Chapter 150: The Eighth Love Scene

The Council horn came from the water and it came three times and stopped.

I went down to the slip with my face still black and my hands blistered and my hair white and there was a Council boat coming into the harbour with a lantern at the mast.

Ilsa came off it.

"Luna," she said. "I have been two days behind you and I have brought the paper."

"What paper?"

"The Council has voted." Ilsa came up the slip. "The truce is confirmed and the coast trade is confirmed and the Blackthorn Pack is confirmed in its territory. The pact is broken and the chain is gone and there is nothing left in the north to hold the ritual network together." She looked at me. "It is done. The Blackthorn Pack is a pack again."

I stood on the slip.

"And the trial?" I said.

"The trial is set for the fourteenth." Ilsa's face was grey. "The Council will hear the charge of the breaking of the chain and the three deaths. And the founder will answer for it."

I looked at her.

"Then I will answer for it," I said.

We went up to the pack house.

The hall was full of wolves asleep on the floor and the kitchen was full of wolves asleep on the benches and Padraig was asleep in a chair with the green tin in his lap.

I got Ronan up the stairs to the Alpha's room.

The roof in the north corner was gone and there was a tarpaulin over it and the room smelled of smoke and the window was black. But the bed was there and the fire was lit and the door shut.

Ronan sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Fiadh," he said.

"Come here."

He came.

I do not have the words for the rest of it. It was not like the bothy and it was not like the northern seat and it was not like the room at the top of the west stair. It was slow and it was tired and there was a great deal of holding on and neither of us said very much at all.

He traced the silver mark on my chest with his finger and then he put his mouth on it and stayed there for a while. I put my hands in his ginger hair and pulled his head up and looked at his face in the firelight.

"Your hair," he said.

"What about it?"

"It is white."

"I know."

"It was gold when I met you." He put his hand on my face. "It is white now and it is the colour of the moon and I have been looking at it all day on that ridge and I have not been able to say a word about it."

I put my forehead against his.

"The pact took it," I said. "Padraig said the founder who breaks the pact does not come out of the cellar the same wolf who went in. And I came out with white hair and a dead grandmother and a coast that is not on fire any more."

Ronan looked at me.

"You are still the same wolf," he said.

"I know."

"You are still the wolf who got off a bus in the rain and told a Council envoy she would not give him her silence."

"I know."

"And you are still the wolf who carried me up my own stairs."

I lay in the dark with his arm under my head.

"Ronan," I said.

"Hm."

"There is a thing I have been thinking about since the ridge."

"What?"

"Soren." I turned my head. "The trial is in fourteen days and Soren is in a cell and he has been writing letters since the day he was put in it. And I have been in a Council chamber with him and I have been in a cellar with him and I have been in a square with him, and every time he has been three steps ahead of me."

"He is ninety four years old and he is in a cell."

"He is ninety four years old and he is in a cell and he has been running this coast for forty years and he has a keeper and a clerk and three elders who still write to him." I sat up. "Ronan. He is going to walk into that chamber in fourteen days and he is going to answer for nineteen children and thirty one wolves and a house in the north. And he is going to do it with the same quiet voice he used in the square and he is going to make the whole of the north feel sorry for an old man in a chair."

Ronan sat up.

"Then we do not let him," he said.

"We cannot stop him. He is ninety four and he is in a cell and the Council will let him speak." I looked at him. "But there is a thing I can do that he cannot."

"What?"

"I can go down to that cell tonight and sit in it with him and let him talk." I looked at Ronan. "He has been in a cell for a week and nobody has sat with him. He has been writing letters and nobody has written back. And he is ninety four years old and he is going to die in a cell in the north and there is not a wolf in this world who will sit with him."

Ronan looked at me.

"Fiadh," he said. "You want to sit with the wolf who ordered your grandmother into a room and your mother into a house and you into a debt."

"I want to sit with him and let him talk." I looked at him. "Because I have been in nine packs and I have learned one thing about a wolf who has been an enemy. You do not beat him by shouting him down. You beat him by letting him talk until there is nothing left to say."

Ronan sat on the edge of the bed.

"Then I am coming with you," he said.

"Ronan."

"No." He took my hand. "You are not going down to a cell at midnight to sit with a ninety four year old keeper on your own."

I looked at him.

"Right then," I said. "We go down together."

And out in the corridor, a door opened and Padraig came in with a lamp in his hand and his old face grey.

"Healer," he said. "There is a thing I have to say before you go down to that cell."

"Say it."

"A founder's mark given in fear will fail," Padraig said. "You made the mark in the cellar and it held because you made it for your grandmother. If you go down to that cell and you make a mark for Soren and you make it because you are frightened of what he will say in that chamber, it will not hold."

I stood in the room.

"Padraig," I said. "I am not going down to that cell to make a mark."

"Then why are you going?"

I looked at him.

"Because there is a thing in this world that is older than the pact and older than the Council and older than the keepers," I said. "And it is a healer sitting with a dying wolf."

And down in the harbour, a horn sounded.