Chapter 69: The Cull Tribunal

The fire was in the mill.

By the time we got down the mill road the roof was gone and the flames were coming out of the loft window and the whole of the north wall was orange. The mill had stood at the end of that road since 1891 and it was going to be ash by morning.

There was nobody in the yard and nobody in the trees. Whoever had set it had done it and gone.

We could not save it. There was no water down there and no hose and the bucket line from the river would have taken an hour, and by the time the first bucket came the roof had fallen in. We stood in the road and watched it burn.

"The tunnel," Elias said.

"The tunnel is under the cellar," I said. "The cellar is stone. It will hold."

"And the vault?"

"The vault is stone and iron and it is under the field." I looked at the fire. "It will hold. But the door is at the end of the tunnel and the tunnel comes up in that cellar and the cellar is under that mill." I turned around. "Whoever set this fire knew about the tunnel."

Elias looked at me.

"Rourke," he said.

"Rourke is in a tack room with two men on the door."

"Then Rourke's men."

I stood in the road with the heat on my face.

"The tribunal is in seven days," I said. "And in seven days we have to put the register and the photographs and the stones and three Lunas in front of seven Alphas. And the mill that hid the tunnel is burning."

"We do not need the mill," Elias said. "We need the circle."

I turned and looked at him.

"The circle is in the trees," he said. "The stones are in the circle. The tunnel is not the only way into the vault. The vault was built by the founders and the founders built it from the circle. The chimney I climbed comes up in the mill but the vault is under the field and the field is where the circle is." He put his hand on my arm. "There is a way into that vault from the circle. There has to be. The founders built the vault from the circle and they would not have built it without a door."

I looked at the fire.

"Then we find the door," I said.

We went back up the ridge and into the trees and the circle was quiet and the standing stone was there with the mark on it and the stones were in their ring.

I walked the circle slow. I put my hands on the stones and I put my hands on the standing stone and I put my hands on the moss and the roots and the ground.

Nothing.

And then Hannah came and knelt down beside me at the north side of the circle where the trees were thickest and said, "Wren. Look at this."

There was a flat stone in the moss. It was gray and it was the size of a table and it had a mark on it. The mark was a circle with two lines.

"The Luna's mark," I said.

"The Luna's mark." Hannah put her hands on the stone. "And it is warm."

I put my hands on the stone beside hers.

It was warm the way the key was warm and the way the lock was warm and the way the stones in the ring were warm. I said the seven words and the stone moved under my hands and slid back into the moss and there was a stair going down.

We went down.

The stair went down into the dark and it came out in the vault, in the back wall, behind the shelves. And the vault was whole and the register was on the table and the fourteen photographs were on the wall and the lamp was still burning.

"The founders built a back door," Elias said. "And they built it with the Luna's mark because they thought nobody but a founder would ever be able to open it."

"Nobody but a founder," I said. "Or a Luna."

The seven days went past like a hand closing.

The tribunal was set for noon in the pack square and by ten in the morning the square was full. There were pack wolves and there were Alphas and there were Council men and there were wolves from the Kessler pack and the river pack and the north road. There was a table at the top of the square with seven chairs behind it and there was a chair in front of the table for the wolf who was being heard.

Ada sat in the middle of the seven. Harlan sat at the end of the row because the Alpha of the territory sits on a tribunal. The six other Alphas sat between them.

Harlan brought his hand down on the table.

"This tribunal is called under pack law, section eleven," he said. "It is called to hear the charge against the Beta of the Palouse Ridge pack and the charge against the Council of Alphas and the charge against the culling officer. The Alphas will hear the evidence and the pack will hear the evidence and when it is done the Alphas will give judgment." He looked at the square. "The first witness is the Beta."

Dale came out of the pack house with the Corrigan boys on either side of him and his hands tied. He sat down in the chair.

Harlan looked at him.

"Beta," he said. "You have confessed to the murder of Owen Halloran. Is that confession true?"

"It is true."

"Then tell this tribunal what happened on the night of the twenty-second of June."

Dale told it. He told it slow and he told it flat and he did not look at me. He told them about the order and the second paper and the field and the knife and the man with the lantern. He told them about the coat in the tack room and the box behind the board and the money he had taken for six years. He told them about the fire at the co-op and he said he had not set it and he said he did not know who had.

When he was done Ada looked at him.

"Beta," she said. "Who else in this pack knew about the order?"

Dale looked at the square.

"Mrs. Pike knew," he said.

The square went quiet.

"Mrs. Pike has been a friend of my family for forty years," Dale said. "She knew about the order and she knew about the money and she knew about the field. She has been in the co-op every week for six years and she has seen the ledger and she has never said a word."

Mrs. Pike stood up at the back of the square.

"That is a lie," she said.

And then a wolf I did not know, a thin wolf in a gray coat with a face like a hatchet, stood up beside her and said, "I am a farmhand from the Henderson place and I saw the wolf in the field on the night of the twenty-second. I saw him standing over the body with his hands on the wound."

The square broke into noise.

I stood up.

"That is not possible," I said. "There was nobody in that field but Dale and my brother and the wolf and the man in the trees."

The thin wolf looked at me.

"I was in the trees," he said. "I have been in this territory for four months and I have been in the trees and I saw the whole of it." He pointed at Elias. "That is the wolf. He had his hands on the body and there was blood on his hands and he was the one who killed him."

Elias was on his feet.

"That is not true," he said.

And then Mrs. Pike said, "It is true. I have known it since June and I have been afraid to say it." She looked at me. "I am sorry, Wren. But the wolf killed your brother and this pack has been protecting him for four months."

The square was shouting.

Harlan brought his hand down on the table three times and the square went quiet.

"Enough," he said. "The tribunal will hear the witness."

The thin wolf came forward and stood in front of the table.

"Your name," Ada said.

"Erik," the thin wolf said.

I stopped breathing.

"Erik what?" Ada said.

The thin wolf looked at her and then at me.

"Erik," he said again. "Just Erik."