Chapter 92: Maeve's Alliance

Maeve came up the harbour road on a black horse with a Ravenscar flag on a pole and four Ravenscar wolves behind her.

She was in a good coat and her copper curls were tied back and she sat the horse the way a wolf sits a horse when she has been riding since she was a girl.

She stopped at the gate and got down and handed the reins to one of the four.

"Alpha," she said. "Luna."

"Maeve," Ronan said. "What is that flag?"

"It is a flag of parley. I have come under it and I will leave under it and no wolf in this house will be harmed by me or mine today." She looked at me. "I have an offer from Lord Callum of Ravenscar and I have been asked to bring it to you in person."

"Bring it in," Ronan said. "And leave the four outside."

Maeve left the four outside.

She came into the kitchen and stood at the end of the table and looked at the archive and the elders and the guards and Lorcan under guard and did not sit down.

"I have been north," she said. "I took the ledger to a pack that does not owe Soren anything and I put it in front of them and I told them what was in it. And then I went further north to Ravenscar and I sat down with Lord Callum and I told him what was in it too."

"And what did he say?" I said.

"He said he had been waiting thirty years for a reason to move against the Council and that a ledger with thirty one names in it was a very good reason." Maeve put a folded paper on the table. "He is offering an alliance. Six wolves on this coast and six on the north road and a boat at the mouth of the bay. He will stand with the Blackthorn Pack at the reading and he will stand with it at the trial and he will not ask for the territory or the boats or the tithe."

"What does he ask for?"

"The seat," Maeve said. "Soren's seat. He wants it and he has wanted it for thirty years and he will take it if the Council falls."

The kitchen was quiet.

"And what do you want?" I said.

Maeve looked at me.

"I want to come home," she said.

Nobody said anything.

"I have been in the north for a week and I have been in a Ravenscar house with a Ravenscar lord and I have done what I went to do and the ledger is safe." Maeve's voice was even. "And I have been thinking about this pack every night. I have been thinking about the wounded and the roof and the boats and the kitchen and the nine wolves who signed my paper. And I have worked out that I have been a fool and that I want to come home."

Ronan looked at her.

"You walked out of my hall," he said.

"I did. And I was wrong to do it and I am not going to make a speech about it." Maeve put her hands on the table. "I am asking to come back. As Beta. And I am bringing an alliance and a ledger and six wolves with me."

Ronan stood with his hands behind his back and looked at her for a long moment.

"Fiadh," he said. "What do you think?"

I looked at Maeve.

I looked at her and I thought about the mill step and the paper with nine names on it and the Council house and the ledger going north in her arms.

"Take the alliance," I said. "Do not take her back as Beta."

Maeve's face changed.

"Fiadh," she said.

"You went to the Council and you traded us for a seat and then you came back and you took the ledger and you went north and you did a good thing with it." I looked at her. "And then you went to Ravenscar and you brought back an alliance with a lord who has been trying to take this coast for thirty years. You have done one good thing and one thing I do not understand and you have done them both in a week, and I am not going to hand you this pack's Beta seat until I know which of them you are."

Maeve's jaw worked.

"That is fair," she said.

"I know it is fair. It is not kind." I put my hand out. "Come back into the house as a wolf of this pack and stand with us at the reading and I will watch what you do. And when the reading is over and the Council has decided we will talk about the Beta seat."

Maeve looked at my hand.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she took it.

"Right then," she said. "I will bring my four in and tell them the flag is down and there is a bed to be found somewhere."

She went out.

Padraig came over to the table with his stick.

"Healer," he said. "There is a thing you should know about the Ravenscar offer."

"What?"

"Lord Callum of Ravenscar has been in the north for thirty years and he has never once offered an alliance without a price." Padraig sat down. "If he is offering six wolves and a boat and no price, then he has already been paid by somebody else."

I looked at him.

"Who?"

"There is a name at the top of every page in Lorcan's ledgers," Padraig said. "And there is a second name under it. And there is a third name on the Ravenscar title deed that nobody in this house has looked at." He looked at me. "Callum of Ravenscar was given his territory by Soren forty years ago. He has been Soren's wolf since the day he took it."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Then the alliance is a trap," Ronan said.

"The alliance is a trap," Padraig said, "and Maeve brought it into this house with a flag and a smile."