Chapter 17: Say It Again

The envoy let me speak, because the law said he had to.

I walked to the pale slab and stepped up onto it, so that the whole hall could see me.

It was cold through my shoes.

"First," I said, "I want to answer what was said about me."

"The Council is not here to hear a defense," the envoy said.

"The Council is here to hear my consent. This is part of it."

He opened his mouth, and the old woman in the pale suit stood up in the third row.

"Let her talk," she said. "I came a long way."

Other voices took it up.

The envoy sat down.

I turned to my father first.

He wouldn't look up.

"Dad, you said I was easily upset. You said I always said yes."

"Ro," he whispered.

"I said yes because you were scared of losing the yard. You never told me you were paid."

"The papers say the bride shall not be informed. I read them to your own crew, and I can read them to this hall."

A sound of disgust moved through the benches.

My father put a hand over his face.

I turned to Genevieve.

"You say I was in Darian Verrin's bed for a month before my birthday."

"I saw you," Genevieve whispered.

"Where?"

"At the gala."

"Who else was there?"

The old woman rapped her cane on the floor.

"I was," she said. "I sat three chairs from the pair of them all evening."

"She spoke to him for four minutes about the harbor lights and left alone. He gave her a card."

"She put it in her glove and did not call it for a month."

"That's not what..." Genevieve began.

"I am two hundred and six years old, child. I know how a woman looks when she has been in a man's bed."

"She looked tired."

Someone laughed in the gallery, and the sound spread.

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