Chapter 19: The Weight and the Water

Ronan was in his kitchen with the fire built up and a pot of tea on the table and a book in front of him. It was a big book, bound in brown leather, and the spine was cracked and the pages were foxed with damp, and it was not the charter in the hall.

"Shut the door," he said. "And sit down where the light is. You have the look of a woman who has been up all night."

"I have been up all night."

"Then you will need strong tea." He poured it without asking. "The book is the second copy. The one that was in the old charter house. Your mother and I took it out of the cache on the night of the fire and we hid it in my roof and it stayed in my roof for thirty six years until your sister came to me in February and asked me about it." He pushed the cup toward me. "I brought it down out of the roof this morning. There is no point in keeping a thing in a roof if the woman who needs it is sitting in my kitchen."

I put my hand on the book. The leather was warm from the fire and it smelled of old paper and soot.

"Tell me what I need to know," I said. "And then tell me what I am allowed to do that Mairéad cannot stop."

Ronan sat down across from me and folded his hands on the table. "The charter has three parts. The first part is the co-op. The boats and the catch and the moorings and the rules for the season. That part does not matter to you tonight. The second part is the pack. The ranks and the duties and the territory and the borders and the rules for a wolf who breaks the peace. The third part is the seat. That is the part you need."

"Go on."

"The seat is the Alpha's. It is held for life or until a challenge is answered. The holder must be a wolf of this territory and of the blood of the pack. A challenge may be made by a wolf who holds a charter number and a weight, and the weight must be placed on the table of the Alpha in the presence of a witness. The Alpha may answer the challenge or forfeit the seat, and if she answers it, it is on the headland at the full moon, and the fight is between the two wolves and no one else."

"Declan told me that. What he did not tell me is what happens when the challenger is dead."

Ronan's old eyes were steady. "Then the challenge dies with her. That is the thing your sister did not understand. She made a claim in March and she lost and the claim was answered and the seat passed back to Mairéad, and there is no appeal from an answered challenge under the old law. You cannot make the same claim twice."

The tea went cold in my hands. "Then I have nothing."

"You have one thing." Ronan opened the book and turned the pages and put his finger on a line near the bottom. "The charter says a challenge may be made by a wolf who holds a charter number and a weight, in the presence of a witness. And it says a challenge that is answered by killing is answered for the challenger alone. But it also says this, and your sister read it and it is why she was frightened. If a challenger is killed by the Alpha in a fight that was ordered by a third party, the challenge is not answered. It is void. The seat is vacant and the pack must choose a new Alpha at the next meeting."

I put the cup down.

"Ordered by a third party," I said. "There is a word for that in this village. Cormac heard the Alpha say it in the hall."

"Cormac is a boy and he is frightened and he is the son of the Beta. He will not say it in front of the co-op." Ronan closed the book. "But if the challenge is void, then the seat is vacant, and a vacant seat can be taken by any wolf of the blood of the pack who holds a charter number and a weight. Not a challenge. A claim to a vacant seat. It is a different thing and the Alpha cannot answer it with a fight, because there is no Alpha to fight. The pack must vote."

"And who counts the vote?"

"The co-op counts the vote. Every adult wolf with a charter number, one vote each. The Beta counts it and the healer witnesses it and the Alpha sits in the chair and does not vote unless the count is tied." Ronan looked at me. "And that is your opening, Niamh. Not a fight on the headland. A vote in the hall. But you cannot get a vote unless the seat is vacant, and you cannot get a vacant seat unless the co-op believes the challenge was ordered, and you cannot get the co-op to believe that unless the proof is put in front of them in a way that no one can argue with."

"The ring."

"The ring is a proof of blood. It is not a proof of the ordering." Ronan got up and put another sod on the fire. "The proof of the ordering is in the ledger your sister found in the back of the frame in the hall. She wrote it in her letter. A ledger that Mairéad keeps in the safe behind the charter, and the key to the frame is in the hollow under your hearth. If that ledger has the order written in it, and the date, and the name of the man in the town coat, then you have the thing you need."

