Chapter 151: Fiadh's Reckoning

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the water, and it came three times and stopped, and I did not go down to the slip.

I sat on the edge of the bed in the Alpha's room with my blistered hands in my lap and Padraig in the chair by the fire and Ronan standing at the window.

"Padraig," I said. "Say it again."

"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. You made it for a woman who died in a cellar and nobody came for her. 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 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."

Padraig looked at me for a long moment.

"Healer," he said. "I have been a healer for forty years and I have never once sat with a wolf who ordered a child into a house."

"Then you have been a lucky wolf."

"I have been a coward and a lucky wolf." Padraig put his hands on his knees. "Fiadh. I have known you for three months and in that time I have watched you do a great many things I would not have done. You went down a drain into a chamber with a keeper and a barrel of powder. You stood in a square with a rogue king and told him he could not have a war. You went into the cellar of the house of the north and you made a mark over your grandmother's grave and it took your hair."

"I know."

"And now you are going to sit in a cell at midnight with the wolf who ordered all of it and you are going to be kind to him." Padraig looked at me. "Why?"

I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Because he is ninety four years old and he is going to die in a cell and there is not a wolf in the north who will sit with him," I said. "Because I have been in nine packs and I have been alone in every one of them and I know what it is to be in a room with nobody in it." I looked at him. "And because there is a thing in that cell that I need and it is not a confession and it is not a mark."

"What is it?"

"The truth," I said. "Soren has been in that chair for forty years and he has been writing letters since the day he was put in a cell and he has not told the whole of it to anyone. He told me half of it in the cellar under the northern seat and he told the square the other half. And there is a piece in the middle that he has not said and it is the piece that matters."

Padraig looked at me.

"Which piece?" he said.

"The piece about the pact." I stood up. "He signed it. His grandfather signed it. The five founding families signed it two hundred years ago and Soren has been sitting on it ever since. And there is a thing in the pact that nobody has asked him about and it is the thing that made him what he is."

Padraig was quiet for a moment.

"Healer," he said. "You are going to sit in a cell with a wolf who has been three steps ahead of you since the spring and you are going to ask him a question."

"Yes."

"And you are going to do it alone."

"I am going to do it with Ronan."

Padraig shook his head.

"Ronan is the Alpha of a pack that Soren has been trying to take apart since the spring," he said. "Soren will not say a word to him. He will sit in that cell and he will fold his hands and he will be polite and he will say nothing at all."

I stood in the room.

"Then I go alone," I said.

"Fiadh," Ronan said from the window.

"Ronan. Padraig is right and you know he is right." I turned round. "Soren has been in a chair for forty years and he does not talk to Alphas. He talks to healers. He talked to me in the cellar under the northern seat because I was a healer and he talked to me in the square because I was a founder. He will not talk to you."

Ronan came away from the window.

"I am not letting you go into a cell with that wolf on your own," he said.

"You are not letting me. I am going." I came and stood in front of him. "Ronan. I have been in nine packs and I have been alone in every one of them and I have never once needed a wolf to stand behind me. And now I have a mate and a pack and a coast and a white-haired founder's line and I am going to go down to a cell at midnight and sit with a dying wolf and ask him a question."

Ronan looked at me.

"And if he lies to you?" he said.

"Then I will know he is lying and I will come back up the stairs and tell you what he said." I put my hand on his face. "And there is a thing I have not told you."

"What?"

"I am not going down to that cell tonight." I looked at him. "I am going down in three days. Because the Council boat is in the harbour and Ilsa is on it and the trial is in fourteen days and there is a thing I have to do first."

"What?"

"I have to bury my grandmother." I looked at the window. "She has been in a cellar for forty years and there is a cart in the yard with her body in it and there is a priestess in this house and a hill above the harbour where my mother is buried."

Ronan looked at me.

"Then we bury her," he said.

And down in the harbour, the horn sounded a fourth time.