Chapter 8: The Roster

By sundown the great hall was full again, and this time nobody was eating.

Three hundred wolves stood along the long tables with their arms crossed, and the two visiting Alphas leaned on the dais rail.

The chair at Eamon's right hand stood empty.

Someone had polished it.

I stood at the foot of the hall in a clean borrowed shirt, with Linus beside me and his left arm strapped to his chest.

The healer had dug three flecks of silver out of Eamon's shoulder, and he had not asked for any pain relief.

He stood at the head of the table with a blood-stiff bandage showing under his collar.

When I walked in, he did not look through me.

He looked at me, steadily, all the way up the hall.

It was harder to bear than being ignored.

"First," Eamon said. His voice carried to the rafters. "Linus Garland."

Linus went white.

"Come up."

My brother climbed the dais steps with his good hand tight on the rail.

Eamon set a heavy iron key in front of an empty council chair, and the room made one low sound.

"Linus Garland sits on this council," he said. "With him, the Garland weaver and the Garland beekeeper."

"Full voice, full vote. The Luna named it, and I agreed in front of two Alphas."

Two white-haired Garland elders in the back row put their hands over their mouths.

A woman near the front began to cry.

Linus sat down in the chair.

I let myself breathe.

"Second," Eamon said, and his eyes moved down the hall. "Dacia."

She was standing by the kitchen door in her camel coat, with a leather valise at her feet.

She had expected sympathy.

She looked at the room and didn't find it.

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