HE WAS JUST A SECRET WOLF

Chapter Thirteen: The Price of a Name

The favor turned out to be small, which frightened Kael more than if it had been large.

"Take me to the Fox lands," Sorrel said, that night at the Cairn, once the Bears had gone and the stars were thick over the standing stones. "That's all. You were going anyway. Edda wants the Matriarch's seal on your claim, doesn't she? So we go together, and I walk in beside you."

"That's it?"

"Nearly." The Fox picked at a thread on his cuff. "When she names her price, and she will, you don't accept the first one. You refuse. Politely. Then you ask her for one thing in return, a page from her archive, marked with a single ear. She'll try to wriggle out of it. Don't let her."

"What's on the page?"

"That's my business."

"Sorrel."

"You said you'd owe me a favor, Wolf, not an explanation." The amber eyes lifted, and for once there was no mockery in them. "I'm asking you to trust me on this one thing. I know it's a lot."

Kael thought of the stumbled heartbeat at the ford, the glance at the pendant, the way the Fox always seemed to know what lay around the next bend. Then he thought of the forged papers, the hot meal, the dark river crossing. Whatever Sorrel was hiding, he had kept Kael alive so far.

"I'll ask for the page," he said. "But if it puts anyone I care about in danger, I won't."

"Fair." Sorrel smiled, quick and relieved, and turned away. He did not see Kael watching him go.

The Fox lands began where the mountains ended.

They crossed the border at midday, down a switchback road into a wide green basin cut through with rivers. Everything about it was softer than the Bear country. Orchards ran in neat rows. Mills turned beside bright streams. Little bridges arched over canals, and white-walled villages shone in the sun with red tile roofs, each with a lantern hung over every door, unlit in the daytime but already waiting for dusk.

Varra and Ket had stopped at the border. Fox law forbade armed Wolves in the territories, and Varra, scowling, had made Kael swear three times to send word at the first sign of trouble. "If you're not back in ten days," she said, "I'm coming in after you, and I won't be polite."

So it was only Kael and Sorrel on the long road to Lanternreach, with the sword wrapped in oilcloth and slung across Kael's back, and the pendant tucked beneath his shirt.

It was a strange journey. In the Bear country, everyone had stared. In the Fox lands, nobody did. People nodded politely as they passed. A farmer sold them bread. A woman at an inn gave them clean beds and asked no questions. It should have been a relief. Instead Kael found it eerie, as though the whole country were pretending not to see him on purpose.

"They know who I am," he said, on the fourth night.

"Of course they know." Sorrel stretched out on his bed with his hands behind his head. "Half of them have probably already sent a message ahead. The Foxes don't stare, Wolf. Staring tells people what you're thinking."

"So what are they thinking?"

"Whatever they're paid to."

Kael lay awake for a long time that night, listening to the Fox's soft breathing, and wondering how a whole people could be built around never showing their hand.

Lanternreach rose out of the plain like a held breath.

It stood on an island in the middle of a broad grey lake, linked to the shore by a single long causeway, a city of towers and bridges and white stone terraces climbing one above another toward a great domed palace. Thousands of lanterns hung from every balcony and rooftop and bridge, and as the sun set, they began to glow, one by one, red and gold and green, until the whole island blazed against the dark water like a jeweled crown.

"The Mirror City," Sorrel murmured. "Wait until you see the palace."

The palace was worse.

It was built of polished black glass. Every surface, every wall and floor and ceiling, was a mirror, so that the visitor walked through endless reflected corridors lit by the lanterns outside. Kael saw himself everywhere: small, thin, battered, a sword on his back, a hundred versions of the same nervous boy. After the first hallway, he stopped looking down.

"It's meant to unsettle you," Sorrel said quietly. "Don't let it."

"It's working."

"Good. Then you're paying attention."

They were led through a long gallery of reflected lamps, past silent guards in grey livery, and into a chamber at the very heart of the palace. It was round and lined with shelves, thousands of them, each filled with scrolls and ledgers and small locked boxes. A single large desk stood at its center. At the desk, writing, sat a woman.

She did not look up when they entered.

"You're late," she said. "I expected you four days ago."

"We took the scenic route, Matriarch," said Sorrel.

