Chapter 15: The Sleeve

The Council hall was full by nine.

Every bench held a packmaster, and the gallery above them held half of Highmark.

I sat at the long table on the left, in my father's sash, with Edith beside me.

Verity sat on the right, in white, with her uncle at her shoulder.

She had never looked more innocent.

The Council's eldest member, the old wolf with the bad hip, rapped his stick on the floor.

"Today we hear a single matter," he said. "The injury to a cat in the castle courtyard."

A murmur ran along the benches.

"It's a cat," someone said at the back.

"Then it will be quick," the eldest said. "The royal vet."

She walked to the middle of the floor with her flat box, and Edith sat up a little straighter.

Edith never sat up straight for anyone. I filed that away for later.

The vet set the box on the clerk's table and spoke without notes.

"On the morning of the decree, I treated an orange tom, thirteen years old. I wrote the cause in my record that day, and I have it here."

"A fight," the Lorne uncle said. "Cats fight."

"This cat has never bitten anyone in his life," the vet said. "He bit one sleeve, and only that one."

She lifted the lid.

Inside lay a cuff of yellow silk, stiff and dark, folded in paper.

The smell reached the front benches before she had finished unfolding it.

It was lavender, so thick that people leaned away.

Alaric sat at the head of the hall in a plain chair with no throne.

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