Chapter 86: Fiadh's Refusal

The smoke was coming under the archive door in a thin grey line.

"Rónán," Padraig said. "Open this door."

"I am burning the orders," the voice behind the door said. "All of them. Every order in this archive. And when I have finished I am going to burn the rest of it."

I put my hand on Padraig's arm.

"Let me," I said.

He stepped back.

"Rónán," I said. "My name is Fiadh. I am the healer who broke the false bond in the chamber this afternoon and I am the founder wolf your grandfather has been hiding for twenty two years."

The smoke went on coming under the door.

"I know who you are," Rónán said. "I have been writing your file for two months."

"Then you know what your grandfather did to me and you know what he did to save me. And you know that if you burn those papers in that grate you will burn the only thing in this house that puts Soren in a cell." I put my hand flat on the door. "Open the door and give me the papers and I will not tell anyone you were in that room."

The smoke stopped.

The door opened six inches.

Rónán was twenty six and thin and he had Padraig's blue eyes and he was holding a bundle of papers in one hand and a candle in the other.

"I have not burned them," he said. "I have been sitting in here for an hour trying to work out what to do and I put the candle in the grate and I have been letting it smoke."

I looked past him into the archive. The grate was smoking and the papers were on the table and there was a lamp burning on the shelf.

"Give me the papers," I said.

He gave me the papers.

I went back up the stairs with the bundle under my arm and Padraig behind me and Rónán behind Padraig, and the chamber was still in session and Ilsa was still in the middle chair.

"Elders," I said. "I have the archive. And I have a thing to say before you read any of it."

The chamber went quiet.

"Lorcan came to me an hour ago and offered me a deal. He would give me Soren and the names and the orders and in exchange I would not tell this Council that he signed the orders himself." I put the bundle on the table. "I refused him. I refused him in front of witnesses in the hall of this house and I am refusing him again now in front of this Council. There is no deal. There is a wolf who signed thirty one orders and there is a Council that is going to try him for it, and there is an archive on this table that is going to be read out loud."

The chamber went up.

Lorcan was sitting on the bench at the side with his hands folded and he did not move.

Ilsa struck the table with her hand.

"The chamber will be silent," she said. "The healer has refused a deal and the Council has heard her refuse it. The envoy will be held in this house pending trial and his statement will be read into the record." She looked at the bundle. "The archive will be read into the record. And the trial of the elder Soren will be opened in his absence and adjourned until he is found."

She looked at me.

"Healer. The Council will need a wolf to read the archive. It is four hundred pages and it is in three hands and it will take a week."

"I will read it," I said. "But I will not read it here."

"Where then?"

"At the Blackthorn house. On the Blackthorn coast. With the doors open and the pack listening and a clerk writing down every word." I looked at the five elders. "This Council has been reading its own papers behind a locked door for two hundred years. It is going to read them out loud where the wolves can hear."

The chamber was silent.

Then Ilsa stood up.

"The Council will adjourn," she said, "and will reconvene at the Blackthorn house on the coast in seven days. The archive will travel with the Council and the doors will be open." She looked at Soren's empty chair. "And the elder Soren will be found and brought to answer."

The chamber broke up.

I went out into the corridor and Ronan was there in his blanket with Nessa at his shoulder and Colm behind him.

"Well?" he said.

"The Council is coming to the Blackthorn house in seven days and we are going to read four hundred pages out loud with the doors open."

Ronan looked at me.

"Then we had better go home," he said.

We went out of the Council house into the market.

The market was full. There were wolves on the steps and wolves on the wall and wolves in the street and every one of them was looking at us.

And at the top of the market, on the road, there was a rider on a lathered horse.

He came down the market at a canter and pulled up in front of us and got off the horse.

"Alpha," he said. "I have come from the Blackthorn coast. I have been riding for two days." He put his hand on his knee and got his breath. "There are wolves at the border. Ravenscar wolves and the highland wolves and the ones from Rathlin. They came over the north track three days ago and they have taken the pack house."

Ronan's face changed.

"The pack house," he said.

"The wounded are inside it and they have not been harmed. But there is a wolf standing on the wall with a flag and he is saying the territory is forfeit and he is holding it in the name of the Council."

I looked at Ronan.

"Bran," I said.

"Bran," Ronan said. "And we are seven days from a Council and two days from a boat."