Chapter 20: Seat

The vote took four minutes.

It was done by raised hands, the way the Compact had voted since before the steeple had a bell.

The woman with the ivory cane read the first question aloud.

"That the Second and Third Laws be struck from the Compact's book, and no human be limited in the bites she gives."

Thirty hands went up.

Emlyn's was among them, and so was the doctor's.

The thirty-first hand belonged to Ingeborg, and it stayed in her lap.

"The Second and Third Laws are repealed," said the woman. "The First Law stands. A vampire asks aloud, and a human answers aloud."

"Every time," said Emlyn.

"Every time. Next question." She did not look at the table. "That Ingeborg Haugen be removed from the Chair, and struck from the roll."

The hands went up slowly this time.

Not all of them.

Four stayed down, and I watched one man with a gray mustache look at the floor.

Twenty-six voted yes.

"The ayes carry," said the woman.

"Ingeborg Haugen, you broke the law you wrote for a hundred and thirty years, in your own kitchen.

You lied to a man to keep him from his love."

"You will give up your seat and your keys."

"And my supply?" Ingeborg said.

"You will draw it from the blood bank like any other. The same as you gave Mr. Trask when you suspended him."

Ingeborg bowed her head.

She stood and took the cameo from her throat and laid it on the table beside the gavel.

She took the ring of keys from her belt and laid that down too.

"You will leave the Twin Ports within seven days," the woman said, "and not return for one year."

"I understand."

"And you owe a debt."

She turned.

Ingeborg faced Emlyn across the long table.

She was suddenly a woman of fifty-two, I thought, and not a day more.

"I told you Ruth would die," she said. "She did not."

"I took sixty-four years from you, and from her, with a lie, and I did it with my hand on your head."

"Yes."

"I do not ask you to forgive me tonight."

"Good," said Emlyn. His voice was very quiet. "I won't."

"No."

"Perhaps in a year, perhaps in ten. I have a great deal of time, Ingeborg. You taught me that."

She nodded once.

That was all.

When the woman with the cane offered Emlyn the Chair, I thought for a moment that he would take it.

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