The Spring Between Us

Chapter 16: Ruth Draws a Line

I went out with the newest ledger in my hand.

Hank came behind me and Cal behind him, and the tunnel was narrow and Ruth stood at the ledge with her lantern raised and her grey jacket buttoned to the throat. There was a second lantern behind her on the ledge and a second set of boots, and when I came into the light I saw who was wearing them. It was one of the warriors from the south fence, a broad quiet man named Berik who had served my mother for twelve years, and he was looking at me with an expression I could not read.

"You followed me," I said.

"I followed Cal." Ruth's voice was mild. "I have been watching the second gate since the pack meeting. When I saw the lantern go up on the fence post I knew you were going somewhere you did not want me to know about. Berik and I came down the track behind you and waited at the tipple until you were in the shaft."

"You brought a warrior to spy on your Luna."

"I brought a witness." Ruth set her lantern down on the ledge. "There is a difference, Derya, and I am going to explain it to you slowly, because you have been up all night and you are not thinking clearly. You are the Luna of this pack. Everything you do is the pack's business. When you go down a mine shaft at midnight with the Alpha of a rival pack and a boy who worships you and no one else, you are not making a private decision. You are making a decision for forty wolves who will have to live with the consequences. So I brought Berik, because whatever happens down here tonight, there will be two witnesses and not one."

"Ruth." I held up the ledger. "This is a duplicate of the Council's water allotment books. My father kept it. It proves that the Council has been selling water out of this canyon for twenty years and that the drought was made by them. There is a tunnel behind me with a channel running east and four pipes and a room full of ledgers. In twelve hours the second envoy will come up that mesa road and I am going to put this book on the table in front of her and I am going to tell her what I found. So before you say another word about witnesses, you should know what you are witnessing."

Ruth looked at the ledger. Then she looked at Hank, and at Cal, and at the tunnel behind me, and her face did something I had not seen it do before. It went tired. Just for a moment, before the patient look came back, Ruth's face went tired and old and sad.

"Give me the ledger," she said.

"No."

"Derya. Give me the ledger and I will tell Berik to go back up the ladder and forget what he saw. We will put the book in the record room and we will take it to the second envoy together in the morning, the two of us, and I will stand beside you and say I was wrong. I will say the Luna found the truth and the Beta did not believe her. I will take the shame of it in front of the pack and the Council both." She held out her hand. "But if you keep that book and go up that ladder with the Çöl Alpha at your back and stand in front of the envoy alone, then you are not a Luna bringing proof. You are a girl who ran off with a rival and came back with a story, and the Council will tear you apart and I will not be able to stop them."

I stood on the wet rock with the ledger in my hand and the water running in the channel behind me, and I thought about the way her face had gone tired, and about her hands on the table in the hall, and about the boot prints on the south rim.

"Where were you the night my mother died?" I said.

Ruth's hand stayed out. "I have told you. I was in the pack house with a bad knee."

"Then how did your mare come to leave hoof prints at the narrow place on the south track?"

The tunnel was very quiet. Berik's lantern moved a little and I saw his head turn toward Ruth and then toward me.

Ruth lowered her hand. She looked at me for a long moment and then she said, "Berik. Go up the ladder and bring the warriors down. All of them. Bring them down here and let them see this."

Berik did not move. "Beta."

"That is an order."

He went. His boots went up the iron rungs and out of the shaft, and the sound of him faded, and the three of us stood on the ledge with the lanterns and the water.

"You want to do this in front of the warriors," Ruth said. "Then we will do it in front of the warriors. You have accused me of murder in a mine shaft at midnight and you have done it in front of a witness. You have left me no way to answer it except in the open. So we will do it in the open, and the pack will hear it, and the Council will hear it, and at the end of it one of us will not be Beta of this pack anymore." She picked up her lantern. "I hope you know what you are doing, Derya, because I have been holding this pack together for three weeks while you rode around the canyon at night with the enemy. If I fall, you will find out how heavy it is."

