Chapter 3 I Should Have Drowned Her

The three grey boats came round the headland slow, the way a man walks into a room he already owns.

I counted eight men in the first boat, six in the second, and I could not see the third for the glare off the water. They were not rogues. Rogues come in twos and threes and they come at night and they run when they see a wolf on the rocks. These men rowed in daylight with their oars in perfect time and their heads up.

The tall old man in the prow had a white glove on his right hand, and even at that distance I could see the glove was spotless.

I got up off the stone. My wolf was on his feet with me, hackles up, and he wanted to shift, and I held him where he was because a wolf on an open shelf of rock with the sea behind him is a dead wolf.

Ingrid had not moved. She was still sitting with her knees drawn up, watching the boats, and her face had gone the colour of wet chalk.

"You know them," I said.

"I know the glove," she said.

"Then tell me what I am looking at, and tell me quick, because they are two hundred yards out and closing."

She got to her feet and pulled her boots on, one and then the other, and she did not hurry, and that scared me more than the boats did. "That is Councilor Halvard. He sits on the Council of Alphas, and he has sat on it for thirty years, and he does not come to a pack's territory himself unless he has already decided what is going to happen there."

"And what has he decided about my rock?"

"He has decided it is not yours."

I looked at her. She looked back at me, and there was something in her amber eyes I could not name, some ugly thing she was carrying and had been carrying for a long time.

"You came with him," I said.

"I came in his ship. I came ashore in his boat. I came up your stairs with his orders in my mouth and his match in my hand." Her voice was flat. "And I am telling you now, before he lands, that I did not know he was bringing men."

"That is a fine distinction."

"It is the only one I have got."

The first boat ground against the rocks. Two of the men jumped out and held it, and the tall old man stepped down onto the shelf with his gloved hand held up, and behind him six more men came off the boats with rifles slung across their backs and their eyes on the cliffs, and I stood between them and my tower with my hands loose at my sides.

"Alpha Eirik," the old man said. His voice was soft and pleasant, the voice of a man who has never had to raise it. "I have heard a great deal about you. Your father was well thought of in his day."

"My father is dead," I said.

"Yes. I was sorry to hear it." He looked past me at the lighthouse, and his pale grey eyes went up and down the whitewashed stone the way a man sizes up a horse he means to buy. "I am Councilor Halvard. I have come about your charter."

"The charter is not a thing the Council inspects."

"Everything is a thing the Council inspects, Alpha, when a complaint has been laid." He smiled. It was a mild, patient smile, and it did not reach his eyes. "Your lamp was dark for eleven hours in April. Did you know that? A fishing boat from Værøy ran aground on the skerries because of it. The skipper survived. The Council took note."

My stomach dropped. I remembered April. I had been out with the cod run and Runa had been minding the lamp and the feed had clogged, and I had told her I would see to it, and I had not.

"Eleven hours is a clerical matter," I said.

"Eleven hours is a border matter." Halvard turned his gloved hand over, palm up, as if he were offering me something. "The charter of the Saltfjell pack is a living document, kept in that lamp room and read aloud at the full moon. If the document has been altered, or if the lamp has not been kept as the charter requires, the Council may challenge the pack's claim to this territory. I am here to open that challenge. There will be a hearing."

"There will be a hearing," I said, "when the Council can prove a fault."

"Ah." Halvard's mild eyes moved past me and settled on Ingrid, who was standing very still beside the rocks with her canvas bag against her hip. "And who is this?"

I had one moment to decide. My wolf was screaming at me and my head was cold and clear and I could feel the whole pack's future balanced on the next thing out of my mouth.

"She is a shipwrecked woman," I said. "Her boat came apart on the north shore four nights ago. She has been in my keeper's room since dawn."

Halvard looked at Ingrid for a long, quiet while. She looked back at him, and I watched her chin lift and her shoulders go back.

"A shipwrecked woman," he said. "How fortunate for her that you were home." He turned away, and the men behind him turned with him, and he walked along the shelf toward the tower stairs. "I will take the lamp room, Alpha. My men will take the pack house. The hearing will be in three days, at the harbor, and you will bring the charter and the lamp register and your warden's oath. Until then, I would advise you to keep your wolves quiet."

He stopped on the bottom step and looked back at me.

"And Alpha? If this woman is a shipwreck, then she will not mind being questioned about her ship. I shall want to speak with her before the hearing." The white glove tapped once against the iron rail. "I always want to speak with the survivors."

They went up the stairs, boots ringing on the iron, and the three grey boats sat off the rock like hounds at a door.

I turned on Ingrid. I did not shout. I have never been a shouter, whatever my wolves say about my temper. I walked up close to her and I kept my voice low enough that the men on the stairs would not hear it.

"You said your boat was smashed. You said you came in his boat. You gave me two stories and neither of them fits the other."

"The boat story was for them," she said. "The truth was for you."

"The truth was for me." I laughed once. "You came to my lamp with a match, you bent a window latch, you have a Council seal in your bag, and now the Councilor who brought you here is standing in my lamp room. Tell me again how you are on my side."

Ingrid's face did not change, but her hand came up and closed around the strap of her bag, and I saw her knuckles go white.

"You want me to go," she said quietly. "Then row me ashore yourself, Alpha. Take me to Værøy, put me on the pier, and tell them I am a liar and a stranger. It will be one less problem on your rock, and you will never have to wonder what I am."

I stared at her.

"You think I am offering you a bargain," I said.

"I think you are a man with sixty wolves and three days and no boat," she said. "And I think I am the only person on this island who knows what Halvard does to packs that cannot prove their charters. So yes. Row me ashore, or keep me here and let me help you. But choose now, before he comes back down those stairs."

Above us, in the lamp room, something glass knocked against stone and did not break.

Then a man's voice came down the stairwell, mild and clear, and it said, "Alpha? Your lamp has gone out again."