Chapter 130: Fiadh's Mother's Letter

We went down the keeper's stair at dusk.

There were six of us. Ronan and I, and Oisin with a lantern, and Ilsa who would not be left behind, and two Council guards with spears. Padraig had wanted to come and I had told him no and he had not argued, which told me more about how tired he was than anything he had said.

The stair went down under the northern seat and it went down a long way.

It was old. Older than the building above it. The steps were worn hollow in the middle and the walls were dry and there was a smell coming up out of the dark that I knew.

Old blood and green water and something sweet at the end of it.

"Blood ritual," I said.

"Yes," Ilsa said.

We came out at the bottom into a chamber under the earth.

It was not a spring. There was water in it, a black pool at the far end with a stone lip round it, but the rest of the chamber was a room and the room had shelves and the shelves had boxes and there was a table and there was a chair.

And there was a wolf in the chair.

He was very old. Older than Cael. His head was bald and his face was a map of lines and his hands on the arms of the chair were like two bundles of sticks. He was wrapped in a blanket and there was a lamp on the table beside him and there was a cup and a book.

He looked up when we came in.

"Ah," he said. "The founder."

Eamon was standing beside him.

"Elder," Eamon said. "They have stripped the envoy."

"I heard." Soren's voice was dry and quiet. "The stair carries sound. It has always carried sound."

I walked across the chamber and stood in front of the chair.

"You are Soren," I said.

"I am Soren."

"You have been sitting in this chair since the spring and you have been directing a keeper and a binder and a Council envoy and a pack on the western coast and you have had a wolf in my house since the spring."

"I have had a wolf in your house since the spring." Soren looked at me. "You have the look of your mother. She had the same brows."

I stood very still.

"You knew my mother," I said.

"I knew your mother." Soren's old hands closed on the arms of the chair. "She was in the keepers' house for two years and she was bred twice and both children were taken from her. And then she ran and I let her run."

"You let her run."

"I let her run because I was the one who ordered her taken and I knew what it would do to her and I did it anyway." Soren looked at me. "I have been in this chair for forty years and I have ordered a great many things and I have never once said this out loud to a living wolf. I am going to say it now because I am ninety four years old and I am not going to get out of this chair."

The chamber was silent.

"Why?" I said.

"Because the founder's line is the oldest thing in this world and the Council was made to protect it and the keepers were made to keep it. And a line that is kept and not used is a line that dies." Soren looked at me. "I used it. I used it for a hundred years and I used it well and the Council has been strong and the north has been strong and the coast has been fed. And every year there were one or two wolves who died of it and I told myself that one or two was a small price."

"You told yourself that."

"I told myself that for forty years." He looked at the lamp. "And then a healer from Galway got off a bus in the rain and stood in a Council chamber with a book and a seal and a stone in her pocket and told the whole of the north that the law had been a lie."

I stood in the chamber under the northern seat.

"Where are the nineteen?" I said.

Soren looked at me.

"The nineteen are in the house of the north," he said. "They have been there for twenty years and they are recorded and they are not to be spoken of. And when I am dead the record will be closed and the house will be shut and the nineteen will be a thing that nobody remembers."

"The nineteen are going to walk out of that house," I said. "And you are going to walk out of this chair and stand in a chamber and answer for every one of them."

Soren looked at me.

"I am not going to walk out of this chair," he said.

And Eamon moved.

He moved faster than a keeper of his age should have moved. He had a knife in his hand and he had it at Soren's throat before either of the guards had moved.

"Nobody comes near him," Eamon said. "He is an old man and he is going to die in this chair and there is not a wolf in the north who is going to put him on trial."

"Eamon," Ilsa said.

"Stay where you are." Eamon's hand was shaking. "I have been a keeper for forty years and I have done what I was told and I am not going to stand in a chamber and watch an old man be dragged out of a chair by a founder and a Council that has been sitting on its hands for a hundred years."

I looked at him.

"Eamon," I said. "Put the knife down."

"I will not."

"Put it down." I came a step closer. "You have a knife at the throat of a ninety four year old man and there are six wolves in this chamber. You are not going to get out of the stair. And there is a thing you have not worked out."

"What?"

"You are not a keeper." I looked at him. "You have been a keeper for forty years and you have been told what to do and you have never once asked why. And the wolf you are holding a knife to has been using you since before you were born."

Eamon's hand shook.

"Put it down," I said. "And I will tell this Council that you came down to this chamber to stop him."

Eamon looked at me.

And then he took the knife away from Soren's throat.

And Soren stood up out of the chair.

He stood up out of the chair and he was not a dying old man and he was not wrapped in a blanket and he had a knife in his hand that he had taken out of the blanket and he came at me.

I did not shift.

I did not need to. Ronan was there before I had moved, and the knife went into his shoulder, into the same shoulder, and he went down on the floor of the chamber under the northern seat.

And I got my hands on Soren and put him against the wall.

He was light. He was as light as a bag of straw and he did not fight me.

"Fiadh," Ilsa said. "Look at the knife."

I looked.

It was on the floor beside Ronan and it had a grey blade and the blade had a sheen on it.

It was silver.

Down in the chamber under the northern seat there was a lamp and a pool and a chair that was empty, and on the floor of it there was a mate with a silver wound in his shoulder and there was nothing on his face at all.

And in the back of my head, faintly, the wolf in my chest said, the bond is quiet.

"Ronan," I said. "Ronan, answer me."

He did not answer.

And down the stair, a long way above us, somebody began to sing.