Chapter 41: Maeve's Challenge

The kitchen went silent and stayed silent.

Maeve stood in the doorway with the storm water still running off her coat and her hands loose at her sides.

"You cannot," I said.

Maeve did not look at me.

"Under the old law a challenge can be called by any wolf of the pack who has served it for five years and holds a rank of Beta or above," she said. "I have served nine years and I am Beta and I have the right. I have called it in front of the Alpha and in front of witnesses and he has accepted it." She looked at Ronan. "It will be at noon in the long room. Shifted, no weapons, first to yield or first to be unable to continue. Padraig will judge."

"Ronan," I said. "You cannot do this."

He was standing in the middle of the kitchen with a cut on his forehead and a bandage on his arm and his wet shirt stuck to his chest, and he looked at me and then at Maeve and did not say anything.

"Ronan. You cannot stand in a challenge ring at noon. You have a false bond eating you and a silver wound in your shoulder that has been open since June and you could not get up off a kitchen floor four days ago." I got between them. "Maeve, listen to me. If you do this, you will kill him. Not because you mean to. Because he will not yield and you will not have to try very hard."

Maeve's jaw tightened.

"I have thought about it," she said. "I have thought about it all night and every wolf in this house has been thinking about it too." She looked at me and her brown eyes were not cruel. They were tired and they were sorry. "The Council's guard is on a boat in the harbour with twelve wolves. The Council's envoy has half this pack believing the healer is poisoning the Alpha. There is a hole in the roof and no bread in the kitchen and a summons on the table with the twenty eighth on it. In nine days this pack goes into that Council chamber and if it goes with a dying Alpha it will be eaten alive." She straightened. "I am not doing this to hurt him. I am doing this because he will not do what needs to be done and somebody has to."

"By fighting him?"

"By fighting him." Maeve looked past me at Ronan. "The old law is the old law. A challenge is the only way a pack changes its Alpha without a war. You know that better than I do. You won your seat in a challenge when you were twenty one and you did not ask the wolf you beat whether he was feeling well."

"I know," Ronan said.

"Then you know what I am doing and why I am doing it."

"I know."

"Ronan!" I turned on him. "Say no. You are the Alpha. You can refuse a challenge and put it to a vote of the pack and you will win the vote because half of them are too frightened of the Council to change leaders now, and Maeve knows it, which is why she is doing it this way." I put my hand on his arm. "Say no."

He looked down at my hand and then at my face.

"If I refuse the challenge," he said, "I am the Alpha who was too weak to fight his own Beta. That is what the pack will remember on the twenty eighth. Not the vote. Not the law. They will remember that a dying man would not stand up." He took my hand off his arm and held it. "I will not give Lorcan that."

"Ronan."

"I have spent six months hiding in my own house," he said quietly. "I have let a false bond sit on my chest because I was ashamed to tell anyone it was there. I have let my Beta run my pack and my healer lie to my wolves and my own body fail me in front of everyone I have ever led. I will not spend the last nine days of my life hiding from Maeve in my own kitchen."

I stared at him.

"You will die," I said.

"Then I will die standing up in my own hall." He let go of my hand. "And if I do, you will take the box and the book and the page and you will get on Oisin's boat and go north, and you will find another way to break that bond, and you will do it for the pack even if I am not there to see it."

The kitchen was full of wolves and every one of them was listening.

"Fine," I said. "Then I have conditions."

Maeve raised her eyebrows.

"Padraig judges and I am at the edge of the ring with my kit. If he yields, the fight stops. If he goes down and cannot get up, the fight stops. If I say stop, it stops." I looked at Maeve. "You want the seat, not a corpse. Agree to that or I will stand in the doorway of that room and tell every wolf in this pack that the Beta of the Blackthorn Pack challenged a dying man to a fight and would not let a healer near him."

Maeve looked at me for a long moment.

"Agreed," she said. "Noon."

She turned and went out and the four wolves who had come with her went after her, and the kitchen sat in silence.

Ronan went to the door and looked out at the harbour.

"The Council boat is still there," he said. "Petra will have heard the challenge by now. She will be sitting on that deck working out how to use it."

"Let her."

"No." He turned round. "Fiadh. Come with me to the sickroom. If I am going to fight a Beta at noon, I want my arm bound properly and I want something for the shaking, and I want you to tell me the truth about how long I can last."

I got my kit.

"How long?" he said, when the door was shut.

I looked at him. At the grey in his face and the roots under his skin and the shoulder that had been open since June.

"Ten minutes," I said. "If you are lucky. If Maeve is angry with you, less."

He nodded slowly, as though I had told him the weather.

"Then we had better make the ten minutes count," he said.

Down in the harbour, the Council boat's bell began to ring.