The Spring Between Us

Chapter 42: The Mark Grows Brighter

We stood in the hall of the Çöl pack house at three in the morning and made a plan.

It was not a good plan. It was the only one we had. Hank put the map of the canyon on the long table and we gathered around it, and the Kızıltaş wolves stood on one side and the Çöl wolves stood on the other and by the end of the hour they were standing together.

"The wagon went down the quarry road," Hank said. "That is the long way round and it takes four hours. There is a shorter road, the old ore track that comes down from the north rim and hits the quarry on the western side. It is steep and it is bad and a wagon cannot use it. But horses can, and wolves can." He put his finger on the map. "We go down the ore track before dawn. We are at the quarry hall by midday and we are waiting for them when they bring the wagon in."

"And if they bring the wagon in before we get there?" Berik said.

"Then they bring it in and we are not there and Silas has a dead woman and an empty hall." Hank looked up. "We are not going to stop him bringing her in. We are going to be in that hall when the Council sits. That is the whole of the plan. We get there first and we fill the hall with both packs and we do not leave."

I stood at the table with my hands on the map. The mark on my arm was still cold and grey. My wolf was still asleep. I could feel her there in the dark, curled up and quiet, and I could not wake her.

"Nora," I said. "The spring. The change of the moon. When is it exactly?"

Nora looked at the window. "The moon is new tonight. It changes at moonrise, and moonrise is an hour before dawn. If we are at the spring when the new moon comes up, that is the moment the pact names."

"Moonrise is an hour before dawn and we are four hours from the spring." I looked at the map. "We cannot be at the spring and at the quarry both."

"No," Nora said. "We cannot."

The hall was quiet. Then Hank said, "Then we split."

Everybody looked at him.

"The Council sits at sundown," he said. "The moon changes at moonrise tomorrow night. Sundown comes first. So the packs go down the ore track at dawn and fill the hall and stand in front of the Council at sundown. And at the end of the sundown inquiry, when the Council has ruled, whoever is still standing takes the rings and the pact and the horses and rides for the spring." He looked at me. "You and I. Not the packs. The pair. The pact says the pair reads it aloud. It does not say the packs."

"And if the Council rules against us and puts us in a cell?"

"Then we do not go to the spring." Hank's face was flat. "But Silas has to get us into that cell first and he has to do it in a hall with both packs in it and the pact on the table. That is a thing he cannot do quickly."

I looked at the map and the two packs around the table and the cold grey mark on my arm.

"All right," I said. "We go down the ore track at dawn. Both packs. All of us. We take the ledgers and the pact and the rings and every warrior we have. And at sundown we stand in that hall." I looked up. "But first I want to try something."

"What?" Hank said.

"Give me your hand."

He looked at me. Then he put his hand out across the table.

I put my hand in his.

The mark on my arm did not go cold. It did not go grey. It came awake all at once, the whole length of it from wrist to shoulder, and the heat of it went up my arm and into my chest and my wolf came up out of the dark with a sound I had never heard her make.

The hall went quiet. Somebody said, "Luna, your arm."

I looked down. The mark was not silver anymore. It was bright. It was bright as a lamp, bright as the fire on the hearth, and the light of it was going through the sleeve of my shirt and onto the table and onto Hank's hand, and his mark was doing the same.

"The bond is warm," Nora said. Her voice had gone strange. "The bond is warm and it is open and it is in this room."

"It is in this room." Hank was looking at his own arm. "Derya. It is in this room and it is bright enough to read by."

The light faded slowly. It went from a lamp to a candle to a low glow and then it settled back into the mark and the mark was warm and silver and awake.

"It was the agreement," Nora said. She was staring at my arm. "You agreed to stand together in front of both packs. The bond heard it and the bond answered it. That is what the mark is for. Not to be hidden. To be declared."

"Then we declare it," I said. I let go of Hank's hand. "At sundown. In front of the Council and both packs. We do not hide the mark and we do not lie about the bond. We stand up and we say what we are."

Cal came in from the passage. He had been out on the rock trail to look at the weather and his coat was still wet.

"Luna," he said. "The rain has stopped. The sky is clearing."

"Good. We ride at first light."

"There is something else." Cal's face was strange. "I went out on the trail to look at the road and there was a wolf on the trail. A Çöl wolf, one of the ones on the border. He was coming up from the creek bed and he stopped when he saw me and he said, 'Tell the Luna the smell is on the wind. It is going down the canyon and the Council soldiers are smelling it and the word is going round the quarry that there is a pair in the canyon and the mark is open.'"

The hall went silent.

"The smell," Hank said. "The bond is smellable at a distance now."

"It is," Cal said. "The Çöl wolf said it is on the wind all the way down the creek bed. He said the soldiers at the pump house were talking about it. He said they were saying there is a bonded pair in the canyon and the mark is open and bright and the Council has been looking for it for fifty years."

Nora put her hand on the table. "That is what Silas wanted all along. He did not want the mark covered. He wanted it open. He wanted it bright. He wanted it smellable." She looked at me. "A pair that is open and bright and declared in front of both packs is a pair the Council cannot freeze. But a pair that is open and bright in a canyon full of Council soldiers, before the pair has declared itself, is a pair the Council can hunt. He will not wait for sundown. He will come for you tonight or in the morning on the road, and he will take you both, and there will be no inquiry and no hall and no pact."

Hank was at the door. "Berik. Get the horses. Cal, wake the warriors. We are not waiting for first light. We go now, down the ore track, in the dark." He turned. "Derya. Get your coat and the ledgers and the pact. And whatever happens on that road tonight, you stay behind me."

"I am not staying behind you."

"Derya."

"I am not staying behind you," I said again. "We are a pair. If the bond is open and bright then we are a pair in the eyes of the law and the packs and the Council, and a pair does not walk down a road with one wolf in front and one behind." I picked up my coat. "We go down that road side by side. And if Silas comes at us on the road, he will find two wolves and two packs and a pact and a pair of iron rings, and he can do what he likes with that."

Hank looked at me for a long moment. Then he came and took my coat out of my hands and held it for me and said, "Side by side, then."

I got my coat on. We went out into the dark with the ledgers in a sack and the pact in my jacket and the rings on my thumbs and forty wolves behind us, and the mark on my arm was warm and bright and open, and the wind was blowing down the canyon toward the quarry.

We were halfway down the ore track when the wolves came out of the rocks.