The Spring Between Us

Chapter 47: Who Gave the Order

The pack house kitchen smelled of onions and woodsmoke and, under both of those, faintly of wolfsbane.

I stood in the doorway with a lantern in my hand and looked at the shelves. Jars of beans. A sack of flour. A crock of lard. A row of copper pots on their hooks. The big stone sink under the window and the barrel stand beside it, and the barrel stand was empty.

Cal came in behind me carrying the barrel. It was half full and the water in it sloshed when he set it down.

"Found it in the creek bed," he said. "Two hundred yards down from where Arne was. Sten's lot had left it behind."

"Did any of them drink from it?"

"I do not know. But Sten and his twenty two are down at the old ore shaft and they took water with them and I do not know where it came from." Cal set the barrel down on the floor. "Luna. If they drank from this barrel tonight there will be more than one body on the sand in the morning."

I knelt down and put my face to the barrel and breathed in. It was there, the same bitter smell, faint and green under the dust of the creek.

"Mira," I said. "How much would it take?"

Mira was at the door with her bag. She had come up from her hut with her hair down and her apron on and she came and knelt by the barrel and smelled it and her round face went hard.

"A handful in a barrel this size," she said. "It would not kill a wolf who drank one cup. It would make him sick. But a wolf who drank two cups, or three, on an empty stomach after a day in the sun, would be dead by morning." She looked up. "Arne drank three cups. He was always thirsty. He used to carry a cup in his belt."

"Where does the wolfsbane come from?" I said. "Who in this pack keeps it?"

"The healer keeps it." Mira said it flatly. "I have a jar of it in my hut on the second shelf and it is locked in a box and I have the key on a string around my neck and I have not opened that box in two months." She pulled the string out of her collar and showed me the key. "There. That is the key and it has not left my neck."

"There is another jar," I said. "Ruth kept one. She had it in her supply shed behind the smokehouse."

The kitchen went quiet. Cal looked at me. Mira looked at me.

"How do you know that?" Mira said.

"Because I stood by the well with her three weeks ago and she brought me a wax paper packet and she said, 'There is more in my stores.'" I got up. "Cal. Get the shed key from Ruth's quarters. It will be on the hook by her door. And bring two warriors."

The supply shed behind the smokehouse was small and dark and smelled of tar and rope and dried herbs. Cal opened the lock with Ruth's key and I held the lantern up and looked at the shelves. There were jars and tins and sacks and a coil of rope and a box of nails and a row of stoppered bottles, and on the middle shelf, among the bottles, there was a brown jar with a wooden stopper.

I picked it up. It was half full of grey powder. I opened the stopper and breathed in and it was wolfsbane, strong and green and bitter.

"How much is gone?" Mira said.

I looked at the jar. "I do not know how much was in it."

"I do," Mira said. "I sold Ruth that jar myself four years ago. It was full to the neck and it holds about a pound and a half, and there is less than a pound in it now." She looked at me. "Half a pound of wolfsbane, Derya. That is enough to poison a pack."

I put the jar down on the shelf and looked at it. Half a pound, gone, out of a jar that only Ruth had a key to, in a shed that only Ruth used.

"Ruth has been dead four days," I said. "Who has been in this shed since?"

Cal shifted. "The warriors have been in and out of Ruth's quarters since she died, clearing it out. And the smokehouse is used by the kitchen." He looked at the jar. "Any wolf in the pack could have come in here."

"But only one wolf put the poison in the barrel." I turned around. "Mira. Who brought the barrel up from the cellar last night? Who filled it?"

Mira thought about it. "The barrel was filled at supper. It was filled by the girl who draws the water. Her name is Tessa and she is fourteen and she has been drawing water since her mother died."

"Where is Tessa now?"

"She is in the hall with the other women."

We went back to the hall. Tessa was a thin girl with a brown braid and a frightened face, and when I asked her she said she had filled the barrel at supper and set it by the kitchen door and that was the last she saw of it. She had not put anything in it. She did not know what wolfsbane smelled like. She did not know who had touched it between supper and the moment Sten's wolves carried it down to the creek bed.