"I know. I had you watched." She finished a line, blotted it, and laid the pen aside. "Hello, Wolf."

Matriarch Ysolde Vane was not what Kael expected. He had pictured someone old and grand. She was perhaps fifty, slim and elegant, with silver threading her copper fur and a narrow, finely boned face. She wore a plain grey gown. Her hands were small and bare of rings. Only her eyes marked her, amber like Sorrel's but much older, and so steady that Kael felt as though she had read the whole of him in the time it took to blink.

"Highness," she said, and inclined her head. It was a courtesy, nothing more. "Please sit. You've come a long way."

"Thank you for receiving me."

"Thank you for coming. Few Wolves would dare." She poured two cups of pale tea from a pot at her elbow and slid one across the desk. "Drink. It isn't poisoned. I would not insult you so crudely."

He drank. It tasted of honey and smoke.

"You've been busy," she said. "A ravine of dead hunters. A Bear chieftain's oath, sworn in the Cairn, which I understand was somewhat unconventional. The Wolf Council in disarray." A small smile. "In a single season you've done more than the old guard managed in seventeen years. I'm impressed."

"I wasn't trying to impress anyone."

"That is precisely why it works."

She sipped her tea, and Kael realized she had not once looked at Sorrel. Not at the door, not now. The Fox stood a pace behind Kael's chair, silent, his hands clasped, and the air around him felt tight as a drawn string.

"Let us be direct," Ysolde said. "You want my help. The Foxes have what you need, intelligence, trade, a seat at the table of the Four Clans. I will give you all of it, in time. But I give nothing for free. That is not greed. It is how the world works, and I'd rather be honest about it than pretend otherwise."

"What do you want?"

"Several things." She raised a finger. "First, the independence of the Fox lands, in writing, sworn before witnesses. No governors, no garrisons, no tariffs." A second finger. "Second, a permanent seat for a Fox speaker on any council that governs the continent." A third. "Third, the right to keep my archives sealed. All of them. Forever."

Kael let the silence sit. He thought of Greymantle's laugh, and of Teyr in the root-hall, and of the oath he had sworn at the Cairn. If I ever take the crown, it serves the clans. The first two were easy. They were already things he meant to give.

The third made his skin prickle.

"Sealed archives," he said. "Why?"

"Because some secrets are a clan's only protection."

"The Lions sealed theirs. I've heard how that went."

"The Lions sealed their archives to hide a crime." Ysolde's voice stayed pleasant. "I seal mine to keep a balance. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"You will have to trust me, Highness. That is the nature of a seal."

He thought of Sorrel's request. Refuse the first price.

"No," Kael said.

Behind him he felt Sorrel breathe out.

Ysolde's eyebrows rose a fraction. "No?"

"Not the third. I'll swear to the first two. But I won't promise to leave records closed. Nobody knows what happened seventeen years ago, and every closed door in this continent seems to hide a piece of it. If I take the throne, the truth about the war comes out. All of it." He met her eyes. "Including yours."

For a moment the silence was total.

Then, slowly, the Matriarch laughed.

It was a light, genuine sound, warm and surprised. "Well," she said. "That is the second person in a month to tell me my sealed rooms are a problem. You would get along with her."

"With whom?"

"The Emperor's daughter." Ysolde's smile turned thin and knowing. "She wrote to me last week, requesting an audience. A most polite letter. She asked whether the Fox seal on the Redrock Treaty meant what she thought it meant." The amber eyes glinted. "I have not yet decided whether to answer."

Kael sat very still. Greymantle had mentioned her too. The Emperor's own daughter, asking questions. Twice in as many weeks. He did not know why it unsettled him.

"What did it mean?" he asked.

"That, Highness, is the price of the second conversation." She pressed her fingertips together. "But I will give you a taste, to show good faith."

She rose, crossed to one of the great shelves, and lifted down a small box of black wood. It was no bigger than a book. From inside she drew a single folded sheet, brown with age.

"Your mother's name," she said, "was Seren."

Kael stopped breathing.

