The Soul Beneath Her Skin

The grain sack beneath me had split somewhere after the last bridge. By the time Hallowmere came into view, flour had worked through my skirt, my coat and two layers of underclothes. It sat in every seam as if I had been rolled for frying. Silas Kerr glanced back from the driver’s board, saw me beating white dust from one sleeve and laughed without much kindness. “You’ll match the frost.” “I was hoping to match the kitchen.” “If they’ll have you.” He faced the road again before I could answer. That was the difficulty with men who owned wagons. They could offer an insult and then put twelve feet of grain between themselves and the reply. I pressed my gloved hand over the letter in my coat pocket. The paper had softened at the folds during three days of travel, but the writing still promised a kitchen post at Hallowmere, board included. Board meant meals. The post meant wages. Hallowmere itself meant very little to me beyond a roof I had not yet been dismissed from. My last mistress had called me into the scullery on a Tuesday and said her circumstances had altered. They had altered so thoroughly that I was given no wages for the final fortnight and one hour to pack. On Wednesday, the house employed another girl. On Thursday, a placement clerk who had never before remembered my name produced the Hallowmere letter and told me I ought to be grateful. Gratitude was often expected when someone had arranged matters so that refusal became expensive. The road climbed between black firs. Hallowmere stood above them, built from grey stone that seemed to have been quarried out of the sky. Its towers were plain, its windows narrow, and its outer wall had the practical ugliness of something designed to keep people on one side or the other. Smoke rose behind it. A great deal of smoke. Smoke required fires. Fires required coal, kindling, ash buckets, blacklead and somebody’s knees on a hearthstone. I counted six chimney stacks and decided the kitchen must be large enough to need another pair of hands. That was better than wondering why my post in Bell’s household had vanished overnight. Silas clicked his tongue at the horses. “Keep your head down in the yard.” “Does grain offend them?” “Strangers do.” I looked at his shoulders. They had gone stiff beneath his patched coat. “Who is them?” He did not answer. The gate opened before we reached it. No guard challenged Silas or inspected the wagon. One man in a dark cloak raised two fingers, and we rolled under an arch deep enough to swallow the daylight. Cold settled there. The wheels struck stone, loud between the walls, then carried us into the inner yard. I had expected barrels, stable lads and servants inventing reasons not to unload a wagon in the frost. There were wolves. A dozen lay along the wall where the weak winter sun reached the stones. Three more stood near the stable doors. Others moved between people and horses with the ease of dogs who had never been kicked out of anyone’s path. Grey, russet, black, brown. Too large for dogs and too watchful to be mistaken for them. Pack houses kept different customs. At my first place, wolves shifted only beyond the orchard because the mistress disliked hair on the rugs. At my second, the master’s sons changed shape at dinner when they wanted the human servants to remember which of us had teeth. I had learned to keep my face empty. Silas drew the wagon beside a loading platform. “Off.” “Charming to the last.” “Off, girl.” The urgency in his voice cost me my next remark. I took my bundle in one hand and gripped the side rail with the other. My left foot had gone numb beneath me. I lowered it towards the wheel hub, missed, and landed hard enough to jar my teeth. The nearest wolf lifted its head. Then every wolf in the yard turned towards me. No warning passed between them. No bark, scenting muzzle or scrape of claw came first. One instant the yard held separate creatures occupied with separate things. The next, every pair of eyes fixed on the flour-whitened stranger beside the grain wagon. A groom stopped with a buckle half-fastened. Two men carrying a crate set it down badly. Wood struck stone and split one corner, but neither man looked at the damage. They looked at me. I went still. Running from wolves invited an old part of them to make a decision. Bowing invited the newer part to make another. I did neither. I kept one hand on my bundle and the other against the wagon, where the rough plank steadied my palm. Something inside me remained as silent as it had always been. I was wolf-born. There had been a naming, an opening rite and years of waiting afterwards, but I had never shifted. No paws beneath the skin. No second voice. No warm animal presence to warn or comfort me. Among wolves, that made me wrong. Among humans, it made me cheap. A wolf-born servant could work twice as hard as an ordinary woman and still be paid half, because one day her nature might prove troublesome. If she admitted that nature had never appeared, she was distrusted for failing at it. I had been fifteen when I understood that late to shift earned fewer questions than unable. For nine years, I had been late. The black wolf by the stable took one step towards me. My fingers tightened around the bundle. It contained a spare dress, two aprons, three pairs of stockings, a comb with four missing teeth and every other object I owned. A poor weapon, unless my attacker feared mended linen. “Silas,” I said. The driver’s board was empty. I saw the back of his coat disappearing through the gate arch. He had abandoned his wagon, his horses and me with the speed of a man who knew which possession was least costly. The black wolf took another step. A woman beside the well whispered, “Why are they doing that?” No one answered. The wolves did not snarl. That frightened me more. Anger was useful. It announced itself and sometimes listened to reason. This attention was quiet, complete and shared. One of the horses tossed its head. The reins slid along the driver’s board. Work gave the hands somewhere sensible to go. I set down my bundle, caught the hanging reins and wrapped them around the brake lever before the team could drag half a wagon through the watching crowd. The nearby horse shuddered under my touch. “Easy,” I murmured. “Only one of us needs to disgrace herself.” Its ear flicked back. The wolves remained fixed on me. Boots sounded beneath the covered walk. A broad man in a dark uniform crossed the yard first. His hand rested near the knife at his belt, though he had not drawn it. He took in the wolves, the abandoned wagon and me. “Name.” “Clara Sedge.” “Business?” I pulled the letter from my pocket and held it out. “Kitchen post.” He did not take it. Behind him, people moved aside. The man who came through them wore black trousers and a white shirt open at the throat, without coat, waistcoat or boots. Frost silvered the edge of the paving. He crossed it barefoot as if cold were an inconvenience belonging to other people. I knew his face from the old coin in the placement office and his name from servants who collected stories about great houses. Darius Vale, Alpha of Hallowmere. Thirty-two, widowed and said to have killed his own mate. No story agreed on why. He stopped several yards from me. The yard changed around his stillness. Heads lowered. Shoulders drew in. Even the man in uniform shifted half a pace aside. Darius Vale did not look at the letter in my hand. He looked at my face, then my throat, where the journey had tugged my collar crooked. His expression emptied. I knew that look. Employers wore a smaller version when they found a cracked jar in the pantry and began deciding whose wages would pay for it. I pulled my collar straight. Darius came one pace closer. The wolves rose together. I felt the movement through the stones before I saw it: claws placed under weight, bodies lifting, a dozen small sounds made as one. None came nearer. None looked at him. They watched me. Darius watched me too, but there was nothing simple in it. Shock had broken through whatever an Alpha used in place of an ordinary face. Beneath it sat grief so old it looked built into the bone. The servants’ stories returned with an unpleasant detail. His wolf had gone silent when his mate died. Five years without word or answer, though the man still ruled a house full of wolves. The Alpha’s bare toes whitened against the frozen stone. “Who sent you?” he asked. “The placement office at Bellcross.” “That is not what I asked.” “It is what I know.” His gaze moved over the flour on my coat, my work-roughened gloves and the bundle at my feet. Nothing in his inspection felt like a man’s interest. It was worse than that. He looked as if each ordinary thing offended the evidence of his own eyes. I wanted my kitchen, my cot and the privacy of being useful to people who did not care who I was. Instead, every creature in the yard had noticed me. Darius looked at me as though I had climbed out of a grave. When he spoke, the voice was not quite his. “Mate.”