Chapter 6: Brooms and Soup

By ten the next morning the lodge had forty-one people in it.

Demelza counted them twice.

They had come up the hill in the dark, in the afternoon, and in the grey hours before breakfast, with duffel bags and children and one elderly cat.

The old guard with the white moustache stood in the doorway of the one good room with his hat in his hand.

"We'd follow you into the Hall if you wanted it, Miss MacShane," he said.

"Nobody's going into the Hall."

"Half the pack would stand behind you in a challenge. Hoyt can't hold the ring. Take the seat."

Nan, up to her elbows in a bucket of soapy water, looked over her shoulder.

"He's right, honey. Walk in there and put your hand on the chair."

Demelza put down the broom she had been holding.

She had been sweeping the lodge since dawn, and the broom had already lost two bristles to the cause.

"I don't want his chair," she said.

"Everyone wants the chair."

"I want to know what you want."

The old guard blinked.

"What I want?"

"Yes. All of you."

There was a long silence, and then a woman in the doorway lifted her hand.

She was holding a toddler on her hip.

"A dry room," she said. "Mine at the Hall leaks. I told Hoyt's father three winters in a row."

"A dry room," said Demelza. "Done. Next."

"I want to learn to shift," said a boy of about sixteen from the back. "They said I was too small."

"You're not too small. You're sixteen. Next."

"A pension," said the old guard. "Forty years of service, and I never saw a coin."

"We'll start a pension."

"With what?" said Nan.

"I don't know yet," said Demelza. "Next."

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