Chapter 53: The Council's Bounty

We went north along the coast with the sail up and the wind behind us, and Oisin stood at the tiller and did not say anything for a long time.

It was Ronan who broke it.

"Three packs," he said. "You said hunters from three packs. Which three?"

Oisin looked at him.

"Ravenscar, for one. Lord Callum has put six wolves on the water and he is not doing it for the Council's gold." He adjusted the tiller. "The second is a pack out of the north called the Fintry and they will hunt anything that moves for money. The third is a pack I do not know. They came down from the highlands two days ago and nobody has heard of them before and they are asking questions in every harbour."

"Questions about what?"

"About a healer with golden hair and a mark on her hand and an Alpha with a false bond." Oisin looked at me. "Somebody is paying them more than the bounty and somebody is paying them to find you alive."

The sail went slack and then filled again.

"Lorcan," Ronan said.

"Lorcan does not have that kind of money," I said. "He is an envoy. Envoys have a purse and a notebook and a car and they do not have the gold to hire three packs and the highland wolves as well."

"Then somebody above him does."

I sat in the stern of the boat with my hand on the gunwale and thought about a line in the margin of a file and a room in the northern seat and a name that had not been spoken in front of me yet.

"There is a master," I said. "Padraig told us on the night of the shooting. He said the binders are trained in the northern seat and they are told the words and not much else, and there is a hand that writes the line at the bottom of the page." I looked at Ronan. "If Lorcan has a master, then the master has gold and the gold is out on the water this morning."

The boat went on north.

We put in at a cove on the north coast that Oisin knew, a narrow cut with a beach of black stones and a ruined cottage above it, and he pulled the boat up and hid it under a tarpaulin and said, "We stay here until dark. There is a well behind the cottage and there is peat in the lean-to and nobody has lived here in thirty years."

We got Padraig up to the cottage and Elara got the fire going and I sat down on the step and put my head in my hands.

Ronan came and sat down beside me.

"Two hundred gold," he said. "That is a great deal of money."

"It is not the money that worries me." I lifted my head. "It is the highland wolves. Oisin said they are asking for me alive. Lorcan wants me dead or alive and he does not care which because a dead healer cannot stand up in a Council chamber and tell the elders about a false bond. But somebody wants me alive and that somebody is paying more than the bounty." I looked at him. "They want the bloodline, Ronan. They have known about it for a hundred years and they have watched it and not touched it, and now they have decided to touch it and they want me alive."

"Then we will not let them have you."

"You cannot promise that."

"I can. I am the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack and I am not dying any more and I have a mate bond on my chest that is the only true thing in this world." He took my hand. "I can promise it and I can keep it."

I looked at him.

His colour was good. His hand was warm and it was steady and the roots under his skin had gone. The mark was gone from his chest and there was nothing there but skin, and he was sitting on a step in the north coast with a fire inside and the sea in front of him and he looked like a man of thirty two.

"You are well," I said.

"I am well."

"Say it again."

"I am well." He laughed. "I have not been well since the spring and I had stopped believing I ever would be. And now I am sitting on a step in the cold and I am hungry and I want a cup of tea and I cannot remember what it felt like to be dying."

I put my head on his shoulder.

"Right then," I said. "We had better find you a cup of tea."

We stayed in the cove for two days.

On the second night Oisin came back from the harbour with a bag of bread and a face that was not good.

"The highland wolves are at Rathlin," he said. "Six of them and a boat and they have been asking at every house on the north shore. And there is a thing I heard in the tavern that I do not like. A wolf from the Fintry pack was in there saying the Council has called a hearing for the twenty second."

"The twenty second," Ronan said. "That is four days from now."

"Four days." Oisin put the bread down on the table. "And the hearing is not about the false bond. It is about an unlawful mate bond between the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack and an unregistered healer, and it has been called at the request of the Blackthorn Beta."

The cottage was very quiet.

"Maeve," I said.

"Maeve." Oisin looked at me. "She has gone to the Council, Fiadh. She has gone to Lorcan and she has asked for the hearing herself."

Ronan was on his feet.

"That is not possible. Maeve would not go to Lorcan. She told him to his face in the hall that the Council does not get to walk into her house and take a wolf out of it."

"She told him that when you were still Alpha. You are not Alpha now. You lost the challenge and you left and you have been gone for four days and the pack does not know whether you are alive or dead." Oisin's voice was flat. "She has a house full of wounded and a hole in the roof and a Council guard on the pier and no Alpha. What did you think she would do?"

Ronan stood in the middle of the cottage with his hands at his sides.

"Where is the hearing?" he said.

"At the northern seat. On the twenty second."

"Then we go to the northern seat."

"Ronan." I stood up. "The northern seat is the Council's own house. There are a hundred wolves there and a binder and a room where the old papers are kept. If we walk into it we will not walk out."

"Then we do not walk in." He turned round. "Oisin. How long to the northern seat by water?"

"Two days if the wind holds."

"Then we have two days to work out how to get into a Council hearing without being taken at the door." He looked at me. "And we have a box that has a false bond in it and a page in my mother's hand and a cave full of marks that the Council has been looking for for two hundred years."

"And what do we do with all of it?"

"We take it to the hearing," Ronan said, "and we put it on the table in front of the elders, and we make Lorcan explain it in front of the wolves he has been lying to."

Outside, in the dark, a dog barked twice and then stopped.