Chapter 10: The Debt Contract

The man with the leather case was named Eamon, the same broad quiet man who had stood by the door during Lorcan's first visit, and he had brought the case into the front room and set it on the table and opened it with the care of a man handling something that might bite.

"Envoy Lorcan sends his regards," he said. "He asks me to say that he is sorry for the early hour. He also asks me to say that this is a courtesy, and that the Council extends it freely."

I did not believe a word of it. Ronan had come down behind me, white and upright and silent, and Maeve had come down after him, and Padraig was in the doorway with his arms folded. Four wolves and a Council man in a cold front room with the sea going outside. It was not a courtesy. It was a performance.

Eamon took the paper out of the case and laid it flat on the table and turned it round to face me.

It looked like the first contract. It was the same size and the same yellowish thick paper and the same seal at the bottom. But the words were not the same words.

"This agreement," Eamon read aloud, "binds the healer known as Fiadh to the service of the Council of Alphas, for a term of three months, in settlement of the debt of her mother, Siobhan, deceased. On completion of the term the said debt shall be considered in part repaid and the said healer shall be granted a licence to practise under Council law, subject to review. Should the healer break the terms of this agreement, or leave the territory of the Blackthorn Pack without written leave of the Council, the debt shall be called in full, and the said healer shall be remanded into Council custody pending judgment."

Nobody said anything. The sea went on outside.

"In part repaid," I said.

Eamon folded his hands in front of him. "The original debt was not owed to the Blackthorn Pack. The Blackthorn Pack was only ever the place of service. The debt is owed to the Council."

"How much?"

"The terms of the debt are private to the Council."

"How much, Eamon?"

"I do not know. That is the truth." He had the grace to look uncomfortable. "I am a clerk. I carry papers. I am not told the numbers."

I picked the contract up. The paper was heavy in my hand. I read it through twice, and the second time I read it slowly, and the thing I had suspected since the first night looked back at me from every line.

The first contract had a number missing. This one had a number missing too, but it had something else. It had a leash. The first one said that if I left, the debt doubled. This one said that if I left, I would be held in Council custody pending judgment, and I knew enough about Council custody to know that a healer who goes into it does not come out a healer.

"What happens to my mother's name if the debt is not paid?" I said.

Eamon hesitated.

"What happens to it, Eamon?"

"An unpaid debt is a stain on a name," he said, quietly. "The name is struck from the rolls of healers. Anyone who trained under her loses their standing. Anyone who carries her blood is marked as the child of a debtor, and marked children are not admitted to the Council's schools or its service." He looked at the paper rather than at me. "It is an old law. It is rarely used. But it is used."

My mother's name. Struck from the roll. My mother, who trained me at the kitchen table with a pestle in my hand and a book open on her knee, who wrapped her wolfsbane in oilcloth and told me never to be careless with it, who died owing a debt so large that the Council itself would not write the number down.

"How was it owed?" I said. "My mother was a healer with a case of tins and a rented room. She did not buy ships. She did not gamble. Where does a debt like that come from?"

Eamon said nothing.

"Eamon."

"I am sorry," he said, and he did look sorry. "I have read the file. The file does not say. There is a page missing where the debt is described, and there is a line in the margin in a hand that is not the clerk's, and the line says, this matter is to be held. That is all I know."

Ronan moved then. He came round the table and stood beside me and took the contract out of my hand and read it, and I watched his pale green eyes move down the page. When he got to the line about Council custody his jaw set hard.

"There is no number," he said.

"There is no number," Eamon agreed.

"Then this is not a contract. This is a threat written on paper. A debt with no sum named can be any sum the Council decides on the day it decides to collect." Ronan put the contract down on the table. "I will not have my healer bound by this."

"Alpha," Eamon said, and his voice was careful, "your healer is already bound by the first contract. This one does not bind her any tighter. It only makes plain what was always true. The debt is the Council's. She is the Council's. She is here under the Council's leave and she stays here under the Council's leave." He looked at me. "Envoy Lorcan asked me to say one more thing. He said to tell you that the first contract was a kindness, and that the second one is the law, and that he hopes you will see the difference."

I folded the new contract along its creases, once, twice, and put it in my coat.

"Tell the envoy I have received the papers," I said. "Tell him I will answer within the three days."

Eamon closed his case and went out, and we heard the grey car start up and go down the harbour road, and then Maeve let out a long breath and said, "Well. That is the leash, then. He did not even bother to hide it."

"Fiadh," Ronan said.

I did not turn round. I was looking at my own hands on the table. My mother had died in a rented room with a case of tins beside the bed and a debt with no number on it, and she had never once told me how it came to be there, and I had never once asked, because I was twenty two and I had my own life to think about and a mother who was always going to be there.

"Fiadh," Ronan said again, and his hand came to rest on the table beside mine, close enough that his little finger touched my little finger.

The pull in my chest turned warm and steady, and it was not unpleasant, and it was not going away.

"There is a page missing from my mother's file," I said. "And there is a line in the margin that says the matter is to be held. That is not a debt, Alpha. That is a secret someone has been keeping for years." I picked up my coat. "I am going to the archive in the morning and I am going to find that page, and then I am going to find the clerk who took it out, and one of us is going to tell the other the truth."

Padraig cleared his throat from the doorway.

"You will not find it in the archive," he said. "The Council's archive keeps what the Council wants kept. If a page is missing, it is missing because someone with a key took it." He looked at me with his watery blue eyes. "But I know a woman in the harbour who was clerk to the Council for thirty years before she retired, and she does not like Lorcan, and she keeps her own copies of everything she ever filed."

I looked at him. "Where does she live?"

"The green door at the end of the pier," Padraig said. "You will want to bring something to trade. She does not give anything for free."