They came down the ladder one by one. Berik first, then six warriors, then two more, and the tunnel filled up with lanterns and the smell of wet iron and men who had been woken in the night and told to bring their boots. By the time the last of them was on the ledge there were eleven warriors in that tunnel, and Cal had moved to my left side and Hank had moved to my right, and Ruth stood in the middle of the wet floor with her lantern held up and her back straight.

"Luna," she said, loud enough for all of them. "You have accused me in front of a witness of the murder of your mother. I am the Beta of this pack and I have served it for eleven years. I am going to answer the charge, and I am going to answer it in front of these warriors, and then I am going to ask them a question." She turned to face them. "I was in the pack house the night the Luna's mother died. Tomas was with me. The warriors on the gate were with me. I rode out at first light with the search party and I brought her body home. Ask any of them."

The warriors looked at each other. One of them, a woman with a scar on her chin, said, "That is right, Beta. We were all here."

"Thank you." Ruth turned back to me. "Now the hoof prints. My mare has a white sock and she is small and neat and she leaves a print that any wolf could follow. I rode her out to the south track the day before your mother died, because she had gone up there herself to look at the spring house and I wanted to see what she had seen. I did not tell you because you were grieving and because it was my business and not yours. That is the whole of it. I rode the south track in daylight, and the wind took my prints, and three days later you found them in the dust and made them into a rope and a murder."

The warriors were quiet. I could feel them turning, the way the hall had turned, and I stood there with the ledger in my hands.

"The rope burns," I said. "Mira found rope burns on her wrists."

"Mira is an old woman who has been frightened for three weeks and who loved your mother. She would find rope burns on a stone if she thought it would bring her Alpha back." Ruth's voice was gentle now. "Derya. Look at yourself. You have not slept in a week. You shifted wrong in the pasture and the Çöl Alpha had to carry you up the hill. You are standing in a mine shaft at midnight with a stolen ledger and a rival Alpha and you are accusing your own Beta of murder. This is not a Luna making a case. This is a wolf who is breaking."

The tunnel was silent. Then Berik said, quietly, "Beta, that is enough."

Ruth turned to him.

"No," Berik said. He was a broad, slow, quiet man who had never in twelve years said a word in a pack meeting, and he said it now with his lantern at his side and his jaw set. "The Luna is the Luna. She has the right to accuse and she has the right to be answered. But she is the Luna and you are the Beta and you do not speak to her that way in front of warriors. Not while I am standing here."

The other warriors moved. I saw it, a small shift of weight, two of them coming to stand a little nearer to me and a little further from Ruth. Ruth saw it too. Her grey eyes went from Berik to the warriors and then to me, and her face did the tired thing again, and this time it stayed.

"Very well," she said. "The warriors have chosen their ground. I will make my answer in the hall tomorrow, in front of the second envoy, and the Council will decide between us. But I will tell you one thing now, Luna, and then I will go up this ladder and leave you to your tunnel." She came close, close enough that I could see the small lines at the corners of her mouth. "There is a reason your mother kept her mouth shut about the water under this quarry. There is a reason she carried her mark in secret for nineteen years and never told a soul whose it was. The Council is not a thing you bring a book to and win. It is a thing that eats wolves who bring books. Your mother knew that. She spent her whole life keeping her head down and it did not save her, and it will not save you."

She turned and went to the ladder. The warriors parted for her. She put her boot on the first rung and stopped and looked back over her shoulder at Hank.

"Alpha," she said. "You should know that the second envoy is your mother. She will be at the gate at noon. And when she asks you what you are doing in a Kızıltaş mine shaft at midnight with the Luna and a stolen ledger, I would very much like to hear your answer."

She went up. The lantern light went with her and then came back as her boots climbed, and the warriors stood in the tunnel with their own lanterns and did not look at each other.

Hank let out a breath. "Berik," he said. "You just cost yourself a career."

"I have been a warrior for twelve years," Berik said. "I know what a Beta sounds like when she is lying."

Ruth's voice came down the shaft, faint and clear, from somewhere above. "Derya. One more thing. There is a rider at the gate. He came up while we were down here and he is asking for the Luna, and he says the Council has received a second complaint. This one is from the Çöl pack."