Chapter 78: The Bond Breaks

The doors of the chamber opened and Bran came up the aisle.

He had his grey coat on and his broken nose and his old mended boots, and he came up the middle of the chamber with two wolves behind him and a paper in his hand.

"Elders," he said. "I am Bran of no pack. I have a claim on this Council seat and I have had it for thirty years and I have been too polite to say so. I am not polite any more."

Soren stood up.

"You have no claim on this seat."

"I have a claim on any seat that falls vacant," Bran said, "and I have spent a year buying votes and boats and wolves on this coast and I have enough of them to make a claim stick." He put the paper on the table. "But I did not come here to take a seat from an old man. I came here because I have been listening at the door for an hour and I heard something I did not expect."

"And what was that?"

"The founder wolf," Bran said. "I have been buying hunters to bring her to me alive for a month and I have been doing it because a founder wolf is worth more than a Council seat. And now I am standing in this chamber and I am watching her put a paper on the table and I am thinking, this is not a wolf who can be bought." He looked at me. "Healer. I will make you an offer. Come north with me and I will give you the north coast and the boats and the gold and every wolf in the highlands behind you. And I will not put a mark on your chest and I will not put you in a cell."

I looked at him.

"No," I said.

"That is a great deal of gold."

"I know. And I have a mate and a pack and a box with a false bond in it and I am not going north with you." I put my hand flat on the table. "But there is a thing you can do for me and it will cost you nothing and it will make you the most popular wolf in this chamber."

"What is that?"

"Sit down and be quiet," I said. "I am about to break a false bond in front of the Council of Alphas and there is not a wolf on this coast who will not want to have been in the room when it happened."

Bran looked at me for a long moment.

Then he laughed and went and sat down on the front bench.

I turned to Ronan.

"Get the box," I said.

He got the box out of his pack and put it on the table.

"Elder Ilsa," I said. "Elder Rannoch. Elder Soren. There is a false bond in this box that was made by a binder of this Council and put on the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack in April. I am going to break it now, in front of you, and I am going to do it with the rite that is written on the page in my coat and the salve in my pack. And when it is done there will be no false bond and no charge of an unlawful bond and no box and no cell."

Soren's hands were flat on the table.

"You cannot break a bond in a Council chamber," he said. "It has never been done."

"Then this will be the first time," I said.

I put the black salve on my hands.

I put the box on the table in front of Ronan and I put my hands on it and I said the words from the page. I said them the way Padraig had taught me and the way Elara had said them in the cave, backwards, a knot untied by pulling the end back through the way it came.

The chamber went cold.

It went cold the way the cave had gone cold, a cold that came up off the floor and into my hands, and the mark on the box went warm and then it went hot and then it went bright, and the whole chamber saw it.

The box opened.

Something came out of it. It was not smoke and it was not light. It was a thin grey rope of a thing, and it came out of the box and it went into Ronan's chest, and he arched back and his mouth came open and he did not make a sound.

I pulled.

I pulled the way I had pulled in the cave, with my hands on the box and the salve on my palms and the thread in my fingers, and the grey rope came out of him and into the box.

And then it did not come.

It stuck.

I pulled and it did not come, and I felt it in my hands, a resistance, a weight on the other end of the rope that was not in the box and was not in the air and was in Ronan.

"Fiadh," Padraig said. "What is it?"

"It is tied," I said. "It is tied into something."

"Into what?"

I put my hand on Ronan's chest and I felt it. The grey rope went into his chest and it went down through him and it was wound round something at the bottom of him, something that moved when he breathed, something that beat.

His heart.

"It is tied to his life," I said.

The chamber went up.

Elara came up the aisle.

"The page," she said. "The back of the page. Your mother wrote on the back of the page. What did she write?"

I got the page out of my coat with my hands shaking.

I read it.

It said: If the bond is tied to a life, the breaking will take the life with it. Do not attempt without a healer who can hold the thread.

I stood in the Council chamber with the page in my hands and the box on the table and Ronan's life tied to the end of a rope in my fingers.

"Fiadh," Ronan said.

I looked at him.

"If you let go," he said, "it goes back into me and it is worse than it was. If you pull, it takes my heart with it." He put his hand on my hand. "You have to choose. And whatever you choose I am not going to be angry with you."

I stood in the middle of the Council chamber with the whole of the Council watching me.

And then I did the only thing I could think of.

I pulled the thread into myself.