Chapter 5
Sable
It’s just after first light when Greta finds me in the dispensary. I’m washing yesterday’s blood out of a stack of cloths. The water in the basin has gone pink, then rust, then brown. I tip it out, refill it from the kettle, and reach for the lye soap.
Greta comes in without knocking. She never knocks when something has already gone wrong.
“Brenna has the list,” she says.
I stop with my hands in the water.
“What list?”
“The names from Bern’s records.”
I take the cloth from the basin and wring it out. Slowly. Water streams between my fingers and hits the metal bowl in a steady patter.
“How many?”
“Twenty-three across the southeast. Two from Ravenclaw.” Greta’s mouth tightens. “The Bowen boy who left in oh-four. And Pell’s daughter.”
The cloth twists harder in my hands.
“Has she told him?”
“At four this morning.”
“Of course she did.”
Greta looks toward the corridor, though no one is there. “He’s been at the south fence since five. Won’t let anyone near him.”
I set the cloth aside. My hands are red from hot water. They look worse than they are.
“I’ll find him after rounds. Maybe I can give him something to help. Valerian, maybe.”
Greta watches me for a moment. She is carrying a tray with two mugs of tea and three heel-ends of bread under a cloth. Someone will eat them because she puts them down and waits until they do.
“Eat something first,” she says.
“I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
I reach for the next cloth.
She leaves the tray on the counter anyway.
Rounds take most of the morning. Tomas’s breathing is still shallow.
I adjust his dose and sit with him until it steadies.
Dara has eaten half her bread and asks about Greta’s broth.
Sparrow is curled up, taking a nap. Everyone in the wing is carrying the weight of Bern’s list, whether they’ve heard the names yet or not.
By mid-morning, I’ve done what I can for them. What I can’t do is sit in the dispensary staring at a tray of cold tea while twenty-three names and a five-digit number run circles in my head.
I go looking for Arden.
She is in the herb beds behind the lodge, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair tied back, hands deep in the soil around a row of feverfew. Lachlan is nowhere in sight, which means he is probably close enough to hear if she calls and far enough away to pretend he isn’t hovering.
Arden doesn’t look up when I reach the path.
“If you’re here to tell me Lachlan is lurking by the woodpile, I know.”
“I’m not.”
“Good. I’m pretending not to.”
I stand at the edge of the bed and wait.
She finishes packing soil around the base of the plant before she sits back on her heels.
Her hands are dirty to the wrist. She looks better in the morning light than she did when she first arrived at Ravenclaw with the first batch of rescued wolved.
Better is not the same as well, but I’ll take it.
“I need to ask you something,” I say.
Her expression changes by almost nothing, but I sense the shift.
“About Bern?”
“About the Syndicate. Numbering systems.”
She wipes one hand on her trousers. Leaves dirt behind. “That’s a broad subject.”
“I know.”
“And an ugly one.”
“I know that too.”
She looks past me, toward the healers’ wing. The eastern windows catch the sun at this hour. From here, the building looks ordinary. Long roof. Whitewashed walls. Clean glass. Nothing about it says there is a nameless wolf sedated behind a reinforced door.
Arden’s eyes stay there. “The man in your locked room.”
Am I that easy to read?
“Yes.”
“The tattoo?”
“3-0-6-7-0.”
She closes her eyes.
I wait.
The wind moves through the herb beds, carrying the bitter green smell of crushed leaves. Somewhere by the kitchen, Greta is scolding someone for lifting a lid before she says it is ready. The compound sounds almost normal if you don’t listen too closely.
Arden opens her eyes.
“Five digits,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Permanent?”
“Tattooed. Forearm.”
“Not intake, then.”
My fingers curl around the strap of my bag. “What does that mean?”
“It means he wasn’t processed as general stock.”
Stock.
The word is ugly. She says it flatly because making it softer would be worse.
I let it stand.
Arden looks down at her hands. “Some facilities used temporary markers,” she says. “Wrist tags. Neck tags. Numbers in ledgers. Those were for captives they moved, traded, drained, bred, killed.”
She pulls a dead leaf from the feverfew and rolls it between finger and thumb until it breaks apart.
“The usual machinery.”
My stomach turns once. I keep my face still.
“And permanent tattoos?”
Her fingers stop moving.
“Different,” she says. “Long-term subjects. Specialized programs. Wolves they expected to keep.”
