The Spring Between Us

Chapter 21: My Father's Gamma

I did not answer her.

I stood in the doorway of the record room with my hand on the frame and the pact against my chest under my jacket, and I looked at Ruth across the table and thought about what she had just read to me out of a book.

"Void," I said. "Not invalid."

"Void. It means the bond never was. It means the Council can order it broken." Ruth's hand was flat on the open book. "A year under guard in your own territory. You would not be Luna. You would not be allowed to cross your own fence line without a Council warrior beside you. And Hank would be the same on his side of the border, and neither of you would be allowed to see the other, and at the end of the year the Council would decide whether to let you out."

"You have read this carefully."

"I have read it three times." Ruth closed the book and put it back on the shelf. "Derya. I am not your enemy. I know you think I am. I know you found my mare's prints on the south track and made them into a rope. But I am standing in this room at midnight reading the law for you because nobody else in this pack will. The Council man gave you three days. In three days the healer examines your arm in front of both packs and then the Council decides whether to make you a prisoner in your own house. That is what is waiting for you. Not a marriage. Not a truce. A cell."

I looked at her. Her auburn hair was coming loose from its pins and her grey jacket was unbuttoned at the top and her grey eyes were steady.

"Where were you the night my mother died?" I said.

Ruth's jaw tightened. "We have done this."

"We have not. You told the warriors you were in the pack house with a bad knee. You told me you rode the south track in daylight the day before. I have looked at the dust on that track and I have looked at your mare's feet and I have looked at the skid marks at the edge where she went over. I have not looked at the one wolf who was in the pack house that night and who could tell me what he saw."

Ruth's face changed. Just a little. "Who?"

"Elias. My father's Gamma. He was in this pack house that night and he was in this room the next morning and he had a packet in his coat and a story in his mouth, and he is dead in the well." I stepped into the room. "Where were you when Elias went out to the well?"

"I was in my quarters."

"Alone."

"Yes."

"With no witness."

Ruth's hands came together in front of her and she looked at me for a long moment. "Derya. If you are going to accuse me of killing Elias as well as your mother, then say it in the hall tomorrow and let the pack hear it. But do not stand in this room at midnight and hint at it like a girl at a well."

"I am not hinting at anything." I went past her to the door. "I am going to find out what Elias knew. And when I find it, Ruth, I am going to bring it to the inquiry and I am going to put it on the table next to the pact, and the two of us will find out together which of us the pack believes."

I went out. I did not look back at her. I went down the back stairs and across the yard to the Gamma's quarters, and I did not have to knock, because the door was open.

Elias's room had not been touched since the funeral. There was a bed with a rumpled blanket and a chair with his coat over the back of it and a table with a bottle on it and a cup beside the bottle. The cup was full.

Elias was sitting in the chair.

I stopped in the doorway with my hand on the frame. He was in his shirt with his boots off and his thin grey hair standing up and his face grey in the lantern light, and he was looking at me with his mouth open. I had seen them put the red earth on him three days ago. I had stood at the grave with the whole pack behind me.

"Luna," he said. His voice was a croak. "Shut the door."

I shut the door. My heart was going so hard I could hear it. I crossed the room and crouched down in front of the chair and looked at his face, and it was Elias, thin and grey and shaking, and he smelled of whisky and sweat and his eyes were red.

"They told the pack I was dead," he said.

"Who told the pack?"

"Ruth. She came to me the night before the funeral and she said the Council man wanted me out of the way and she was going to put it about that I had fallen in the well." He picked up the cup and drank from it and his hand shook so badly that some of it went down his shirt. "She said she would hide me in the Gamma's quarters and bring me food and that when the inquiry was over she would get me out of the canyon and I would never have to speak to anyone again. And I was frightened, Derya. I was so frightened. I have been frightened for eleven years."

"Elias." I put my hand on his knee. "Who is buried in that grave?"

"An old wolf from the mine. He died in the spring and nobody claimed him. Ruth had him put in a Council coat and wrapped in a tarp." He drank again. "It was not my idea. I want you to know that. It was not my idea and I did not have the courage to say no."

I crouched there in the little room with my hand on his knee and my heart going and the pact against my chest, and I thought about Ruth standing at my shoulder at the grave with her hands folded and her face grave. I thought about her saying, "He was your father's Gamma for many years."

"Elias," I said. "The packet you had in the record room. The oiled cloth. You said you had kept it for eleven years and that my mother gave it to you. Where is it?"

He put the cup down. His hands were shaking. "I gave it to Ruth."

"You what?"

"She came to me the night you found the map in the attic. She said you were breaking apart and that the packet would only make it worse and that she would keep it safe until you were yourself again." He looked at me and his eyes were wet. "I believed her, Derya. She was your mother's Beta. I have known her for eleven years and I believed her."

I got up. The room was very small and very hot and I could not breathe.

"What was in the packet?" I said.

"Your father's letters." Elias's voice had gone very quiet. "Your father knew he was going to die. He wrote letters to you and to your mother and he gave them to me the week before the collapse, and he told me to keep them until you were old enough to read them, and then he went down into that mine and it came down on top of him and I have had those letters in a box in my room for eighteen years." He put his face in his hands. "I am sorry. I am so sorry. I was a coward and I have been a coward my whole life and your mother knew it and she still trusted me and I failed her."

"Elias." I knelt down again. "The letters are gone. Ruth has them. But you saw my father the week before he died. What did he tell you?"

Elias lifted his head. "He told me the Council man had come to the mine again. He told me he had refused him and that the man had said there would be a reckoning. And then he said a thing I did not understand for eighteen years and I understand it now." He looked at me. "He said, 'Tell Derya it is not the mine. It is the water. And tell her that her mother's mark is not a mistake.'"

I sat back on my heels. My father knew. My father knew about the mark. My father knew about the water, and he had written it down and given it to Elias, and Elias had kept it in a box for eighteen years, and Ruth had it now.

"Elias," I said. "My mother's mark. Who was she bonded to?"

Elias opened his mouth. Then he closed it again and his eyes went past me to the door and his whole body went stiff.

I turned. The door was opening. Ruth came in with a cup in her hand, a cup she had not had a moment ago, and she smiled at Elias and said, "I have brought you something to help you sleep. You have been talking too much and it is not good for you."

Elias looked at the cup. Then he looked at me and his face was white.

"Luna," he said. "Do not let me drink that."

Ruth set the cup down on the table. "It is only a sleeping draught. The healer makes it. You have had it before and it has helped you."

"Ruth," I said. "Step away from the table."

"Derya, he is an old man who has been drinking all day and he is confused. I am trying to care for him." Ruth's hand stayed on the cup. "He is my pack. I do not abandon my pack."

Elias reached out and picked up the cup and held it in both hands. His hands were shaking and his face was grey and he looked at me over the rim of it and said, "Your mother was bonded to the Alpha of the Çöl pack. Not Hank. Hank's father. And your father was bonded to Nora. They were the pair. They were the second pair in the pact." He lifted the cup. "And the Council man knew, and he killed them both, and he has been waiting eighteen years for the third pair to come along."

He drank.

The cup came away from his mouth and he sat very still in the chair with his hands in his lap, and Ruth's hand was on the table, and I saw her face, and her face was not patient at all. It was the face of a woman who had just heard a thing she had been trying to prevent for eleven years.

Then Elias's mouth opened and his eyes rolled back and he slid sideways out of the chair.