Semua Bab The Wolf She Silenced: Bab 11 - Bab 20

The eastern border held. Three Çamlıca wolves had come up the low path and found the patrol waiting, and by the time I reached the wall with my boots half laced, the fighting was over and the raiders were running back down the ridge with their tails low.Barış was on the wall with his auburn hair tied back and a cut on his forearm that he had not noticed yet. He watched the last of them go and then he turned to me with the calm of a wolf who had just won something."They tested us," he said. "Three wolves is not a raid. It is a question.""What did they learn?""That the eastern patrol is where I put it, and that the Luna comes to the wall in her night clothes." He wiped his knife on his sleeve. "They will come again in a week with more."I did not argue with him in front of the warriors. I went back to the pack house and sat in the long room until the sky went grey, and then I took the crooked jar down from the shelf and set it on the table in front of me.The ash inside was fine and

Selin was waiting for me in the guest wing with the window open to the west and a cup of tea going cold on the sill. Her copper hair was loose and her dark green eyes followed me across the room."Your Beta wants an answer tonight," she said. "I heard him through the floor.""You hear everything through the floor.""I am a light sleeper and this house has thin boards. Sit down, Luna. You have been standing all day and you look like a wolf who has forgotten what a chair is for."I sat on the edge of the bench by the window. The evening air coming off the pines smelled of rain that had not arrived and the sea somewhere far below the ridge."Say your piece," I said. "Without the council, without the warriors, without the letter. Say what your Alpha actually wants."Selin set the cup down and sat across from me. "He wants the northern passes. You know that. He wants them because the Council is talking about dissolving the old border laws, and the wolf who holds the passes when the laws di

I took the strip of birch bark from Deniz and turned it over in my hands. The marks were cut shallow, the way a wolf cuts when he does not want the wood to split, and they ran in two lines with a small circle at the end."Where exactly?" I asked."Under the shelf, behind the empty jars. I was sweeping out the mouse droppings and it was lying flat against the wall." Deniz wiped her hands on her skirt. "I did not read it. I do not know the old marks.""Good. Do not tell anyone you found it."I put the bark inside my coat and went to the herb shed and shut the door. The marks were old script, the kind in Orhan's ritual book, and I could make out perhaps a third of them. A circle. A word that might have been "bound" or "binding." A line that ended in a mark like a hook. The rest was beyond me.I stood at the bench with the bark in front of me and the lamplight on it and thought about who would put a ritual page in my shed and then tell me to look for it. Someone who wanted me to find it.

The gate bell stopped before I reached the bottom of the ridge.I came down the path with my lungs burning and my coat open, and by the time I reached the yard the whole pack was standing in it and the bell rope was still swinging. Barış was on the steps with his auburn hair loose and a lamp in his hand, and beside him stood Orhan with the founding laws under his arm, and the two of them were looking at the gate.There was nothing at the gate."False alarm," Barış said as I came through the crowd. "One of the young ones saw a shadow in the pines and rang the bell. I have spoken to him.""Which young one?""Deniz. She is in the kitchen with Maren and she is crying, and I have told her that if she rings that bell again without cause, she will walk the northern wall for a month." He looked at me. "Where were you?""On the ridge.""On the ridge. At dusk. When the elders were waiting for the test." His voice was flat. "The elders waited an hour, Elif. They have gone back to the long room.

The Council wolf was in the long room with a seal on the table and two warriors at the door, and he was drinking tea and asking Barış questions about the eastern border. I stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment before I went in. Pale blue eyes, silver hair cropped short, a face that had been handsome once and had settled into something patient instead. He was old. Older than Orhan, older than my father had been. When he turned to look at me, the room seemed to get smaller."Luna Elif," he said, and set his cup down. "I am Henrik. The Council has sent me to observe the test at first light. I had heard the mountain was in some difficulty, and I thought I should see for myself.""The mountain is in difficulty often," I said. "The Council does not usually send a lord to watch.""The Council does not usually hear that a rogue has claimed a Luna's bond in the middle of an alliance negotiation." He smiled. "It is a busy season for the Council, Luna. We have borders to think of. We