The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Line Up

Warrick was already pulling on his jeans.

"Stay here," he said.

"No."

"I knew you'd say that. I just wanted it on the record."

I dressed in yesterday's clothes and his work coat, because it was nearest the door.

By the time we got to the strip, the turbine Otter's door was open.

Two men climbed down first.

Big, in matching black parkas, with the High seat's moon stitched on the shoulder.

Enforcers.

Then Elden, in his charcoal overcoat and good shoes, stepping down into eight inches of new snow like it had personally offended him.

Then at me, in Warrick's coat, coming from Warrick's cabin at seven in the morning.

He smiled.

"Well," he said. "That was quick."

"You landed without calling the base," Warrick said. "That's not done up here."

"I'm the High seat. Everything's done."

People were coming out of the bunkhouse in their socks and parkas.

The cook. The kids. The base families, twenty of them. Gussie, with her ball cap on backwards and her phone in her hand.

Elden took a folded paper out of his coat.

"The petition requires the roll of the pack she claims to lead," he said, loud enough for all of them.

"So. Everyone in a line, please. Each of you will say your full roll name to me."

"Why?" Gussie said.

"Because your Luna is supposed to feel you when you do. If she can, she'll say so." He spread his hands. "If she can't, well. That's the petition."

"You have the book," Warrick said. "You've got every name in it."

"I want to hear them said. Out loud. In front of her."

He looked at me.

"It's a formality."

It wasn't.

It was twenty people standing in the snow saying the one word that let him own them, while I stood there feeling nothing.

And he'd hear each voice, and remember it.

The enforcers walked to the bunkhouse and started moving people.

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