The Spring Between Us

Chapter 26: A Bond We Can't File

Nora was sitting at the head of my mother's table with her white hair down her back and her hands folded on the wood, and she looked at me and Hank as we came out of the record room the way a schoolmistress looks at two children who have been whispering.

"Sit down," she said. "Both of you."

We sat. The hall was empty now. The warriors had gone out to the yard and old Tomas had been sent to his bed and Ruth was somewhere in the pack house with the door of her quarters shut, and the long table was bare except for the cup in front of Nora and a folded paper beside it.

"I have been in this pack house for two days," Nora said. "I have listened to your Beta and I have listened to the Council man and I have listened to the warriors in the yard. Last night I listened at the door of the record room for a while, and this morning I listened at the door of the hall while the Çöl Beta made his confession, and I have just listened at the door of the record room while the two of you talked about a chamber under a pump house." She picked up her cup. "I am old and I have no patience left, so I am going to say the things that neither of you has said, and you are going to sit there and let me."

"Yes," I said.

"First. My son is bonded to you and you are bonded to him and the marks on your arms are the marks of a truce pair. I knew it before I came up that road. I have known it since the Council gathering three months ago when my son came home and could not eat his supper." She looked at Hank. "You did not tell me. You did not have to. I have been waiting for it since the spring."

Hank's jaw worked. "Mother."

"Second," Nora said. "I knew about the pact. I have known about it since I was a girl and my mother told me the story of the first pair and made me swear I would never speak of it to anyone outside the family. I did not tell you, and I did not tell your father's mate, and I did not tell her daughter. That is on me. I have carried it for sixty years and it has not made me a better wolf, it has made me a coward." She set her cup down. "Third. Your mother, Derya, came to me four weeks before she died. She came to my house by the spring in the night and she sat where you are sitting and she asked me to help her take the pact to the Council. I told her no. I told her it would get her killed and that the Council had buried that paper two generations ago and would bury anyone who dug it up. She said she would do it alone. I let her go." Nora's dark brown eyes were steady. "Four days later she was dead. I have not slept properly since."

The hall was quiet. I sat with my hands on the table and my mother's letter in my pocket and the mark on my arm warm under my sleeve.

"Now," Nora said. "The bond. The Council man has given you three days and a demand for public proof. You have two days left of the three. What are you going to do?"

Hank said, "We are going to bring the chamber into the open at the inquiry before the examination and let both packs see what Silas has been doing under that quarry."

"That is a good plan," Nora said. "It will not save you."

"Why not?"

"Because of the truce law, and because the Council man has read it more carefully than either of you." Nora picked up the folded paper beside her cup and opened it and turned it around. It was a page copied in a neat hand, and the ink was still dark. "I went to the record room last night after you went out and I copied this out of the third volume. It is the clause that comes after the clause your Beta read to you." She put her finger on the page. "It says that no mate bond between Alphas of rival packs may be filed, recorded or given effect by the Council until the Council has ruled on the consent of both packs, and that no such bond may be ruled on while there is an open inquiry into either pack." She looked up. "Do you understand what that means?"

I said, "It means the Council cannot file the bond while the inquiry is open."

"It means the Council cannot even look at the bond while the inquiry is open. And the inquiry is open until the Council closes it, and the Council closes it when it has finished its report, and the report is written by the envoy, and the envoy is Silas." Nora folded the paper. "So long as Silas has an inquiry open, the Council cannot rule on your bond. And Silas can keep an inquiry open for a year if he wants to. He can open a new one every time the old one closes. A bond that cannot be filed is a bond that does not exist, in the eyes of the Council."

I looked at Hank. His face had gone very still.

"Then the examination in two days," he said. "The public proof."

"Will prove the bond to both packs and to every wolf in this canyon. And it will not be filed, because the inquiry is open, and the Council will say it cannot be filed, and the Council will be right." Nora set the paper down. "And there is a worse clause. If a bond is proven in public while an inquiry is open, the envoy may order the pair separated for the duration of the inquiry, for the good order of both packs. Separated means confined. You would be confined to this mesa and he would be confined to his spring, and neither of you would cross a fence line until the inquiry closed."

"So Silas wants the bond proven," I said. "He demanded the proof. He wrote the demand himself."

