Chapter 174: The Eleventh Love Scene

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the square and it was calling the north to the chair.

I stood in the middle of the floor of the great chamber with Rannoch in front of me and the whole of the north in the gallery and the aisles and the square, and I did not answer him.

"Luna," Rannoch said. "I am asking you to take the chair."

I looked at the fifth chair.

It was old. It was oak and it was carved and it had been sat in by forty years of Soren and by the elders before him, and it had a cushion on it that had gone flat.

"No," I said.

The chamber went up.

"Luna," Rannoch said.

"I am not going to sit in that chair." I looked at him. "I have been in this north for a year and I have been in a 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."

The chamber was silent.

"And I know now," I said. "It is not for a chair. It is not for a seat at a table with five wolves in it. It is for the twelve and the seven and the nineteen and the thirty one and every wolf in the north who was bound with the water of the spring."

I turned round and faced the gallery.

"There is a door in the cellar of the house of the north and there is a second pool behind it and there is a thing behind the second pool that has been there for two hundred years." I looked at the whole of the north. "And tomorrow at noon I am going up that hill and I am going down that cellar and I am going to close it."

The chamber went up.

It went up in a roar that filled the whole of the northern seat and it did not come down for a long time.

When it did, Rannoch came round the table.

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

"You do," I said. "And you keep the record and you keep the archive and you keep every paper in this building. And if you ever sit in that chair and forget what it is for, there are forty wolves in this square who will remind you."

Rannoch looked at me for a long moment.

"Right," he said. "I will sit in the chair."

The chamber went up.

We went out of the great chamber at dusk.

The square was full and the fires were lit and there were wolves on the steps and wolves on the wall and there were forty rogues at the north gate and a wolf with a scarred ear standing in the middle of them.

And there was a table in the square with a jug on it and a plate of bread and there were wolves sitting on the steps of the northern seat with their backs against the stone.

Ronan took my hand.

"Fiadh," he said. "Come upstairs."

We went up.

The room at the top of the east stair was warm and the fire was lit and the window was open and the square was below us with the fires and the singing.

Ronan shut the door.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Tomorrow."

"At noon we go up the hill and down the cellar and you make the reversal mark and Padraig holds the thread and I am the wolf who is bound." He looked at me. "And there is a thing in that book that says the founder who makes the reversal mark gives up the thing she holds dearest and it does not say whether she gets it back."

"I know."

"And you have given away a line and a hair and a seat in a chair." He put his hands on my face. "Fiadh. What is left to give?"

I looked at him.

"You," I said.

Ronan stood very still.

"Me," he said.

"The thing I hold dearest in this world is not a line and it is not a chair and it is not a mark on my chest." I put my hands on his wrists. "It is you. It has been you since the beach and it will be you until the day I die."

Ronan looked at me.

"And if the mark takes me?" he said.

"Then it takes you and I will have given you and I will have done it willingly and I will not take it back." I looked at him. "That is what a willing mark is. It is not a thing you give up. It is a thing you give."

Ronan put his forehead against mine.

"Fiadh," he said.

"Ronan."

"I am not going to let you give me."

"You are not letting me. I am doing it." I put my hand on his face. "And there is a thing I have been thinking since the chamber and I am going to say it now because there is no time tomorrow."

"What?"

"If the mark takes you and I am left on this coast with a pack and a line and a seat in a chair that I have given away, I am going to be a very difficult wolf to live with."

Ronan laughed.

"You are already a very difficult wolf to live with," he said.

"I know."

He kissed me.

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 urgent and it was tender and there was a great deal of holding on, and both of us knew what was going to happen at noon.

We did not get to the bed.

We got about as far as the wall by the window and that was where it happened, and it was not slow and it was not quiet and there was a fire going and a square below us and a whole north that had come in for a trial and stayed for a vow.

He kept saying my name. I kept saying his. And at some point in the middle of it I got my hand flat on the silver mark on his chest and he stopped and put his hand over mine.

"It is still there," he said.

"It is still there."

"It has been there since the square and I have been feeling it all evening and I have not known whether you were going to give me away at noon."

I pulled him down.

The second half of the night was different.

It was slower and it was quieter and there was a great deal of touching that had nothing to do with wanting and everything to do with keeping. He traced the silver crescent 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 and tried to remember it.

"Fiadh," he said.

"What?"

"Whatever happens at noon." He looked at me. "I want you to know that I would have taken the three months and the debt and the ugly contract and the whole of it again. I would take it a hundred times."

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

"I know," I said.

"I would take it a hundred times."

"I know."

And through the bond, warm and steady and clear and burning, I felt him.

And outside the window, in the square, a wolf began to sing.