Chapter 43: The Debt Comes Due

We got him into the sickroom and onto the cot and I worked on him for two hours.

The shoulder was bad. Maeve had not torn it open, but she had shaken everything loose that had been holding together, and the roots under the skin had gone further up and the silver burn was weeping again. I packed it and bound it and put a poultice on it and sat with my hand on his chest and waited for the shaking to stop.

It did not stop. It went on and on, and around four in the afternoon Padraig came in and looked at him and then at me and said, quietly, "He is not going to come back from this on his own."

"I know."

"What are you going to do?"

"I am going to do the rite," I said. "Tonight. Tomorrow. As soon as he can open his eyes and say yes to it."

Padraig was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You will need Elara. You will need the box. And you will need to be somewhere the Council cannot walk in on you."

"The boathouse."

"The boathouse." He nodded slowly. "It is on the water and it has a door that bolts and it is not on Council maps. It will do."

He went out. I sat with Ronan until the light went and he did not wake, and Nessa brought me bread and I did not eat it, and around seven there was a knock at the front door and then voices in the hall and then Nessa put her head round the sickroom door with her face white.

"Healer," she said. "It is the Council boat. Petra is on the step and she has a paper and she says she has come to collect you."

I went out.

Petra was in the hall with four of her twelve behind her and Lorcan at her shoulder in his grey coat, and the whole pack was in the corridor behind them, and Nessa was standing in front of the door to the sickroom with her arms out.

"Fiadh," Petra said. "The Council has reviewed your contract and has decided to call in the debt in full. You are to come with me to the northern seat and remain in Council custody until the debt is settled or the twenty eighth, whichever comes first." She held up the paper. "This is not a request."

I stood in the middle of the hall and looked at her.

"The debt does not exist," I said.

"The debt is on the paper."

"The paper is a forgery. The original contract has no number in it and no sum named and the file in the northern archive has a page missing out of it." I looked at Lorcan. "You know that. You have known it since the first day."

Lorcan smiled.

"Then bring the file to the Council and argue it there," he said. "It will take six weeks and a lawyer and by then the twenty eighth will have come and gone and the Alpha will be dead and the pack will be gone. Or." He stepped forward. "Or you can come with me now, quietly, and I will tear this paper up in front of you and the debt will be cleared and you will be a free woman with a licence to practise and no contract on your name."

The hall was very quiet.

"In exchange for what?" I said.

"In exchange for leaving this coast," Lorcan said. "Tonight. On the morning tide. You go north and you do not come back and you do not write to anyone in this pack and you do not stand in that Council chamber on the twenty eighth. And in exchange the debt is gone and the Alpha gets the second mark at the Council seat and lives and the pack keeps its territory."

"He gets the second mark and the Council owns him."

"He lives." Lorcan said it flatly. "You are a healer. You have spent a month telling everyone in this house that you will not let him die. So here is your chance. Leave, and he lives, and the pack survives, and the only thing that is lost is you."

I stood there with my hands at my sides.

"He will not take the second mark," I said.

"He will if you are gone. He has no healer and no rite and no hope and a pack that will not follow him. He will take it because it is the only thing left." Lorcan put his hand out. "The tide goes out at six. I will have a boat at the slip at five."

I looked at his hand.

"No," I said.

Lorcan's smile did not move. "No?"

"No. I am not leaving and he is not taking the second mark and you are not tearing up that paper, because that paper is the only proof in the world that the Council invented a debt to trap a healer, and I am going to stand in that Council chamber on the twenty eighth and read it out loud to the elders." I took a step toward him. "You have twelve wolves on a boat and I have a pack and a rogue king and a binder and an old man with a book. Take your hand down, Envoy. You look foolish with it out."

Lorcan's hand came down.

"Very well," he said. "Petra. Take her."

Petra stepped forward, and behind her the four guards stepped forward, and behind me the whole corridor of the Blackthorn Pack moved at once.

I do not know who moved first. I think it was Colm. I think he came off the wall with his shoulder down and took the first guard in the chest, and then the corridor was full of wolves and the hall was full of shouting and somebody knocked the lamp over and it went out.

I got my back to the sickroom door and stood there.

When the noise stopped, Petra was on the floor with Colm's knee in her back, three of her guards were pinned against the wall by six Blackthorn wolves, and Lorcan was standing in the middle of it all with his coat torn and his notebook on the floor and his face for the first time entirely without a smile.

"This is an act of war," he said.

"No," Maeve said, from the top of the stairs. "This is a pack defending its healer. There is a difference and the Council knows it." She came down. "Take your wolves and go back to your boat, Envoy. The twenty eighth is nine days away. We will see you there."

Lorcan looked at her. Then at me.

"Nine days," he said, and picked up his notebook, and went out.

Petra and the guards went after him. The front door shut.

Maeve stood at the bottom of the stairs with her arms folded and her mouth set, and she did not look at me.

"You challenged him this morning," I said.

"I did."

"And now you are defending me."

"I am defending the pack." She turned her head. "The Council does not get to walk into my house and take a wolf out of it. Not while I am Beta and not while there is breath in me." She looked at me. "Do not mistake it for friendship, healer. There is no friendship between us. There is only the pack."

She went out.

I stood in the hall with my back against the sickroom door and my hands shaking and my heart going, and behind me, through the wood, I heard Ronan's voice.

"Fiadh," he said. "Come in here. I need to tell you something."

I opened the door.