Chapter 148: The Rogue King

We came up out of the cellar at noon with my grandmother's body in a blanket and Maeve carrying the head and me carrying the feet, and the whole of the house of the north was full of wolves.

They had come in while we were down there. The nine and the fourteen and the seven and the twelve and Colm and Nessa and Oisin and Padraig and Ilsa and forty Council guards and the whole of the north behind them.

And at the front door of the house of the north there was a wolf I had not seen in a month.

Bran.

He was standing on the step with his hands in his pockets and his mended coat and his scarred ear, and behind him there were forty wolves in the lane.

"Luna," he said.

"Bran."

"I heard you broke the pact." He looked at me. "And I heard it took your hair."

"It took my hair."

"Better your hair than your life." Bran came down off the step. "I have been in the north for a week and I have been buying votes and boats and I have been sitting in taverns listening to wolves talk about a founder from Galway who keeps breaking things." He looked at me. "And I have been thinking about the paper you gave me in the corridor of the northern seat. The one where I was to bring forty wolves and hold a square and get a seat for it."

"And?"

"And I brought the forty wolves and I held the square and I did not get a seat." Bran's jaw worked. "The Council has not confirmed me and it will not confirm me because I am a rogue with a scarred ear and no pack and no name."

I stood at the bottom of the steps of the house of the north with my grandmother's body in my arms.

"Then what do you want?" I said.

"I want a war," Bran said. "I have been waiting thirty years for a reason and I have found one. There is a Council in that building that has been sitting on its hands for two hundred years and there is a lord of Ravenscar who laid siege to a house full of children and there is an elder in a cell who has been writing letters since the day he was put in it." He looked at me. "And there is a founder with white hair and a dead grandmother in her arms and the whole of the north behind her."

The lane was silent.

"You want me to start a war," I said.

"I want you to finish one." Bran put his hand out. "Luna. I have forty wolves and I have been in every harbour on this coast for thirty years and I know every rogue between here and Rathlin. Give me the word and I will put two hundred wolves on the road to the northern seat by morning."

I looked at his hand.

And then I looked past him at the lane and at the forty wolves and at the whole of the north behind them.

"No," I said.

Bran's hand stayed out.

"No?"

"I am not going to start a war in the north. I have been in a war in the north for three months and there are three wolves dead of the chain and there will be more by morning and there is a woman in my arms who died in a cellar because of a war that started two hundred years ago." I looked at him. "I am going to stand in a Council chamber and I am going to put a pact on a table and I am going to say, this is what it was and this is what it did. And the north will decide what to do about it."

Bran looked at me.

"And if the north decides nothing?" he said.

"Then the north decides nothing and I will go back to the coast and hold a border and be a rogue Alpha's mate with white hair." I looked at him. "But I will not put two hundred wolves on a road to a Council seat because a rogue with a scarred ear wants a war."

Bran stood in the lane.

And then he laughed.

It was a short hard laugh and there was no humour in it at all.

"You are the most difficult wolf I have ever met," he said.

"I have been told."

"I have been trying to buy you and fight you and follow you since the spring and every time I think I have worked out what you are going to do you do the other thing." He put his hand down. "Right. No war. What do you want?"

I looked at him.

"I want a hundred wolves on the coast road by morning," I said. "Not to fight. To hold. There are eleven packs on that coast and four of them have been bound for twenty years and they are going to wake up tomorrow and find out that the pact is gone and there is nobody holding the chain." I looked at him. "And there is a Ravenscar lord with forty wolves and a truce he signed yesterday and I do not trust him as far as I can throw him."

Bran looked at me.

"You want me to hold a coast," he said.

"I want you to hold a coast and I want you to do it without a war and I want you to do it for a seat that the Council is going to have to give you because there will not be a wolf in the north who has not heard that Bran held the coast when the chain broke."

Bran looked at me for a long moment.

"Right," he said. "A hundred wolves on the coast road by morning."

He turned round and went down the lane and the forty went with him.

Ronan came and stood beside me.

"You have just given a coast to the Rogue King," he said.

"I have given a coast to a wolf who has forty wolves and a grievance and has just been told he cannot have a war." I looked at him. "And I have told him that if he holds it well the Council will have to give him a seat."

Ronan looked at me.

"You are doing it again," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Making a friend out of an enemy by giving him something to lose."

I looked at my grandmother's body in my arms.

"Ronan," I said. "I have been in nine packs and I have never once had a home. And I am standing in a lane in the north with a dead grandmother and white hair and a rogue king doing what I tell him." I looked at him. "What is happening to me?"

Ronan put his hand on my face.

"You are becoming what you were always meant to be," he said.

And down at the bottom of the lane, a horn sounded.