Chapter 18: The Word

"The key, Miss Bostick," the Elder said.

He held out one liver-spotted hand, palm up, and the porch light shone on his rings.

Behind me the yard was filling.

Wolves had come up from the Longhouse in ones and twos, and then in a stream.

Torsten was at my right hand within a minute, with Beck and Stellan a step behind.

His fingers found mine, and I pressed the brass into his palm, and he closed his fist without looking down.

"I don't have it," I said.

"You were holding it a moment ago."

"I was. I'm not now."

It was true, and he heard that it was true.

His eyes went to Torsten's bandaged arm and, for the first time, I saw him count the cost of a thing before he did it.

"Very well," he said. "Then we'll finish tonight."

"The third trial is the Word."

He turned to the pack, and his voice rolled out gentle and carrying.

"Linnea Niemi has been taken in my house with her hand in my private things."

"By law I may judge her for theft. The penalty, if the family won't answer for her, is silver."

A woman near the front gasped.

The Elder smiled at the Stone, where Garrick had been brought out between two scouts.

"But I am not a cruel man," he said. "Garrick may buy his daughter's freedom with a single sentence."

"Say before the pack that Mara Quill broke the law and ran, that the law was just, and that you are sorry."

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