Chapter 171: The Battle Plan

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

We went down to the quay.

There was a Council boat at the pier and a wolf on the deck with a lantern and a paper and there were six Council guards behind her.

It was Ilsa.

She came off the boat slowly with her shawl round her shoulders and her white hair pinned up and her old face grey, and she looked at the harbour and the boats and the smoke still hanging over the roofs from the fires of the last fortnight.

"Luna," she said. "Alpha. The Council has been in session since dawn and it has taken a vote."

"Say it," I said.

"The trial is confirmed for noon and it will be held in the great chamber in front of the whole of the north." Ilsa looked at me. "And there is a thing in the vote that you need to hear. The Council has voted to hear the charge of the breaking of the chain and the three deaths. And it has voted not to hear the charge of the founder's claim."

I stood on the quay.

"What does that mean?" I said.

"It means the claim is not on trial. It means the Council has accepted the claim and the founder's line and the fourth generation and the whole of it." Ilsa's old face worked. "It means the only thing you are answering for at noon is the chain and the three deaths."

The quay was silent. A gull came down and took a look at us and went away again.

"And Soren?" I said.

"Soren is dead and the Council has voted to strike his name from the record and to declare the ritual network a crime against the north." Ilsa looked at me. "And there is a thing I have to say to you and I have been carrying it since the northern seat."

"Say it."

"The Council has voted to offer you the seat." Ilsa's voice was quiet. "The empty chair at the table. The one Soren sat in for forty years."

I stood on the quay.

"No," I said.

Ilsa looked at me.

"Luna," she said.

"I am not going to sit in that chair." I looked at her. "I have been in a Council chamber and a cellar and a square and a bothy and a camp in the highlands. And I have been trying to work out what the founder's line is for since the day I got off the bus. And I know now. It is not for a chair and it is not for a seat and it is not for a mark on a chest."

"What is it for?"

"It is for the twelve and the seven and the nineteen and the thirty one." I looked at her. "It is for the wolves who were bound and the wolves who were taken and the wolves who have been sitting in a room at the top of a house for seventy years. And I am going to give it to them."

Ilsa stood on the quay.

"Then who sits in the chair?" she said.

"Rannoch," I said.

Ilsa's old face changed.

"Rannoch has been on that Council for thirty years and he has never once had an opinion of his own," she said.

"Rannoch has been on that Council for thirty years and he has never once had an opinion of his own and he voted against the vote that declared me a rogue." I looked at her. "And he has been the keeper of the seal for twenty years and he knows every paper in that building and he has been sitting in a room for a fortnight trying to work out which way the wind is blowing."

"Luna."

"Give him a thing to hold on to," I said. "Give him the record. Give him the archive. Give him the whole of the north's papers and tell him he is the wolf who keeps them. And he will hold on to them for the rest of his life."

Ilsa looked at me for a long moment.

"That is either the cleverest thing I have heard in thirty years or the most foolish," she said.

"It is the cleverest," Ronan said. "She has been doing it to me for four months."

We went back up the hill.

The square was emptying and the fires were being put out and the wolves who had come in from the coast were sitting on the steps of the northern seat with their packs beside them.

And in the great chamber of the northern seat, at noon, we made the plan.

Padraig had the plans of the house of the north and he put them on the table in the room at the top of the east stair and we stood round it.

The table was covered in paper. There was the plan of the cellar and the plan of the second floor and a drawing Padraig had made himself of the room at the top of the house with the bed and the chair and the window that did not open.

"The reversal has to be made in the place where the bond was tied," Padraig said. "That is the room at the top of the house of the north. And the mark has to be made by a founder of the blood and it has to be made willingly and it has to be made with the stone in her hand."

I put the stone on the table.

"And the wolf who is bound has to be there," Padraig said.

"I will be there," Ronan said.

"And there has to be a fourth," Padraig said. "A healer who can hold the thread."

"I will hold the thread," Padraig said.

I looked at him.

"Padraig," I said.

"Healer. I have been a healer for forty years and I have held a thread once in my life and it was in a cellar in the north and it was a child of six and it was the worst thing I have ever done." He looked at me. "I am going to hold this one."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"Right then," I said. "At noon tomorrow we go up the hill to the house of the north. And we make the reversal."

And down in the square, a horn sounded.