Chapter 168: Fiadh's Wolf Awakens

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the square and it came three times and stopped.

Eamon was standing on the stairs with his knife on the step and his hands at his sides and his old face grey.

"Say the bargain," I said.

"The bargain is the second pool," Eamon said. "I know the words to open the door behind it. I have been a keeper for forty years and the words have been in my family since the first one went behind it. And I will give you the words and I will go down to the cellar and I will open it."

"And what do you want?"

"I want to live." Eamon looked at me. "I want to go north to the isles and I want to live out the rest of my life with a boat and a net and no keeper's coat. And I want it in writing with a Council seal on it."

I stood at the top of the stairs.

"You killed my mother," I said.

"I did."

"And you want me to write you a paper."

"I want you to write me a paper." Eamon's jaw worked. "Luna. I have been a keeper for forty years and I have done a great many things and I have been sorry for a great many of them. And there is a door in a cellar under this house and behind it there is a wolf who has been behind it for two hundred years. And I am the only wolf in this world who knows the words."

The stairs were quiet.

"Ronan," I said.

"I heard."

"What do you think?"

Ronan came and stood beside me.

"I think a wolf who kills a healer in a rented room and then asks for a paper is a wolf who should be in a cell," he said. "And I think there is a door in a cellar and a wolf behind it and forty years of words in that keeper's head, and I think we are standing at the top of a stair and the horn has gone twice."

I looked at Eamon.

"Then we do it in the order I say," I said. "You open the door. And then you go in a cell and you stay in it until the Council decides what to do with you."

Eamon looked at me.

"That is not a bargain," he said.

"It is the only one you have got."

The horn sounded a third time.

"Right," Eamon said.

We went down the stairs.

The square was full when we came out of the house of the north. There were Council guards on the steps and wolves in the square and forty rogues on the wall and a wolf with a scarred ear at the gate. And there were wolves coming in through the north gate with grey coats and no colours and their faces were not the faces of Council guards.

"Hunters," Bran said from the wall. "Soren's hunters. They have been coming in since dawn."

"How many?"

"Forty. Maybe more."

Ronan turned round.

"Fiadh," he said. "The cellar."

"Go," I said. "Get Eamon to the cellar and get the door open."

"And you?"

I looked at the north gate.

"I am going to hold a square," I said.

Ronan looked at me for a long moment.

"Right," he said. "Bran. Forty wolves on the steps of the northern seat and do not let them past."

Bran went.

Ronan took Eamon by the arm and went down the side of the house of the north toward the cellar door.

And I went across the square to the north gate.

The hunters came in through it.

I shifted.

I did not think about it. I did not call the wolf and I did not hold a door shut. I went across the square and the wolf came up out of my chest and I went into them on four legs.

I have been in a fire and a cellar and a siege and a square. But I have never once fought as a wolf who knew what she was.

I went into the first one and took him off his feet and I was on the second before the first had landed. There was a wolf on my left and I turned and met him and there was a wolf on my right and I turned again. And all the time I was fighting there was a thing in my chest that was not the wolf and it was not the bond and it was the whole of the coast behind me.

I fought beside Bran's forty on the steps of the northern seat and I fought beside the Council guards at the north gate and I fought beside a highland wolf who had lost his coat in the fire.

And then Ronan came back up the side of the house of the north.

He came across the square with Eamon behind him and his shirt torn and his shoulder bleeding and he shifted as he came, and then there were two wolves in the square.

He came and stood beside me.

"Fiadh," he said, through the bond and through the noise and through the whole of the square. "I am here."

I looked at him.

I know, I said. Hold the line.

We held it.

And when it was over the square was quiet and the hunters were on the ground or gone and I was standing in the middle of it on four legs with my chest going and Ronan beside me and Bran's forty on the steps.

I shifted back.

Ronan shifted back.

"Fiadh," he said.

"Ronan." I put my hand on his face. "Your shoulder."

"It is not silver. It will close." He looked at me. "You shifted in the middle of a square and you fought beside me as an equal."

"I know."

"You have never done that before."

"I know." I looked at him. "The wolf came when I called it. It has been waiting since the cave."

And down in the cellar of the house of the north, a door opened.

Eamon came up the cellar stair at a run.

"Luna," he said. "The door is open. And there is a thing behind it that is coming up the stair."