Chapter 116: The Hidden Heir

We went down to the room of the north at midnight.

Tomas was on the door with his lantern and he did not say a word. He unlocked it and stood aside and I went in with Ronan behind me and he shut it and locked it and his boots went away up the corridor.

The room of the north was not a room. It was a cellar, long and low, with shelves from floor to ceiling and boxes on the floor and a table at the end with a lamp on it.

"There must be a thousand papers in here," Ronan said.

"Then we start with the ones that have dates on them." I put my lamp down on the table. "Nineteen years ago. The mining town. Eamon's letter."

We started.

It took two hours.

Ronan took the shelves on the left and I took the shelves on the right, and we went through the boxes one at a time, and most of it was what a keeper's cellar is. Records of bindings. Records of debts. Records of wolves who had been recorded and wolves who had been bound and wolves who had been taken north.

And then Ronan said, "Fiadh."

He was at the bottom of the left-hand shelf with a box open on his knees.

"Come here."

I went and knelt down beside him.

The box was full of letters. They were all in the same hand and they were all addressed to the northern seat and they were all signed by Eamon.

The first one was dated nineteen years ago.

It said that a keeper of the north had found a healer with golden hair in a mining town in the north and that she was of the founder's line and that she was living under a name that was not her own.

It said that the keeper requested leave to take her into custody.

And at the bottom of it, in a different hand, there was a line that said: leave granted. Bring her north.

"They were going to take me," I said. "When I was nineteen. They had leave and they were going to take me north."

"They did not get you."

"Because Oisin put me on a boat to Galway the same night." I looked at the letter. "Ronan. There are more of these."

There were eleven more.

I read them one after another with the lamp pulled close and my hands not steady.

They were all in Eamon's hand and they were all dated within the last twenty years and every one of them was about a child.

The second one was about a girl in a fishing town on the north coast who was of the founder's blood and was eleven years old. The third was about a boy in the highlands who was fourteen. The fourth was about a family in the western islands with two children and a grandmother who was of the line.

And every one of them had the same line at the bottom in the same hand.

Leave granted. Bring them north.

I sat back on my heels.

"Ronan," I said. "They have been taking children for twenty years."

Ronan was reading the fifth letter.

"Fiadh," he said. "There is a list in the back of this box."

He pulled it out.

It was a single sheet and it had a date at the top and there were names on it and there were two columns. The left-hand column said taken and the right-hand column said recorded.

There were nineteen names in the left-hand column.

"Nineteen children," I said.

"Nineteen children in twenty years and every one of them of the founder's line." Ronan put the list down. "And there is a line at the bottom that says the line is to be kept and not ended, because a line that is ended cannot be used."

I sat on the floor of the room of the north with the letters in my hands.

"Where are they?" I said. "The nineteen. Where did they go?"

Ronan turned the list over.

There was a note on the back of it in the same hand as the leave granted.

It said: the nineteen are in the house of the north and are recorded and are not to be spoken of.

"The house of the north," I said. "The keepers' house. The one my mother was born in."

"The one you refused to walk into." Ronan looked at me. "Fiadh. There are nineteen wolves in that house right now and every one of them is of your blood."

I got up off the floor.

"Then we do not wait for the trial," I said. "We go to the house tonight."

"Fiadh. The trial is at nine and the square is full and if you are not in that chamber at nine Soren walks."

"Then Soren walks." I put the letters into my coat. "Ronan. I have spent two months trying to prove a claim and I have been doing it with a book and a seal and a stone and a cave. And there are nineteen wolves in a house in the north who have been taken from their mothers and recorded and not spoken of, and if I stand in a chamber tomorrow and prove a claim and do not go and get them out of that house then I am no better than the keepers."

Ronan looked at me.

"The house will be guarded," he said.

"Then we take Bran and his forty wolves."

"The house is a day's ride north."

"Then we ride north tonight and we are back by morning." I looked at him. "Ronan. There is a false bond in my chest that is getting colder every day and I do not know how long I have. I am not going to spend it proving a claim. I am going to spend it getting nineteen wolves out of a house."

Ronan stood up.

"Right," he said. "We ride north."

The door of the room of the north opened and Tomas was standing in it with his lantern and his face white.

"Luna," he said. "There is a thing I have to tell you and I have been standing in the corridor for an hour working out how to say it."

"Say it."

"The keeper Eamon came down to this door an hour ago and asked me who was inside it." Tomas looked at me. "I told him nobody. And he looked at me for a long time and then he went away up the stairs and he did not go to his room."

"Where did he go?"

"He went out through the north gate on a horse," Tomas said. "And there was a wolf waiting for him on the road and I saw the wolf's face in the lantern light."

"Who?"

Tomas's jaw worked.

"It was the Beta," he said. "It was Maeve."