Chapter 13: Not to Be Told

The Alphas filed out of the great hall in twos and threes, talking low.

Eli had fallen asleep against Garrick's arm in the first row of chairs.

I left him there and crossed the empty floor to the dais.

Torin was standing alone at the foot of it, looking at the place where Theron had been.

"Show me the thirteenth lock," I said.

He turned.

"Delphine wants you to ask me that," he said. "You know she does."

"I know she's a liar. I also know you wouldn't say what was behind it. Show me."

He was quiet for a long moment.

Then he took a heavy iron ring from inside his coat, with thirteen keys on it, and held it out on his palm.

"You can open it yourself," he said.

I took the keys.

We went down through the kitchen in the dark, past the pantry shelves and the loaves under their cloths, to the iron door in the back wall.

The passage was cold enough to show my breath.

I fitted the first key, and the lock turned easily.

So did the second.

At the thirteenth the door swung inward on a small stone room with no window.

There was a desk, a lamp and shelves of ledgers bound in black leather up to the ceiling.

There was no woman in it, and no song.

"The singing comes down an old shaft from the east tower," Torin said behind me. "I told you the truth. Your mother was never behind this door."

"Then what is it?"

"My father's record room."

One ledger lay open under the lamp, with a ribbon marking the page.

I read the page standing up.

It was a column of women's names in a dead man's slanting hand, with a date beside each and the pack that had sent her.

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