Mortal Ties

by Eileen Wilks

  He turned. He let his gaze touch each of them briefly, and he knew them. Knew them personally, yes, and of course the mantle recognized them. But for the first time, his knowledge and the mantle’s recognition blended into a seamless whole.

  He knew them, and they were his. “Leidolf,” he said, his voice raised enough for Nokolai and the other clans to hear. “You will answer truly and fully now. If I have given you orders on some previous occasion which might cause you to withhold information or mislead or lie, you will disregard those orders. Do any of you have personal knowledge of this theft or of this thief?”

  Some shook their heads. Some said no. A few did both.

  “Have any of you spoken to someone not present tonight about Cullen Seabourne’s workshop?”

  Most of them spoke their no aloud this time, firmly. So that Nokolai would hear. One didn’t respond. Rule’s heart gave a single hard thud in his chest. He controlled it quickly. “Scott. You didn’t answer.”

  “I wasn’t sure how to answer. LeBron and I talked about it some. He’s not here.”

  This time the relief was real and vivid. Rule turned to look at Isen. “LeBron died saving my nadia’s life. I can’t call on him to testify for himself, so I will speak for him. He did not betray Leidolf or our alliance with Nokolai. I so pledge on the honor of Leidolf.”

  Isen didn’t react. Others did. Breaths sucked in, feet or bodies stirred. Rule could have made the pledge on his own honor. That he’d backed it by Leidolf’s meant it could only be disputed if Isen were willing to call Clan Challenge.

  It was probably overkill. Rule didn’t care. LeBron’s name would be honored, not smudged by doubts.

  Isen nodded again, a fraction more deeply—acknowledging a favor. “Nokolai accepts Leidolf’s pledge and thanks you for your help. Does the Leidolf Rho have further comment or questions at this time?”

  “Leidolf has no more to contribute at this time. We are on your land. We acknowledge your rights and responsibilities in this matter.”

  “Then I would speak with my Lu Nuncio.”

  Rule had switched roles with his father many times now, going from Lu Nuncio to Rho and back. It had sometimes been tricky in the way that a puzzle can be, but never truly difficult.

  Tonight it was.

  The Nokolai Rho wished to take him out, use him, then stuff him back into the lesser role when it suited him? And do so publicly, demonstrating to all that Leidolf answered Nokolai’s bidding. That was…Rule drew a slow breath. That was entirely proper. When Rule first was thrust into the leadership of Leidolf, his Rho had spoken to him about the problems inherent in being Rho to one clan and Lu Nuncio to another. He had agreed that here at Clanhome he would be Lu Nuncio to Nokolai, not Rho to Leidolf. Tonight Isen had agreed to his assumption of the other role so he could clear Leidolf of complicity, but that did not abrogate their original agreement.

  Isen had noted his hesitation. No doubt of that. Others might have as well. “I have thought of one thing Leidolf might do to assist. I would send my men to guard Toby, releasing more of your men to assist in other ways.”

  “I accept your offer.”

  Rule turned and gave quick instructions to his men. As they melted away into the crowd, he faced Isen again. This time he dipped his head low, baring his nape. “My Rho wishes to speak with me?”

  Isen’s face held no emotion. “Change.”

  TEN

  RULE’S heart gave a single, frightened leap, but he obeyed.

  The moon was new and hidden now behind the curve of the earth. It didn’t matter, not for Rule. Her song was as much a part of him as his pulse. He didn’t rush, not wanting to pull others into the Change with him. He listened and opened himself to moonsong, distant and muted and impossibly pure, and it slid through him like falling water. The earth answered easily, shooting up through him, and the two met and ripped the world apart, starting with his body.

  The pain was instant and intolerable—and over, the memory of it lingering faintly like an afterimage of the sun imprinted on the retina. Then that, too, was gone. He stood on four feet in a world vastly different from what he experienced on two, his vision both expanded and contracted. Expanded, because wolves have a full 180 degrees of vision, compared to a human’s 100 degrees. Contracted, because wolves are myopic—unless something moves. That they’ll spot quickly even at a great distance, though the object itself may be an unidentifiable blur.

