Chapter 16: The Elders

Dashiell reached the field at a run, with his shirt open and his boots unlaced.

He stopped when he saw Lavinia, and his hands closed.

"Don't," I said, without looking round. "I'm not hurt."

Lavinia was waiting.

Her face was wet, and she held very still.

"I can't give you her life," I said. "I won't give you her death either.

"I'll give you this. Your mother will be heard in front of every pack, and nobody will touch her until she has been."

"That isn't what I asked."

"It's what I have."

"Then you're no better than she is," Lavinia said, and her voice shook.

"My father screamed for four minutes," I said. "I'm a great deal better than she is, and it's costing me."

She stared at me for a long time.

Then she pulled her red coat around her and walked back toward the lodge without another word.

Dashiell put his coat back on my shoulders, and I realized I was shaking.

"You didn't say no," he said quietly.

"I didn't say yes."

"That's a different thing."

"I know," I said. "I'm trying to learn what it is."

The Council sat in the long hall at ten the next morning.

Honora had called the session herself.

She wanted the elders to rule that the girl from the kitchen was a fraud and a thief.

She wanted it done before the Moot, where witnesses could see.

I stood at the foot of the dais.

Behind me stood Dashiell, because I had told him to, and Aldous with his cane.

Fenn stood beside them in his bandages.

The case of bottles lay on the long table in front of the twelve.

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