Chapter 54: Maeve's Bargain

The dog barked twice and stopped, and Ronan was at the door of the cottage with his hand on the latch before I got to my feet.

"Not a dog," Oisin said quietly. "A wolf. Two of them, up on the ridge behind us." He blew out the candle. "They are not hunting. They are sitting on the skyline and looking at the cove."

"Council?"

"Not Council. Council wolves do not sit on a skyline and look at anything. That is a pack wolf and he is counting us." Oisin picked up his coat. "I will go and have a word with them. If I am not back in an hour, take the boat and go north."

He went out and we sat in the dark cottage and waited.

I want to put down what happened in the pack house on that same night, because I did not see it and I did not learn about it until much later, and it belongs in this story as much as anything I saw with my own eyes.

Maeve went to the grey house on the harbour road two days after we left the coast. She went on her own, at dusk, with her coat buttoned and her copper curls tied back, and she stood at the door until Lorcan opened it.

She did not go in. She stood on the step and said what she had come to say.

Lorcan listened to her with his hands folded in front of him and his head on one side.

"You want the hearing," he said, when she had finished.

"I want the pack." Maeve's voice did not rise. "I have a house full of wounded and a hole in the roof and no Alpha and a Council guard on my pier. If I wait for Ronan to come back I will be waiting a long time and the pack will not survive the waiting. So I am asking for the hearing, and I am asking for it now, while there is still a pack to hear it for."

"And in exchange?"

Maeve looked at him.

"In exchange," she said, "I will tell the elders what I know about the Alpha and the healer. That they are mated. That she has no registration and no pack and a debt on her name. That she has been in his room at midnight and on the cliff with him in the moonlight and in a boathouse with him in a storm." She paused. "And I will tell them where he is."

Lorcan's head came up.

"You know where he is?"

"I know where he was three days ago." Maeve folded her arms. "He went north with the healer and the old man and a smuggler's boat. There is one coast road north and one harbour on it that a boat can put in at in the dark. I do not know which cove he is in. But I know which cove he will come out of, and I know the only road south from it, and if the hearing is on the twenty second he will be on that road on the twenty first because he is an Alpha and he will not miss a chance to stand up in front of the Council and be right."

Lorcan was quiet for a moment.

"That is a great deal of information," he said. "What do you want for it?"

"The Beta seat," Maeve said.

"You have the Beta seat."

"I have the Beta seat in a pack with no Alpha and no future and a Council review hanging over it." Maeve's voice was flat. "I want the seat when there is a pack to go with it. I want the territory confirmed. I want the tithe forgiven and the review closed and the name Blackthorn left on the map. And in exchange I will stand in that hearing and I will say what I saw and I will give the elders a reason to confirm me as Alpha in his place."

Lorcan looked at her for a long moment.

"You would do that to a man you served for nine years," he said. "A man who is dying."

Maeve's jaw worked.

"He is not dying," she said. "He is gone. He went north with a healer who cannot save him and a smuggler who is paid by nobody and an old man who burned a book. And I am standing in a house with a hole in the roof and eleven wounded wolves and a pack that is looking at me to do something." She took a breath. "So yes. I would do that. And I would do it again tomorrow."

Lorcan smiled.

"Very well," he said. "The hearing is on the twenty second. Bring me the Blackthorn Pack's wolves and its records and its title and I will see that the Council confirms you." He held out his hand. "And Beta. If you happen to hear from your Alpha before then, I would be grateful if you would send word to me before you send it to anyone else. There is a kindness in a thing like that. It saves everyone a great deal of unpleasantness."

Maeve looked at his hand.

She did not take it.

"I will send word when I have word," she said, and turned and went down the path.

Lorcan stood in the doorway and watched her go with his hand still out.

Then he lowered it and went inside and shut the door.

Oisin came back an hour later with his coat wet and his face set.

"Two wolves on the ridge," he said. "Highland wolves. I told them there was a boat in the cove two days ago and it had gone north, and they went north." He sat down on the floor by the fire and held his hands out to it. "They will be back when they find nothing."

"Then we move in the morning," Ronan said.

"We move tonight." Oisin looked up. "There was a wolf from the Fintry pack in the harbour tavern an hour before I left and he was asking about a boat with a green sail. Nobody has a boat with a green sail on this coast but the ones who know me do, and if they put it together they will be at every cove between here and the northern seat by dawn."

I was on my feet.

"Then we go tonight," I said. "Get the bundle. Get the box. Padraig, wake up."

We went down to the cove in the dark and got the tarpaulin off the boat and put her in the water, and I got Ronan in and Padraig in and Elara in, and Oisin took the oars and pulled us out into the black sea.

The dog barked twice on the ridge behind us and then stopped.

I looked back and there were three of them on the skyline with a lantern.

They did not follow.