HE WAS JUST A SECRET WOLF

Chapter Forty-Two: Salt

Kael had been hunted by hounds, shot by crossbows, and punched ten times by a Bear, and he had never been so miserable as he was in the bottom of a salt barrel.

It was dark and cramped and smelled like the sea. The lid pressed against his hair. His knees were jammed against his chest, a thin layer of coarse grey salt stung every scratch he owned, and somewhere above him the barge rocked gently on the slow brown water of the Solhaven river. He could hear everything. The creak of rope. The slap of a pole. The tiny, constant scrape of grains settling against the wood.

And voices. A great many voices, getting closer.

"Fox barge," called a man on the wharf. "Name and cargo."

"Sorrel of the Vane house, factor, with thirty barrels of Saltmere white for the Solhaven market." Sorrel's voice was bright and unhurried, a perfect imitation of a man who had never in his life been afraid of a customs officer. "Is that Wharfmaster Dunn? Gods, it is. I haven't seen you since the autumn fair. You've lost weight."

"I've worked weight off," said the man heavily. "There's a new regime. Papers, please."

Kael held his breath. Inside the neighboring barrel, he could hear Aurelia's heart going fast and light, a bird in a box. Further along, Ket's was a slow, slow thud, as though she had decided to stop being afraid by sheer force of will. Renn's was calm as a stone.

"Everything in order," said Sorrel. "A little irregular, perhaps. The Matriarch's seal is on every barrel. Fox trade right, under the treaty of the river, a hundred and fifty years old." A pause. "I'd be very sorry to have to explain to the Council why the Regent chose this week to violate it."

"The Regent has not violated..."

"Of course not. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding." Sorrel's voice dropped into a friendly murmur. "But I'd hate for it to get back to my mother. She's in a delicate humor lately."

A long silence. Kael counted six heartbeats, and none of them were his.

"Open them," said Wharfmaster Dunn, in a different voice. "Every tenth. The Regent's orders."

Something heavy hit the planks. Dogs.

He heard them before he saw them. Nothing could be seen, in the dark, except the faint line of grey light along the edge of the lid. But he heard their claws on the wood, and the whine of a leash, and a snuffle, deep and wet and horribly familiar.

Bear-bred, Calder had said. Trained to the scent of Wolf.

They were not the war-hounds from the ravine. These were bigger, deeper in the chest, with a low wicked rumble in their throats. He could hear four of them, circling the barrels, working along the line. One stopped beside his. It breathed against the staves. He felt it, a hot gust through the tiny gap by the bung, and his whole body locked.

The heat in his wrist surged up his arm.

No. He pressed his palm flat against the barrel's side. No. Not here. Not now. In through the nose.

The dog sneezed.

It was a great, wet, undignified sneeze, and it was followed by another, and another, a violent explosive paroxysm that made the whole line of barrels shudder. A man swore. A leash snapped. "Gods! It's the salt. It's got in his nose." More sneezing. A yelp. "Get him back. Get him back. Take him out of the stink."

"Saltmere white," said Sorrel, with great sympathy. "Very fine grain. It's rather hard on the sinuses."

"Open the tenth barrel!"

"Of course. Number ten." A creak. A scoop, a rattle, a long cascade of grey crystals pouring over wood. "Salt. Salt. Salt. And there's more salt. I could show you the rest, Wharfmaster, but it would take until midnight, and my mother likes me home for supper."

Dunn muttered something that was not quite a curse. Another sneeze. A long, resentful pause.

"Pass," he said finally. "Move your barge."

Kael let out a breath. It trembled all the way out.

They came out of the barrels in the shadow of a ruined warehouse, one by one, like pale grey ghosts.

Salt crusted Kael's hair and his eyelashes. It had worked into his collar and his boots and the small of his back, and he shook himself like a wet dog. Beside him Aurelia was laughing silently, tears running down her cheeks, a streak of white across her nose. Renn spat. Ket brushed her sleeves with grim, methodical care.

"The dogs," Kael said. "They never smelled me."

"Salt kills scent," said Sorrel, springing lightly from the barge. "Everyone knows that. It's why we keep fish in it." He bowed to the dark. "I thank you, I thank you. I'll be here all week."

"You're enjoying this," said Renn.

"I'm a trained professional." He winked. "But I admit, it's a nice change from being hunted."

They stood together in the warehouse's broken shadow and looked across the water.

Kael had never seen a city.

He had seen the Mirror City, but Lanternreach was a toy, a jewel box on a lake. Solhaven was something else. It rose from the river in tiers, terrace after terrace of white stone and gold roofs, climbing a great shallow hill that was crowned, at its summit, by a long, low palace built of pale stone, so enormous that it seemed to hold up the sky. Thousands of windows glittered. Thousands of lamps burned. At the very top, rising over the roofs like a single raised hand, a tall slender tower flew a gold banner in the evening wind.

