Chapter 11: The Loaf Breaks

At seven o'clock on Midsummer evening the Long Hall door swung open at Nils's touch.

It hit the wall hard enough to knock two antlers off their hooks.

The whole pack turned around.

"It worked," Nils said, to nobody, and walked in.

I walked in behind him, in the green dress I had chosen because it hid flour and photographed well.

A hundred and ninety wolves stood along the tables in their good flannel.

Every one of them watched me come up the aisle, and I could tell which of them already knew.

I did not have the clipboard.

I had it in my head.

Step one.

Step two.

On step three I lifted my foot over the loose board.

There was no loose board.

Somebody had driven six nails into it.

I had already committed my leg, so I cleared a stretch of floor that did not need clearing, with my knee at my waist.

I landed on step four with the dignity of a stork.

In row five, a child held up a ten.

I looked up the hall.

Soren Halme stood at the dais in a clean green coat, with a pale shaving cut on his jaw and hands full of nothing.

He did not smile.

He moved his eyes, once, from me to the board and back.

I found out later that he had done it at dawn.

I took my chair at Table One, under the antlers.

Table Fourteen sat at the far end of the hall by the dish pit, with its wobble and one empty seat.

The Anointing came first.

Soren stood in front of Nils with a copper bowl of lake water.

The Blessing Alpha is supposed to speak for as long as it takes to be heard in the back row.

The last one had gone for forty minutes, and Ulla had written a complaint about it in the binder.

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