Chapter 15: The Vote

The Silverfen healer could slow the silver, but she could not draw it out.

"Only one healer in these mountains has done it," she said. "The old woman who raised you."

I looked at the clock on the wall.

Three hours to Iron Moon, three hours back, and Wystan had less than that.

Joran was already at the door.

"Take Fenn's truck," I said.

"I don't have a rank, a seal or a single warrior. They owe me nothing."

"Then ask."

He looked at me for a moment.

"I'll ask," he said.

He went out, and I heard the engine catch and the gravel spray.

I did not watch him go.

I sat down by Wystan's cot and held his hand, and the black lines crept another inch up his arm.

At sunset the three elders came into the infirmary yard, and every wolf in Silverfen came behind them.

They stood in a ring in the cold light.

The oldest elder held a wooden bowl, and in it lay three stones, one black and two white.

"We said we would vote at the end of her thirty days," he said. "The Marrow elder has taken that from us."

"Then vote now," I said.

I stood in the doorway with Wystan's blood still drying on my sleeves.

"Does a rejected wolf stay on Silverfen land?" the oldest elder asked.

The first elder, a stern woman with a braid, came forward.

She dropped her stone into the bowl.

It was black.

My stomach turned over.

"She brought them to our gate," the woman said. "I don't say she meant to. I say she did."

The second elder came, an old man leaning on a stick.

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