Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Walking the Walls

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The morning of the Welcoming had a habit, in Silvercrest Manor, of belonging to no one. Father had pack meetings. Mother had the kitchens. Lyra usually had a horse and a problem and a stolen scone. The household ran like a hive that had been told a lord would visit, and the lord, by tradition, was not allowed to interfere.

I used my morning differently than I had used it in the life before.

I left breakfast as soon as I could without rudeness. I told Lyra I needed air. She tried to come; I told her the kitchens needed rescuing from her sticky fingers. She rolled her eyes and went to steal something.

I went out through the long gallery and the side door that opened to the herb garden, the one I had not used in years because in my old life I had been too busy being prepared for Damien's gaze. I took the path my grandmother used to take, when she had still been alive, around the inner walls of the manor.

I needed to see Silvercrest with my own eyes.

I had thought about this a great deal in the long, slow seconds between waking and dressing — about the strange, dangerous gift the Goddess had given me and the strange, dangerous problem that came with it. I had three years. I had memory. I had a list folded in my mother's jewelry box and a wolf curled under my ribs. What I did not have, yet, was a body that could answer my mind.

I was seventeen. My first transformation was eight months away. I had no claws. I had a girl's strength against a pack's politics.

I had to map what I had.

So I walked the walls.

The herb garden was where I started. Mother had laid it out herself the year I was born — rosemary, thyme, the tall feathery yarrow, a single old apple tree with branches that would not behave. I touched the apple tree as I passed it. It had been alive in my last life too, the year I left for Crescent Fang. The bark had felt the same under my fingers when I had said goodbye to it; I had thought, foolishly, that I would come back at midwinter with a pup of my own and lift the pup to its lowest branch.

I touched the bark today the way I had touched it that goodbye morning. I told the tree, silently, that I would not be a fool again.

From the garden, the path went out under the inner wall arch and up along the parapet that ran the eastern length of the manor. I climbed the steps. The stone under my hand was warm with sun. From the parapet I could see the long curve of the Silvercrest valley, the lake at the far end, the ridge above the woods, and the road that wound down out of the mountains toward Crescent Fang country.

The road. I stood looking at it for a long time.

In the life before, I had ridden out on that road three years from this morning, in a black coach with a Crescent Fang flag at the front, after my wedding. I had waved at my mother through the back window. I had not turned around for a last look at the valley, because I had been too busy being a bride.

Today the road was empty. Today the dust had not been raised yet. Today, somewhere at the bottom of the long descent — somewhere in the green country east of our hills — Damien Cross was being dressed in his Crescent Fang coat and was being told, by a steward of his own, that the Hartwell daughter would be at the Welcoming.

"Don't come," I said, to the road.

I did not whisper it. I said it with sound. I said it with breath.

The road did not answer me. He was coming anyway. I had known he would come from the moment I had opened my eyes; I had needed only to say it to the wind, so that the wind could take it as a small and useless prayer up into the morning.

From the parapet I could see down into the practice yard.

The practice yard was where I had been given my first wooden sword, when I was four. It was where, at fifteen, I had thrown my first proper punch — at Lyra, who had richly deserved it. It was where, at twenty, in my last life, I had stopped going entirely, because Damien had told me that a Luna did not need to spar. He had been the kind of man who could turn a generous-sounding sentence into a leash.

This morning the practice yard was full.

Two dozen of our Betas in training were sweating through the morning drill under the eye of the master-of-arms, an old wolf named Hugh who had been my father's second when my father was younger than I was. Hugh's white braid hung down his back. He shouted in a voice too easy for the size of him. The young trainees moved in pairs.

I leaned my forearms on the parapet stones and I watched.

I found him after only a moment, because I had known where to look. He was at the far end of the practice yard, working with a wooden longsword against a Beta a head taller than he was. He was twenty. His hair was the dark gold of summer hay. He had a way of fighting that looked, from this distance, the way it had always looked: too patient by half. He won by waiting longer than the other man could stand to wait.

Ezra Hale.

I closed my hands on the warm stone of the parapet. My breath went out of me long and slow.

Ezra Hale at twenty was alive. Ezra Hale at twenty had a small, half-healed bruise across the line of his jaw from a sparring round he had not yet told his mother about. Ezra Hale at twenty had not yet been sent to a north patrol on a forged work order. Ezra Hale at twenty had not yet bled out in the snow.

In the life before, I had not been at his funeral.

In the life before, I had been at Crescent Fang the day they buried him. Damien had told me he was sorry for my old friend, and had handed me a glass of wine, and had said something else clever and shaped that had distracted me from feeling anything for a long time.

I had only learned, much later, that Ezra had ridden out at Damien's quiet request — a private contract, a small consulting work — and that the rogues who killed him had been paid by a Crescent Fang Beta with too much eagerness in his eyes. By the time I had understood, I had not had the room in my chest to grieve him properly. I had grieved many things in the wrong order.

I would grieve in the right order this time, I thought, looking down at his bruise.

I would also not let him give me anything to grieve.

I left the parapet.

I went down the back steps and along the kitchen corridor. I came out behind the practice yard and I let myself be seen. I did not want to interrupt Hugh's drill. I waited with my hands folded at the gate until he saw me. He saw me. He gestured the boys to stand at rest, and he came over with a slight, formal bow that he gave my father and that he had never bothered with for me before.

