The Spring Between Us

Chapter 34: The Second Death

I did not go down to the quarry alone.

That is the thing I keep coming back to. I did not go, and it did not matter, because the rider who came up the mesa road that evening was not the only thing moving in the canyon.

I stood at the hall door with Cal and the list inside my jacket and the ring on my thumb, and I said, "Where is he now?"

"At the gate," Cal said. "He will not come in. He says he will wait until full dark and then he will ride back."

"Then he can wait." I looked at the yard. "Cal, I want Berik on the gate with two warriors and I want them to watch that rider all night. If he moves before full dark, I want to know. If he moves after full dark, I want to know that too." I turned. "And I want Helle and Sten and four more on the south fence. Ruth saw skid marks on that track four weeks ago and I want a warrior on it tonight."

Cal went. I stayed at the hall door and watched the light go out of the yard, and the rider sat on his horse at the gate with his hat pulled down and did not move.

By full dark he was still there. By the time the moon came up over the rim he was still there. I went up to my mother's room and sat on the floor with the list in my lap and the ring on my thumb and my wolf awake behind my mark, and I read the list by candlelight and tried to hold my wolf and read at the same time.

The list was not long. Eleven names. Beside each name a sum and a place and a date, and at the bottom of it my mother had written: These are the wolves who took the water. The first name on the list was a Council man I had never heard of and the last name on the list was Silas.

I read it three times. Then I folded it and put it inside my shirt and lay down on my mother's bed with my boots off and my eyes open.

I do not know what woke me. It was not a sound. It was the mark, maybe, or my wolf, who had gone from awake to alert and was standing in my chest with her ears up. I sat up in the dark with my heart going and listened, and the pack house was quiet, and out in the yard a dog barked once and stopped.

Then somebody screamed.

I was off the bed and at the window before I knew I had moved. The yard was full of lanterns and wolves running, and the scream came again from the direction of the south fence, and then a howl went up from the slope and another from the gate.

I went down the back stairs two at a time and out through the kitchen and into the yard. Cal was there with his shirt open and his boots unlaced.

"South fence," he said. "Helle sent Sten up the slope. Somebody has gone over the rim."

"Who?"

"I do not know. Sten would not say."

We went out the south gate at a run with six warriors and a lantern, and we went up the slope toward the south fence line, and the whole way up I could hear wolves calling to each other along the fence and the sound of boots on rock.

At the narrow place on the south track Sten was standing with his lantern at the edge of the rim and his face grey in the light. He did not say anything. He just pointed down.

I went to the edge and looked over. The drop was sheer and the rock was red and the bottom of it was lost in shadow, and halfway down there was a ledge, and on the ledge there was a body.

It was a woman. She was lying on her back with her arms out and her hair over her face, and her hair was auburn.

I stood at the edge of the rim with the lantern in my hand and I could not move.

"Luna," Sten said. "She was on the fence with me at midnight and she said she was going down the slope to check the wash. She did not come back. I went after her at two and I found her here."

I went down. There is a path down to the ledge that only the shepherds use and I went down it with the lantern and Cal behind me and my hands on the rock, and when I got to the ledge I knelt down and turned the body over.

It was not Ruth.

It was Helle.

Her hair had come loose from its tie and it was over her face and in the lantern light it had looked auburn. She was lying on her back with her arms out and there was a bruise on her forehead low over the brow, and there was rope around her wrists.

I sat back on my heels on the ledge with the lantern beside me and the wind coming up the canyon.

"Cal," I said. "Go up and tell them to bring a stretcher and a rope. And then go to the pack house and find Ruth and tell her to come to the hall. Do not tell her what has happened. Just tell her to come to the hall."

He went. I stayed on the ledge with Helle and the wind, and I put my hand on her cold arm and I looked at the rope around her wrists and the bruise on her forehead and I thought about my mother on this same track four weeks ago with the same marks.

It took an hour to bring her up. We put her in the hall on the long table with a sheet over her and the pack stood around the table in the lantern light, and Ruth came down the stairs with her grey jacket buttoned and her face pale and stopped at the foot of the table.

"Who did this?" she said.

"You tell me." I stood at the head of the table. "She was on the south fence because I put her there. She was watching the south track because you told me you saw skid marks at the narrow place the day before my mother died. She went down the slope at midnight to check the wash and she did not come back." I looked at Ruth. "The night my mother died you were in the pack house with a bad knee and Tomas vouched for you. Tonight Tomas is asleep in his bed and there is a dead woman on the south track with rope on her wrists and a bruise on her brow, and you are the one who sent her down that slope."

Ruth's face did not change. "I did not send her down that slope. She was on the fence because you put her there. I have not spoken to Helle since the yard this morning."

"Where were you at midnight?"

"In my quarters."

"Alone."

"Yes."

The hall was silent. The warriors along the wall were looking at Ruth the way they had looked at me in the yard two days ago.

"Luna," Ruth said. "I know what you are thinking. I know how it looks. But I did not leave my quarters tonight and I did not go up that slope, and if you want proof I will give you the only proof I have, which is that I have been in this pack for eleven years and I have never in my life put a rope on a wolf." She put her hand on the table. "Somebody in this pack is doing this and it is not me. Helle was on the south fence tonight because you sent her there and I told the pack about the skid marks this morning in the yard. Any wolf in this hall could have heard me say it. Any wolf in this pack could have gone up that slope tonight and waited for her."

I looked around the hall at the ring of faces. Old Tomas in his nightshirt. Sten with the lantern still in his hand. Two women from the kitchen. Berik with his arm in a sling. Cal.

"Then nobody leaves this hall tonight," I said. "Nobody goes to their quarters and nobody goes to the yard and nobody goes out the gate. We sit here until morning and in the morning I am going to go down that mesa road to the inquiry with a dead woman on my table and a list in my jacket and I am going to put the whole of it in front of both packs." I looked at Ruth. "And Ruth. If it was you, I will find out. If it was not you, then you will help me find out, because whoever it was has now killed two women on the same track and the next one will not be a warrior on a fence line."

Ruth looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, "What list?"

The hall was very quiet.

"The list my mother wrote," I said. "Eleven names and eleven sums and the places the water went. Mira had it under her floor for four weeks and she gave it to me this afternoon." I put my hand inside my jacket. "The last name on it is Silas."

Ruth's face went white. She came around the table toward me and her hand was out and her grey eyes were wide, and she said, "Derya. Do not say that name in this hall."

"Why not?"

"Because the rider at the gate." Ruth stopped. "I went out to the porch an hour ago to see whether he was still there. He was not. There was no horse at the gate and no rider and Berik was on the ground by the gatepost with his head bleeding, and when he woke up he said the man had come up behind him in the dark and asked him where the Luna sleeps."