Chapter 60: The Pack Divided

It was Nessa.

She came up the ladder with a lantern in her hand and her hair wet from the river and her face white, and when she saw us she sat down on the top rung and put her hand over her mouth.

"You are alive," she said. "I thought you were dead. Maeve said you were dead."

"Maeve said a great many things," Ronan said. "How did you find us?"

"I saw Oisin in the market at dusk. I followed him." She came up the rest of the way and sat down on the floorboards with the lantern between her feet. "I have been in the town for two days. Maeve brought me and Colm and four others. She said the pack had to be represented at the hearing and she needed witnesses."

"Witnesses to what?"

"To you." Nessa looked at me. "She is going to stand up in front of the elders and say the healer is a rogue who came to the pack with a false name and a debt she did not owe and put a bond on the Alpha and turned him against his own Beta. She has been saying it all morning to anyone who will listen and half the town believes her."

The mill creaked under us.

"And the pack?" Ronan said. "What does the pack say?"

Nessa looked at her hands.

"They are divided," she said. "Colm is with her. He does not want to be but she is his Beta and he does what he is told. Four of the others are with her because they are frightened and the Council is here and they think she is the only one who can save us." She lifted her head. "And there are nine of us in the town who came because we were told to come and we have been in the tavern all day saying that the healer sewed up eleven wolves in one night and did not ask which side they were on."

"Nine," Ronan said.

"Nine. And there are twenty two wolves in the pack and eleven wounded and the rest are on the boats and they have not heard anything except what Maeve has told them." Nessa wiped her eyes. "Alpha. There is a thing I have to tell you and I have been carrying it since the spring and I cannot carry it any more."

Ronan looked at her.

"Go on."

"I have been telling Lorcan things." Her voice was very small. "Since the spring. He holds my brother's debt. My brother is in the north and he owes the Council money and Lorcan said if I told him things about the house he would not call the debt in. So I told him when the post came and who was in the house and what was said at the meetings and I told him when the healer came and what she was doing." She was crying now. "And then the tea was poisoned and the silver blade was on the ridge and I did not know who did it and I did not know if it was me who told them where to put it. I have been in that house every day since the spring and every day I have been frightened that I was the one who killed the Alpha."

Ronan got up.

Nessa flinched.

He walked over to her and knelt down on the floorboards and took her hands.

"You did not poison the tea," he said. "You did not put the blade in my shoulder. You told a man where the post came from and who was in the house, and you did it because your brother was in trouble and you are twenty two years old." He held her hands. "I am not angry with you. Do you understand me? I am not angry with you."

Nessa cried harder.

I sat down on the floor beside her and put my hand on her back and let her cry.

When it was done she wiped her face on her sleeve and sat up and looked at me.

"There is one more thing," she said. "Maeve is going to ask the elders tomorrow for a vote on the Alpha's removal. She has a paper with nine names on it and she says it is a majority of the pack and it means the elders can confirm her in the seat without a challenge."

"Nine names," Ronan said. "Out of twenty two."

"Nine names and the wounded cannot vote and the boats have not been heard from." Nessa looked at him. "Alpha. She has been working on this for a week and she is going to stand up tomorrow and read out those names and the elders will look at the paper and they will confirm her, and then the Council will own this pack and there will be no hearing and no cure and no nothing."

Ronan sat back on his heels.

"Then we have until noon tomorrow," he said, "to find nine wolves who will stand up and say no."

"I have nine," Nessa said. "I told you. Nine of us came because we were told to come and we have been in the tavern all day saying the healer sewed up eleven wolves and did not ask which side they were on."

Ronan looked at her.

"You have nine," he said.

"I have nine."

He put his hand on her shoulder.

"Then we are not divided," he said. "We are nine and nine and the pack is the thing that decides which nine it is."

Down below us, in the dark, the mill door opened again.

Oisin went to the ladder and looked down and then came back.

"There is a woman at the door," he said. "She has a green scarf and she is asking for the healer."

Elara came up the ladder.

She looked at all of us and then at me.

"I have been in the Council house," she said. "I still have the seal of a binder and they let me in. There is a room under the elders' chamber where the old papers are kept and there is a paper in that room with your mother's name on it and I have read it." She put her hand into her coat and took out a folded sheet. "Fiadh. It is the page that went missing out of your mother's file. And it is worse than we thought."