"Lady Selene." His old eyes flicked over the moon-grey silk. He looked, for a breath, as if he could not quite place what he was seeing. "Up early."

"Forgive me, Hugh. I do not mean to interfere."

"You are never interfering."

"I want a word with Ezra. May I take him for a moment?"

Hugh's mouth pressed flat the way it pressed flat when he was thinking. He glanced at Ezra, who had set his wooden longsword across his knees and was wiping his face with his sleeve.

"You may, Lady Selene," Hugh said, slowly. "Five minutes."

"Three."

"Take five anyway."

I did not smile. I nodded. Hugh did not smile back, but he gave Ezra a tip of his old white head and moved off down the line of trainees with his back straighter than it had any right to be at his age.

Ezra came over with his sword on his shoulder and a question already on his face.

"Lady Selene." He bowed. He did not kneel; we had grown up too close. "Hugh let me out for what crime?"

"Walk with me."

He fell in step beside me. We turned down the side path, away from the yard, into the small cool tunnel where the ivy had been allowed to grow over the stones.

I had to be careful. I knew that. I had no proof, no investigation, no name yet. I had only memory, and memory was useless without a witness.

So I would not name the rogues. I would not name October. I would not name the man at Crescent Fang who had paid for a death.

I turned to him in the green tunnel of ivy and said, "Ezra, I am going to ask you something strange."

His brow lifted. "I have known you since you were three. Strange is most of our conversations."

"You will hear, in the next month or so, of a private guard contract. North patrol work. Quiet pay. Crescent Fang or one of their friends will reach out. They will ask for you specifically because you are good and because you are not currently sworn to a side."

His face went quiet the way it went quiet when his teasing fell away and the trained Beta underneath stepped forward.

"Selene."

"I am not finished."

He waited.

"You will tell them you are flattered. You will tell them you must speak to your master-of-arms. You will not say yes. You will not say no in a way that closes the door. You will let them think you might. And you will come, immediately, that very night, and you will tell me. Not my father. Me. You will swear it on the moon."

His eyes searched my face.

"Selene." His voice was low. "Why?"

"I had a dream."

"Lady, you must do better than that."

I looked up at him. I let my face be older than my body for one moment — only one — and I let him see me.

"Ezra. Please."

The trained Beta in him did the work of recognizing what he was looking at. He did not understand it. I saw the not-understanding pass over his face like a hand over water. He would, in his own time, give it a story. He would call it a premonition or a Hartwell stubbornness or a sister's fear. I did not need him to know what I was. I needed him to do as he was told.

"I swear on the moon," he said.

"Thank you."

"And you will tell me, eventually."

"Eventually."

"And you will explain why you look like that this morning."

"Eventually."

He nodded. He shifted the wooden sword on his shoulder. He hesitated, in the cool ivy, the way he did when something else was going to come out of him.

"Lady Selene. You're shaking."

I looked down. My right hand was shaking against the silk of my skirt.

I made it not shake. I lifted my chin.

"You will go back to Hugh," I said, "and you will continue your drill, and you will not, today, give me a single look that says you are afraid for me. I am not the lady who needs you to be afraid. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lady Selene."

"Then go."

He went.

I stood in the green tunnel for a long minute and listened to the sound of his boots on the stones receding. Then I went back up the side stair, along the corridor, past the kitchens, up the long gallery, to the small office at the eastern end of the manor where Garrison kept his ledgers.

Garrison was at his desk. He had been at the same desk since I was small. His hair, never very thick, had thinned the way old wolves thin. His glasses, half-moon and steel-rimmed, had been the same glasses for fifteen years.

"Lady Selene." He stood and bowed. "How may I serve you?"

"I would like an appointment with you, Garrison. Privately. After the Welcoming. Tonight."

He blinked. "Tonight, Lady? I will be running the closing-down of the gardens —"

"I do not want it on a calendar. After the gardens. Eleven, in the small library."

"May I ask the matter?"

I let my eyes meet his. I had been a girl whose name he had written in his ledgers since I was six weeks old. I owed him a hand of trust.

"Money," I said. "Mine. I have decided to invest it. I want the conversation to be discreet."

His glasses caught the morning light. He set down his pen. He looked at me a long moment.

"At what scale, Lady?"

"Whatever is in my dowry account. To begin."

"That is not a small sum."

"I am not a small heiress."

His mouth tucked at the corner. It was the closest Garrison ever came to a smile.

"Eleven in the small library, Lady Selene."

"Thank you, Garrison."

I left him. As I went up the stair to my own room, I heard, distantly, the first sound of a carriage at the front gate. Lyra's voice in the courtyard. A footman calling for the master of the house.

I went to my window. I stood beside the glass and I looked down.

The first guests had come.

The carriages were silver and grey with ribbons. The Bluemoon banner. I could see Mother already on the front steps in her welcome gown, lifting an arm. Camilla Yates, my mother's old friend, would be in the first carriage. The Welcoming had begun.

I watched a heartbeat. Two. A third carriage at the gate. A fourth.

I did not see Damien yet. He would come, by tradition, last and loud, just as the morning light turned to noon.

I straightened the moon-grey silk on my hips. I touched, with a hidden hand, the small folded square of paper inside the sleeve of my dress, where I had moved it after breakfast. The list was there. The list was warm with my pulse.

I went down the staircase to meet the day.