Chapter 116: The Truth He Wouldn't Say

The lights went out and the whole court went up and the only thing in the room that was still going was the horn on the quay.

I had my hand on Declan's arm before the dark had settled. The bond in my chest was wide open and I could feel the whole of him, the fear and the pull and the thing under both of them that had been there since the first night.

"There is a door at the back of this room," he said, close to my ear. "It goes into the corridor and the corridor goes down the back stairs to the yard. There is a gate in the yard wall and the gate is open and there is a lane behind it."

"The court," I said.

"The court is nine wolves in a dark room and there is not a wolf on the quay who is going to touch them." He took my hand. "It is us they have come for. There is a hunt called and a hunt has a quarry and the quarry is a woman with gold hair and a man with auburn hair and a boy who has been in the hand of the Alpha since he was fourteen."

The whole room was shouting. Somebody had a torch and the beam went across the gallery and across the benches and caught my sister's face and Mairéad's silver hair and the woman with black hair standing behind the table with her hand up.

I found Cormac by the door with Mary beside him.

"Down the back stairs," I said. "The yard and the lane. Go now and do not stop and do not look back."

Cormac took Mary's hand and went.

The corridor was dark and the back stairs were dark and the whole of the building was full of the sound of the quay. We came down into the yard and the gate was open and the lane was wet and the whole of it was quiet and we went along it at a run.

We got as far as the corner and the dogs found us.

There were four of them and they came round the corner of the lane with their leads trailing and their heads down and they were not hunting dogs and they were not wolves. They were dogs and they had been given a scent and they came at us and Declan shifted in the middle of the lane and put himself between the dogs and Cormac and the whole of it was noise and fur and teeth for about ten seconds.

Then a man came round the corner with a lamp and a lead in his hand and shouted them off.

"Get back," he said. "Get back. There is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be bitten by a dog in a lane for a woman in a black coat." He pulled the leads and the dogs went back and he was a big man with a red face and a coat that had been rained on and it was the fireman from the quay.

He looked at the wolf in the lane and then at me and then at Cormac.

"There is a thing about this afternoon," he said, "that I have been trying to say to a wolf in a good coat for the last hour and that no wolf has let me say. The men on that quay are not the men of Sligo and they are not the Kelleher men and they are not hunters. They are dockers and coal men and two of them are firemen off my own watch and they have been paid twenty pounds each to stand on a quay with a lamp and a dog and blow a horn." He put his hand in his coat and took out a fistful of notes. "And there is a thing about a man who is paid twenty pounds to stand on a quay. He does not go up a lane after a wolf. He stands on the quay and he blows the horn and he goes home."

The lane was quiet.

"Then there is not a hunt," I said.

"There is a hunt on paper and there is not a hunt on the ground." The fireman put the notes back in his coat. "And there is a thing about that which is worse than a hunt. A woman in a black coat has paid forty men to stand on a quay and blow a horn and she has done it in front of nine wolves of the Court of Alphas and the whole of the gallery. And there is a reason for that and the reason is not a wolf in a lane. The reason is a room on the floor below the court with a wolf on the door and a man inside it who can open it."

Declan shifted back and stood in the lane with his coat over his arm and his face grey.

"Kern," he said. "The hold."

We went back through the yard and in through the back door and down the back stairs and the whole of the building was still going and the corridor on the ground floor was full of wolves and smoke and shouting.

The room at the end of the corridor had a wolf on the door.

The wolf on the door was on the floor.

He was not dead. He was sitting against the wall with his hand on his head and a cut over his eye and he said, "There were three of them. They came down the back stairs with a key and they opened the door and they went in and they came out with the Keeper and a thing in a box and they went out through the yard."

The door of the room was open and the room was empty and the chair was on its side and the desk was cleared and there was a thing on the floor that had been dropped in a hurry.

It was a photograph. It was old and it was creased and it was a picture of a man in a good coat standing in front of a building with a brass plate on the door, and the man was young and he had a thin face and a pair of spectacles and it was Kern.

And on the back of it, in the thin elegant sloping hand, there was a line.

"The hold is open. E."

I stood in the empty room with the photograph in my hand.

"Then there is a thing we have to do," I said, "and we have to do it now and we have to do it without the court and without the nine of them and without a paper. The hold is in the basement of this building and it has been there since 1961 and a woman in a black coat has just gone down to it with three men and a Keeper and a box. And there is a thing in that hold that has been there since 1961 and that a woman in Galway has been trying to get out since Friday and that she has not been able to get out because the door has a lock and the key was in the pocket of a man with a wolf on the door." I turned round. "And there is a thing about the key that I have been thinking about since the quay. She has the key now. And a woman who has been trying to get a thing out of a hold for four days and who has just got the key is a woman who is not going to open a door in a basement and take a thing out. She is going to open a door and put a thing in."

Declan looked at me.

"Put what in?"

"Cormac." I put the photograph in my coat. "She has been in this building since Friday and she has heard the whole of the file and she knows what is in it and she knows what the court is going to do this afternoon. And there is a thing in that file that she cannot take out and that she cannot burn and that is not a paper. It is a witness. And a witness who is in a hold in a basement with a stone floor and a drain is a witness who is not going to stand in a court in the morning."

Declan was already at the door.

"There is a thing about the hold," he said, "that I have not told you and that I am going to tell you now because we are going down to it. It is not a hold for a wolf who has been arrested. It is a hold for a wolf who is going to be kept. It has a drain in the floor and a pipe in the ceiling and a door with a lock on the outside and there is not a wolf in this building who has been in it since 1961."

We went down the stairs at a run.

And then Cormac stopped in the middle of the corridor and put his hand on my arm and said, "There is a thing I have not told you and that I am going to tell you now because there is not going to be a better time. She does not want a witness in a hold. She wants a wolf who is going to stand in front of the Court of Alphas and say the thing she told him to say. And there is a thing about me that she has known since I was fourteen and that she has been using since I was fourteen. I am the boy who says what she tells him to say. And if she has me in a hold in a basement with a stone floor and a drain, she is not going to keep me. She is going to make me say the thing she wants said, and she is going to do it in front of a court, and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to believe the woman from Dublin after that."