CHAPTER FOUR — The Hunt-Song (3)

Macy released his wrist. She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was drier, but not unkind. "You know why we have the Old Law, human? It's not because elders are wise. It's because the last time one of ours loved one of you, the lover moved away after six months and wrote us a postcard. A postcard. From the coast. While she was in the dark." She held his gaze. "So forgive me if I don't applaud. I've seen this movie. It ends badly for the girl."

Kellen opened his mouth. Closed it. For once, the fool's grin didn't come.

"I'm not moving away," he said quietly. "I came here on purpose. That's the whole problem."

Macy stared at him. Then she sighed — the long, universe-weary sigh again — and gave Isola a look that said, see? this is exactly the sentence I warned you about.

Kellen raised both hands. "Look. With every respect due — I'm currently hiding from the most powerful tribe in North America, I've already been sniffed at by a ghost-dog once tonight, and your friend here is the only thing keeping me alive. Can we please table my love life for, like, ten minutes? Until after the murder attempt?"

"Smart man." Macy nodded, approving despite herself. "That's the first sensible thing I've heard all week." She turned to Isola, and her face sobered. "The white robes are on the east switchback. Seven of them. Casimir's on his feet — he's alive, which is the only reason any of us are still having this conversation, because if you'd killed him we'd all be in the dark by now."

"I didn't kill him," Isola said.

"I know you didn't. I also know why." Macy's voice went quiet. "You never could kill clean, when it mattered. Even when we were children and you beat me at every race, you'd slow up at the finish line so I didn't feel small. You've spent your whole life being the strongest person in the room and being angry about it." She looked at the human again. "And now you've gone and broken every law we have for one of them."

Kellen watched Isola's face. It didn't move. But her hand, on the hilt of her sword, went white at the knuckles.

"Macy," Isola said. "I need the border. I need the Veil's eastern trace-point, where the trails cross out of the pass. And I need something to make the Circle believe the wolves finished what they started."

Macy stared. Then she laughed — a loud, snorting, completely unprofessional laugh, the kind that should have gotten all three of them caught, and Kellen decided on the spot that he loved her.

"Of course you do." She wiped her eye. "Of course the deserter wants to stage a death scene on my beat. Of course. I've been your quartermaster for nine years, Isola, and you have never once asked me for something boring. Not 'restock the salt.' Not 'mend the net.' No. 'Macy, forge a human corpse on the Veil. No pressure.'"

"It's not a corpse." Kellen leaned around the rock. "It's evidence. Evidence of a corpse. We don't need a body. We need a story the mountain will read. Torn pack. His blood. A few scraps that look like something the wraithwolves didn't bother to finish digesting."

Macy squinted at him. "You're very calm for a man who's about to be murdered twice — once by the tribe, once by your own faked death."

"Professional hazard."

"He's not wrong," Isola said.

Macy looked between them. She looked at the silver lights moving in the valley. She looked at the sky, gone just a shade less black at the eastern rim — the first dishonest promise of dawn.

"Okay," she said at last. "Okay. Here's what we do, and I want it on record that I hate every single word of this. The eastern trace-point is the old game trail where the Veil lets itself be touched. You leave the pack there. You leave his blood —" she looked at Kellen's arm, where the gash had sealed to a silver line "— well, we'll make you bleed again, don't pout."

"I wasn't pouting."

"You were about to pout." She hooked her thumb over her shoulder. "I'll carry the evidence. I'm the border quartermaster, remember? I'm allowed on that trail. I'll 'find' it at first light. I'll report the wolves got him. The Circle will sigh with relief, close the file, and go back to pretending their law makes sense."

"And Isola?" Kellen said.

Macy's face closed. "Isola's a deserter now. She can't come home. She knows that."

"I know that," Isola said.

"Then what's the plan, you brilliant, ruined woman?" Macy said it almost gently. "You run west, across the Veil, into his world, and what — you become a tourist? A human? You, who can hear the mountain think?"

Isola didn't answer. She looked at Kellen.

Kellen, who had spent eight years filming himself in places the internet called unsafe, who had a ledger and a photograph and a decade of quiet vengeance tucked in his pack, looked back.

"She comes with me," he said. "That's the plan. Temporarily. We lay low. We close the file. And then —" he smiled, the sharp one, the one with the teeth in it "— then we come back. Because I still have questions, and she still has a sister to avenge, and your Circle just made two very large mistakes."

Macy was quiet for a long time.

"Two mistakes," she repeated.

"One: they let me live. Two —" he nodded at Isola "— they pissed her off."

Somewhere below, a horn sounded. The silver lights picked up their pace. Dawn was bleeding gray over the pines, and the three of them were crouched on a ridge with a forged corpse and a treason they hadn't even finished committing.

Macy hefted her coil of rope.

"Give me the pack," she said. "And the arm. This is going to sting, human."

Kellen held out his arm with the bravery of a man who had once swum with sharks. "For the record, this is the second time tonight a woman has cut me open. I'm starting to think there's a pattern."

"There is," Isola said. And for the first time since the shrine, she smiled — small, wild, entirely out of place on a mountain that was currently trying to kill them both. "It's called having terrible taste."