Chapter 23: The Pack Meeting

The pack meeting was on Sunday at noon, in the long room with the tables pushed back against the walls and the benches in two rows facing the head of the room where the Alpha's chair stood on a low platform of worn boards.

I had never seen the whole pack in one room. Twenty two wolves, and the ones who had been out on the boats and the north border had come in for it, and the room was hot and loud and smelled of wet wool and salt and twenty two different people's dinners. Nessa had saved me a place at the end of the second row. Padraig was on the first row by the wall with his stick across his knees. Maeve stood at the front with her hands folded, not sitting, and the wolves came in and looked at her and then at the empty chair.

Ronan came in last. He walked the length of the room with his shoulders back and his head up, and every wolf in there watched him do it, and I saw them see what I saw. The grey in his face. The way his left hand stayed close to his side. The bandage showing at his cuff.

He sat down. The room went quiet.

"I will not waste your time," he said. "The Council has summoned me to the northern seat on the twenty eighth to answer for my health and for this pack. If I do not go, they will send a steward and turn us out of this house. If I do go, I will sit in front of the elders and I do not know what they will decide." He paused. "You all know I have been ill since the spring. You have been told it is a wasting sickness. It is not."

Somebody in the back row said something under their breath.

"It is a false bond," Ronan said. "A ritual mark put on my chest by a wolf of the Council's choosing, in exchange for the tithe and the boats and the storehouse. I signed the paper. I did it in April and I did it to keep this pack fed, and I have been paying for it ever since."

The room did not go quiet this time. It went loud. Somebody stood up. Somebody said a word I will not repeat. A woman in the second row put her face in her hands and another woman put an arm round her.

Maeve let it run for about a minute. Then she stepped forward and held up one hand and the noise died down the way it always did when she raised her hand.

"Thank you, Alpha," she said. "That was braver than I expected and I will say so in front of everyone. But brave does not feed us and brave does not keep the border." She turned to face the room. "You have all heard what he said. There is a Council summons and there is a false bond and there is a pack that has not had a strong Alpha since the spring. So I am asking the question that every one of you has been thinking since the storehouse burned. Alpha, name a successor. Name a wolf who can stand in front of the Council on the twenty eighth if you cannot."

The room went quiet again, but it was a different quiet.

Ronan looked at her for a long moment.

"I am not naming a successor," he said.

"Then you are asking this pack to go into the Council's chamber with a dying man at its head."

"I am asking this pack to give me eleven days."

"Eleven days for what?"

"For a way out that does not end with the Blackthorn name on a Council paper." Ronan stood up. It cost him something and I saw it cost him. "I have a healer who has found the false bond and named it and stopped the poison in my tea, and I have an old man who knows a rite that may break it, and I have a box under my floor that the Council wants and cannot have. On the twenty eighth I will go to the northern seat and I will stand in front of the elders and I will tell them what was done to me. If I am still alive to say it."

The room broke apart.

It did not break loudly. That is what I remember. It broke in small ways, in twos and threes, in wolves getting up and moving to stand by other wolves. Colm the boatman went and stood by Maeve. The two women who had been crying stayed where they were. An old wolf near the door got up and walked out of the room entirely and did not come back.

And when the moving stopped, there were twelve wolves on Maeve's side of the room and nine on Ronan's, and one old wolf who had left, and nobody was looking at anybody.

"That is the pack, then," Maeve said. Her voice was flat. "Twelve and nine. It has not been split like this since my father's time." She looked at Ronan. "You have eleven days. On the twenty eighth, if you are not standing in that Council chamber with a cure in your hand, I will take the seat and I will take it with the majority of this pack behind me, and I will do it in the open and by the law, and you will not be able to say a word against it."

"You would take it now if you could," Ronan said.

"Yes," Maeve said. "I would. I have wanted it for nine years and I have never once lied about that." She turned and walked out of the room, and eight of the twelve went with her, and four stayed where they were with their faces turned to the wall.

Ronan sat back down in the chair. He sat down slowly and put his good hand on the arm of it and his knuckles were white.

"Meeting closed," he said.

Nobody moved for a moment. Then Padraig got up with his stick and went out, and the wolves drifted after him, and I stayed where I was at the end of the second row until the room was empty except for the two of us.

"Twelve and nine," I said.

"Twelve and nine."

"And four of Maeve's twelve will not follow her if it comes to a challenge. They were standing with her because they are frightened, not because they want her."

Ronan looked up at me.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I have been in nine packs and I have watched a great many frightened wolves stand on the wrong side of a room." I came and stood in front of him. "Alpha. You have eleven days and a split pack and a Council summons. But you also have a healer who is going to the grey house tomorrow to find the woman in the green scarf, and a box that will open when she puts her hands on it, and a rite that Padraig half remembers."

"And if the box does not open?"

"Then we will find another way."

"And if there is no other way?"

I looked at him sitting in his chair with the light on his ginger hair and the dimples gone from his face and his hand white on the arm of the chair, and the pull in my chest was so strong it was almost a pain.

"Then I will be standing beside you on the twenty eighth," I said, "and they will have to come through me to get to you."

The door at the back of the room opened. Nessa stood there with her face white.

"Healer," she said. "The boy from the pier is back. He says Eithne's door was open when he went past this morning, and the lamp was still burning, and there is nobody inside."