The Spring Between Us

Chapter 46: After the Raid

The hundred wolves from the south were a lie.

That is what Silas said, and the clerk wrote it down, and for about an hour the hall believed it. The runner was a young man from the town who had never been in a fight in his life and he had seen lanterns moving on the south rim and he had heard howling and he had run. By the time the soldiers went out to look there was nothing on the south rim but wind and dust and a mule deer that had come down to the creek to drink.

But the hall did not calm down. The town did not calm down. And the inquiry that was supposed to begin at sundown did not begin at all. The clerk struck his gavel three times and read the order of proceedings and a soldier came in and whispered something to Silas and Silas said, "The hall is adjourned until morning. The yard is full of men and there is a rumor of rogues on the south rim and I will not hold an inquiry in a hall full of frightened wolves."

He walked out. The soldiers cleared the hall. The town went back down the canyon road with Owen and two lanterns, and the packs went up the ore track to the sheds and the pump house and the old powder store, and I stood in the yard of the Council hall with the crate on the cart and Ruth under the canvas and the mark on my arm warm and open and half my pack with their backs to me.

We buried her the next morning.

There was no hall and no inquiry and no clerk. We took her up the mesa road on the wagon and we buried her at the Kızıltaş pack house in the little graveyard behind the water tower where my mother was and where Elias was, and the whole pack came and stood in the sun, and Sten and the wolves who had turned their backs stood at the back of the crowd and did not look at me.

I said the words. I did not have much to say. I said that Ruth had served the pack for eleven years and that she had taken company money and that she had signed a lease in my name and that she had ridden down the mesa road to confess it and that she had died for it. I said that she had been a hard woman and a clever one and that the pack had been held together by her hands for a month while I rode around the canyon and made a mess of things. And I said that whatever she had done, she had not killed my mother, and that the woman who had put the rope on my mother's wrists had stood up in the Council hall the night before and said so.

The pack did not say anything. They put the earth in and they went back to the hall.

I stayed. Hank stayed with me. Nora took the packs back to the pack house and set the kitchen to work, and the sun went over the rim and the graveyard went blue and the two of us stood by the new grave and did not talk.

"Twenty wolves," Hank said at last. "Maybe more. They have turned their backs and they will not look at you and half of them are talking about going down the mesa road to the Council and asking for a new Luna."

"I know."

"You are not going to fight them for it."

"I am not going to fight them for it." I looked at the grave. "Sten is right about one thing. A Luna who will not do what a Luna is for is not a Luna. He thinks a Luna is for killing the wolf who killed your mother. I think a Luna is for standing in a hall and making the wolf who paid for the murder say it out loud in front of the whole canyon. We are not going to agree about it tonight and we are not going to agree about it tomorrow." I turned. "But there is a thing I have been thinking about since last night and I do not like it."

"What?"

"Ruth." I looked back at the grave. "She was alive in the morning. The Council soldier told Cal she was alive and she had been talking to Silas all morning and then at sundown she was in a crate with a rope mark on her neck and a bruise on her brow." I turned to Hank. "Who killed her?"

Hank was quiet. Then he said, "Silas."

"Silas does not put his own hands on anyone. That is the thing I keep coming back to. He has wolves for that. He has rogues and soldiers and clerks and he does not put his own hands on anyone." I looked at the grave. "So who in that hall put the rope on her wrists?"

Cal came up the slope from the pack house with a lantern and his face set.

"Luna," he said. "The warriors who turned their backs have gone down to the creek bed. Sten is with them and there are twenty two of them and they have taken the two cart horses and a barrel of water and they are not coming back to the hall."

I stood very still.

"Where are they going?"

"I do not know. One of them said they were going to the Council to ask for a new Luna. Another said they were going to the old ore shaft to see what the Luna had been hiding down there." Cal's lantern shook. "Luna. There is a thing I have to tell you. I went down to the creek bed after them to see if I could talk to Sten and I found a wolf on the ground. It was one of ours. It was Arne."

Helle's husband.

"He is dead," Cal said. "He is dead in the creek bed and there is no blood on him and no claw marks and no bite. He is lying on his back with his eyes open and there is a smell on him."

I was down the slope before he finished. Hank came behind me and Cal came behind him, and we went down through the yard and out the south gate and along the fence line to the creek bed, and the moon was up and the creek bed was silver and there was a body on the sand.

Arne was on his back with his arms out and his eyes open and his mouth open. There was no blood. There was no wound on him that I could see. But his face was grey and his lips were blue and there was a smell coming off him that I knew.

I knelt down beside him and put my face close to his mouth and breathed in.

"Wolfsbane," I said.

Hank knelt on the other side. "You are sure?"

"I have smelled it twice this month. Once in Elias's cup and once in Mira's hut." I sat back on my heels. "He has been poisoned. Somebody put wolfsbane in his water and sent him down to the creek bed with the warriors who turned their backs, and they will find him in the morning and they will say the Luna poisoned him."

Cal's lantern was shaking badly now. "Luna. The barrel of water they took down to the creek bed. It came out of the pack house kitchen."

I got up. I got up and I stood in the creek bed with Arne's body at my feet and the moon on the sand and I said, "Cal. Go back to the pack house and find the barrel. The one they took. It will be in the creek bed somewhere or it will be with the warriors. Do not drink from it and do not let anyone else drink from it. Bring it to Mira's hut."

Cal went. Hank stood up.

"Derya," he said. "There is a thing you are not seeing."

"Tell me."

"The wolves who turned their backs on you in the hall last night. They took a barrel of water from your pack house kitchen and they went down to the creek bed. And this morning one of them is dead of wolfsbane." Hank looked at me. "Whoever put that poison in the barrel knew they would take it. Whoever put it there knew which wolves would turn their backs and which way they would go. That is not a Council man from the capital. That is a wolf in your pack house who was standing in the hall last night and watching."

I looked down at Arne.

"Then we go back to the pack house," I said, "and we find out who was in the kitchen last night."