  Even two-footed Rule’s sense of smell was better than a human’s, but in this form smells burst upon him, wrapping him in a more deeply dimensional world. The air was alive, textured with information more layered and complex than any of Rembrandt’s paintings. His ears pivoted, helping him read that world. He heard Isen’s heartbeat now as well as feeling it pulse through the mantle. He heard the throb of all the other hearts timed to it, and realized his own heart had fallen into that rhythm the way a rock obeys gravity.

  Rule stood on four feet and felt a whine try to rise in his throat. This was worse as wolf. Far worse. Wolves live wrapped in instinct, and his were at war. Rule remained four-footed but pulled himself more into the man.

  Sometimes thinking helped.

  His own men were away from the crowd now, no longer surrounded by the scent of the clan who had been their enemy for so long. They would do well enough even if their hearts did beat faster for a bit. But he didn’t want to be compelled into the rhythm. He was Nokolai and obedient to his Rho, but he was also Leidolf, and he would not be compelled. He turned part of his attention to his breathing once more. His breath answered him, but his heart didn’t want to obey. Fear was clutching at him with clammy hands, trying to wrest control. He knew what the order to Change meant. He knew.

  This was the form for Challenge…or judgment.

  Isen signaled for Rule to resume his place at his side. He obeyed. Quietly Isen said, “Pete. Name two squads who are all on the field now that you trust completely.”

  Pete paused. “Seven and Eight.”

  “Squads Seven and Eight!” Isen boomed out. “Change!”

  They did. Two of the newer wolves were inadvertently caught up in it. They immediately lowered themselves to the ground in apology.

  “Seventh and Eighth squads—disperse so that at least one of you stands with each group.”

  Wolves began to move through the crowd. As they did, Isen turned slowly, letting his gaze sweep over the gathering. He made a full circle before he spoke again. “I require you now, all of you, to think. To remember. Who have you spoken with about Cullen Seabourne’s workshop? About what he has been working on? You’ve discussed it with other Nokolai, of course. But perhaps someone who is not Nokolai was curious. Perhaps one of our guests. Such curiosity is natural, but you were told not to discuss this outside the clan, so you will remember if someone asked. Think about this. Call it up in your memory.”

  Silence. Several moments of it, hearts beating together…but not all of them. Not Laban. Not Vochi.

  And not female clan.

  The pull of that demanding pulse continued to build. Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump…

  Isen raised his voice once more. “Everyone who remembers being asked about these things by someone outside Nokolai will come forward now.” Then he lowered his voice. “Pete. Make room for them. Forty or fifty, I suspect. Don’t move Laban and Vochi.”

  Pete moved away and began directing those groups closest to the center to other parts of the field. Others began moving up in ones and twos. It wasn’t silent now, not with so many moving forward or back, the inevitable excuse mes, feet shuffling as some shifted to allow others to pass. Lily was asking Cynna something again. She kept her voice so low that Rule caught only a few words over the noise…enough to guess her question. She wanted to know what happened to a subordinate clan that screwed its dominant.

  Cynna’s whispered response was clear to a wolf’s ears. “Anything. It can be anything, up to and including clan death, if the dominant gets two other dominant clans to agree that
a betrayal took place. But if the Rho of the subordinate clan admits his guilt, it’s kept between those two clans. It’s all on him then, see? Not his clan.”

  Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump…

  Lily asked what happened to that Rho.

  Cynna whispered, “He submits and is killed.”

  Lily didn’t ask any more questions. She waited. Rule waited.

  Most of those making their way forward were female clan.

  That, too, he’d expected. Women were the obvious targets for someone out-clan to question. Female clan obeyed their Rho, but they were human, not lupi. They obeyed the way a human obeys a policeman or doctor—from habit, from respect, from the assumption that the cop or physician knows what’s best. They knew that disobedience had consequences, but they didn’t have a gut-deep certainty that it was right to obey. And the consequences of disobedience were different for them.

  Lupi didn’t harm women. Ever.

