Chapter 12: The Grain

I read my father's ledger at the war table at dawn, with a candle, with my glasses on, and with Kjell breathing over my shoulder.

Torin had put the little wolves back on their hills himself.

He stood across the table with his arms folded, watching me turn pages, and I tried not to feel it on my skin.

"Here," I said.

The page was in my father's square hand, dated four years back, the autumn before he died.

It listed the Hartfell tribute, set aside every year by the Alpha of Lowmere in a locked granary at the border.

Four hundred sacks of barley.

Under it, a second hand had added a line in thin brown ink.

"Gudrun's," I said. "That loop on the g. I would know it anywhere. She wrote my school reports."

"What does it say?" Torin asked.

"Released to Falk granary. Payment in silver, received. Dated the week after Father died."

Kjell swore.

I turned the pages faster.

Every autumn since, the same entry in the same thin hand.

Four hundred sacks, released to Falk.

Four years of Hartfell's winter grain, and the silver for it went to Gudrun's account.

"The border villages are hungry because of this," I said.

"She's been selling the debt she owes you to the pack she wants to marry her daughter into."

Torin's jaw was set.

"There's more," I said, more slowly. "There's a gap. The last page is gone."

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