All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Ilsa came in and shut the door behind her and stood there with the lamp in her hand."He is gone," she said. "Soren. He went out through the back door an hour ago with a bag and a driver and he did not tell the guard at the gate where he was going.""Then he is running," I said."He is not running. He is an old man who has been on that Council for forty years and he has never once been challenged and he is not going to run." Ilsa set the lamp down on the table. "He is going north to the seat. He has a house there and a clerk and a room full of papers, and he will be sitting in it by morning writing letters to every elder on this coast.""Letters about what?""About a founder wolf who broke a bond in a Council chamber and a healer who stood in front of five elders and told them what the law was for." Ilsa sat down in the chair by the fire. "I have known him thirty years. He does not fight in a room. He fights in writing and he does it slowly and by the time you have noticed he has alre

Maeve took the ledger off the table and walked out of the chamber.She did not run. She walked, with the ledger under her arm and her copper curls tied back and her bruise fading on her mouth, and she went past the benches and past the clerk and out through the doors at the back.It took the chamber about three seconds to understand what had happened."Stop her," Ilsa said.Two Council wolves went out after her. I went after them.I caught her on the stairs."Maeve."She stopped with her hand on the rail and turned round."Give me the ledger.""No.""That ledger is the only thing in this house that ties Soren and Lorcan to thirty one deaths. If you walk out of here with it, this Council has nothing."Maeve looked at me."This Council has nothing anyway," she said. "You have been in it for a day and you have not worked out what it is. Five elders and a clerk and a guard and a hundred years of paper, and not one of them will do a thing that Soren has not already written down for them. I

Lorcan stood in the hall with the paper in his hand."Say it plainly," I said. "All of it. Not the version you would put in a notebook."He looked at me for a moment."Very well," he said. "Plainly. I will go north with you and I will stand in that house and I will give you every name I know and every order I signed and every wolf who ever paid for a binding. I will give you Soren. And in exchange you will not tell the elders that I signed the orders and you will let me keep my pension and my house and my name and walk away from this coast and not come back.""You signed thirty one orders.""I signed thirty one orders.""And thirty one wolves died of them."Lorcan's jaw worked."Yes," he said. "They did."I stood in the hall of the Council house and looked at him."You want me to let you walk away," I said. "You want me to let you keep a pension and a house in the north and a name that does not have thirty one dead wolves under it, and you want me to do it because you are going to giv

We left the Council town at dawn.Oisin had the boat at the mill and we went down through the market in the half-light with the whole of the Blackthorn Pack behind us and the Council clerk at the front with a satchel of papers and two Council guards for the archive. The market was empty and the shutters were still closed and the only sound was our own boots on the cobbles.Ronan walked down to the river on his own feet. He had eaten something and slept a few hours and he was still grey about the mouth, but he walked, and I walked beside him with my hand under his elbow and did not say anything about it."Fiadh," he said, as we came down to the mill. "The pack house has the wounded in it.""I know.""There are eleven wolves in that house with bandages on and a Council flag on the wall above them." He stopped on the mill step. "I am not going to stand on a boat for two days while that is happening.""You are going to stand on a boat for two days because there is no other way to get ther

I got up off the chair and sat down on the edge of the bed."Come here," he said again."You are not strong enough.""I am not asking to be strong. I am asking you to lie down." He moved over on the bed and pulled the quilt back. "I have been in a Council chamber and a boat and a slip and my heart stopped in front of five elders. I am not asking for anything but this."I lay down.He put his arm round me and pulled me in against his chest and I put my head on his shoulder and the pull in my chest settled and went warm and the wolf in the back of my head put its head down and closed its eyes.We lay like that for a while."You stopped breathing in that chamber," I said."I know.""I had my hands on your chest and there was nothing under them." My voice cracked. "I have never been frightened like that. Not in a mining town, not in the snow, not once in ten years. I have been frightened for patients and I have been frightened for myself and I have never once been frightened the way I was