Chapter 69: Maeve's True Face

We came down into the town at ten in the morning with the mark on my chest and the box in Ronan's pack and the whole of the north valley grey and quiet below us. The mist was still lying in the bottom of it and the roofs came up out of the mist one by one as we came down the track, and the river went through the middle of it the colour of lead.

Maeve was waiting at the mill.

She was standing on the step with her coat buttoned and her copper curls tied back and her hands folded in front of her, and there was a bruise coming up on her mouth where Ronan had hit her. It had gone the colour of a plum and it made her look older than she was.

"Alpha," she said.

"Maeve."

"I want a word with the healer." She looked at me. "Alone."

Ronan did not move.

"It is all right," I said. "Wait inside."

He looked at me for a moment and then he went in, and Oisin went in after him, and Nessa went in, and Padraig stood in the doorway with his stick and did not go in at all. He was old and he was tired and he had decided that whatever was going to be said on that step was going to be said in front of him.

Maeve and I stood on the step of the mill with the river going under the boards and the mist coming up off the water.

"You have the mark," she said.

"I have the mark."

"I saw it through your coat when you came down the track." She looked at me. "It is silver. A true mark is silver." She was quiet for a moment. "I had a true mark once. He died in the winter of the bad sickness, six years ago, and I have not had one since. I know what one looks like and I know what it does to a wolf and I have been telling myself for a month that what you have is something else."

"It is not something else."

"No," she said. "It is not."

The river went under the boards.

"I have been in that Council house for two days," Maeve said. "I have been talking to Soren and to Lorcan and to the elders and I have been telling them what I know about you and about the Alpha and about the pack. And I have been lying."

I looked at her.

"Lying about what?"

"About you." She turned her head and looked out at the river. "I told them you were a rogue with a false name and a debt you did not owe. That is true and I have no shame in it. I told them you had put a bond on the Alpha and turned him against his own Beta." She looked back at me. "That is not true and I knew it was not true when I said it."

"You knew it in the hall. You said it in front of forty wolves."

"I said it in the hall because I was angry and because I had been standing in the background for nine years and nobody had ever asked me what I thought." Her voice did not rise. "And I have known since the boathouse. I stood on the harbour wall and watched the two of you come out of that door at dawn with your hands linked and your clothes wet through and I knew what it was. I have been in this pack nine years and I know what a true bond looks like. And I went to the Council anyway and I told them you had put a spell on him."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted the seat." She said it flatly. "I have wanted it since before Ronan took it. My father put my name forward when the old Alpha died and the pack chose Ronan and I have never once said a word about it in nine years and I have thought about it every day. Every single day. When he was sick in the spring I thought, this is the chance. This is the one chance I will ever get and I am going to take it."

The mist came up off the river and lay along the mill floor.

"So what changed?" I said.

"Soren." Maeve's jaw worked. "I have been in that house two days and I have seen what he is. He is old and he is quiet and he does not raise his voice and he has been sitting in that seat for forty years. And in two days I have watched him take a pack apart without once saying a word that could be written down and used against him." She looked at me. "He is not going to confirm me. He was never going to confirm me. He is going to take the territory and put a steward in the Blackthorn house and put you in a cell under that chamber and let Ronan die, and he is going to do it all with a paper and a seal and a very reasonable voice."

"You are certain of that."

"I am certain of it because I asked him." Maeve's mouth twisted. "I asked him on the first night, when I still thought I was going to get what I wanted. I said, Elder, when the pack is confirmed to me, what happens to the Alpha? And he looked at me the way a man looks at a dog that has brought him the wrong stick, and he said, the Alpha is a dying wolf with a false bond and a rogue mate and he will be dealt with according to the law." She paused. "And then he said, and you will be confirmed, Beta, in the fullness of time. And I knew what the fullness of time meant. It meant never."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"You will be finished," I said. "If you stand up in that chamber and say you lied to the Council, you will be finished as Beta and as a wolf in this pack. They will strike you off and they will write it down and it will follow you for the rest of your life."

"I know."

"Then why?"

Maeve looked at me.

"Because I have been in that house nine years and I have held it together while he could not and I have run the kitchens and the boats and the harvest and the wounded and I have done it because I love this pack." She straightened her coat. "And I am not going to stand by and watch a wolf from the north take it apart for a seat I was never going to be allowed to sit in."

I put my hand out.

Maeve looked at it.

"I am not going to shake your hand," she said. "We are not friends and we will not be friends. You are a rogue from Galway with a debt and a wolf in your chest that half this town is frightened of. But I will stand beside you in that chamber and I will say what I have to say, and I will say it loud enough for the elders to hear it."

"That is enough," I said, and put my hand down.

We went into the mill.

Ronan was at the table with the box in front of him and Oisin at the window and Nessa by the fire and Elara in the corner with her bag at her feet.

"Maeve has something to say," I said.

Maeve stood in the middle of the mill floor and said it.

She said it in about a hundred words and she did not make it smaller than it was. She said she had gone to Lorcan and traded information for a confirmed seat. She said she had told the Council things that were not true. She said she had done it because she wanted the seat and because she was frightened and because she had been holding the house together for nine years and had not been thanked for any of it.

When she was done Ronan stood up.

"You hit me once," he said. "In the hall. With a challenge. And I hit you once on the steps of the Council house in front of half the town. I think that is even."

Maeve looked at him.

"It is not even," she said. "But it will do."

"Then we go to the trial together," Ronan said. "All of us."

Down the street, the bell of the Council house began to ring for noon.