Chapter 11: The Terms

Nobody in the garden said a word, and then everybody did.

"She knew," a man shouted. "She knew it would burn, because she put it there!"

"The tin was in Maud's keeping for twenty years!"

"Who's she to say what the Alpha did or didn't do?"

Caleb stood in the middle of it with his wrapped hand held against his chest, and he looked at me for what felt like a long time.

Then he turned to the elders.

"The tin goes to the council hall under seal," he said. "So does the flask, and the cup, and the tea on the grass. Nobody touches any of it."

"And the Beta?" the oldest elder asked.

"Goes back to the healer's loft. With Alpha Rotheram and Ida beside her. Not the cellar."

He did not look at me when he said it.

"And Maud Hesketh stays at Lenora's side with two of you watching, until the council has heard both of them."

Maud gave a small, wounded gasp.

"Caleb, you can't think..."

"I think nothing yet," he said, "and neither does anyone else in this garden."

He walked out through the gate.

It was past midnight when I heard the gravel again.

I was in the cottage yard with a lantern, because Ida had told me to air the loft blankets, and because I could not stand to be indoors.

I knew who it was before I looked up.

The cord had been pressing at my ribs for a quarter of an hour, a low, steady heat.

"Term three," I said.

"I'm in the yard." Caleb stopped at the edge of the lantern light. "Not the cottage."

"Term three is Ida's cottage and everything that belongs to it."

"That isn't what you said."

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