Chapter 83: Maeve's Flight

Maeve took the ledger off the table and walked out of the chamber.

She did not run. She walked, with the ledger under her arm and her copper curls tied back and her bruise fading on her mouth, and she went past the benches and past the clerk and out through the doors at the back.

It took the chamber about three seconds to understand what had happened.

"Stop her," Ilsa said.

Two Council wolves went out after her. I went after them.

I caught her on the stairs.

"Maeve."

She stopped with her hand on the rail and turned round.

"Give me the ledger."

"No."

"That ledger is the only thing in this house that ties Soren and Lorcan to thirty one deaths. If you walk out of here with it, this Council has nothing."

Maeve looked at me.

"This Council has nothing anyway," she said. "You have been in it for a day and you have not worked out what it is. Five elders and a clerk and a guard and a hundred years of paper, and not one of them will do a thing that Soren has not already written down for them. I have been in this house two days and I have watched them. Ilsa has lost her nerve and Rannoch will vote with whoever is loudest and the other three are Soren's." She held up the ledger. "This is the only thing in this building that can take him down and I am not going to leave it on a table where his clerk can put it in the fire."

"Then give it to Ilsa and let her lock it up."

"Ilsa will put it in the archive under the chamber and it will be gone by morning." Maeve came down a step. "I have run a house for nine years, healer. I know how a thing gets lost. You put it somewhere safe and you tell one person where it is and by the end of the week nobody can find it."

I stood on the stairs.

"Where are you taking it?"

"Out of this town and onto a boat and up the coast to a pack that does not owe Soren anything." She looked at me. "I am not doing this for you. I am doing it because I have been Beta of the Blackthorn Pack for nine years and I stood in a Council house two days ago and traded my Alpha for a seat, and I am going to spend the rest of my life making that right."

The two Council wolves came up the stairs behind me.

Maeve looked at them and then at me.

"Tell them to stand down," she said.

I turned round.

"Stand down," I said. "The Beta is acting on the Luna's orders."

The two wolves stopped.

Maeve looked at me for a long moment.

"Luna," she said.

"You stood in a yard this morning and took my hand," I said. "That makes you my Beta. And a Beta who is doing what needs to be done is not a Beta I am going to hand to the guard."

Maeve's jaw worked.

Then she came down the last two steps and put her hand out.

I took it.

"Oisin is in the corridor," I said. "He has a boat at the mill and he knows every harbour on this coast. Take him with you and do not go north on the road."

Maeve went out.

I went back up into the chamber.

Ilsa was standing at the table.

"The Beta has gone," I said. "She has taken the ledger and she has gone to a pack that does not owe Soren anything, and she will send word when it is safe."

"That is theft," Ilsa said.

"That is the only reason this Council is going to survive the week," I said. "And if you want the ledger back you will have to deal with me."

The chamber was quiet.

Lorcan stood up.

"Elder Ilsa," he said. "I have a thing to say and I would like to say it before the guard comes for me." He put his hands on the table. "I have signed thirty one orders and I did not ask what they were for and I have known since the spring that something was wrong and I did not say a word. I am not going to ask for mercy. I am going to ask for paper and a pen and a room with a lock on the inside, and I am going to write down every name I know and every order I signed and every wolf who paid."

Ilsa looked at him.

"You will have the room," she said. "And the pen. And when you have finished writing you will stand in this chamber and read it out loud."

Lorcan sat down.

I went out of the chamber and up the stairs.

Ronan was awake.

He was sitting up in the bed with a blanket round his shoulders and his hair on end and Padraig in the chair beside him.

"Fiadh," he said. "What happened?"

"Soren has run and Lorcan has confessed and Maeve has taken the ledger and gone north." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "And Bran is on the north road with a rifle and a grey coat and he has been buying hunters with Soren's money."

Ronan looked at me.

"Then Soren is not running," he said. "He is going to Bran. He is going to give him the seat and the money and the hunters and he is going to do it in the north where there is nobody to write it down."

I sat on the edge of the bed with the stone in my pocket and the letter from my mother in my coat.

"Then we go north," I said.

Padraig stood up.

"Healer," he said. "Before you go north there is a thing in your coat that you have not read."

I put my hand in my coat and took out the letter.

It was old and soft and sealed with wax and it had my name on it in my mother's handwriting.

I broke the seal.