All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The rain had been falling since Galway, and by the time the bus left me at the top of the harbour road it had settled into the kind of grey, patient drizzle that soaks through wool and makes every stone in Donegal look like it has been weeping for a century. I stood with my case at my feet and counted the fishing boats in the harbour. Nine. Then I counted the lights in the windows of the big house on the hill. Four. Then I picked up the case and started walking, because a healer with a debt contract does not get to stand in the rain feeling sorry for herself.The pack house smelled of salt and wet dog and something warm underneath it, bread maybe, or the ghost of bread. A woman with short copper curls opened the door before I knocked. She looked me up and down, took in the case and the damp coat, and smiled with her mouth only."You'll be the healer," she said. "Maeve. Beta. I run this house, so if you need anything, you ask me and not one of the young ones, they'll only tell you wron

Lorcan was already seated when I came down, which told me something about him. A guest waits to be invited to sit. Lorcan had chosen the chair nearest the fire, the one with the good cushion, and he had his coat folded over the arm of it as if he were doing the room a favour by staying.The coat was grey wool, cut close, and it had not a speck of the coast on it. No salt, no rain, no dog hair. Beside him stood a man I did not know, broad and quiet, with sandy hair and a jaw like a door."You must be Fiadh," Lorcan said, and rose, and took my hand. His fingers were cool and dry and he held mine a moment longer than politeness asks. "I am Lorcan, envoy of the Council of Alphas. I have been looking after the Blackthorn Pack's interests in this difficult season. This is Eamon, my assistant.""Envoy," I said. "That's a fine word.""It keeps me busy." He smiled. He had grey eyes and black hair silvered at the temples, and the smile was the sort that a man practises in a mirror. "Sit, please

I woke at midnight because someone in the corridor was trying not to make a sound.That is a particular kind of noise. It is the noise of a person who is ill and does not want to be found. A boot scuffing a floorboard and then stopping for a count of ten. A hand sliding along a wall. A breath let out slowly between the teeth.I lay still and listened. The gulls had gone quiet hours ago. The wind had dropped, which on this coast is its own kind of warning. Down the corridor, something heavy met the wall with a soft thud.I got up, put my coat on over my shift, and opened my door.Ronan was four doors down, halfway between his room and the stairs, with one shoulder against the panelling and his hand flat on the wall. He had no lamp. The moonlight came through the corridor window and lay in a pale band across his face, and his face was wet."Alpha.""Go back to bed." His voice was a scrape. "This is nothing.""It's not nothing. You're standing in the dark talking to a wall.""I'm leaning

Padraig came up from the pier with a canvas bag over one shoulder and his white beard blowing sideways in the wind, and he did not look pleased to see me. He was a tall old man, stooped at the neck, with blue eyes gone watery at the edges and hands like knotted rope. The Council man walked a step behind him and did not say a word."So you're the one," Padraig said, and walked past me into the house.The Council man stopped in front of me. He was youngish, with a plain face and a grey coat cut the same way as Lorcan's, which told me whose he was."Fiadh the healer," he said. "Envoy Lorcan asks that you attend him at the grey house in the harbour at four this afternoon. He wishes to discuss your findings regarding the Alpha's health.""Tell him I'll come at five.""He said four.""Then he can discuss it with the wall until five." I went after Padraig.I found him in the sickroom with my tins on the shelf and his bag on the cot, and he was picking up my comfrey and sniffing it with an ex

The writ was short and it was worse than I had feared.Padraig brought it up to the Alpha's room and stood in the doorway reading it aloud by the light of my candle, because his eyes were old and the writing was small. The Council required the Blackthorn Pack to produce its debt healer for examination at the grey house in the harbour within three days, and to surrender all books and papers in her possession for inspection, and to confirm under seal that she had been duly registered as a healer of the Council before taking up her post."Registered," I said. "I have never been registered in my life. My mother trained me. She was registered, before she died. But she never put my name on the roll."Padraig lowered the paper. "Then they have you. An unregistered healer practising on an Alpha is a serious thing. It is a fine, or it is a ban, or it is worse, depending on who is sitting in the chair that day.""Who wrote this?""Lorcan. His hand is on the bottom of it." Padraig folded the pap