The Spring Between Us

Chapter 51: What Silas Wants

They took my quarters that afternoon.

I was not there when they did it. I was in the record room with Hank and Nora and the pact and the ledgers, and Cal came in and said, "Luna. Wren has put her things in your mother's room and she has told the warriors that the Luna's quarters belong to the trustee and that the Luna can have the room over the stable."

I put down the pen I was holding.

"Let her have it," I said. "There is nothing in it that matters."

That was a lie. There was my mother's sewing cupboard and her thread and her buttons and the knot in the floorboard that looked like an eye. But I was not going to stand in the hall and argue about a bed while Silas walked out of the gate with a lease in his pocket.

"Cal," I said. "Sit down. I want to ask you something and I want you to think before you answer. The morning Ruth signed the lease. You were on the powder path above the quarry with me and we saw her in the yard with the man in the dark coat and the two warriors. Do you remember what the man in the dark coat was holding?"

Cal thought about it. "A roll of papers."

"How many?"

"Three. He unrolled one and gave it to Ruth and she looked at it and gave it back. Then he rolled them all up again."

"Three copies," I said. "One for Ruth. One for the company. One for the Council." I looked at Hank. "Silas had three copies of that lease. Ruth signed all of them that morning. The company copy went down the road to Denver with the ore wagons. The Council copy is in Silas's coat. And the third copy is the one Ruth took."

"Ruth's copy will have been in her quarters," Hank said. "And Wren has been in Ruth's quarters since the funeral."

"Then Wren has it, or Wren has burned it." I stood up. "But a copy is a copy and a lease is a contract and a contract can be read. If the third copy is gone, we go to the second copy. The one that went to the company."

"Denver is four hundred miles away."

"The company office in the town is not." I looked at Cal. "Owen. Owen signed the lease as the company's foreman. He would have a copy or he would know where the copy is." I picked up my jacket. "Cal, get the horses. We are going down to the town."

Hank put his hand on my arm. "Not tonight. It is nearly dark and the town is at the bottom of the canyon and Wren has the seat and the warriors. If you go down that road tonight without the pack behind you, Wren will say you went to the town to raise men against the Council. That is the story she needs and you will hand it to her."

"Then what do we do?"

"We do what you said in the hall," Nora said from the door. "We go to the attic."

I turned. Nora was standing in the doorway with her white hair and her dark brown eyes and her hands folded.

"The map," she said. "The one your father drew with the branch under the quarry and the corner torn off. You told me about it. You said the branch goes off the bottom of the page and comes out in the tear. And you said there was a note on the back of it in your father's hand that said the Council man had come to the mine and wanted the branch surveyed."

"The map is in my mother's room," I said. "Wren has my mother's room."

"Then you had better get it before Wren thinks to look." Nora looked at me. "The attic is above the stable and the hatch is in the stable loft and the key is on a nail behind the tack shelf. Wren does not know about the hatch. She has been in Ruth's quarters and my mother's room and she has been at the gate with the soldiers. She has not been in the stable loft."

The stable was dark when we went in. The horses were quiet and the loft ladder was where it had always been and the key was on the nail behind the tack shelf. We went up through the hatch with a lantern and the attic was hot and dry and full of the smell of hay and dust, and the four crates were still in the corner under the canvas.

I opened the third crate and took out the maps and spread them on the floorboards. The canyon map was there, the one my father had drawn, with the branch going under the quarry and off the bottom corner where the tear was. I turned it over and read the note on the back again. And then I sat back on my heels and looked at it.

"Hank," I said. "Bring the lantern closer."

He brought it. I held the map up to the light and looked at the tear, and then I looked at the rest of the paper, and I said, "The tear is not a tear."

"What?"

"It is a cut. Somebody cut the corner off this map with a knife. See the edge. It is straight. It is not ragged. A hand tore this and then somebody cut it clean afterward." I turned it over. "And the cut goes through the note on the back. Look. The note says the branch goes down and then there is a line of ink that stops at the cut. There was more writing on the back of this map and somebody cut it off."

Cal came up the ladder behind us. "Luna. There is a thing in the corner. Under the spinning wheel."

I looked. There was a spinning wheel in the corner of the attic and a chair beside it and under the chair there was a box. It was not one of the crates. It was a wooden box about the size of a saddlebag with a hasp on it and no lock.

I opened it.

It was full of letters. My mother's letters. Not the ones she had written but the ones she had received, tied in bundles with string, and every bundle had a year on it in her hand. I found the bundle marked with the year I was six and I untied it and spread the letters on the floor and the first one I picked up was in my father's hand and was dated the winter before the collapse.

Derya. If you are reading this then your mother has given you the box and you are old enough to understand. I am going to write down what I know and I am going to put it in this box and I am going to give the box to your mother and she will keep it until you are grown. The water under this canyon is ours. It was ours before the Council and it will be ours after. The pact says so. The first pair swore it and the second pair swore it and the rings are the seal of it. I have one ring and Nora's mate has the other and I have hidden mine in a place where the Council will not find it. The map in the attic has the place on it and the corner of the map has the name of it and I have cut the corner off and given it to your mother and told her to keep it separate. If the Council finds the map they will not find the place. If they find the place they will not find the map.

I put the letter down.

"The corner," I said. "The corner of the map is the name of the place. And my mother kept it separate."

Hank knelt down beside me. "Then where did she keep it?"

I sat in the attic with the letters in my lap and the lantern burning and the map on the floor, and I thought about my mother's room and the sewing cupboard and the floorboard with the knot in it that looked like an eye.

"The floor," I said. "Under her bed. There was a board that did not match the others and it had an iron ring in it and I lifted it and there was the bundle with the pact and the ring and the list. But there was a space beside the bundle. There was a space in the oilcloth where something else had been."

Hank looked at me. "Something else had been there."

"Something else had been there and my mother took it out." I got up. "The corner of the map. She took it out of the bundle and she put it somewhere else. Somewhere in that room. Somewhere Wren is sleeping tonight."

The stable door creaked open below us. Cal went to the hatch and looked down and came back.

"Luna," he said. "There is a light in the yard. It is Wren. She has a lantern and she is coming to the stable."

I rolled the map and put the letters back in the box and put the box under the spinning wheel, and the three of us stood in the attic with the lantern and the dust and the sound of boots on the stable floor below.

"Luna," Cal said. "She is going to come up the ladder."