Chapter 144: The Healer's Truce

We went down to the harbour at dawn with the nine wolves of the Blackthorn Pack behind us and the whole of the north watching from the square.

Callum was on the quay.

He was not in a cell and he was not under guard. He was standing on the quay with four Ravenscar wolves behind him and a paper in his hand, and there was a boat at the pier with a Ravenscar sail and a second boat with a Blackthorn flag.

"Luna," he said. "Alpha."

"Callum," I said. "You laid siege to a house full of children."

"I did." He did not flinch. "And I have been in a room under guard since midnight and I have had a great deal of time to think about it. I am not going to pretend I did not do it and I am not going to ask for mercy. I am going to ask for a truce."

The quay was silent.

"Say what you want," I said.

"The coast trade." Callum held up the paper. "Ravenscar has held the northern coast trade for forty years and the Blackthorn Pack has held the southern coast trade and the two of us have been fighting over the middle of it since before I was born. I am offering to split it. Ravenscar takes the north and Blackthorn takes the south and the middle is shared and there is a written agreement with a Council seal on it."

"And what do you want in exchange?"

"I want the Council to drop the charge of siege and I want my name left on the Ravenscar title." Callum looked at me. "And I want you to say, in front of the whole of this harbour, that the truce is made and the coast is settled."

I stood on the quay.

"Callum," I said. "You have been trying to take the Blackthorn territory since the spring. You took the patrol routes and gave them to a keeper and you brought twenty wolves to my ridge and you laid siege to a house full of children."

"I did all of it." Callum's jaw worked. "And I did it because I have been a founding family for forty years and I have been given nothing and I have been promised everything and I have been used by an old man in a cellar. And I am standing on this quay at dawn with the whole of the north watching and I am asking for a truce because I have run out of ground."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"Give me the paper," I said.

He gave me the paper.

I read it. It was fair. It was more than fair. It was a better agreement than the Blackthorn coast had ever had and it had a clause in it that said the coast trade would be open to every pack on the western coast and not only to Ravenscar and Blackthorn.

"Who wrote this?" I said.

"I wrote it," Callum said. "At midnight. In a room under guard. With a Council clerk and a bottle of ink."

"Then you wrote a better paper than anything the Council has written in forty years." I looked up. "Callum. I am going to sign it. And there is a thing I want in exchange and it is not in the paper."

"Name it."

"The children." I looked at him. "There are seven in the northern seat and twelve in the square and there is a woman in a bed who has not spoken in sixty years. And there is a house on the hill and a cellar under it with a woman in it who has been dead for forty years and no stone on her grave."

Callum looked at me.

"You want me to pay for the stone," he said.

"I want you to stand at the grave when it is laid and say in front of the whole of the north that you knew what that house was and you did nothing."

The quay was silent.

Callum looked at the harbour.

"I will be there," he said.

I signed the paper on the capstan at the end of the quay with a Council clerk holding the ink and Ilsa holding the seal, and Callum signed it after me and the whole of the harbour watched.

And when it was done Callum put his hand out.

I did not take it.

"Not yet," I said. "The grave first."

He nodded slowly and went back to his boat.

Ronan came and stood beside me.

"You did not shake his hand," he said.

"No."

"You signed a truce with a wolf who laid siege to a house full of children."

"I signed a truce with a wolf who has forty wolves and a coast trade and a title in the north and who is going to stand at a grave and say what he knew." I looked at him. "I have been in nine packs and I have learned one thing about a wolf who has been an enemy. You do not make him a friend by forgiving him. You make him a friend by giving him something to lose."

Ronan looked at me.

"You said that in the corridor in the northern seat," he said.

"I know."

"You said it about Bran."

"I know." I put my hand on his. "And Bran is standing at the back of the harbour with forty wolves and a paper he wrote himself and a seat he has not been given yet. And Callum is going to stand at a grave."

Ronan was quiet for a moment.

"Fiadh," he said. "The Council declared me a rogue Alpha at five this morning."

"I know."

"And the territory is vacant."

"I know."

"And there are nine wolves on that boat who turned their backs on me in a chamber and have come north to find me." He looked at the boat. "What do I do with them?"

I looked at the boat.

"Nothing," I said. "You do not do anything with them. They came north on their own and they came to a harbour with a Council in uproar and a town on the edge of a war and they came because they were the nine who turned their backs and they have been living with it since." I looked at him. "Let them say what they came to say."

Ronan looked at the boat.

And then the nine came down the gangplank.

The one at the front was a woman of forty with a broad face and grey in her hair and she came down the plank with her hands at her sides and she stopped in front of Ronan.

"Alpha," she said. "We turned our backs in a chamber in this town and we have been sorry for it since the day we did it. And we have come north to say so and to ask if there is still a place in the Blackthorn Pack for nine wolves who were wrong."

Ronan looked at her for a long moment.

"There is a place," he said. "And there is a hole in the roof and a border to hold and a coast that has been vacant since dawn."

The woman's face worked.

"Then we will hold it," she said.

And down at the end of the harbour, a horn sounded.