Free The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

women do for the Fort. He listed the washing and vegetable tending, the tanning of hides, the making of snowshoes … and attributed a value to each task, until he could show that the Company was benefiting at least as much from the association as the families were. He was proud of this achievement, even more sosince getting to know Jacob’s wife and children–two girls who stare at their father’s pale friend with huge, liquid brown eyes. These children with their trusting gaze and incomprehensible secret names are set against the furs that the Company lives on, although to be honest, no one is in any doubt which are more important.
    When Donald first arrived at Fort Edgar, the Clerk-in-depot, a man called Bell, had shown him round the post. Donald saw the offices, the crowded sleeping quarters, the trading counter, the Indian village beyond the palisade (at a suitable distance), the log church, the graveyard … and finally the huge cold storerooms where the furs were stacked, waiting to start on their epic journey to London, where they would be converted into hard cash. Bell glanced furtively around him before breaking open a bale, and the glossy pelts slithered out onto the dirt floor.
    ‘Well, this is what it’s all about,’ he said in his Edinburgh accent. ‘This lot will be worth several guineas in London. Let’s see …’ He stirred the pelts with his hand. ‘Here’s a marten. You can see why we don’t want them to shoot the beasties–the traps barely leave a mark, look!’
    He waved the flattened leg of a weasel-like animal at Donald. The head was still attached to it–a small, pointed face with its eyes squeezed shut, as though it couldn’t bear to remember what had happened to it.
    He laid the marten down and plunged his hand back into the skins, offering them to Donald in quick succession, like a magician. ‘These are the least valuable; beaver, wolf, and bear, though they are useful enough–good wrappings for the other furs. Feel how coarse it is …’
    The glossy pelts rippled under his hands, vestigial legs folding under them. Donald took the pelts as he was handed them and was surprised at their touch. He had felt rather disgusted at this vast warehouse of death, but as he pushed his hands into the cool, silky luxuriance, he experienced anurge to put the soft fur to his lips. He resisted, of course, but understood how a woman could want such a thing draped round her neck, where she could, with just a small tilt of the head, brush the fur against her cheek.
    Bell was still talking, almost to himself. ‘But the most valuable … ah, this is silver fox–this is worth more than its weight in gold.’ His eyes shone in the dirty light.
    Donald reached out a hand to touch, and Bell almost flinched. The fur was grey and white and black, blended together into a silvery sheen, thick and soft, with a heavy, watery flow. He withdrew his hand, as Bell seemed unable to let go of it.
    ‘The only one more valuable is black fox–that comes from the far north too, but you hardly see one from one year’s end to the next. That would cost you a hundred guineas in London.’
    Donald shook his head in wonder. As Bell started to press the furs into a wooden packing mould, tenderly laying the silver fox in the middle, Donald felt uncomfortable, as if, despite Bell’s best efforts to hide it, he was in the presence of some secretive act of pleasure.
    Donald wrenches his mind back to the present. He wants to think about his conversation with Jacob, to balance the facts until he comes up with a brilliant solution that makes everything come out right, but there aren’t enough facts. A man is dead but no one knows why, let alone who did it. If they could trace Jammet’s life back from its end point, if they could know everything about him, would it lead to the truth? It is, he feels, an idle thought; he cannot imagine the Company committing the men and the time to find out. Not for a free trader.
    His mind turns