I stood in the hall with the pack around me and the jar in my hand and I said, "Who gave the order? Who told the warriors to take that barrel?"

Nobody answered. Then a woman near the fire said, "It was the Beta's voice."

I turned. It was a woman named Inge, one of the kitchen women. She was about fifty and she had worked in that kitchen for twenty years.

"Ruth's voice?" I said. "Ruth is dead."

"The Beta's voice in the corridor. Last night, after the hall. I was in the kitchen washing the pots and there was a wolf in the corridor speaking to Sten and I heard her. I heard Ruth's voice. She said, 'Take the barrel and go down to the creek bed and wait. When the Luna comes after you, she will have the packet and the powder on her hands.'"

The hall was silent.

"Ruth was in that crate last night," I said. "She was dead in that crate at sundown in front of the whole hall."

"I know what I heard," Inge said. "I have worked in this kitchen for twenty years and I know that woman's voice."

Mira stepped forward. "You heard a voice in a corridor at night through a door. You were washing pots and the pots were rattling and there were forty wolves in the yard. You heard a woman's voice and you thought it was Ruth because you have been frightened for two weeks." She looked at Inge. "There is another woman in this pack who has been taking the Beta's place all month. Who has been wearing her coat and standing in her boots. And I do not think she is standing very far from you."

Inge turned and looked at me and said, "It was Mira."

The hall made a sound.

"It was Mira's voice," Inge said. Her face was white. "I did not want to say it. I have known Mira for thirty years. But it was her voice in the corridor and it was her key that opened the shed and it is her jar of wolfsbane that is missing from the second shelf of her hut. I went to her hut three days ago to get a tea for my husband's stomach and her box was open and the jar was gone."

Mira took a step back. "That is a lie."

"It is not a lie."

"It is a lie and you know it is a lie." Mira turned to me. "Derya. I gave you the bundle under my floor. I told you about the list and the ring. I have been with you since the spring. I did not poison Arne and I did not put wolfsbane in that barrel."

I stood in the middle of the hall with the jar in my hand and the pack around me and Inge and Mira facing each other and the whole of it turning over in my head.

"Cal," I said. "Go to Mira's hut. Second shelf. The box with the lock. Bring it to me and bring the jar inside it."

Cal went. The hall waited. Mira stood with her hands at her sides and her face grey, and Inge stood with her hands folded and her lips tight, and the pack stood around the walls and watched.

Cal came back with the box. He put it on the table. It was locked and Mira came and opened it with the key from her neck, and I lifted the lid and took out the jar.

It was empty.

The hall made a sound again, louder this time. Mira looked at the empty jar and then at me and her face had gone from grey to the colour of paper.

"I did not," she said. "Derya. I did not."

I looked at the jar and then at Inge and then at Mira.

"Nobody leaves this hall," I said. "Not tonight. Berik, put a warrior on every door. Cal, go and get the alpha of the Çöl pack and bring him here." I put the jar down on the table. "And somebody go and find Sten and his twenty two wolves and tell them that the water they are carrying is poisoned, and if they do not believe the messenger they can come up here and smell the barrel themselves."

The outer door opened. A Council soldier stood in it with a paper in his hand and a lantern.

"Luna of the Kızıltaş pack," he said. "The envoy of the Council of Alphas formally summons you to a hearing at the Council hall at the quarry. It will sit tomorrow at noon. It concerns your Luna legitimacy, your fitness to hold the seat, and a mate bond between rival packs which the Council has been informed is open, declared and unrecorded." He held the paper out. "The envoy asks that you bring the mark on your arm and the Alpha of the Çöl pack and nothing else."

I took the paper.

"Tell your envoy," I said, "that the Luna of the Kızıltaş pack will be there at noon. And tell him to make sure the hall is warm, because I am going to be in it for a long time."