the daughter. It does not say watch the son. He has been watching you and he has not been watching Hank. And the third pair is a pair. So there is a thing in this canyon that the old clerk missed for twenty years, and I am going to tell you what it is."

"What?"

"The third pair is a Luna and an Alpha," Nora said. "But the pair does not come from the Alphas. It comes from the mates. Your mother was a mate. I was a mate. The pair is born to the mates, not to the pair." She looked at me. "The old clerk has been watching the wrong wolves for twenty years. He watched your father and my mate and he thought the pair was in them. And he watched you because you were the daughter. But he did not watch Hank. And Hank is the son of a mate and he is the other half of the pair and the old clerk never saw it."

I looked at Hank.

"He never saw it," I said.

"He never saw it until the Council gathering three months ago when the two of you stood in the same hall and the mark came up." Nora put the note down. "And now he has seen it and he has confessed and he is in a cell and the pair is going to be declared in the open hall tomorrow at dawn."

I stood up. I put the law book and the box of rulings in my jacket and I went to the door.

"Nora," I said. "The spring. The pair can call it at any time of need."

"The first volume says so."

"Then we go to the spring tonight," I said. "Before the declaration. Before the hall. We go to the spring tonight and we call it and we see whether the water comes back. And if it does not, then there is no point in declaring anything in the morning."

Nora looked at me for a long moment.

"Then we go tonight," she said. "And we take the whole of the autumn gathering with us."