The Spring Between Us

Chapter 5: A Truce Nobody Wants

I opened the door with my sleeve pulled down over my wrist.

Ruth stood on the step with the sun behind her and a folded paper in her hand. Behind her, the yard had filled up. I counted eleven wolves by the gate and four more on the porch and old Tomas with his bad hip standing in the middle of the path because nobody had told him to go home. Cal was at the corner of the hut with his arms crossed and his jaw set, and he was watching Ruth the way a dog watches a stranger at the fence.

"Ten minutes," Ruth said. "That is what the rider says. The envoy is ten minutes behind him on the mesa road."

"The letter said within the week."

"The letter was written before he left the Council. He has been riding since." Ruth held out the paper. "The rider brought this as well. It is addressed to the pack, not to you."

I took it and unfolded it. It was short. It said that in the matter of the Kızıltaş succession, the Council of Alphas had appointed an envoy to conduct an inquiry, and that the envoy would hear testimony from any wolf of the pack who wished to speak, and that the Luna was to make herself and the pack records available to him without delay.

"Any wolf who wishes to speak," I said. "That is a fine way to run a pack. Ask the warriors what they think of their Luna and write it all down."

"That is how the Council has always done it." Ruth's voice was reasonable. "Your mother sat through two of these inquiries. She said the trick was to give them nothing to write about."

"My mother is dead."

"Yes." Ruth's grey eyes did not move from my face. "And I am sorry. But the pack is waiting, and they have been waiting since dawn, and half of them think you went over the border to make a deal with the Çöl pack and the other half think you went over to spy. Both halves want to know what you are going to do about the water."

"And what do you think I should do about the water?"

Ruth stepped closer. The yard was loud behind her, the way a yard gets loud when everyone in it is pretending not to listen, and she lowered her voice so that only I could hear it. "I think you should finish what you started. Not tonight. Not here. But soon, and quietly. The tincture is still in your pocket, or it is in Hank's pocket, and either way it can be got. Three pinches in the spring house and the Çöl pack is on its back for a month, and then you go to the Council with a water petition and a pack that has kept its word and not shed a drop of blood. That is how your mother would have done it. That is how a Luna wins an inquiry."

"She would have poisoned a spring?"

"She would have done what was necessary and not told me about it." Ruth's mouth curved. "You are not your mother, Derya. That is not a criticism. But you cannot hold this pack by being careful and honest. Careful and honest wolves get eaten in this canyon."

I looked past her at the yard. Tomas with his bad hip. Two warriors by the gate with their jackets half on. A woman with a baby on her hip and a bucket in her hand, waiting for water that was not going to come. All of them looking at me, and behind their looking, I could feel the thing I had been feeling since I rode in: they wanted a fight. Not all of them, and not the same fight, but there was a hunger in that yard that had nothing to do with water. A dry pack with a dead Luna and a young Luna and a rich neighbor across the border is a pack that wants someone to blame and someone to hit.

I had the mark under my sleeve, and Mira's words in my ear, and a folded paper in my pocket with Hank's small firm handwriting on it.

"The tincture is gone," I said.

Ruth's eyebrows went up. "Gone where?"

"I poured it out in the creek bed on the way home." It was the first lie I had told her, and it came out of my mouth smoother than I expected, and something in my chest turned over when I heard it. "I stood at the border for an hour before dawn and I thought about what my mother would have done, and I decided she would not have poisoned a pack's water. So I poured it out. If that was the wrong decision, then it is mine and I will answer for it."

Ruth was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You poured it out."

"Yes."

"Into the creek bed."

"Yes."

"Then the creek bed will be poisoned and the horses drink from it." Her voice was still mild. "You should have buried it."

I had not thought of that. I had not thought of it because I was making the lie up as I went, and now there was a hole in it and Ruth was standing in front of me looking at the hole. The woman with the bucket had come closer. Cal had uncrossed his arms.

"I will tell the stable master to keep the horses off the south creek for a week," I said.

"Do that." Ruth turned and walked toward the hall, and then stopped and turned back. "Derya. One more thing, and then I will leave you alone. The envoy will ask about the border. He will ask why the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack crossed into Çöl territory at night without her Beta and without her warriors. What will you tell him?"

"That I was looking for water."

"He will ask what you found."

"I will tell him I found a spring house and an Alpha who was willing to talk."

Ruth looked at me for a long moment. Her grey eyes were calm and her face was patient and I thought, not for the first time, that she would have made a very good Luna if she had ever been given the chance, and that this was exactly the reason I could not trust her.

"He will ask whether you touched him," she said.

The yard went quiet in my ears, though the yard itself had not changed. "What?"

"A truce bond is made by touch. Every wolf in this canyon knows the old stories. The envoy will ask whether the Kızıltaş Luna laid hands on the Çöl Alpha, and if you say no he will have his healer look at your skin, and if you say yes he will write it down and take it back to the Council." Ruth's voice was very soft. "I am telling you this as your Beta. If there is a mark on your arm, Derya, you should let me see it now, while there is still time to decide what to do about it."

The sun was on the yard and my sleeve was down over my wrist and the mark under it was warm and steady and patient as a second pulse. Behind Ruth, the hall door stood open and I could see the long table and the benches and my mother's chair at the head of it with the carved back and the worn armrests.

"There is no mark," I said.

Ruth held my eyes for three breaths. Then she nodded, once, and went into the hall.

I let out the breath I had been holding and my knees went weak and I put my hand on the doorframe of Mira's hut to keep upright. Cal was there in two steps with his hand under my elbow.

"Luna," he said, low. "What did she want?"

"She wanted me to poison a spring and she wanted to see my arm."

Cal's freckled face did not change, but his hand tightened on my elbow. "And?"

"I lied to her twice in five minutes." I straightened up and pulled my sleeve down again out of habit, though it was already down. "Cal. I need you to do something for me and I need you to do it without asking me why."

"Anything."

"The spring house on our land. The one above the mine, where the pipe comes down to the cistern. I want to look at it. Not with Ruth and not with the warriors. Just you and me and a lantern, tonight, after the envoy has gone to bed." I looked at him. "I think our water did not dry up. I think somebody turned it off."

Cal's mouth opened and then shut. Then he said, "The envoy is here, Luna. He is in the hall with Ruth right now. He came up the road five minutes ago while you were in the hut with Mira, and he has already asked for the pack records and for your mother's ledger."

I turned and looked across the yard at the hall door. There was a horse tied at the rail that I had not seen before, a tall grey with a Council brand on its flank, and beside it stood a man in a dark coat with his hat in his hand, talking to Ruth on the step. He had silver hair. Even from the hut I could see it, bright as a coin in the morning sun, and something in the way he stood, with his weight on his back foot and his hat held just so, told me that he had been standing on steps like that one for most of his life.

The envoy turned his head as if he had felt me looking, and across the yard our eyes met. He had pale blue eyes and a pleasant, patient face, and he smiled at me and raised his hat.

"Luna," he called. "There you are. I was beginning to think I would have to conduct this inquiry without you."