Chapter 34: What the Healer Heard

The meeting broke up without a vote and without a decision, which was the worst of all possible outcomes and the only one I could have got. The co-op went out of the hall into the lane talking to each other in low voices, and Mairéad went out through the back with Korkut behind her and did not look at me, and Declan went down to the harbor with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders set and did not look at anyone.

I went to Ronan's cottage.

He was in the garden with a basket and a knife, cutting the last of the cabbage, and he straightened up when he saw me and his old face was grim.

"You have set a fire," he said. "I heard the whole of it from the church steps. Half the village came out of the hall talking about the safe and the other half went straight to the shop to tell Nora." He put the knife down. "Come in. There is tea and there is a thing I have been meaning to tell you since the church and I have been putting it off."

The kitchen was warm and the fire was built up and he poured the tea and sat down across from me and folded his hands.

"The Alpha's wrath is coming," he said. "Not on Saturday. Tonight. She has lost the hall and she has lost the cooper and she has lost the Beta, and a woman who has lost the hall does not wait for the safe to come up. She will do a thing tonight and it will be a thing that no one sees coming, and she will do it through the boy, because the boy is the only wolf in this village she can still reach."

"Cormac is with his father."

"Cormac is with his father and his father is a wolf who has just stood up in the hall and told the co-op he will dive on a safe that may hang him, and a man in that state is not watching his son." Ronan looked at me. "You need to put the boy somewhere she cannot reach him. Somewhere with a lock and a wolf who is not in the pack. There is one wolf in this village who is not in the pack and it is not me. I am in the pack. I have been in the pack for eighty years and she can hear me as clear as a bell."

"Padraig."

"Your guard from Dublin. He is not a wolf and she cannot hear a thing that is in his head and the boy can sit in a room with him and talk about the boats and the moon will pass over." Ronan picked up his cup. "And there is the other thing and it is the thing I have been putting off. Your sister came to me in February with a broken mark and a broken heart and I have not told you the whole of it because I did not know how to say it to a woman who had just buried her."

I put my cup down.

"Siobhan had a mate," Ronan said. "I do not know who he was and she would not tell me. She came to me in the winter with the mark on her throat and it was torn and it was bleeding and she said, Ronan, I have rejected a bond and it is killing me and I need you to tell me whether I am going to die. And I said, who was it, and she said, it does not matter, and I said, it matters a great deal, and she said, Ronan, if I tell you she will hear it in your head."

The fire settled. The wind came down the chimney.

"She rejected a bond," I said.

"She rejected it three times, in front of the Alpha, and the third time it broke." Ronan's old eyes were steady. "She did it in the hall in December with the whole co-op watching and she did it to a wolf whose name she would not say, and the Alpha witnessed it and the co-op saw it and the mark on her throat never healed. A broken mark does not heal. It stays open and it hurts and it hurts worse at the full moon." He looked at his tea. "That is why she went up to the high ground in the evenings. She was not only looking for stones. She was walking off the pain."

"Who was the wolf?"

"I do not know. She would not tell me and I did not press her because I was afraid of what she would say." Ronan put his cup down. "But I know this. When a wolf rejects a bond the other wolf feels it too and the other wolf carries it the same way. There is a wolf in this village with a broken mark on his throat and a pain that comes at the full moon, and he has been in this village all winter and no one has said a word about it." He looked at me. "And the only wolf in this village who has never once been seen without his collar buttoned at the throat is the Beta."

The kitchen went very quiet.

"Declan," I said.

"Declan has worn a collar to the throat since December and Declan has not been to a full moon run since December and Declan has been a man who stands in doors with his hands on the frame since December." Ronan picked up his cup and found it empty and put it down again. "And in December your sister rejected a bond in front of the Alpha and the whole co-op and the Alpha witnessed it. And in March your sister made a claim on the seat. And in April your sister was in the boathouse with a rope round her neck."

The fire ticked. I sat in the healer's kitchen with the tea going cold and my hand on the table and the bond in my chest going cold and tight and strange, because I had felt Declan's grief through the mind-link and I had taken it for the grief of a man who had carried a woman down a road, and it had not been that. It had been the grief of a wolf whose mate had rejected him and gone up to the high ground to walk off the pain and had died in the water.

"He did not tell me," I said.

"He could not tell you. She had rejected him in front of the Alpha and the whole co-op and the mark was broken and a broken mark is a shame in this village that no wolf speaks of." Ronan looked at me. "And there is the thing that matters more than the shame. In December your sister rejected a bond and the Alpha witnessed it and the co-op saw it and the whole village has known since December that the Beta of this pack has a broken mark. And Mairéad has been sitting in that hall with a Beta whose wolf is loyal to the seat and whose heart is broken and she has been using him since December the way a woman uses a horse that has been beaten."

The door of the cottage opened without a knock and Cormac came in with his coat open and his face white.

"He is gone," he said. "My father is gone. He went down to the harbor after the meeting and he got into the Cormorant and he went out and he has not come back and the tide is on the turn and there is a wind coming up from the southwest."

Ronan was on his feet. "Out to where?"

"Out to the point. I saw the light go round the headland." Cormac's voice was high. "And there is a thing I have not told you. In the meeting, when the Alpha went out through the back, she stopped by my chair and she put her hand on my shoulder and she said it in the pack voice. She said, go down to the harbor tonight when the moon is up and take the boat out to the deep water beyond the point and drop the anchor and leave it there until morning." He looked at me. "I did not go. I came here. But my father heard her say it and I saw his face when she said it and he got up and walked out of the hall before she had finished the sentence."

I was at the door before he had finished. "Where is Padraig?"

"At the shop. He came back from Athlone an hour ago and he is at the shop with Nora and he has a paper in his hand and he has been asking for you."

"Then go to the shop and get Padraig and take him down to the harbor and get into the first boat you can find and go out to the point." I pulled my coat round me. "Do not go near your father's boat. Do not get into the water. Stay in the boat and keep the light on him and do not let him out of your sight."

Cormac ran. I went out into the lane with Ronan behind me and the wind had come up from the southwest and the sky over the sea was the colour of a bruise and the moon was not up yet.

"Niamh," Ronan said. "The Alpha has sent a boy to the deep water with an anchor and she has sent a Beta out to the point in a boat on a night when the sea is wrong. She is not doing the same thing twice. She is not going to put a rope round anyone's neck. She is going to let the sea do it and she is going to have a witness who will say the man went out on his own in a bad wind and did not come back."

I shifted on the lane. It was the fourth time and it came faster than the others and I did not fight it and the pain took me down and up and then I was on four legs in the wind with the smell of the sea and the coming storm in my nose, and I went down the lane and along the shore road to the harbor with the whole of the village coming out of their doors to see what was happening and the tide coming in over the slip.

The Cormorant was out past the point with her light going and the sea was breaking white on the rocks and there was another light behind her, small and low, going out from the harbor with two men in it and a lamp.