He Took the Heirs' Emblems, Then Became Their King novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Hearing

The Hall of Elders held four hundred seats, and by nine the next morning all of them were full.

Word had gone around Highspire that the new top student was going to humiliate his uncle in public.

People had brought lunches.

James had brought a cart of pastries from the academy kitchen, and set it beside the long table where forty green ledgers stood in a stack.

"Odds that this works are eighty-five percent," he told Felix, who stood at his shoulder.

"And the fifteen?"

"Bella does something clever and I have to improvise from a sitting position."

"You're sitting?"

"I'm going to."

James sat.

Under the table, Felix's fingers closed around his, openly, and stayed there.

Nobody in the front row missed it.

Six elders in the colors of three clans took their seats on the dais, and Matthew took the witness bench with his chain swinging.

Bella sat behind him, fan folded in her lap, and smiled at James and waved two fingers.

Grant and Harry came in last.

They had spent half the night with Felix in the archive, and neither had slept.

Grant walked straight to the table, put a small bundle on it, and untied the string.

It was a stack of notes, all in the same fine slanting hand, each one folded into the same neat square.

"I keep every note James Phoenix has written me," Grant said to the elders. "There are eleven. Eight are from before the Ashfall Winter, when we were boys, and are signed with a drawing of a bird."

"And the other three?" asked the eldest of the Griffin elders.

"The last year. All of them cold. All of them in the wrong hand."

"The wrong hand?"

"A clerk's," said Harry from behind him, dry as a bone. "With a loop on every g."

Matthew rose.

"This is an outrage. My nephew has been in the Phoenix house for four years with no one to guide him. Forged papers are the least of what he is capable of."

"Sit down, Matthew," said the Dean from the end of the dais.

She had come in without anyone noticing, and she had a cushion under her arm.

Matthew sat.

"Elders," James said, standing after all. "I'd like to call my uncle's household clerk."

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