  A lupus who erred in a minor way was chastised physically. He might be given some onerous job as well, but the physical defeat was what mattered. It proved that he wasn’t allowed to disobey; those with authority over him could force his obedience, and there was comfort in that. Comfort, too, in the simple expiation of guilt—first pain, then healing, both physical and emotional.

  Women couldn’t be punished physically. The idea was deeply repugnant. Besides, it would bring fear, not comfort. For a minor transgression, a female clan might be given chores, a stern talking-to, something along those lines.

  Serious disobedience was rare, but it happened. When it did, shunning was the usual consequence for both male and female clan. During the shunning—which traditionally lasted from one day to one week—no one would speak to you, look at you, acknowledge your existence in any way. No one except your Rho. He was the only one who knew you were alive, who might—if he chose—meet your eyes for a moment.

  Rule had been shunned for three days before he was named Lu Nuncio. Not because he’d disobeyed. His father had wanted him to understand in his gut how serious a punishment shunning was.

  It had worked. Rule had had nightmares off and on for a year.

  If a transgression was so severe that a week’s shunning couldn’t expiate it, the punishment was death or removal from the clan. Of the two, lupi considered death more merciful, but both were extremely rare. In Rule’s lifetime, his father had had two Nokolai lupi killed for major offenses. None had ever been banished.

  But five female clan had.

  One had been a thief. She’d stolen from the clan itself. Two had been simply troublemakers and liars who couldn’t refrain from stirring up those around them. Another had nearly caused the deaths of two children through a combination of willful disobedience, arrogance, and stupidity. Each of those four had been driven to the destination of their choice, given a couple thousand dollars, and cut off forever from Nokolai.

  The fifth one had caused the tortuous death of a Nokolai lupus out of petty vindictiveness.

  Twenty-two years ago, Nevada, Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi still had shoot-on-sight laws for lupi who were in wolf form, though they were being challenged in court. Most other states still had laws on the books for locking up lupi in either form, but by then the lockup was only until they could be turned over to the feds. The federal government was enthusiastically pursuing its more humane policy toward Rule’s people: catch them, brand them, dose them with gado, then allow them to lead “normal” lives.

  Gado weakens lupi, depriving them of both strength and healing. It also blocks moonsong, preventing the Change. Lupi go crazy if deprived of the Change for too long. Different lupi react differently to the drug; for a few, the effects of a single dose linger for months.

  Sheila had been angry at Carlos, a fellow clansman and former lover, and had turned him in to the feds. He’d been caught, branded, and dosed. Nokolai found Carlos after the feds released him, and hid him. That was no easy task back then. The brand on his forehead wouldn’t heal until the gado was out of his system, and MCD liked to keep a close watch on branded lupi, hoping to catch others.

  It hadn’t helped. Four months later, Carlos still couldn’t hear moonsong. He’d committed suicide.

  Sheila was gone by then.

  Isen couldn’t let her repeat her crime. She could have taken vengeance on too many others by reporting them to the government, up to and including Isen himself. She’d proven herself capable of doing just that. So he’d had her smuggled into Cuba, where she was given the equivalent of five hundred dollars and left to survive. Or not.

  Rule thought about Sheila as he stood beside Isen and watched clan obediently gather in front of their Rho. Any lupus who had done what Sheila had would have been put to death. But his people did not hurt women. Ever.

  With one exception.

  Their Lady understood her people. She’d never told them to protect women, no more than she’d instructed them to love their children, fight their enemies, or revel in the bliss of running four-footed. They did those things because they were as she’d made them. Because she knew this, one of the very few laws she’d given them was that any clan member who willfully and knowingly assisted the Great Enemy was to be put to death. Any clan, male or female.

  The Lady’s law must be followed. Isen had no choice. Neither did Rule.

  What happened tonight depended on many things. It was possible a male clansman had revealed details about Cullen’s workshop and his project, but it was far more likely to have been a female clan. But who had she spoken to? What were her motives? Speaking when she shouldn’t might result in benefit to the enemy, but stupidity wasn’t punishable by death.

