The Thirteenth Moon novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Hearing

"How?" Torin said.

Sable had not stopped shaking, so Edda put a blanket around her and a cup of tea in her hands.

"The law lets an enforcer put down an exile who raises a hand on the grounds," Sable said. "Orrin told the men to push him until he does."

"And then it's the law," Torin said, "and not murder."

"Yes."

I looked at her bare feet on Edda's floor.

"Why are you telling us?" I asked.

"Because it's wrong," she said, and wouldn't look at me. "That's all. I can't say more tonight."

She left the way she had come, and Torin watched the trees until she was gone.

"I'm still going," he said.

"Then keep your hands at your sides, guard," I said.

"All night if I have to."

Moonrise the next evening, three hundred wolves stood on the north ridge in the witness-fires.

The envoy sat at a plain table beside the dais with Davin's two pages in front of her.

Davin stood on the dais itself in his dark jacket, and Orrin sat in the first row with his gloves folded on his knee.

Sable stood behind Davin with her arms wrapped around herself.

Torin walked in beside me with his hands open and empty.

Four of Davin's enforcers fell in around him before we reached the front, close enough to knock his shoulder.

"Watch yourself, exile," one of them said.

Torin kept his hands where they were.

The man shoved him, hard, and then another did, and the third drew back an elbow.

"He's reaching," the first one called. "Alpha, he's reaching for me."

He wasn't.

Every wolf on that hill could see he wasn't.

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