Chapter 97: Lorcan's Master

The bell was the harbour bell and it was ringing because a boat had come in.

"Stay here," I said to Colm. "Do not move and do not open that door until I come back."

I went out.

The harbour was full of lanterns. There were three boats at the pier and a fourth coming in, and the wolves on the wall had lit the beacons and the whole of the pack was down on the slip.

Oisin met me at the bottom of the path.

"It is the Council's boat," he said. "From the north. It came in under a white flag and there is a wolf on it who says he has come to speak to the Council in session."

"Which Council?"

"The one in this house." Oisin looked at me. "It is a keeper, Fiadh. He says he is a keeper of the northern seat and he has come to claim the debt."

I went down to the slip.

The wolf who came off the boat was old and he was small and he wore a plain grey coat and he had no guards and no clerk and no paper in his hand.

"My name is Cael," he said. "I am a keeper of the northern seat."

"The keepers," I said. "The ones who have been in the north since before the Council."

Cael looked at me.

"You have been to Dunmore," he said. "You have the look of a wolf who has been to Dunmore."

"I have the letter," I said. "The one my father wrote sixty years ago."

Cael's face did not change.

"Then you know what the debt is," he said. "And you know who it belongs to."

"It belongs to you."

"It belongs to the keepers." Cael put his hands together in front of him. "I have come to claim it, and I have come to offer you a bargain, and I am going to offer it in front of your pack and your Council so that there is no mistake about what was said."

We went up to the house.

The hall was full by then. Ilsa was at the top of it with her shawl round her shoulders and the four elders behind her and Lorcan under guard at the side. The pack was on the benches. Ronan was at the door with his arms folded.

Cael stood in the middle of the hall.

"The keepers of the northern seat have kept the founder's bloodline for three hundred years," he said. "We kept the records and we kept the binders and we kept the debt. We did not make the Council and we did not make the law and we did not put a false bond on any wolf. We kept the line."

"You kept me in a debt that was not a debt," I said.

"We put a debt on your name because a debt is how you keep a wolf." Cael looked at me. "It is not a kind thing. It is the way it has always been done. And I am here tonight because the way it has always been done has stopped working."

"Who stopped it?"

"You did." Cael looked at the hall. "There is a founder wolf in this house who has broken a false bond in a Council chamber and named the ritual in front of five elders and put a paper with thirty one names on it on a table where the whole town could see it. That is the end of the keepers, healer. If the archive is read out loud in six days there is no keeping anything any more."

The hall was silent.

"Then what are you offering?" Ilsa said.

Cael turned to her.

"The keepers will give this Council the records," he said. "All of them. Three hundred years. The names of every binder and every wolf who paid and every wolf who was bound. In exchange the founder wolf will come north to the seat and stand in the house of the keepers and be recorded as the heir of the line."

The hall went up.

"You want me in the house," I said. "The house my mother was in. The house she was bred in."

"I want you recorded as the heir," Cael said. "Not bred. Recorded. It is a different thing."

"It is the same house."

"It is the same house and it is a different thing." Cael looked at me. "I am ninety years old and I have been a keeper since I was twenty and I have watched three wolves of the founder's blood go into that house and not come out. I am not going to watch a fourth. I am offering you the door and the title and the records and I am asking you to walk through it of your own accord."

I stood in the hall of the Blackthorn house.

"Let me think about it," I said. "And while I am thinking about it, there is a wolf in this house I want you to look at."

I went to the side of the hall where Lorcan was sitting under guard.

"Cael," I said. "Do you know this wolf?"

Cael looked at Lorcan.

Lorcan looked at Cael.

And something went across Lorcan's face that I had never seen there before. It was not the smile and it was not the careful blankness and it was not the tiredness. It was fear.

"Envoy," Cael said. "You did not tell them."

"I told them what I was told to tell them," Lorcan said.

"You told them Soren," Cael said. "You did not tell them me."

The hall went silent.

"Lorcan," I said. "Who is your master?"

Lorcan looked at me.

And then he looked at Cael, and he put his hands over his face, and he said, "The keepers. It has always been the keepers."

The hall went up.

Ilsa struck the table.

"The hall will be silent," she said. "The envoy will be taken to a room and locked in it and the keeper will be taken to a room and locked in it and nobody will speak to either of them until morning."

The guards came forward.

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