The crushed leaf dusts her palm green.
“Wolves they wanted identifiable even if the paperwork disappeared.”
I look down at her hand. At the smear of green worked into the lines of her skin.
“Why would paperwork disappear?”
Arden’s mouth twists.
“Because paperwork is evidence.”
I look at the five digits behind my eyes. Straight lines. Meant to be read fast.
“Do you recognize the number?”
“No.”
The answer is immediate.
My hands tighten on the bag strap. I have no right to expect more. Arden owes me nothing. The fact that I want a name does not make one appear.
“But I recognize the range,” she says.
I look back at her.
“Thirty-series came up in research conversations. Not often. Never where captives were supposed to hear.” She rubs at a smear of dirt on her thumb. It does not come off. “Suppression. Frequency work. Instability protocols. I didn’t have enough to piece it together.”
“Frequency work?”
“I don’t know what it means. I heard the word. I remembered it because they hated saying it near us. Some words made staff look at doors before they spoke.”
“Was there a doctor attached to it?” I ask.
Arden goes still.
“Fell,” she says.
The name barely reaches me.
I wait.
“Dr. Fell. I heard staff say the name when they spoke about the thirty series.” Arden’s eyes drop to the feverfew between us. “Not the way people talk about someone they like. Not even the way they talk about someone they fear.”
“How, then?”
“Carefully.”
The back of my neck prickles.
Arden pulls a dead leaf from the plant and crushes it between her fingers. “That program had subjects who stopped having names even in places where names were useful. Staff used numbers for them because the doctor did. If your male is thirty-series and permanently marked, he may have been Fell’s.”
My male.
The words land low in my body before my mind catches up.
I should correct her. The answer is right there, simple and clean.
My patient.
I even draw the breath to say it.
But Arden is watching the healers’ wing, not me, and the correction sticks behind my teeth.
My patient. My case. The wolf in the locked room.
None of it comes out.
“What were they studying?” I ask instead.
“I told you what I know.” There is a line in her voice now.
I’m pushing too hard. “Thank you,” I say.
She gives a short nod, already reaching for the next plant.
I turn to leave.
“Sable.”
I stop.
Arden is still kneeling in the dirt, hands braced on her thighs. “If he was Fell’s, don’t assume he knows what he is.”
I look toward the healers’ wing.
The sun has moved higher. The windows no longer shine. They look dark from this angle.
“What does that mean?”
“It means some of them were for research.” Arden’s voice is level. “And some of them were weapons.”
The feverfew trembles under the wind.
“Which was he?”
“I don’t know.”
She looks at the wing again.
“But if they tattooed the number where everyone could see it, they wanted the staff to remember what he was before they remembered he was a man.”
I carry that with me through the rest of the morning.
Fell. Thirty-series. Frequency work. The way staff looked at doors before they spoke.
Not a name. A trail.
By evening, the compound has gone quiet in the strained way that follows a day when grief has moved through every room, and nobody has enough words left.
The news of Bern’s list has spread to all of them.
The emotional overload feels like a weighted blanket.
We’ve known about the hate against magic-bloods; Ravenclaw has been fighting purists for decades.
But this is different. This is a system.
After dinner, I find Pell leaning against the back wall of the barn, staring out into the darkness.
“Hey,” I say. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He turns to me, his expression set. “She’s not dead,” he says. “Just because her name’s on the list, doesn’t mean she’s dead.”
“You’re right.” I touch his arm. “It’s no guarantee of anything.”
He nods. “We got others out. Lots went in and stayed for years. Like the one you brought back. Folks say he was in there a long time.”
“Exactly.” I keep my hand on his arm. He’s rigid. I don’t point out that the man in the ward came out broken. “I brought you this,” I say, not wanting to linger on these details. I reach into my pocket and pull out a small pouch of leaves. “It’s valerian. And chamomile. It’ll help you sleep.”
“I don’t need to sleep,” he mutters. “I need to think. I need to do something.”
“Pell, everyone is doing everything they can right now. And you’ll be no good to her if you’re a wreck when they find her.”
When they find her.
He looks at me, then gives a curt nod, reaching for the pouch. “You’re right. She’ll need her father.”
“Exactly.” I smile, feeling like a fraud, but knowing he needs this more than hard reality right now. If nothing else, a decent night’s sleep will help him cope with whatever’s on the horizon.
He manages a smile back before heading off in the direction of the cabins.