Chapter 12: The Second Ledger

I didn't say his name out loud.

If I'd said it, Cale would have heard.

He was ten feet away, black with soot, leaning on his axe.

He'd already proved once he could be halfway to murder in the time it took me to blink.

So I said nothing.

I turned around and looked at the crowd.

Garth was there.

Of course he was.

He was on the riverbank with a bucket in his good hand, his face shining with sweat.

A ring of young wolves stood around him.

"Lamp left burning," he was telling them. "Garrison wolves. They live like animals. I've seen it a hundred times."

The young wolves nodded.

One of them clapped him on the shoulder.

He'd carried water for an hour, they'd say tomorrow. The commander himself.

He saw me looking.

He set the bucket down and lifted the gloved hand in that same little salute.

My wolf threw herself against the inside of my ribs.

I let her.

I let her hit the ribs and fall back, and then I turned away from him and walked to Edda.

"Get the tracker," I said quietly. "And the twins. Nobody else."

She looked at my face and didn't ask why.

We left the fire one by one, so nobody would notice.

We met in the dark under the pines on the far side of the river.

The tracker was already crouched over the ground.

"Lamp oil," he said. "He carried it in a can. He spilled it." He touched a dark spot on the pine needles and smelled his finger. "Here. And here."

"Which way?"

He pointed up the ridge.

Garth didn't sleep in the Great House.

He never had.

He kept a hunting cabin on the north ridge, half a mile above the last lodge.

Up there he could drink without his sister watching.

Everyone knew that.

Nobody had ever been up there.

We went up in our wolf shapes, the four of us, the tracker in front with his nose down.

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