Chapter 19: The Vote

The candles didn't burn out.

On the second Monday of July, the line for the Council gallery went down the marble staircase, out the brass doors and halfway to the harbor.

Women brought folding stools.

Somebody's grandmother brought sandwiches for the whole line.

The wolf-kin crossing guard took the day off and directed foot traffic in her orange vest anyway.

Inside, the chamber was hot and packed to the walls.

The three brides sat in the front row of the gallery in their best coats, the same as in March.

This time, I wasn't at a table.

I was on a bench at the side of the floor with the other people who'd signed up to speak, and there were forty of us.

Orrin sat in the gallery behind the brides.

He'd worn the tie again.

Wilda was next to him with a box of buns, as usual, and a cardboard sign she wasn't allowed to hold up.

The Council came in through the side door.

Seven black robes.

Leonie came last and took the center chair.

She looked older.

Her bob was still perfect.

"Speakers will have two minutes each," she said, and set a kitchen timer on the bench in front of her. "This Council has a full afternoon."

The old tortoise-kin at the end of the bench sighed so loudly the microphones picked it up.

I was ninth.

I watched eight women before me get cut off by the timer.

A deer-kin bride, eighteen months, five Heats, a burst appendix nobody caught because she was always feverish.

A cat-kin mother with her teenage daughter holding her hand.

An old hare-kin who'd been widowed out of her bond after thirty years and called it the best day of her life.

Every time the timer rang, Leonie said "Thank you" in a voice like a door shutting.

When it was my turn, I walked to the middle of the floor.

Behind me, I heard the gallery rail creak.

The three brides had stood up.

Then they came down the gallery stairs, one after the other, and walked across the floor, and stood at my back.

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