Chapter 83: The Beta's Confession

Ada came into the storeroom with her stick in her hand and looked at the crates.

"Four hundred and six," she said.

"Four hundred and six," Clara Renn said.

Ada went to the nearest crate and opened it and took out a paper and read it and put it down. She opened another and read a paper and put it down. She did it six times and then she stopped and put her hand on the crate and did not say anything.

"Alpha," I said.

"Every one of them is a Luna," Ada said. "Every one of them has a name and a pack and a parcel number and a price. And every one of them was filed and stamped and registered and nobody in the Council of Alphas ever saw one of them." She turned around. "I have been on the Council for forty years. I have signed the register every year. I have never seen a single name in this room."

"Because the clerk did not send them to you," I said. "He sent them to the territory and he kept the copies here and he put the originals in the vault in Boise and he told the Alphas that the claims were routine and the Alphas believed him."

Ada looked at the crates.

"The Alphas will sit in this room tonight," she said. "And we will read every paper in these crates and we will write down every name and every pack and every parcel. And then we will go back to Boise and we will open the vault and we will read the originals and we will name every clerk and every Alpha who ever signed one of them."

"And the chief clerk?" I said.

"The chief clerk will be tried for the murder of Owen Halloran and for eighty-five years of fraud against eleven packs." She put her hand on the crate. "I am going to write to Boise tonight and I am going to have him arrested in his office."

She went out with the six Alphas and the pack went with them and the storeroom was quiet.

I stayed.

I sat on a crate with the photograph of the three children in my hands and I did not go up.

Elias came and sat down beside me.

"You should go up," he said. "The tribunal is tonight."

"I know." I turned the photograph over. "I have been looking at this photograph for a week and I have been thinking that the three children are the founders' line. And they are. But they are the Luna's line too. Margaret was the Luna's cousin and she married the founder and her children carried both." I put the photograph down. "So the founders' line and the Luna's line are the same. My mother was the founders' line and she was the Luna's line and I am both."

"You are both."

"And the curse came from a house divided and it ends when the house is one." I looked at him. "Clara Renn's mother told her that in 1919. It has been in this tunnel for sixty years and nobody ever read it."

Elias was quiet.

"Then the cure is not three Lunas in a circle," he said.

"The cure is the house made whole," I said. "And the house is me. And Hannah. And Arthur Renn. And every wolf in this territory who has founders' blood and does not know it." I looked at the crates. "There are four hundred and six names in these crates and every one of them is a Luna who was taken and every one of them is a wolf whose blood is in this pack somewhere. This territory is full of the Luna's line and nobody knows it."

The door of the storeroom opened and Dale came in.

He was in his coat with his hands tied and the Corrigan boy behind him with a rifle.

"Alpha," the Corrigan boy said. "He asked to see her. He said it was important."

I looked at Dale.

"Leave us," I said.

The Corrigan boy looked at me and then at Dale and then at Elias.

"I will be outside the door," he said.

He went out.

Dale stood in the middle of the storeroom with his hands tied and his face gray and his coat torn at the shoulder.

"Wren," he said.

"Say what you came to say."

He looked at the crates.

"I have been in the pack house all day," he said. "And I have been going over it in my head. The night your brother died. The order. The paper. The field." He looked at me. "And there is a thing I have not told you. I told you the Council sent me an order to bring Owen in for questioning. That is true. But there is more of it and I have been keeping it back because I did not want to say it in front of the Alphas."

"Say it now."

Dale took a breath.

"The order did not come from the chief clerk," he said. "It came from a Councilman. A man on the Council of Alphas. He wrote to me himself, not through the clerk, and he told me that Owen Halloran was to be brought in and that if he resisted I was to use whatever force was necessary and that if he died in the field it would be a rogue attack and the Council would cover it." He looked at me. "I did not know who he was. I had never heard his name. But his letter had the seal of the Council of Alphas on it and it said he was writing with the authority of the Council and I believed him."

I stood up.

"Who?" I said. "What was his name?"

"I do not know his name," Dale said. "The letter was signed with a mark. The founders' mark. The circle with the line through it. And there was a note at the bottom in the chief clerk's hand that said the Councilman was not to be named and that the letter was to be burned after it was read." He looked at me. "I burned it. I burned it in the stove in my office and I have been regretting it for four months."

"A Councilman," I said. "A man on the Council of Alphas ordered my brother killed."

"A man on the Council of Alphas ordered your brother killed," Dale said. "And I do not know which one. But there are seven Alphas in this territory tonight and one of them wrote that letter."

The storeroom was very quiet.

"Then one of the seven is a murderer," I said.

"One of the seven is a murderer." Dale looked at me. "And I am the man who did the killing for him and I have told the tribunal everything else and I am telling you this now so that you can ask them."

I sat down on the crate.

"Which one?" I said.

"I do not know," Dale said. "But there is a thing I do remember. The letter was written on Council paper and it had a date and a register number and the register number was not a cull order number. It was a different series. It started with the letter A."

I stood up.

"Arthur Renn," I said.

I went out of the storeroom and up the tunnel and out into the circle with Elias behind me and Dale behind him, and the pack square was full and the seven Alphas were at the table and Ada was standing with a paper in her hand.

"Gamma," she said. "The tribunal is ready."

I walked into the middle of the square.

"Before the tribunal rules," I said, "there is a thing this pack has to hear. The Beta has told me that the order to bring my brother in did not come from the chief clerk. It came from a Councilman. A man on the Council of Alphas, writing with the seal and the authority of the Council. And the register number on that letter started with the letter A."

The square went silent.

Ada looked at me.

"Gamma," she said. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying that one of the seven Alphas sitting at that table ordered the death of my brother," I said. "And I am going to ask this tribunal to find out which one."