Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

humans ran their societies.
    Human crowds reminded Rule of flocks of birds or children, unable to tolerate stillness
     for long. He stood beside his father at the center of roughly three hundred mostly
     still and silent people. Mostly, because there were humans in this crowd, too—female
     clan, who were as quiet as they could manage. But most were lupi, with a wolf’s instinctive
     understanding of the value of stillness. Most were Nokolai. Their Rho had called for
     quiet. They obeyed. Even with that hard pulse stirring them, they could hold quiet
     and wait…for now. As long as the rhythm didn’t pick up.
    But not all here were Nokolai. Laban, Leidolf, and Vochi had each gathered into a
     knot of their own, surrounded by Nokolai. They would be feeling the tension. They
     were close enough to smell Isen’s anger. They’d hear the massed heartbeats around
     them, like a distant ocean. Leidolf would react to this differently than the other
     two. Rule held their heartbeats to a slow, steady rhythm. They were alert, but calm
     in their stillness.
    Laban and Vochi were still, too—for a wolf’s reason. Fear.
    The gathering was not, however, completely silent.
    “Your find didn’t work?” Lily said to Cynna, her voice very low.
    Cynna shook her head. “Mountains are tricky. I can find through dirt, but even small
     amounts of quartz will distort things unless I have a really good pattern. Which I
     don’t. I’ll work up a more complete pattern, but that will take time.”
    “Emanuel Korski,” someone called from the rear of the crowd.
    “On duty,” Pete said loudly. “Excused.”
    “Matt Briggs,” another voice called from up near the front of the crowd. Pete responded
     with the same two phrases:
On duty. Excused.
    Lily drummed her fingers on her thigh. “About Laban…they haven’t been subordinate
     to Nokolai for very long, in lupi terms.”
    “Less than thirty years this time,” Cynna whispered back. “But they’ve submitted several
     times over the years to different clans. This is their third dance with Nokolai.”
    “Because they’re combative. They have trouble controlling themselves, so they need
     a dominant clan to sit on them. Vochi, on the other hand, throws a lot of submissives.
     They need a dominant clan for protection.”
    “Andy Carter!”
    “On duty. Excused.”
    Six of them stood in the center of the meeting field—Rule and his Rho at the very
     center, with Pete at Isen’s left. Cullen stood behind them beside a short, angular
     woman with iron gray hair, thick glasses, and skin that remained luminous in her seventh
     decade—Isadora Bourque, the chief tender, who answered for those tenders excused from
     the meeting, just as Pete was for the guards.
    Lily and Cynna stood to Rule’s right with their heads together to conduct their soft-voiced
     conversation. Lily had not run out of questions. No one else would answer themhere and now, but Cynna was Rhej. Isen couldn’t command her silence, and by answering
     Lily’s questions she gave tacit permission for them to continue. Isen was ignoring
     the whispered conversation. If Cynna had chosen to sit down and paint her toenails,
     he would have ignored that, too.
    But he hadn’t had to permit Lily within the small group in the center of the field.
     Lily had assumed she would stay with Rule, but Isen didn’t have to allow it. He had.
     There was a reason—with Isen there was always a reason, often several—but Rule had
     no idea what it was. Isen hadn’t given him any private word, any guidance at all.
    His heart beat steady and slow, out of sync with the rest.
    Perhaps no one but he and Isen and Cynna heard Lily’s next question. She kept her
     voice very low. “But the Vochi Rho himself is a dominant, right? He’d have to be.”
    “Right.”
    “And Vochi has been subordinate to Nokolai for centuries but has never been…what’s
     that word? Oh, yeah—
subsumed
. That’s why Leidolf doesn’t have any subordinate clans. They used to, but they subsumed
     them.”
    “Becka Whitbourne,” a voice at the east side of the crowd called.
    “On duty,” Isadora announced in her gravelly voice. “Excused.”
    The obvious way to locate a traitor was to see if someone failed to appear. Isen wasn’t
     calling roll, however; he was calling absences. Or having them called out.
    Visitors—both
ospi
, or clan-friends, and nonresident Nokolai—had been told to report to Pete. There
     were currently three