Chapter 82: The Blood Ritual Revealed

The car came up the market and stopped at the door of the Council house and the wolf on the running board jumped down before it had stopped moving.

It was Lorcan.

He came up the steps two at a time with his coat open and his notebook in his hand and he did not knock.

"Where is the Alpha?" he said.

"Upstairs," I said. "He is alive and he is sleeping and you are not going in."

"I am not going in. I am going down." Lorcan looked at me and his face was not the face he usually wore. "The elders are in the chamber. All five of them. Soren's chair is empty and Ilsa has called the Council back into session and she has asked for you."

"For me?"

"For you and for the box and for the paper and for the binder." He looked past me at Elara, who was standing at the top of the stairs with her green scarf in her hands. "You are to come down and you are to bring the box and you are to tell the Council what is in it."

I looked at him.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I have been an envoy for twenty years and I have written down a great many things I did not like and this morning I wrote down the name of a wolf who was bound in the year before last and died of it, and then I wrote down the name of a wolf who was bound in the spring and did not die of it because a healer from Galway pulled it out of his chest in a Council chamber." He put his notebook away. "I am fifty one years old and I have a pension and a house in the north and I have been a coward for twenty years. I would like to be something else before I retire."

I went down.

The chamber was not full this time. There were five elders at the table and Lorcan and a clerk and Ilsa in the middle chair with her white hair pinned up and her old face set.

And there was Maeve.

She was standing at the side of the chamber with a leather ledger under her arm and her copper curls tied back and a look on her face I had not seen before.

"Elder Ilsa," I said. "You asked for me."

"I asked for the healer and the box and the binder." Ilsa's voice was tired and steady. "Healer. There is a thing this Council has been told and I want it said out loud in this chamber with the doors open so that the town can hear it. Tell us what a blood ritual is."

I stood in the middle of the chamber.

"A blood ritual is a bond that is made by force," I said. "It is made with a knife and a mark and words that are not in any language on this coast. It takes the strength out of the wolf who is bound and gives it to the wolf who binds. It does not need the leave of the wolf who is bound and it does not need the leave of the Council. It only needs a binder and a paper and a wolf who cannot say no."

"And the box?"

"The box is the anchor. It was made by a binder and it held the bond on the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack for seven months." I put the box on the table. "It is empty now. The bond is out of it and it is in a stone in my pocket and I am not going to let it out."

The chamber was quiet.

"Elder Rannoch," Ilsa said. "Read the list."

Rannoch stood up with the paper in his hand and he read the eleven names on Tomas's list and then he read the names from the record under the chamber, and there were thirty one of them, and he read every one.

When he had finished the chamber was silent.

"Thirty one wolves," Ilsa said. "In two hundred years. Bound without their leave by binders of this Council and dead of it within the year. And there is not one line in any file in this house that says who ordered it."

She looked at Lorcan.

"Envoy. You have been in this business for twenty years. Who ordered it?"

Lorcan stood up.

"I have never been told," he said. "I have been told what to write and where to send it and I have been told that the binders are trained in the northern seat and that the orders come from the top of the Council. I have never been told a name and I have never asked, because a man who asks that question in this house does not keep his job."

"And now?"

"Now I am asking." Lorcan looked at the empty chair where Soren had sat. "And I am going to write down the answer when I get it."

The chamber door opened behind me and Maeve came forward with the ledger under her arm.

"Elders," she said. "I have been in this house two days and I have been in the envoy's room and I have been through his ledgers. There is a book in there with the names of every binder on this coast and the date of every binding and the name of the wolf who paid for it." She put the ledger on the table. "And there is a name at the top of every page."

Ilsa opened the ledger.

She looked at the page for a long time.

Then she closed it and put her hand flat on the cover.

"The name at the top of every page," she said, "is Soren."

Lorcan did not move.

"And there is a second name," Ilsa said. "Under his. On every page. In a different hand." She looked at Lorcan. "It is yours."

The chamber went up.

Lorcan stood very still.

"I signed the orders," he said. "I did not know what they were for and I signed them and I wrote them down and I sent them north and thirty one wolves died of it." He put his hands on the table. "I am not going to pretend I did not. I am going to tell this Council everything I know and I am going to do it in writing and I am going to do it today."

The chamber door opened again and a wolf came in with a paper in his hand.

"Elder Ilsa," he said. "There is a rider come in from the north road. The elder Soren's car has been found at the ford. The car is empty and the driver is dead and there is blood on the seat."

The chamber went silent.

"Where is Soren?" Ilsa said.

The wolf looked at the paper in his hand.

"Nobody knows," he said. "But there is a thing the rider said that he heard from the ferryman at the ford. He said there was a wolf on the north bank of the river with a rifle and a grey coat, and he was not alone."

I looked at Lorcan.

"Bran," I said.

Lorcan's face had gone grey.

"Bran has been buying hunters for a year," he said. "And he has been buying them with Soren's money."