Chapter 21: The Land Back

Ramsay read until the sun went down behind the Council Stone.

He read every month of every year, and when his voice gave out the gray-braided Alpha poured him water and made him go on.

I sat on the Hall steps with Rowan's coat around my shoulders and listened to the whole thing.

I had lived it, and I still had to hear it said.

The Alliance sat in judgment at moonrise.

Forty Alphas stood in the ring under the stars, and nobody was talking.

They had brought the Chair out in his white hair and his good coat, with his hands tied in front of him.

The gray-braided Alpha stood on the bench where he had sat.

"By the vote of this Alliance," she said, "the seat of the Chair is vacated and shall not pass to his blood."

"The Alliance pharmacy is sealed. Every order it filled in ten years will be read in open session."

"The man who was Chair is stripped of rank and name in this body, and goes to the Alliance cells for the term of his natural life."

The Chair looked at his shoes.

His mouth was working, but no sound came out of it.

I thought I would feel something big when it was over.

What I felt was that a very heavy door had finally shut behind me.

"Ruby Kjellberg," the gray-braided Alpha said.

Ruby stood between two Alpha women with her cardigan hanging open and her braid undone.

She didn't look at her father.

"For the ten years she measured another woman's cup, the Alliance sentences her to ten years in its custody," the Alpha said.

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