Chapter 67: The Pack Square

The door shut and the lock clicked and the vault was dark except for the lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Elias went to the door and put his hands on it and pushed. It did not move.

“It is iron,” he said. “It is two inches of iron and it is set into the stone.”

“Can you break it?”

“No.” He turned around. “Can you open it from the inside?”

I went to the door and put my hand on the lock and said the seven words.

Nothing.

I said them again.

Nothing.

“It opened from the outside,” I said. “It does not open from the inside.”

Elias sat down on a crate.

“Then we are in a vault,” he said.

I looked around the room. The shelves went from the floor to the ceiling and there were crates on the floor and a table in the middle and the lamp was burning with a low steady flame and there was oil in the reservoir.

“We are in a vault with a lamp and a table and a register,” I said. “And there is air coming from somewhere. Look at the flame. It is moving.”

I followed the flame. It was leaning toward the back wall and the back wall was stone like the rest of the room, but there was a crack in the stone at the top and the crack was wide enough to put my hand in and cold air was coming through it.

“There is a vent,” I said. “It goes up. It goes up toward the mill.”

Elias came and looked.

“It is a chimney,” he said. “The founders built a chimney in the vault. That is how they heated it.” He put his hand into the crack. “It is narrow and it is rough and it is going to be a hard climb.”

“It is a climb or it is a wait,” I said. “And I am not going to wait in a vault for a pack that has already voted to chain you.”

He looked at me.

“Then I will go first,” he said.

He went up the chimney with his hands and his feet against the stone and I stood below him with the lamp and watched his boots go up into the dark. He was gone for a long time. Then his voice came down.

“There is a grate at the top,” he said. “It is iron and it is rusted. I can feel the air coming through it.”

“Can you break it?”

“I can try.”

I heard him grunt and the sound of metal moving and then a crack and then the grate came away and fell and hit the stone beside me and I jumped back.

“Wren,” he called down. “I am out. It comes up in the floor of the mill by the grain chute. I am going to find a rope.”

He was gone. I stood in the vault with the lamp and the fourteen photographs and the register on the table and I waited.

And then the rope came down.

I tied the register to the rope and he pulled it up and then I climbed the chimney with the lamp hooked on my belt and the photographs in my jacket and the ledger under my arm, and I came out through the hole in the floor of the mill and into the cold dark air.

The mill was empty. Rourke was gone.

“Where is Rourke?” I said.

“He is gone,” Elias said. “He was gone when I came out. He has cut his ropes on something and he has gone.”

I stood in the mill with the register in my arms.

“Then we have to get to the square before he does,” I said.

We went up the mill road at a run with the register and the photographs and the ledger and the key, and we came to the pack house yard at midnight with the lamps burning and the square full of wolves.

There were more wolves in the square than there had been in the morning. There were pack wolves and there were Alphas and there were Council men and there were men from the Kessler pack with Hannah at the front of them, and there were the three wolves from the north road in their dark coats.

And in the middle of the square there was a table and a chair and Dale sitting in the chair with his hands tied and his head down.

Ada was standing beside the table with her stick in her hand.

“Gamma,” she said. “You have been gone three hours and the pack has been waiting for you. Where have you been?”

I walked into the middle of the square and put the register on the table.

“In the vault,” I said.

The square went quiet.

“The vault was placed under Council administration,” Ada said.

“The vault was placed under Council administration on the word of a clerk who forged the motion,” I said. “And the vault has been sitting under this mill for eighty-five years with the register of every wire and every order and every cull the Council has ever sent in it.” I opened it. “And I have read it.”

Ada looked at the register.

“Read it to me,” she said.

I read it.

I read the wire from the chief clerk to Rourke that said the cull was to go ahead no matter what the Alphas ruled. I read the wire from the chief clerk to the culling officer in 1968 that said the Luna of the Palouse Ridge pack was to be denied a hearing and driven out if she pursued it. I read the wire from the chief clerk to the Beta in June that said the wolf known as Owen Halloran was to be brought in for questioning and if he resisted the Beta was authorized to use whatever force was necessary. I read the entry in the register for the twelfth of June and the entry for the twenty-second and the entry for the twenty-third, and every one of them had a number and a date and the signature of the chief clerk at the bottom.

When I was done Ada put her hand on the table.

“Who is the chief clerk?” she said.

“His name is Kessler,” I said. “He has been the chief clerk for forty years and his father was the chief clerk before him and his grandfather was the clerk who filed the forged boundary deed in 1891.” I looked at the crowd and found Kessler standing at the back of the square with his folder in his hand and his face white. “And he is standing in this square right now.”

Every wolf in the square turned and looked at Kessler.

Kessler did not move.

Then he put his folder down on the ground and walked into the middle of the square and stood in front of the Alphas.

“I am the chief clerk,” he said. “I have been the chief clerk for forty years. I wrote the wires in that register and I wrote the motion that brought the Alphas to this territory and I wrote the false ruling that was sent to this pack in September.” He looked at Ada. “I did it because my father did it and his father did it before him and I did not know how to stop.”

Ada looked at him for a long moment.

“And the wolf in the chair?” she said. “The Beta?”

Kessler looked at Dale.

“The Beta took money from the Council and he did what he was told,” he said. “But the Beta did not write the cull order and the Beta did not order the death of Owen Halloran. That was my wire and my order and my hand.” He put his hands behind his back. “I am the chief clerk and I am the man you want.”

And then Dale stood up in the chair and said, “No.”

The square turned.

“No,” Dale said again. He looked at Ada. “The chief clerk wrote the order. But I am the man who put the knife in Owen Halloran and I am the man who left him in that field and I am the man who took the Council's money for six years and lied to this pack about a rogue that did not exist.” He held up his tied hands. “I am not going to let a clerk in a suit take the whole of it. I killed him. Not the Council and not the clerk. Me.”

Ada looked at him.

“Then you will be judged for it,” she said.

And then Rourke came out of the dark at the edge of the square with a rifle in his hands and said, “Nobody is going to be judged for anything.”

He had the rifle up and he was not aiming at Dale.

He was aiming at me.