Silver Moon Nanny novel · Chapter 3 of 3
Chapter 3: The Hall She Left
In the hall, Cordelia presents her rival claimant's sealed line and moves to strike Elspeth's claim for good; Elspeth's wolf rises and rings silver across the lake outside the windows.
Aldric's eyes stay gold for three seconds.
Then they go brown and he looks at my hands.
"Inside," he says.
"I'm not going anywhere until the claim's read."
"Inside is where it gets read."
He turns and goes up the steps.
I follow him.
The hall is the same.
The long table sits in the middle.
The east windows look out over the lake.
The old iron chandelier still hangs over everything.
I know every knot in that floor.
I stop in the middle of the room.
The elders come in behind me and take the long side of the table.
Cordelia comes in last.
She takes the chair at the head of the table.
It isn't her chair.
Aldric stands at the window with his back to the room.
The older woman from the gate stands by the door.
I still don't know her name.
"Read it," Aldric says.
An elder unrolls a document on the table.
His hands shake the way old hands do.
"The claim of the Silver Moon seat, filed by Cordelia Mossgrave on behalf of a claimant of the royal line."
The date at the bottom is the fourth of this month.
"Read the claimant," I say.
"That's sealed."
"Unseal it."
"It's sealed by custom."
"Then custom's wrong."
The elder looks at Cordelia.
Cordelia folds her hands on the table.
"Custom seals the claimant until the Hunter's Moon," she says.
"So the rival heir can't be pressured or bought."
"You know that. You were raised by Mags."
"Mags says the seal protects the claimant."
"Elspeth." Cordelia smiles. "Sit down."
"No."
"Then stand. It's a long document."
The elder reads.
The claim says the Silver Moon line ended in the fire eighteen years ago.
It says the seat has been dark since then.
It says a dark seat is a wound on the pack.
Then it says a claimant has been found.
A woman of the blood, raised off the lands, who never hid what she was.
The claim says she carries the line openly.
It says three elders of an Idaho pack verified her.
It says the seat should pass to her before the Hunter's Moon.
It says the old heir's claim should be struck as abandoned.
"Struck," I say.
"Struck," the elder says, and doesn't look up.
I stand there and let it land.
Five years in this house.
Five years of tea with wolfsbane in it.
Five years of hiding the one thing that would have made me worth something here.
The word for it in a document is abandoned.
"On what grounds," I say.
Cordelia answers.
"On the grounds that you left the lands and never filed."
"I was exiled."
"You were told to go."
"That's exile."
"That's a distinction you're making up."
Aldric hasn't moved from the window.
"The grounds," he says, "are that she never declared."
Every head in the room turns to him.
He's still facing the glass.
"She lived here five years," he says.
"She knew what she was."
"She never told me, never told the elders, never filed a claim of her own."
"The law says a claim has to be made. It wasn't."
"That's true," I say.
The room goes still.
"I never declared," I say.
"I had reasons. Some of them were good and one of them was fear."
"I never declared, and that's on me."
Cordelia's smile widens a little.
"So the elder's right. The claim's abandoned."
"Unless what."
"Unless the law allows a claim made after exile."
"By an heir who comes back and answers in person."
I look at the elder.
"Does it?"
The old man's hands shake harder.
"It does," he says.
"There's a provision. Old. It's never been used."
"But it's there."
"It's there."
Cordelia's jaw moves and her smile doesn't.
"Then I'm filing," I say.
"Tonight. In this room. In front of these elders."
"You can't file without proof of blood."
I take the moonstone out of my pocket and set it on the table.
It's still warm from the gate.
It throws a thin line of light across the grain.
"That's not proof," Cordelia says.
"Anyone can carry a rock."
"It lit for me at the gate in front of the whole pack."
"That's a story about a gate."
"Then test me."
The room goes quiet in a different way.
The elders look at each other.
One of them says, "The test is blood on silver."
"Do it," I say.
"Your hands," Aldric says.
He's turned around now.
He's looking at my hands, still open at my sides.
"Your hands are already ruined."
"Then it'll be quick."
Cordelia stands up.
"No," she says.
Everyone looks at her.
"You don't get to bleed in this hall and have it mean something."
"That's not a test. That's a performance."
"She put her hands on the gate and now she wants everyone to cry about it."
"Then how do you want it?" I say.
"I want it in writing."
"A claimant who files has to produce her line."
"Names. Dates. Who her mother was, who her grandmother was, where they lived, who buried them."
"Paper. Not blood, not a rock, not a burning hand."
"I can do that."
"Can you?"
"Yes."
"Then do it." Cordelia sits back down.
"You have until the Hunter's Moon. Twenty-one days."
"Produce your line in writing, verified by an elder of another pack."
"And if I can't?"
"Then the seat passes to the claimant I brought."
"And you go back to whatever you were doing before you came here."
She picks up her pen and writes on the bottom of the document.
Then she signs it.
"Elders," she says. "Witness."
They witness.
Aldric doesn't.
He stands at the window with his arms crossed.
He watches me the whole time.
Outside, the lake is flat and gray under the afternoon.
It's the same lake.
The one that took Clover.
The one with silver in the silt from the fire eighteen years ago.
Nothing grows in the shallows.
The fish come up blind.
I walked into it that night with my boots on and pulled her out.
My hands have never been the same since.
I look at the water through the window.
My wolf turns over inside me.
She's been quiet since the gate.
Now she isn't.
She stands up in my chest and she pushes.
The moonstone on the table flares.
Not a line this time. A ring.
A circle of light spreads out from the stone across the table.
It climbs the walls and goes out through the glass.
The lake answers.
A ripple crosses it from the near shore to the far shore.
Then another.
Then the whole surface is moving in rings that don't come from any wind.
The chandelier above the table swings.
A glass falls off the sideboard and breaks.
Every wolf in the hall turns toward the water.
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