The Spring Between Us

Chapter 44: The Border Breaks

I sent Wren and two more scouts down to the canyon road to watch the cart and the crate, and then I sat in the pump house with the ledgers in the sack and the pact in my jacket and the rings on my thumbs and I tried to think about what could be in a company crate that would make Silas come out of the hall and smile.

I was still trying to think of it when Sten came in from the western slope.

"Luna," he said. "There are wolves on the mesa road. Not the ore track. The mesa road. They have come up from the Kızıltaş side and they are on the ridge above the quarry."

"Who?"

"I do not know. They are not Çöl and they are not Council and they are not wearing any mark I know." Sten's face was tight. "There are eleven of them and they are in the rocks above the western sheds and they have not moved since they came."

Hank was at the door before Sten finished. "Eleven wolves with no mark. That is a raid."

"That is a raid." I got up. "But they are not raiding the hall and they are not raiding the pump house. They are sitting above the western sheds with a clear view of the yard and the yard is where the packs will come in when we go to the hall." I looked at Hank. "They are there to watch us. To see who comes and who goes and which of us is a pair and which of us is a warrior and which of us is a child."

"Or they are there to start a fight in the yard when the packs are in it." Hank picked up his coat. "Derya. If eleven rogues attack the yard at sundown when both packs are going into that hall, the hall will be a battlefield and Silas will have his fight and the Council will rule that the canyon is ungovernable and the packs are dissolved."

"Then we deal with them before sundown." I turned to Sten. "Get Berik and Helle's husband and four warriors. Quiet. We go up the western slope and we take them from behind."

We went up the western slope at a run with the sun going down behind the rim and the quarry in shadow. Berik went first with his bandaged arm and did not slow down. Helle's husband went beside him with a set face and a knife in his hand. Hank went on my right with his wolves behind him, and we came up the rocks from the south and found the eleven wolves in a line along the ridge above the western sheds with their bellies to the stone.

They did not see us until we were twenty paces away.

The first one heard Berik's boot on a loose stone and turned and put his hands up and said, "Luna. Do not. We are not here to fight."

He was a young man with a thin face and a good coat and no mark on it. The other ten came up off the stone with their hands up and their faces turned toward me.

"Who are you?" I said.

"We are from the town at the bottom of the canyon." The young man's hands were still up. "We are not rogues and we are not company men. We are the men who drink the water the Council has been selling us, and we have come up the canyon because our wells are going dry and the company told us it was the wolves." He looked at me. "There are eleven of us here and there are forty more in the town and we have been told all our lives that the wolves in the canyon are savages who steal the water and kill the men who come for it. And then a foreman came back to the town last night and told us it was the Council and not the wolves, and he showed us a ledger."

"Owen."

"Owen." The young man lowered his hands. "He told us the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack had found the truth and was going to take it to the Council at sundown. And he told us the Council would not listen. So we came up to see for ourselves." He looked past me at the fifty wolves behind me and the ledgers in the sack and the pact under my arm. "We came to watch. We did not come to fight."

I stood on the ridge above the western sheds with the wind coming up the canyon and the mark on my arm warm and open and eleven men standing in front of me with their hands down.

"Go home," I said.

The young man's face changed. "Luna."

"Go home and tell the town to come up the canyon road at sundown. All of it. The whole town. Tell them to stand in the yard of the Council hall and listen to the inquiry and hear what the Council has done with the water they have been drinking for twenty years." I looked at him. "You say your wells are going dry. Then come and hear who took the water and why. And when the Council tries to rule, you will be standing in their yard and they will have to rule in front of you."

The young man looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "We will come." He turned and went down the western slope with his ten men behind him, and we watched them go down the canyon road toward the town.

Hank came and stood beside me.

"That is a risk," he said.

"Everything is a risk." I turned and looked down at the quarry. The hall was lit now and the doors were open and there were lanterns in the yard and the wagon with the wet canvas was gone from the yard and there was a cart standing in its place with a crate on it. "Hank. What time is it?"

"Half an hour to sundown."

"Then we go down." I picked up the sack. "Get the packs into the yard and do not let them into the hall until I am there. I want to walk into that hall last, with you and Nora and the ledgers and the pact, and I want every wolf in the canyon to see us do it."

We went down. The packs came out of the sheds and the powder store and the pump house, and the Kızıltaş wolves went first and the Çöl wolves came behind, and we went round the back of the quarry and down the long slope to the yard of the Council hall, and the yard was full of soldiers and lanterns and the cart with the crate on it.

And the crate was open.

There was a table beside the cart with the crate on it, and the crate was open, and inside the crate there was a body. It was a woman and she was wrapped in canvas and her face was grey and her hair was auburn and there was a rope mark on her neck.

It was Ruth.

I stopped in the middle of the yard.

Hank stopped beside me. Nora stopped behind us. The packs stopped behind her.

And Silas came out of the hall with his hat in his hand and his pleasant face composed and his pale blue eyes going from me to the body in the crate.

"Luna," he said. "You are just in time. The Beta of the Kızıltaş pack has been returned to the canyon and she will be present at the inquiry. She was hanged this morning in the Council hall and the Council has sent her body back to her pack for burial. I told you she was dead. I am sorry you did not believe me."