Chapter 96: The Debt's True Owner

We stayed at the Dunmore house until the afternoon.

The old man's grandson brought bread and milk and we sat in the long room with the fire going and the books on the shelves and the old man talking.

He talked about my father for an hour and he talked about the north and he talked about the years after the war when the Council had been busy with its own affairs and the wolves on the coast had been left alone.

And then he talked about the debt.

"There was a thing your father said before he went south," he said. "He said the debt was not the Council's. He said the Council was a room full of old wolves who signed what was put in front of them and the debt was not theirs and never had been."

"Whose was it?" I said.

"He did not say a name. He said there was a wolf behind the Council and the wolf had been behind it for a hundred years and the wolf was not an elder and did not sit at the table." The old man looked at me. "He said the wolf was a keeper. He said the keepers had been in the north since before the Council and they had made the Council and they had been feeding it ever since."

Ronan sat forward.

"Keepers of what?"

"Of the blood," the old man said. "Of the line. Of the thing the Council was made to protect." He put his hands on the arms of his chair. "There is a family in the north called the keepers and they are not wolves of any pack and they are not elders of any Council and they have been in the northern seat since it was built. They keep the bloodline records and they keep the binders and they keep the debt."

I looked at the letter in my hands.

"The debt my mother owed," I said. "The debt that was really a trust that was really a trap. My father said it was not the Council's."

"Your father said it was the keepers'," the old man said. "He said a keeper had come to him in the spring before they took him and had offered him a bargain. The keeper would keep the Council off him and keep his daughter safe and in exchange your father would come north and stand in the house and do what was asked of him." The old man's voice was quiet. "And your father refused. And two weeks later the Council wolves came to Galway."

The fire cracked.

"Who is the keeper now?" Ronan said.

"I do not know. I have not been in the north in forty years." The old man looked at me. "But there is a thing I do know. Your father went south to collect a debt from a wolf in the northern seat and he did not come back. And forty years later there is a debt on your name that was never a debt and a contract that brought you to this coast on purpose. Somebody has been keeping the line for two generations."

I sat on the floor of the Dunmore house with the letter in my hand.

"Then the debt is not the Council's," I said. "It is the keepers'. And the keepers put it on me and wrote a contract and sent me to a dying Alpha's house, and they have been doing it since before I was born."

"It is a long game," Padraig said. "A hundred years is nothing to a family that has been in the northern seat since it was built."

We walked back over the mountain in the late afternoon.

Ronan was quiet for most of it and so was I. Padraig went ahead with Oisin and the two of them talked about the path and the weather and did not say a word about any of it.

We came down into the north cove at dusk and Oisin's boat was there and we went back along the coast in the dark.

I sat in the stern with the letter in my coat.

"Fiadh," Ronan said. "There is a thing we have not talked about."

"What?"

"The name at the bottom of the Ravenscar page. Colm."

I sat in the boat with the wind in my face.

"I know," I said. "I have been thinking about it all day and I have not worked out what to do about it."

"You have to ask him."

"I know I have to ask him. But if I ask him in front of the pack and he denies it, then I have accused a wolf of this pack of treason on the word of a ledger, and the nine who walked out will say I am turning on my own wolves." I looked at him. "And if I ask him alone and he admits it, then I have to decide what to do with him and I do not know what to do with him."

"Then we ask him together," Ronan said. "Tonight. In the sickroom with the door shut and no one else there."

We came into the harbour at midnight.

The pack house was quiet and the lights were low and Colm was on the wall with a lamp in his hand because it was his turn on watch.

"Alpha," he said. "Luna. You are back."

"Colm," I said. "Come down. There is a thing we need to ask you."

He came down off the wall and stood in front of us with the lamp in his hand.

"Am I in trouble?" he said.

"I do not know yet," I said. "Come into the sickroom."

We went into the sickroom and I shut the door and Ronan stood with his back to it.

Colm stood in the middle of the room with the lamp in his hand and his soft anxious face and he looked from me to Ronan and back again.

"Colm," I said. "There is a name at the bottom of a page in a ledger that came out of the Council house. It is a Blackthorn name and it is yours."

Colm's face did not change.

He put the lamp down on the shelf.

"Which page?" he said.

"The Ravenscar page."

Colm was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, "I have been waiting for somebody to ask me that for two months."

And down in the harbour, the bell began to ring.