Chapter 97: The Smuggler's Deal

We went back to the shore in the boat with the whole of Vaughan's crew standing at the rail and not one of them lifting a hand.

Thomas rowed. Nobody spoke. The harbour came up out of the dark and the whole of the pack was on the pier with lanterns and the three Alphas were on the shingle with their hands untied and their faces grey.

We got onto the pier and Clara went up the shore and Thomas caught her arm.

"Not yet," he said.

She turned round.

"The boat is at the stern of the ship," Thomas said. "I put it there myself this afternoon before the Council came up the cliff. It has a sail and a false name on it and a barrel of water and a bag of bread and a chart of the coast from here to Oban. I can have you on it in an hour and out past the point before the moon sets."

Clara said, "I am not leaving."

"I know you are not leaving." Thomas let go of her arm. "I am telling you the boat is there. That is all I am telling you. There is a boat at the stern of that ship with a sail and a false name and a barrel of water and a chart, and if at any point between now and noon tomorrow you decide that you would rather be alive in Oban than dead on a shore in the Highlands, you come and find me and I will put you on it."

The pier was quiet.

Clara looked at him.

"You have been a smuggler for thirty years," she said.

"I have been a smuggler for thirty years and a magistrate for thirty years and I have never once in the whole of it had to choose between the two." Thomas put his hat on. "You are the heir and the deed is in your pocket and the whole of this coast will answer to you if you live long enough to be answered to. And there is a thing coming at noon that has been coming out of the north for a hundred years and I have been on this coast for sixty of them and I have never seen anything like it. I am not going to stand on this pier at noon tomorrow and watch a schoolteacher be taken apart by a thing in a good grey coat." He looked at her. "So the boat is there. That is all I am saying."

Clara was quiet for a long moment.

"The boat is at the stern of the ship," she said.

"The boat is at the stern of the ship."

"With a sail and a false name and a barrel of water and a chart."

"And a bag of bread."

Clara looked at the water.

"I have been running since I was six years old," she said. "My father ran and he took me with him and we went from Oban to Perth and from Perth to a school and from a school to this village and the whole of it was running. And when I came back to this village I told myself I was coming back for a grave and I was coming back because there was nowhere left to run." She turned round. "I am not going to Oban. I am not going to the south. I am going to stand on this shore at noon with the whole of this pack and the whole of this coast and I am going to do the thing my grandfather did not do."

Thomas said, "And if the thing in the north takes you?"

"Then it takes me," Clara said. "And there will be a woman in Oban who remembers a schoolteacher who did not run."

Thomas looked at her for a long moment.

"Right, then," he said. "The boat stays at the stern."

We went up the shore.

And Marcus was standing at the top of the pier.

He had come down from the chapel with his two men behind him and his copper red hair loose and his face grey and his light brown eyes on Clara.

"The heir," he said. "The Alpha of Cragmoor and the Luna and the keeper of the island. I have been in the chapel all night and I have heard the whole of it through the window." He came forward. "There is a thing I have to say to you and it is not a thing I can say in front of the pack."

"Say it here," Clara said.

"Not here." Marcus looked at me. "Elias. There is a thing in me. It has been in me since the byre and it has been getting stronger every hour and it is not the copper wolf. The copper wolf is in the door. This is the other thing." He put his hand on his chest. "It is the thing that was in the well before the door opened and it went into the priest and then into the copper wolf and then into the door. And it is not in the door. It is in me."

The pier was quiet.

"Marcus," I said.

"It is in me and it is getting stronger and there is a thing it wants." He looked at me and his light brown eyes were wet. "It wants me to kill you. It has been telling me since the byre that if I kill the keeper the fragment comes out of him and goes into me and the whole of it is finished and the coast is closed and the thing in the north is shut out." He put his hand out. "And I have been sitting in the chapel all night with my hands in my lap and it has been getting stronger and I do not know how long I can hold it."

Clara said, "Then we put you in the byre with a chain on the door."

"The byre will not hold it." Marcus looked at her. "The byre did not hold the copper wolf. The chain did not hold the copper wolf. And there is not a wolf in this village who can hold a thing that has been in the well for a hundred years."

I looked at him.

"What do you want me to do?"

Marcus looked at me for a long moment.

"I want you to promise me a thing," he said. "If it takes me and I come for you and there is no other way, you will not let me be the thing that kills the keeper. You will put me down. You will put me down and you will not stand there and tell the pack that it was the curse and not the man." He put his hand on my shoulder. "I have been the Alpha of this pack for forty years on a lie and a kidnapped boy and a cup of silver and I have done a thing to you that cannot be undone. But I am not going to be the thing that ends this coast. Promise me."

The pier was quiet and the whole of the pack was on the shore with their lanterns.

"I promise," I said.

Marcus looked at me and his light brown eyes were clear for the first time in a long time.

"Thank you," he said.

And then he turned round and walked back up the shore toward the chapel.