Chapter 27: The Law

Stellan didn't go up the steps.

He stood at the bottom of them with every hand in the hall still half raised.

"No," he said.

The hands came down slowly.

"I won't take it," he said. "Not with that law under the chair."

The eldest folded her hands in her lap.

"You understand what you're refusing."

"I understand exactly. If I sit, she stays over the line. If she comes back, I lose it again."

"Every month, at every Council, you'd have to read it at us."

He looked up at her.

"I watched my mother live under it for twelve years. I won't sit on top of it while Geneva lives under it for the rest of hers."

A murmur went through the hall.

Some of it was angry.

Most of it was tired.

A man in the third row stood up.

He had an IV taped in his arm and his daughter asleep across two chairs beside him.

"Then who sits?" he said. "We just watched the Beta go out that door in handcuffs. Jarrett's in a hospital bed. We need somebody."

"Somebody else," Stellan said.

"There isn't anybody else, and you know it."

The eldest looked at me.

"Geneva," she said. "You've got something to say. I can see it on you."

I did.

I'd been holding it since the first Council, the night I'd lied in that same spot.

I walked back up the three steps.

The table was still covered with the evidence.

Two slugs, a ledger, a lab letter, a pharmacy printout.

I put my hand flat beside them.

"You all know who that law was written about," I said. "You've heard Boyd read it every year."

"So I'll tell you who it was really about. His mother."

I pointed at Stellan without looking at him.

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