Chapter 8: The Tin

"You are not going," Mags said.

"I'm going."

"He said he'd handle it. Let the big idiot handle it."

"He'll handle it by going to war for me. With three hundred wolves who've never said good morning to me."

The cook put a plate of eggs in front of me and pointed at it with her spatula until I ate.

"Mags," I said, with my mouth full. "Did you get it?"

Mags scowled.

Then she reached into her canvas jacket and set something on the table, wrapped in a dish towel.

"Two in the morning," she said. "Under the boathouse floorboards. I had to lie on my belly in an inch of bird crap."

"You're a hero."

"I'm an idiot who smells like a pigeon."

I unwrapped the towel.

It was a round tin, the kind you buy fancy salt in, with a screw lid.

Empty.

The inside was frosted gray, and the rim burned my fingertip through the gauze when I touched it.

Silver salt.

Enough to poison a swimming lake.

I wrapped it back up.

Then I went to Aldric Langtry's hall.

The great room of the pack house had a ceiling two stories high and a stone fireplace you could stand inside.

I'd only ever been in it carrying a tray.

Today every bench was full.

Langtry wolves down the left side, Mossgrave wolves down the right.

Five long shapes under white sheets on the floor in front of the hearth.

Aldric sat in the Alpha's chair at the far end.

Cordelia sat beside him in gray silk and long gray gloves, her hands folded in her lap.

Alpha Mossgrave stood in the middle of the room, talking.

He stopped talking when I walked in.

So did everyone.

"Well," he said pleasantly. "The rogue comes on her own feet. That's courteous."

"I told you to stay over the ridge," Aldric said.

His voice was hard, but his eyes went over me fast, head to foot.

"You don't tell me things anymore," I said. "You cut me out, remember?"

Somebody on the Langtry benches snorted.

Mossgrave spread his hands toward the sheets.

"Five of my wolves. Torn open. On Langtry ground. And this woman's scent on every one of them."

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