Chapter 102: Fiadh's Trial

The trial was at noon and the hall was fuller than it had ever been.

There were wolves on the benches and wolves standing at the back and wolves in the doorway and wolves in the yard outside listening through the open doors. The Ravenscar wolves were at the back in their own colours. The highland wolves were on the wall. The nine who had signed Maeve's paper were on the left-hand benches and every one of them was looking at me.

Ilsa sat at the top of the hall with the four elders behind her and the seal of the Council on the table in front of her.

I stood in the middle of the floor.

"Fiadh," Ilsa said. "You are charged with claiming the founder's bloodline without proof and with using that claim to take the Luna's seat of the Blackthorn Pack. How do you answer?"

"I answer that the claim is true," I said. "And that I will prove it."

"Then the Council will hear the evidence against you first."

Lorcan stood up.

He was thinner than he had been and his coat was not brushed and there were two Council guards behind him, and he came forward into the middle of the floor with a bundle of papers under his arm.

"Elder Ilsa," he said. "I have been a clerk and an envoy of this Council for twenty years and I have been asked to present the evidence against the healer. I am doing it under protest and I am doing it because I have been ordered to and I am going to say that out loud in this hall so that it is in the record."

"Say it," Ilsa said.

"I say under protest that the evidence I am about to present was given to me by the elder Soren two days ago and I have not been allowed to examine it and I do not know whether it is genuine."

The hall went up.

Ilsa struck the table.

"Present the evidence," she said.

Lorcan opened the bundle.

"The first paper is a record from the northern seat," he said. "It is dated forty years ago and it is signed by a clerk called Ailsa and it says that the wolf known as Siobhan, healer, of no fixed pack, came to the northern seat and asked to be entered on the roll of healers. It says she gave a false name and a false history and that when she was questioned she admitted that she had stolen a book of the founder's bloodline from the keepers' house and had run south with it."

The hall went up again.

"That is a lie," I said.

"The record is in the clerk's own hand and the clerk is in this hall," Lorcan said. "Ailsa. Will you look at this paper and tell the Council whether it is in your hand?"

Ailsa came forward.

She looked at the paper for a long time.

"It is in my hand," she said. "But I did not write it."

"What do you mean you did not write it?"

"I mean the hand is mine and the ink is not and the paper is not from the northern seat." Ailsa held it up to the light. "The northern seat uses a paper with a watermark in it. This paper has no watermark. And I have never in forty years written the word stolen in a record, because a clerk does not write that word. A clerk writes the facts and the elders decide what they mean."

The hall went quiet.

Lorcan put the paper down.

"The second paper," he said, "is a record of the founder's line dated a hundred and twenty years ago. It says that the child of Mairead died in infancy and that the line was ended."

"I have seen that record," I said. "It is the copy that was in the room under the chamber and it has been amended."

"You cannot prove it has been amended."

"I can prove it has been amended because there is an original in the northern seat and a clerk has read it out in this hall." I looked at Ilsa. "Elder. The clerk Ailsa stood in this hall three days ago and said that the original record says the child did not die and was taken north to the keepers' house. That is in the record of this Council and it is in the hand of the clerk who keeps the record."

Ilsa looked at Rannoch.

Rannoch stood up.

"The healer is right," he said. "The clerk's statement is in the record and I wrote it myself."

Lorcan put the second paper down.

"The third paper," he said, "is a letter from the keeper Cael, dated two days ago, in which he states that the wolf known as Fiadh is not of the founder's blood and that he was coerced into naming her heir in this hall."

The hall went up and did not come down.

I stood in the middle of the floor and let it happen.

Because I had seen the letter.

It was on the table in front of Lorcan and it was in Cael's hand and it had Cael's seal on it and it had been written two days ago, after Cael had gone north, after Cael had stood in this hall and named me heir in front of forty wolves and a Council.

Cael had written it.

The old man in the grey coat who had come off the boat with no guards and no papers and had offered me the records had gone home and written a letter that took it all back.

"Elder Ilsa," Lorcan said. "The Council has a letter from the keeper. The keeper is the only wolf in this world who can prove the founder's claim and the keeper has withdrawn it. I submit that the charge is proved."

Ilsa looked at me.

"Healer," she said. "Have you anything to say?"

I stood in the middle of the hall.

"There is a thing in this letter that does not add up," I said.

"Say what it is."

"Cael came to this house two nights ago and named me heir and went home. And two days ago he wrote a letter taking it back." I looked at the letter. "Why would a keeper do that? He came to this coast of his own accord and offered me the records and the title and the door, and I refused him. And then he went home and wrote a letter that gives Soren everything he wants."

Ilsa looked at the letter.

"Because he was forced," I said. "Because he went home to the north and found somebody waiting for him."

The hall was silent.

And then Nessa stood up.

She was at the back with her hands pressed together and her face white and she stood up in the middle of forty wolves and said, "Healer. I have something to say."

The hall turned round.

"I have been in the envoy's room," Nessa said. "Two nights ago. I went in to bring him his supper and there was a paper on the table and it was in the keeper's hand and it was not finished. And there was a wolf in the room with the envoy and the wolf was not a Council wolf and he was writing the letter himself and he was telling the envoy what to put in it."

"Who was the wolf?" Ilsa said.

Nessa looked at Lorcan.

"It was him," she said. "It was the envoy and he was writing it and he was laughing."

The hall went up.

Lorcan did not move.

"It is a lie," he said.

And in the middle of the noise, in the back of my head, the stone in my pocket went warm.