"And if it does not?"

"Then you have a ring and a grandmother and a story, and Mairéad has a stolen seat and a village and an enforcer, and you will lose." Ronan sat down again. "There is one other thing you should know before you go. The enforcer is coming to this village to see that the co-op is kept in order, and he will want to speak to you before Saturday. He will ask you whether you make a claim. If you say yes, you will be taken to the Council in Galway and the Council will decide whether your claim is lawful. If you say no, you will be a rogue in this territory and Mairéad will be within her rights to run you out. There is no third answer."

"There is a third answer," I said.

Ronan raised his eyebrows.

"I say nothing. A claim is not made until the weight is on the table in front of a witness. If I do not put the weight on the table, I have made no claim, and the enforcer has nothing to judge me on." I stood up. "The Alpha will be on the Mary Rose on Saturday night with the whole co-op watching her. If I have the ledger and the ring and the charter in my hand by then, I do not need to challenge her on the headland. I need to stand up in the hall on Sunday morning and put the proof in front of the co-op and ask for a vote on a vacant seat."

Ronan looked at me for a long time. Then he said, "That is a good plan. It is also a plan that requires you to go into the hall at night and open a frame that is in plain sight of the whole village and take a ledger out of a safe that only the Alpha has a key to, and then hide it until Sunday morning in a village where the Alpha can hear what the pack is thinking."

"I know."

"And you have a bond with the Beta that will tell him everything you are thinking whether you want it to or not."

"I know that too."

"Then you will need to learn to keep your mind quiet." Ronan stood up and took his coat off the back of the door. "Come out to the garden. There is a thing you should have been taught when you were fourteen and your mother should have taught it to you, and she did not, and I am the only one left who can."

He took me out to the garden behind the wall, where the cabbage rows were and the little stone outbuilding with the slate roof, and he made me stand in the middle of the path with my hands at my sides.

"Close your eyes," he said. "Find the wolf. You know how to find it now. Find it and then put a wall around it. Not a wall of stone. A wall of water. The wolf is in the water and the water is in the wall and nothing gets out and nothing gets in. The Alpha can hear what a wolf is thinking when she calls the pack to listen. She cannot hear a wolf who is standing behind a wall of water. It takes practice. It takes years. But you have three days and you are your grandmother's granddaughter and your grandmother could do it with her eyes shut in the middle of a fight."

I closed my eyes. I found the wolf. It was there, patient, sitting at the back of my head where it always was, and I built a wall around it the way he told me, water on water, and it held for a moment and then it leaked.

"Again," Ronan said.

I did it again. It held a little longer.

"Again."

And then, from the lane behind the garden wall, a voice said, "Niamh. Ronan. The enforcer is at the hall and he is asking for the woman from Dublin. The Alpha has sent for her and she says if she is not at the hall by noon the enforcer will come to the cottage with the pack behind him."

I opened my eyes. Ronan was looking at me and his old face was very still.

"The ledger," I said. "The key. The frame in the hall. If I go to the hall now, I am in the same room as the safe."

"You will be in the same room as the safe and the Alpha and the enforcer and the whole co-op," Ronan said. "And the frame is in plain sight and the key is in your coat and your sister's letter is in your pocket and your face has never been able to keep a secret in its life. Go home. Wash your face. Put on your good coat. And when you go into that hall, think about the water. Think about the wall. And do not look at the frame."

He turned and went back into the cottage, and I stood in the garden with the cabbages and the wind and the sea beyond the wall, and I put my hand in my pocket and felt the small brass key with the paper tag on it that said, "The hall, the frame, the back of the charter."

Then I went out through the gate into the lane, and the man standing there waiting for me was not a villager. He was tall and grey-haired and he wore a good town coat, and he had a face like a retired schoolmaster, and he said, "Miss Niamh. I am Korkut. I am the regional enforcer for the Council of Alphas and I have come a long way to meet you. Will you walk up to the hall with me? The Alpha has tea and I have questions, and I find that a walk in the open air makes a difficult conversation easier for everyone."