Chapter 50: The Price of Silence

We took Erik Renn into the pack house kitchen and sat him down at the long table with the guard on one side of him and Harlan on the other, and Silas put his folder on the table and opened it.

“The road that is not on the map,” Silas said. “Tell me where it is.”

“It starts at the old mill,” Erik said. “There is a track behind the miller’s house that goes north through the trees and comes out on the river road above the pass. It was a wagon road in 1891 and it has not been used since the war.” He put his hands on the table. “I have kept it clear. I have kept it clear for eighty-eight years because it was the road I used when I took the Luna east and I did not want anyone to know it was there.”

“And it comes out where?” Harlan said.

“It comes out on the river road four miles north of Walla Walla. From there you can take the river road south to the highway and the highway goes to Boise.” Erik looked at me. “It will take you a day longer than the pass. But there is no depot on the river road and no man with a list.”

Silas wrote it down.

“Why are you telling us this?” he said.

Erik looked at him for a long moment.

“I have been the Council’s hand since 1891,” he said. “I have done what I was told and I have never been sorry. But the Council has sent a false ruling into this territory and put another man’s name on it, and that is a thing I did not do and would not have done.” He put his hands flat on the table. “I have killed for the Council. I have lied for the Council. I have held a woman in a mill room for six days and I have taken her out to a pond and I have watched her go under. I have done all of it. But I have never written a false ruling and I have never put a wolf’s name on a paper he did not sign. That is a clerk’s crime and I am not a clerk.”

Silas closed his folder.

“You are going to Boise with us,” he said. “You are going to stand in front of the Alphas and you are going to say what you did. And if you do that, I will ask the Alphas to hear the whole of it, including the part where you pulled the Luna out of the pond and put her in a wagon and sent her east.”

Erik looked at him.

“You would do that?”

“I am not doing it for you,” Silas said. “I am doing it because a witness who tells the whole truth is worth more to the Alphas than a witness who tells half of it, and because the Luna’s line is alive today because of a thing you did in 1891 and the Alphas should know that too.” He stood up. “You will be held in the pack house until we leave. You will not speak to anyone but the Alpha and me. And if you run, I will find you and I will put you in front of the Alphas in chains.”

Erik nodded once.

They took him out. The kitchen was quiet.

Harlan sat down at the table and took off his hat and put it in front of him.

“The Council wants the mill land,” he said.

I looked up.

“What?”

“I have been going through the papers in the Alpha’s office since this afternoon,” Harlan said. “Every letter the Council ever sent this pack about the east field and the boundary and the mill. There are forty of them. And there is a pattern in them.” He put a folded paper on the table. “The Council has been trying to buy the mill land since 1954. Every offer has been refused by the Alpha of the day. Your grandfather refused it in 1954 and your mother refused it in 1968 and I refused it in 1971.” He looked at me. “The last offer was in July. It came to me from the Council and it offered three times the value of the land and it said the Council wanted the mill for a records depot.”

“And you refused it.”

“I refused it. And then the Council wrote to Dale and told him to file the trial claim.” Harlan put his hand flat on the table. “The claim was never about you, Wren. It was about the land. If Dale married you and you were the Luna of this pack and Dale was the Alpha, the mill land would come to him with the marriage and the Council could buy it from him. That is why the claim was filed. That is why the hearing was moved to the twenty-ninth. That is why the cull order was written on the same day.”

I sat down.

“And my testimony,” I said. “At the hearing. The Council used it.”

“The Council did not need your testimony to file a claim,” Silas said from the door. He had come back in and he was standing with his folder under his arm. “The claim was filed in August. But the Council needed a reason to send its own hunters into this territory, and a hearing where the Beta confesses to murder and an old man confesses to finishing it gives them that reason. They will say the pack is in chaos and the territory is in dispute and the cull is necessary to keep the peace.” He came and sat down. “Your testimony did not create the trap, warden. The trap was already set. Your testimony was the lever the Council used to spring it.”

I looked at the two of them across the table.

“Then the hearing tonight did exactly what the Council wanted,” I said. “Dale confessed in front of the whole pack and Erik confessed in front of the whole pack and three women stood up and claimed the Luna’s blood, and the Council has been waiting for a night like this for years.”

“Yes,” Silas said. “And there is a thing that the Council did not count on.”

“What?”

“The pack saw it,” Silas said. “Every wolf in that square saw Dale confess and heard Erik say what he did. That is a thing the Council cannot undo. They can send hunters and they can send false rulings and they can send clerks, but they cannot make forty wolves forget what they heard tonight.” He put his folder down. “And in three weeks, when the Alphas come to this territory to hear the claim of blood, those forty wolves are going to be standing in the square behind you.”

Harlan stood up.

“We leave at first light,” he said. “Wren, you and the archivist and Hannah and your mate will take the mill road north through the trees and you will not stop until you are on the river road. I will hold the hunters here as long as I can.” He put his hat on. “And Wren. There is a thing I have to say to you before you go. I have been the Alpha of this pack for twenty-two years and I have signed things I knew were wrong because I was afraid of the Council. I am not going to be afraid anymore. But I am going to be the Alpha who let the Council run this territory for twenty-two years and I am going to have to answer for it. So when you get to Boise and you stand in front of the Alphas, you tell them that the Alpha of the Palouse Ridge pack sent you and that he is ready to answer for what he did.”

I stood up.

“I will tell them,” I said.

The door opened and June came in with snow in her hair and her face white.

“Wren,” she said. “There is a truck coming down the co-op road. It is the hunters’ truck and it has the Council mark on the door and there are four men in it.”

Harlan put his hat on.

“They are early,” he said. “Wren. Go. Now. Out the back and through the barn and up the ridge to the mill. Do not take the road. Do not take the truck. Take the trees.”

I ran.