Chapter 122: The Healer's Price

Padraig did not get the pot.

He stood in the middle of the room with his stick in his hand and his white beard flat against his chest and he looked at me.

"Healer," he said. "I am not going to get the pot."

"Padraig."

"I have been a healer for forty years and I have done a thing to you that I have been sorry about every day since and I am not going to do another one." He came forward. "The black pot is a keeper's thing. Your mother put it in that cave because it was the one thing in the world that could hold a false bond and she wanted it there for the day a founder wolf came to break one. It was not put there for a healer to use on her own mate in a bedroom with a silver wound in his shoulder."

"It is the only thing that will work."

"It is the only thing that will kill you." Padraig sat down heavily on the chair by the window. "Healer. I have watched you for three months. You have been in a cave and a Council chamber and a boat and a mountain and a hall. You have broken a blood ritual and stood in front of five elders and put a ledger on a table in the north. And every time there was a thing that had to be done you did it and you did it alone." He looked at me. "This is the one you cannot do alone."

I stood at the end of the bed.

"Then tell me what to do instead," I said.

Padraig was quiet for a moment.

"There is a thing in the north that will close a silver wound," he said. "It is called the spring and it is under the northern seat and it is older than the Council. It closed the wound in your mate's shoulder in June and it will close it again."

"Then we go north."

"You cannot go north. There is a Council in the north that has declared this territory vacant and given it to Ravenscar and there is a wolf in a cell in that building who has been paid to say you murdered your mother." Padraig looked at me. "If you walk into the northern seat without a writ you will be taken at the door."

"Then I get a writ."

"From who?"

"From the Council." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "I have a ledger with two hundred years of bindings in it and a list of nineteen children and a letter from a keeper that says he found me in a mining town when I was nineteen. I have a witness in a cell and an envoy who has confessed and a keeper who has run. And I have a claim to the founder's line that has been proved in a chamber in front of the whole of the north."

"That is a bargain," Padraig said. "You are going to trade the claim for the writ."

"I am going to trade the claim for a writ that says the Blackthorn territory is not vacant and the pack is not Ravenscar's and the Council will send a healer and a surgeon and a spring to a coast that has been forgotten for a hundred years." I looked at him. "And I am going to name my price for the ledger and the list and the letters and the whole of it."

Padraig looked at me.

"Healer," he said. "If you give the claim to the Council they will record it and they will own it and you will be a wolf of the founder's line who has given the line to the north."

"I will be a wolf of the founder's line who has given the line to the north in exchange for a coast." I stood up. "Padraig. I have spent my whole life being told what I am by wolves who wanted something from me. My mother hid me and the keepers hunted me and the Council put a debt on my name and a contract on my head. And now I am standing in my own hall with a mate who is dying and nine wolves and a hole in the roof and I am going to decide what I am."

Padraig looked at me for a long moment.

"Then I will write the writ myself," he said. "I have been a healer for forty years and I know the words and the Council will not be able to argue with them."

He got up and went to the table and sat down and took out a pen and a paper.

I turned round.

Ronan was sitting up in the bed.

"Fiadh," he said. "Come here."

I went and sat down beside him.

"You are going to give the claim away," he said.

"I am going to trade it."

"Fiadh. The claim is the whole of it. It is the book and the seal and the pact and the cave and the four generations and your mother's whole life." He looked at me. "You have been fighting for that claim since the day you got off the bus."

"I have been fighting for a coast since the day I got off the bus," I said. "The claim was never the thing I wanted. The claim was the thing they put on me." I put my hand on his face. "I want the pack. I want the fourteen who stood on a harbour wall and the nine who are in this house and the nineteen in the house in the north. I want a coast that is not forgotten and a Council that reads its own papers out loud. And I want you in a bed with a shoulder that closes."

Ronan looked at me.

"You are the most practical woman I have ever met," he said.

"I know."

He put his hand over mine.

"Then we do it," he said. "And when it is done and the writ is in your hand and the spring is open and my shoulder is closed, I am going to stand in that hall and name you Luna in front of the whole of the north and there will not be one wolf in it who turns their back."

And down in the harbour, the horn sounded again.