Chapter 18: The Beta's Lie

I did not move from the back of the chair. I looked at him and he looked at me and the lie hung in the air between us like smoke.

"Say it again," I said. "Slowly."

"I do not know what you are talking about." His voice was flat and even and his grey eyes did not move. "I do not know what Cormac told you and I do not know what you think you heard. The night of the claim I was at the harbor. I have told you that already and I will tell you again as many times as you want to hear it."

"You were at the harbor." I felt the bond go tight and then go slack and then go tight again, and it was like standing on a pier with a rope around your waist and a boat pulling away. "And you did not go up the hill. And you did not carry my sister down to the boathouse. And you did not stand in the door of that boathouse with your hands on the frame and watch the sun come up."

His jaw moved. Something went across his face, quick, and was gone.

"I did not carry anyone down to any boathouse." He said it slowly and he said it looking me in the eye, and the bond told me it was a lie, and the bond told me it was a lie that was costing him something, and that was the worst of it. A man who lies easily is a man you can catch. A man who lies and it hurts him is a man who has decided the lie is worth the pain.

"Declan." I came round the chair and stood in front of him. "I am going to say a thing to you and you are going to listen to me the way you listened to me on the stairs, and then I am going to leave this cottage and go and do what I have to do. You have a bond with me. You told me yourself it is a thing that does not lie and does not let go. So you know what I am feeling right now, because I am feeling it through you and you are feeling it through me." I put my hand flat on his chest and he went still. "And what I am feeling is that the man standing in this kitchen is lying to me about his son and about my sister and about the night she died."

He looked down at my hand on his chest. His breath was not steady. I could feel his heart going under my palm, fast and hard, and the warmth of him came up through the wool of his shirt and the pull between us came up with it, and every part of me that was a wolf wanted to step in close and put my face in his neck and make the lie stop.

He put his hand over mine and lifted it off his chest and held it.

"You are right," he said.

The kitchen clock ticked. The gull screamed outside.

"I am going to tell you the truth now," he said, "and then you are going to have to decide whether you can live in the same village as me, because after I have said it there is not a thing I can do to make it better. I did not lie to you about the harbor. I was at the harbor. Everything I told you on the stairs was true. But there is a thing I did not tell you and it is the thing Cormac has told you and I have been carrying it for a month and I did not know how to put it into words." He let go of my hand. "The Alpha came to me at midnight on the Thursday and she said there was a woman in the hall who had lost a challenge and could not be moved and would I carry her down to the boathouse and put her on the floor. And I went up to the hall and your sister was lying on a blanket by the fire and she was breathing badly and there was blood on the blanket and I picked her up and I carried her down the road and I put her on the floor of the boathouse and I put a blanket over her and I stood in the door."

"And she said it was ordered by the Council."

"She said it was ordered." He looked at the wall. "I do not know if she said by the Council. Cormac says she did. I heard her say the word ordered and I heard the rest of it go past me like a wind. I have gone over it a hundred times and I cannot tell you whether she said the Council or not, and that is the truth of what is in my head."

"You could have told me that on the stairs. You could have told me that on the first night. I asked you why you did not go up the hill and you told me a story about a promise."

"Because the promise was real and the story was easier." He said it with a flat honesty that I had not heard from him before. "I have been the Beta of this pack for twenty years. I have carried a great many things down a great many roads and I have never once said out loud what I carried. And then a woman with her sister's eyes came into my harbor office and asked me why I did not go up the hill, and I told her about the promise because the promise was a thing I could say, and the other thing was not."

I walked away from him to the window. The village was up now. There was smoke from the shop chimney and a man on the pier with a hose and the light in the priest's window had gone out.

"Where is Cormac now?" I said.

"He will be at the harbor office. He goes there when he is frightened. He has done it since he was a boy." Declan's voice was careful. "I will go and find him and I will bring him home and I will not let the Alpha near him tonight."

"The Alpha will call the pack to listen."

"She will call the pack to listen at moonrise. That is her right under the charter and there is nothing I can do about it." He paused. "But I can keep the boy in a house with a stone wall and a fire and I can keep him talking about boats until the moon is over, and a boy who is talking about boats is not a boy who is thinking about a rope."

I turned round. "And what about me?"

"You will be in the cottage with the door bolted and you will think about boats."

"I do not know anything about boats."

"Then think about the weather. Think about the price of diesel. Think about anything that is not a silver ring and a note under a flagstone." He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "I am sorry I lied to you. I am not sorry I carried your sister down that road, because there was no one else to do it and she was not going to be left in that hall. Those are two different things and I want you to know that I know the difference."

He went to the door.

"Declan."

He stopped.

"The night of the claim. You carried her down to the boathouse and you put her on the floor and you stood in the door with your hands on the frame." I looked at him. "What did you see from that door?"

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "I saw the lights on the hill go out one by one. And I saw the light in the hall go out. And I saw a dark car come along the shore road with no lights on and stop at the slip, and a man got out and went up to the hall and came back down again with the Alpha, and they stood at the slip for a while and talked, and then the man went away." He turned his head. "And I saw the woman in the car. She had red hair. And she was crying."

"Did you know her?"

"I thought I did. I thought, that is Bridget, and then I thought, no, Bridget is banished, and I told myself it was a stranger from Galway and I went back to looking at the water." He opened the door. "I have been telling myself that for a month. It was Bridget. I knew it then and I know it now and I did not say it because I did not want to be a man who let a banished woman into his village and did not report her."

He stepped out onto the path and pulled the door behind him and then he stopped and put his head back round it.

"Niamh. The Council's enforcer is in the village. His name is Korkut and he is staying at the hall. He will want to speak to you before Saturday and he will do it politely and he will offer you a way out that sounds like a kindness. Do not take it. Whatever he offers you, do not take it." He looked at me. "And if you are going to do a thing that will make the Alpha come down on this village like a storm, do it before Saturday night, because on Saturday night she will be on that boat with the whole co-op watching her and there will not be a thing anyone can do."

He went down the path. I watched him go and then I went to the fireplace and lifted the flagstone and took out the ring and the key and my sister's letter and put them in the inside pocket of my coat.

Then I went down to Ronan's cottage, and I knocked on the door, and I said, "You are going to teach me pack law. All of it. Every clause that has a name in it. And you are going to do it now, before the enforcer comes, because I have a weight in my pocket and a ring in my coat and I am going to need to know exactly what I am allowed to do with them."