"The Tower of Sunrise," said Aurelia softly. "Where the council meets."

"It's beautiful."

"It is." She did not look at him. "I was born in it."

He heard what she did not say. And it's about to fall. He found her hand, and she let him hold it.

The Chapel of the Mourning Sun stood at the end of a narrow lane in the oldest part of the city, where the houses leaned together over the cobbles and the gutters ran with the smell of cabbage.

It had been abandoned for forty years. The shutters hung crooked. The roof had lost half its tiles. Above the door, where a carved sun had once been, only a pale scar remained. But a thin line of light showed under the door, and as they came up the lane in the dark, a voice said sharply, from the shadows:

"Halt. Who goes there?"

"A very tired lion," said Aurelia, "with a head full of salt."

A silence. Then a rough, wet, incredulous laugh, and the door burst open, and a tall young man in a ragged captain's coat crossed the doorway in two strides and picked her up off the ground.

"Rell!"

"Put me down!"

"No."

"Tavian, you're crushing me."

"I thought you were dead." His voice cracked. "I've been in this stinking hole nine days, and every night I thought, that's it, they've caught her, they've killed her." He set her down, and held her at arm's length, and looked her up and down. "You've lost weight. You look like a ghost. You've got salt in your eyebrows."

"It's a disguise."

"It's an awful one."

She was laughing, and crying, and hugging him again, and Kael looked away. He found Ket standing very still at his elbow, watching the lane with her bow half drawn. Renn had gone ahead to check the corners. Sorrel was examining the lock with professional interest.

Tavian let go of his sister at last, and looked past her.

"Kael."

"Tavian."

"I owe you an apology." The captain rubbed his face with the back of his hand. "For what I said at Lanternreach. About Wolves. About what I was taught." His voice was rough. "I've spent nine days alone in a cellar thinking about it. I'd like to say I've changed. I think I'm only beginning."

"That's the same thing."

"Is it?"

"It's what I've been told." Kael held out his hand. "Come on. We've a lot to talk about, and Aurelia's going to freeze."

"I am not," said Aurelia.

"You're blue."

"It's the salt."

The chapel's nave was a wreck of fallen beams and dusty pews, lit by a single lantern on an upturned crate. Three Lion lancers sat against the far wall, young and thin, in torn uniforms, with the wary look of men who had not slept in days. They rose when the Princess entered. She told them to sit. They did not.

"These are the ones who stayed," Tavian said quietly. "Out of the dozen. Two went back to their families. One was caught on the south road." He swallowed. "Maren and the child got away. I'm sure of it. They're with the old nurse by now. I haven't heard."

"You did well."

"I broke into a house and ran away. That isn't well." He shook his head. "Sit. Eat. I have bread and half an onion. Then I'll tell you everything. It isn't good."

It was not.

He laid it out in short sentences, with his hands clasped between his knees. The Regent had sealed the city nine days ago. Every gate was guarded. Every street had a curfew. Oswin had summoned all the Lion lords to the capital under pain of treason, and most had come, because the Regency Council still held the royal seal and a lord who stayed home was a lord with something to hide.

"The soldiers?" asked Renn.

"Half are Oswin's. A third are afraid. The rest are..." He gestured helplessly. "Waiting, I think. The ledger's passed through every barracks in the city. They've all read it. Nobody talks about it. They look at each other and look away."

"And the Emperor?"

Tavian hesitated.

"That's the worst part." His voice dropped. "Father was in his apartments. Under guard, for his own protection. I saw him through a window, six days ago, from the roof of the baker's shop on the south road. He was sitting at his desk with a candle. He looked old."

"And now?"

"I went back yesterday. To the same roof." He drew a breath. "The window was dark. The guards at his door had been changed. New men, in grey coats, none of them palace guards. And a maid I know told me this morning that the Emperor's rooms haven't been entered in two days." His eyes met Aurelia's, haunted. "Rell. He's gone."

"Gone?"

"Not arrested. Not dead, as far as anyone knows. Just gone. The Regent says he is resting at a country house. But nobody has been told where." His hands shook. "Oswin has him. I'm sure of it. And on the longest night, he'll bring him out in front of the Hall and..."

He did not finish.

Aurelia had gone white. She sat very still on the pew, her fingers pressed against her mouth.

"No," she said at last. "That isn't what he'll do."

"What do you mean?"

"Oswin needs the Emperor alive. At least until the Hall." Her voice was shaky but clear. "He needs him to speak. He's going to stage the confession. A bent old man, a wicked Wolf, a poisoned cup, and an Emperor who dies in front of a hundred witnesses, begging the clans for forgiveness." She drew a ragged breath. "He wants Father to say it was all Wolf sorcery. And then he'll let him die of grief."

"Gods," said Tavian.

"I'd say it's what I'd do," said Sorrel, dryly. "If I had no morals."

"We have until the longest night," said Kael.

"Three days," said Tavian. "Not even that. Two and a half."