"She was the daughter of a river-captain from the south, a commoner, which was a scandal in itself. Your father married her anyway, against the advice of his court. They say he first saw her at a harvest festival, dancing, and never looked at anyone else." Ysolde unfolded the sheet and held it gently, as one might hold a bird. "She was not a queen who ruled. She was a queen who listened. Half the reforms in the last years of the old kingdom were hers, though her husband took the credit. She died in the palace, the night it burned. She did not run. She stayed to see the servants out."

Kael could not speak. He was dimly aware that his hands were shaking.

"She left letters," Ysolde said. "Several. To people she trusted. To your father, to a friend, to the old guardian who carried you away." Her eyes did not leave his face. "And one for you."

"Orin has it," Kael whispered. "He wouldn't give it to me."

"I know. I have wanted to read it for seventeen years."

The warmth drained from the room.

"That is the price, Highness," Ysolde said, very softly. "Not the independence. Not the council. Those I would grant you for nothing, because they are fair, and because a Wolf who keeps his word is worth more to me than ten who do not. My price is this: when you find that letter, I read it first."

"Why?"

"Because it may contain my name." She looked, for the first time, truly tired. "Not as an accusation, Highness. As a witness. Your mother and I spoke often in her last year. She knew things. She suspected things. And if what I believe is true, then the Fox clan did more in that war than sign a treaty." She folded the page and slid it back into the box. "I have kept the Fox archives sealed for seventeen years because I am afraid of what is in them. And of what will happen to my people when it is known."

Kael looked at her for a long time.

It was not a bribe, he realized. It was something worse and more honest. She was asking him to trust her with the one thing that might hurt her. And if he refused, he would never know what she knew.

"I'll consider it," he said slowly. "I can't promise. I haven't read it myself. It's my mother's last words. I want to be the first to see them."

Ysolde's smile was small and rueful. "That is a good answer. Better than I expected." She set the box aside. "Then for the moment, I'll offer you a different gift. A name, freely given."

"Whose?"

"The one who fired the first arrow at the Greenwater."

The room seemed to tilt.

"I do not offer it lightly," she continued. "You are not ready to hear it, and you will not believe me if I tell you. So I will tell you only this. The arrow came from your own side of the river. And the hand that loosed it was neither a Lion nor a Bear nor a Fox." Her voice dropped. "Ask your Wolves who held the western ford that morning. Ask who was missing from the roll afterward. When you have the answer, come back, and I'll tell you the rest."

"A Wolf," Kael said. His voice did not sound like his. "A Wolf killed his own."

"A Wolf, or a man wearing the grey." She spread her hands. "I have said enough for tonight. You've had a long road. My servants will show you to your rooms."

Sorrel did not speak until the door of their chamber had closed behind them.

Kael sat on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. The room was a smaller mirror-chamber, lit by hanging lamps, and in every wall he could see himself sitting with his shoulders bowed.

"Seren," he said. "Her name was Seren."

"Yes."

"You knew."

"No." For the first time, Sorrel sounded entirely honest. "I swear I didn't. She kept that from everyone."

"But you knew something." Kael raised his head. "She never looked at you. Not once. The whole time. You stood behind me like a servant, and she didn't say a word to you. Why?"

The Fox said nothing for a long moment. He crossed the room and stood at the window, looking out over the lantern-lit lake.

"Because," he said at last, "if she'd looked at me, she'd have had to say my name."

Kael waited.

"I'm sorry," Sorrel said. "You'll have the rest soon. I promise you that. But not tonight." He leaned his forehead against the glass. Reflected in the black mirror, his face looked younger than Kael had ever seen it. "I was about to ask for a page. I'm not going to. Not yet. The moment's gone."

"Sorrel."

"Please." It was barely a whisper. "Just let me be someone you trust for one more night."

Kael looked at his back, at the slim stooped shoulders, and felt anger and pity wrestling in his chest. He did not know which would win.

"Tomorrow," he said, "you tell me everything."

"Tomorrow," the Fox agreed.

But in the long hours of the night, as Kael lay sleepless in the mirrored dark, he heard Sorrel's breathing and knew, from its careful evenness, that the Fox was not asleep either. And he heard something else, very faint, from somewhere far below in the palace. A woman's voice, murmuring in the dark, and under it the soft scrape of a pen.

It was the Matriarch, writing letters.

At that hour, he thought, and to whom?