The Spring Between Us

Chapter 41: Hank's Confession

Mira would not do it.

That was the thing I kept saying to myself while Silas stood in the hall with the paper in his hand and the soldiers behind him and the whole of both packs watching. Mira would not do it. Mira had put the bundle in my hands in her hut and sworn me to silence and told me she would rather be the next one over the rim than sit on it another night.

But I had seen the paper. It had her name on it and it was in her hand. I had seen Mira's hand a hundred times on her healer's notes and on the labels of her jars, and the signature on that paper was Mira's and it was not forged.

"Where is she?" I said.

"Under Council guard at the quarry," Silas said. "She came to the hall this evening of her own accord and she asked to make a statement. She is a frightened old woman and she has been carrying a great deal for four weeks and she has decided to put it down." He folded the paper and put it in his coat. "You should be glad, Luna. If the Omega of your pack has evidence that you murdered your mother, then the Council will hear it and rule on it and you will have your answer in the same hall as everything else. If she is lying, the Council will know. If she is telling the truth, the Council will know that too."

"She is not telling the truth."

"Then come to the hall tomorrow and say so." Silas put his hat on. "Sundown. Bring your ledgers and your rings. I will bring the Omega and the healer and the clerk and the rope that hanged your Beta, and we will see which of us the Council believes." He turned to the door and stopped. "Alpha. My soldiers will remain outside your house until dawn. They are there to keep the peace and not to trouble your wolves. I would ask you not to give them a reason to come inside."

He went out. The door shut behind him. The soldiers went with him and the sound of boots on wet stone faded down the trail.

The hall did not move for a long moment. Then Nora said, "He is lying. Mira would not sign a paper against you."

"She signed it." I sat down on the bench by the fire because my legs would not hold me. "I saw her hand. It is her hand."

"Then she signed it because he made her." Nora came and sat down beside me. "Derya. That man has been in this canyon for nine years. He does not come at a wolf with a knife. He comes with a paper and a choice. Sign this and your pack is spared. Sign this and your sister's family is spared. Sign this and you will not be hanged in the hall like the Beta." She put her hand on my knee. "Mira has a sister in the town at the bottom of the canyon. She has a niece and two great nephews. If Silas put a paper in front of her and told her it was that or her family, she would sign it. Any wolf would sign it."

I sat by the fire with my hands in my lap and my mark cold and grey on my arm and my wolf asleep and could not feel anything at all.

"Then we cannot win," I said. "He has Ruth's confession and Mira's statement and the healer and the clerk and the soldiers. We have two ledgers and a pact and two iron rings and a pack that has been up all night in a storm. He will read the papers and the Council will rule and the pack will be dissolved and the water will be his."

"That is not what we have." Hank came and stood in front of me. He had his coat on over his bare chest still and his hair was wet and his jaw was set. "We have a pact that is older than the Council and a pair of rings that belong to it and two packs under one roof. And we have one thing more that Silas does not have, and that is the truth. All of it. The whole of it." He crouched down in front of me. "Derya. Look at me."

I looked at him.

"There is a thing I have to tell you and I have been putting it off since the spring house because I was ashamed of it," Hank said. "You asked me at the red rock why I did not come to your gate three months ago when I knew. I told you it was because your mother would have driven me off the mesa and Ruth would have made sure of it. That was true. It was not the whole truth." He took a breath. "The whole truth is that I was Alpha of the Çöl pack for six years and I had kept my spring and my border and my wolves alive by being careful. And then I stood in a Council hall and smelled you across the room and every careful thing I had built in six years went out of my head. I could have come to your gate the next week. I could have come with my Beta and my warriors and asked for a parley and told your mother the truth. It would have been a mess and she would have been angry and it would have been the right thing to do. And I did not do it. I stayed on my side of the border and told myself I was protecting my pack."

"Hank."

"I am not finished." His face was close to mine. "Six weeks ago the Council gathering was held at my own hall. Your mother came. She came to my hall with Ruth and eight warriors and she sat at my table and ate my food. And in the evening, when the wine was out and the hall was loud, she came and stood beside me at the fire and said, 'Alpha. My daughter is not here tonight. She is on the mesa with a fever. But I have smelled you on her and I know what you are to each other and I have known since the spring.'" He stopped. "And I said nothing. I stood there with my cup in my hand and said nothing. And she looked at me for a long moment and then she said, 'I am going to die soon, Alpha. There is a thing in this canyon that will kill me and I have not been able to find it in time. When I am gone my daughter will be alone and she will not trust anyone. If you are what she needs, you had better be worth her trust.' And then she went back to her seat."

I sat on the bench by the fire and looked at him.

"My mother said that to you," I said.

"She said it to me six weeks ago and she was dead four weeks later." Hank's voice had gone rough. "I should have told you at the spring house. I should have told you the night you came over the rim. I did not, because I did not want you to think I had come for you out of duty to a dead woman. I came for you because I could not stay away. But she asked me, Derya. She stood beside me at my own fire and asked me to be worth your trust, and I have been failing that since the spring."

The hall was quiet. The fire cracked. Somewhere in the passage a door opened and shut.

I put my hand out and took his.

"You are worth it," I said. "You came over that border with eight wolves when I had no wolf in me. You stood in my hall and let me bite your shoulder. You have been carrying your own pack and mine since the spring and you have not once asked me for anything." I tightened my hand on his. "You are worth it, Hank. Now get up off the floor because we have a day to put two packs in that hall and we are not going to do it sitting down."

He got up. He pulled me up with him.

"There is one thing," Nora said. She was standing by the door with her hand on the chain around her neck. "The mark on your arm. It has gone cold and grey. I have seen that before. My mother's mark went cold the winter my father died. It goes cold when the pair is being pulled apart. It does not mean the bond is broken. It means the bond is holding on with everything it has."

"Then how do I make it warm again?"

"By doing the thing the bond was made for." Nora looked at me. "Stand in the hall with your Alpha and say what you are in front of both packs, and then go to that spring at the change of the moon and read the pact aloud. The bond is cold because it has been hidden. It will be warm when it is not."

The outer door opened. Cal came in with his coat dripping and his face white.

"Luna," he said. "I went down to the wagon. The two warriors I left with it are on the ground with their heads bleeding and the wagon is gone. The body is gone. Helle is gone." He stopped. "And there is a trail of wet boots going down the quarry road, and there are four sets of them and they are carrying something."

Hank was at the door before Cal finished.

"Silas did not come here to talk," he said. "He came here to keep us in this hall while his men took the body and the wagon and the road."

"For what?" I said.

"For the hall." Hank turned. "The inquiry is at the quarry at sundown and the Council hall is at the quarry and he has just taken a dead woman down that road in a wagon. Derya. He is going to put Helle in the Council hall and tell the Council that she died because the Luna sent her up a bad track with a false story. And then he is going to put Mira on the stand and read her statement and hang you the way he hanged Ruth."