  Rule breathed slowly and carefully and told himself he was not nauseous. His body would heal nausea, so what he felt was tension, not illness. Isen understood the difference between accidental aid and intentional. He was no fool.

  But he was very angry.

  “Squads Seven and Eight!” Isen called out. “Do you smell guilt? Is anyone in your group lying by remaining behind?”

  Rule couldn’t see what the four-footed guards did. Vochi blocked his view to the right, Laban to the left, and those who’d been brought up front for questioning blocked the rest. He didn’t turn around to look—not until Isen began to turn in a slow circle. Then he kept pace, staying at his Rho’s side.

  At the back of the crowd to the south, a wolf yipped. To the east and much closer, another one did. Two reluctant witnesses had been identified.

  “Bring them forward,” Isen commanded. Then, in an ordinary voice, he said, “Lily.”

  She was behind Rule and to his right. “Yes?”

  “I told you once that a Rho does not question his clan directly. That was an exaggeration, but the basic principle is true. This is not yet a matter of trial and accusation. I would like you to ask the questions.”

  Rule’s hackles lifted. His ears flattened as he swung his head around to look first at his Rho, then at Lily. He shook his head once. No.

  Lily met his eyes, her own dark and serious. “It will be all right,” she told him.

  He shook his head again.

  She walked up to him, knelt, and threaded her hand into the fur along his neck until her fingertips touched skin. “It will be all right,” she repeated, but this time under the tongue, so quietly that only he would hear. “You won’t have to kill anyone tonight.”

  He stared at her, astonished that she understood. And upset that she didn’t.

  “Oh. That’s not quite it, is it?” She bent and put her mouth close to his ear, her voice so soft now it was barely more than a breath. “You won’t have to disobey your Rho, either.”

  ELEVEN

  “LILY.” Her name was a low rumble, like thunder in the distance. Isen’s voice was pure, deep bass. Most of the time it seemed to rumble up from the depths of his barrel chest, as if his lungs were located so deep in his body the sound had the time and space to echo around in there. It was a voice well suited to menace when he wanted it to b
e.

  Lily wished she knew for sure he was aiming for menace instead of hitting it naturally at the moment. She straightened, keeping one hand resting on Rule’s back. “I would very much like to handle the questioning. Thank you.” Not that he was doing it to please her. No, he had something else in mind, and maybe she’d guessed what that was. One of his goals, anyway. Isen wasn’t a two birds with one stone kind of guy. More like one stone, two birds, a rabbit, a fox, and maybe that deer will trip over the fox and we can get him, too.

  Which Rule knew very well. And he was still scared. Scared his Rho would ask something of him he couldn’t do.

  Something was going on Lily didn’t understand, but she knew what questions to ask. She spoke to Isen. “I’d like to give the witnesses some directions first.”

  His bushy eyebrows lifted a millimeter. “Very well.” He raised his voice, addressing the tense group who’d come forward. “You will do as the Chosen bids.”

  The Chosen. Lily ran her thumb over the other ring she wore. Not Rule’s ring, but the one that held the charm the clan had entrusted to her when she accepted her place in the clan. The lupi had considered her Nokolai from the moment the mate bond hit, but the charm marked her acceptance of that joining.

  The toltoi, they called the little charm. The toltoi wasn’t magic. Not exactly. Lily felt something when she touched it, something so faint it almost wasn’t there, and that faint trace didn’t quite feel like magic. She didn’t know what it was, and that was annoying, but she’d gotten used to not knowing. Mostly.

  Lily turned to look at her witnesses.

  Maybe forty people waited to do as she bid. Six of them were male. All of them were anxious. “First,” she said loudly, “does anyone have information that’s urgent? Not just important, but urgent?” Some shook their heads. None spoke. “Okay, then. I want everyone who spoke with or was questioned by someone from Laban to move to your right. Everyone who spoke with or was questioned by someone from Vochi, go to your left. If you’ve been questioned by people from more than one clan, get in the middle and sit down. If you’ve been questioned by someone not from Vochi, Laban, or Nokolai, get in the middle but don’t sit down.”