"He wants the proof because the proof puts you both in a cage. He does not want to end the bond. He wants to freeze it, and to freeze the two of you, and to keep the water running into his pockets while the Council writes reports about it." Nora picked up her cup. "That is what he has been doing in this canyon for nine years. He does not kill every wolf who gets in his way. He files papers at them until they cannot move."

Hank stood up and walked to the window. He stood there with his back to us and his hands at his sides for a long moment.

"Then we do not give him the proof," he said.

"The inquiry demands it," Nora said. "In two days the healer examines your arm in front of both packs. You cannot refuse. If you refuse, the Council rules the bond void, and void is worse than frozen, because void means it never was, and then Silas can say the two of you were never bonded and the water was never yours."

I sat at the table with my hands flat on the wood and my heart going hard. The mark on my arm was warm and steady and I could feel Hank across the room, the low hot ache of him, the way I could feel the weather.

"The mark is on my arm," I said. "It is silver and it has grown into a crescent and a healer will see it in two days in front of both packs. I cannot hide it. I have tried. Mira says it grows whether I want it to or not."

Nora looked at me. "A healer looks at skin, Derya. What she sees depends on what is on the skin." She turned her cup around on the table. "Your mother carried a mark for nineteen years and no healer in this canyon ever examined it. Do you know why? Because a wolf can refuse an examination. And because a mark can be covered."

Hank turned around. "Covered with what?"

Nora put her hand into her coat pocket and brought out a small tin, the kind that holds salve, and set it on the table.

"Your mother used this," she said. "Mira made it for her. It is beeswax and lamp black and a little lead, and it goes on like paint and it does not come off in water. She wore it for nineteen years and nobody saw her mark, and the night she went over the south rim it was still on her arm." She pushed the tin across the table toward me. "Mira will make you another. And in two days the healer will examine your arm in front of both packs and she will see clean skin, and you will both swear there is no bond, and Silas will have nothing to freeze."

I looked at the tin. "I would be lying to the Council in front of both packs."

"You would." Nora's dark brown eyes did not move from my face. "And if you are caught, the Council will rule the bond void and confine you both for a year and there will be nothing left of either pack. I am not telling you it is a good plan. I am telling you it is the only plan that does not end with you in a cage."

Hank came back to the table and stood beside me and looked down at the tin.

"Mother," he said. "You carried this tin in your pocket up the mesa road. You have been carrying it since the day you left your house."

"Yes."

"You knew we would need it."

"I hoped you would not." Nora stood up. "Now sit down and eat something, both of you, and then you will go and look at that chamber under the pump house and decide what to do about the ledger, and I will go and see what I can learn from a Council man who thinks he is the only clever wolf in this canyon." She went toward the door and stopped. "Derya. One more thing. Your mother wrote to me a week before she died and told me she had found the pact and that she was going to take it to the Council. I have that letter. It is in my saddlebag and it is in her hand and it says what she meant to do and who she meant to do it to. If we need a dead Luna's voice in that inquiry, I have it."

She went out. The hall was quiet. I sat at the table with the tin in front of me and Hank beside me, and neither of us said anything for a while.

"Two days," he said.

"Two days." I picked up the tin and turned it over in my hand. "Hank. If we do this, if we lie to the Council and cover the marks and say there is no bond, then when this is over we still cannot file it. There is no legal bond between rival packs. There is no paper in the Council's books that will make us one wolf. We would be bonded in secret for the rest of our lives."

He looked at me. "You are asking whether I want that."

"I am asking whether you have thought about it."

"I have thought about nothing else for two days." He put his hand over mine on the tin. "Derya. I did not want a bond. I did not want a mark on my arm or a wolf in my head. I wanted my spring and my pack and a quiet life and I have been telling myself that for three months. And then you came over the rim with your poison and your flat ugly truth and I have not wanted a quiet life since." He took his hand back. "We cover the marks. We lie to the Council. And when it is over we will find another way, because there has to be one, and if there is not, then I will live in secret with you and be glad of it."

The outer door opened and Cal came in.

"Luna," he said. "There is a rider at the gate. He is from the Council and he is asking for the envoy, and he has brought a letter with the Council's own seal on it, and the gate warrior says the rider told him the Council has finished its report on the Kızıltaş succession and has reached a decision."