"Then we've got work."

There was one more thing, and Tavian saved it for last.

He had been fidgeting with it for some time, turning it over and over in his hands, a small thing wrapped in a scrap of cloth. At last, with a long sigh, he set it on the crate beside the lantern and unwrapped it.

It was a small iron key.

"Ket," he said. "Is that your name?"

The young archer had been crouched in the shadows by the door. She looked up, slowly. "Yes."

"I went to see him. Before they took him." He did not look at her. "The gatekeeper. At the east postern. I'd gone through twice by then. The third time, I stopped and asked why." His voice was very low. "He was a very big, very quiet man with a limp. He made tea. He asked me how my mother was."

Ket did not move.

"I said she was dead. He said, I know. I'm so sorry. He said he'd known her once. A long time ago, in another life." Tavian swallowed. "And then he took this off his belt and said, give it to the boy with the moon. Tell him it opens the stair. Tell him I've kept it oiled for seventeen years."

The silence was absolute.

"He said something else." Tavian's eyes, finally, found hers. "He said, and if a young woman comes with him, with dark eyes and a bow, tell her that I never stopped thinking about the night her mother came to the gate. Tell her I have something I owe her. And that I'd like to pay it before they hang me."

Ket stood up.

She did not speak. She crossed the floor, step by step, and stopped in front of the crate, and looked down at the little iron key. Her face had gone perfectly blank. When she reached out, her hand trembled, once, and then went still.

She picked it up.

"Where is he?" she said.

"The east tower. The Regent's holding cells. Fourth floor." Tavian shook his head. "It's guarded by twenty men and two locked doors. We can't..."

"We can."

"Ket..."

"I'm going to get him out." She closed her fingers around the key. Her voice was quiet and level, and there was nothing in it that could be argued with. "Whatever he did, whatever he is. He's going to tell me what she said. And then you can hang him."

Kael got to his feet. He looked at the thin hard girl with her mother's eyes, and the little key in her hand, and he thought of a cottage hearth, and a stone, and a lie that had been a kindness.

"Not hang," he said.

"Kael..."

"I mean, not yet." He gave a crooked smile. "I'm told it's bad form to execute a man before he's finished his tea."

Ket stared at him. Slowly, for the first time in three days, a corner of her mouth twitched.

"You're impossible," she said.

"I've been told."

"Who by?"

"Everyone," said Aurelia, wearily, from the pew. And Tavian laughed, helplessly, and Sorrel snorted, and even Renn's weathered face cracked into something like a smile.

Later, much later, when the others had slept, Kael climbed the broken stair to the chapel's bell-tower and stood at the open arch looking out over the roofs.

The city lay beneath him like a map in lamplight. Thousands of windows. A river of silver. And at the center of it all, the long pale palace on its hill, and the one tall tower with its golden banner. He could see the roofline of the great hall. A long, low dome, dark against the stars.

Somewhere inside it, behind a wall, a hundred and ten steps went up into the dark.

A small stone with a wolf's paw. Press it with your thumb, and push.

He took out the iron key and turned it over in the starlight. It was plain and heavy and warm from his hand. Kept oiled for seventeen years. A man in a locked tower, waiting for someone to ask him a question. A hundred thousand people asleep below, who didn't know what was coming.

He thought of Orin, in the rear of a Bear's wagon on the long road south, wrapped in fur, muttering about the barley. He thought of the Wolves kneeling to a road. He thought of a throne that said held in trust, sitting in the dark for seventeen years with its own name scraped off.

A hand touched his sleeve.

"You're not sleeping," said Aurelia.

"Neither are you."

"I know." She leaned on the ledge beside him, wrapped in a Lion lancer's coat three sizes too large. Her hair had come loose. There was still a little salt on her cheek. "It's very big."

"It's your home."

"It was." She looked at the palace for a long time. "I used to think it was the most beautiful place in the world. I used to stand on that balcony and watch the parade and feel like I was part of something enormous and golden." Her voice was quiet. "Now I think it's the saddest building I've ever seen."

He did not answer. He only slid his hand over hers on the cold stone.

Far below, in the empty lane, something moved.

It was very small. A shadow, low to the ground. He might not have seen it if he had been any less than what he was. But it crossed the cobbles in a long, slow, deliberate arc, nose down, tail still, and stopped at the foot of the chapel's door.

Then, softly, it began to snuffle.

Kael went rigid.

A Bear-bred hound. Alone, a hundred yards from the river, nose pressed to the bottom of the door. Not sneezing. Not confused. Methodically working the crack under the wood, as though it had caught something no salt could hide.

Behind it, in the dark at the end of the lane, a second shape stepped out. And a third. And, last of all, walking unhurriedly into the thin light of the single street lamp, a slim man in a plum-colored coat with a notebook in one gloved hand.

"Highness," said Lord Cressin, in a soft, carrying, pleasant voice. "I do hope I'm not too late for supper."