The Spring Between Us

Chapter 94: The Beta's Weakness

Mira came out of her hut at midnight and said Cal would live.

We were all in the yard waiting. The whole pack and half the town and Hank and his wolves and the Chancellor with her hood up. Mira wiped her hands on her apron and said, "He has two broken ribs and a cut on his head and he lost a great deal of blood. He is asleep and he will sleep until morning and when he wakes he will be sore and angry and hungry. But he will live."

The yard let out a breath.

I went in and sat by his cot for a while. His sandy hair was stuck to his forehead and there was a bandage around his ribs and his face was pale under the freckles, and he was breathing slow and even.

"You are a fool," I said. "You are seventeen years old and you are a fool and you went down to that wash with two warriors and you told me you would come back before dark."

He did not answer. He was asleep.

Mira came in and sat down at her table and said, "Luna. There is a thing I have been wanting to tell you since the circle and I have been putting it off because it is not a good thing to say about a wolf who is going to be hanged."

"Ruth."

"Ruth." Mira lit the lamp. "When she came to me in the spring and asked for the wolfsbane, I gave her a packet and I watched her hands. They were shaking. Ruth's hands never shook. I have known that woman for eleven years and I have never seen her hands shake." She put the lamp down. "And then in the circle tonight I watched her stand in front of the whole pack and say what she did. And her hands shook the whole time. She put them behind her back so nobody would see."

I sat down in the chair.

"What are you telling me?"

"I am telling you that the Beta is ill." Mira sat down across from me. "I have been her healer for eleven years and I have seen her wolf come up less and less. Three years ago she could hold a shift for an hour. Two years ago it was half an hour. This spring she came to me and asked me for a thing to keep her wolf steady and I gave her a tonic and she took it for a month and then she stopped." She looked at me. "Luna. Ruth's wolf is failing. She can hold a shift for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and then it goes and she is a woman again and she cannot get it back for an hour. If she had challenged you to a duel in the old way and you had shifted, she would have lost in ten minutes and she knew it."

The hut was quiet.

"Then why did she challenge me?" I said. "She knew she would lose."

"Because she did not want to win. She wanted the pack to hear it from her." Mira put her hand on the table. "But there is a thing I did not tell you. When she stood in the circle tonight, she was shaking and her wolf was close to the surface and it did not come up. And I have seen that before. In a wolf who has been given wolfsbane over a long time."

I looked at her.

"Ruth was poisoned?"

"Ruth was given wolfsbane for a month." Mira's face was grey. "I do not know who gave it to her. It could have been the Council man in the cellar or it could have been the Council healer or it could have been a wolf in this pack. But her wolf is failing and it is failing from wolfsbane and she has been carrying it since the spring and she did not tell anyone."

I got up.

"Where is she?"

"She is in the wagon on the mesa road. The Chancellor put four soldiers on it and told her she would not be let out until the capital."

I went out of the hut and across the yard to the gate. The wagon was on the road with four soldiers around it and a lantern on the tail and Ruth was sitting on the bench inside with her hands chained to the rail and her auburn hair down her back.

She looked up when I came to the tail of the wagon.

"Luna," she said. "It is late."

"Mira says your wolf is failing," I said. "She says you have been given wolfsbane for a month and that you cannot hold a shift for more than ten minutes."

Ruth looked at me for a long moment.

"Mira is a good healer," she said. "She always was."

"Who gave it to you?"

"The Council man. In the cellar. He put it in my food for a week before I came out." Ruth's hands were still on the rail. "He told me it was a tonic for my nerves and I believed him because I wanted to believe him. And then I came out of the cellar and walked four hundred miles and my wolf has not come up since."

"You knew. In the circle. You knew you could not fight."

"I knew." Ruth's grey eyes were steady. "I did not challenge you for the seat. I challenged you for the truth and the pack heard it and that is what I wanted. And if you had taken the challenge and fought me, you would have beaten me in ten minutes and the pack would have seen a Luna beat a sick wolf in a circle and that would have been the end of it."

I stood at the tail of the wagon.

"There is a thing I have to say to you," I said. "And I am going to say it once and then I am going to go back to my pack. You killed my mother and you put a rope on Helle and you put wolfsbane in a cup that killed a man with children. I am not going to forgive you for it and I am not going to ask the pack to forgive you for it. But you came up that road tonight and you stood in the circle and you told the truth to the pack's face and you did it with a failing wolf and a chained hand." I looked at her. "And there is a thing I have not told anyone. When I called the spring tonight the water came back. And when I read the pact at the spring the stone came up out of the welling hole with my grandmother's name on it. And the first thing the stone said was that the Council murdered the first pair. The second thing it said was that the Council man who ordered it was named Silas. And the third thing it said was that there is a copy of the first volume in the spring house."

Ruth looked at me.

"That is not a thing to tell a chained wolf," she said.

"No. It is a thing to tell a wolf who is going to the capital to be hanged and who has a failing wolf and who came up a road at midnight to tell the truth." I put my hand on the rail of the wagon. "Ruth. There are wolves in the capital who want the Chancellor recalled. They have the old clerk's report and they are going to use it. And the only thing that can stop them is the first volume and the stone and the pact and the pack. And the pack is going to the capital at dawn." I looked at her. "I am not going to let you out of this wagon. But I am going to tell the Chancellor that you are ill and that you need a healer and that you are to be treated as a sick prisoner and not a well one. And if you stand in the capital and say what you did in the circle, then the Council will hear it from you and not from a clerk's book."

Ruth looked at me for a long moment.

"Luna," she said. "There is a thing I have not told you. The Council healer. The one who gave me the vial. She is not what she says she is. She is the old clerk's daughter."

I stood at the tail of the wagon.

"Say that again."

"The Council healer is the old clerk's daughter. She is the envoy's sister. She has been in the capital for twenty years and she has been the Council healer for ten and she has been her father's hand in the Council the way the envoy was her father's hand in the canyon." Ruth's hands were tight on the rail. "She gave me the vial and she signed the paper on your mother and she signed the paper on Arne. And she is in this canyon tonight with the Chancellor and the clerk and the whole of the autumn gathering. And she is the one who has been telling the wolves in the capital that the pair is a fraud."

I turned and looked back at the yard.

The Council healer was standing on the porch of the pack house with her bag in her hand and her grey hair and her plain face, talking to the Chancellor.