Chapter 23: The Fall

Stella did not die.

She lay on the white stage with one leg bent the wrong way, and the black case burst open beside her.

Small gray canisters rolled out across the floor and came to rest at the feet of the board.

Each one carried a curved white S.

Four thousand people looked at them.

The medics ran in with a stretcher, and the chair of the board raised a hand.

"Leave her where she lies," the chair said. "Until the board has spoken."

Stella lifted her head.

Her honey hair was tangled with blood, and her blue eyes were huge and empty.

"Thora," she said.

Thora came down the gantry ladder and crossed the stage to her.

She stopped an arm's length away.

"Please," Stella whispered. "I'll say whatever you want. I'll say it was Mother. I'll say it was all her."

"You've said enough."

"I loved them."

"You fed them poison every morning for five years."

"I wanted to be loved!"

"So did I," Thora said. "I didn't drug anyone for it."

Stella's face crumpled.

For the first time all week it looked like a face, and not a mask.

The chair of the board rose and read the finding from a slate.

It took a minute, and no one in the hall made a sound.

Stella Ostrow was stripped of the name, the allowance, the rooms in the Ostrow house and every contract signed in her hand.

She was held answerable for the poisoning of five citizens.

She was held answerable for the death of the season-two contestant.

The board had dug the girl's name out of the show's records, and the chair read it aloud for the whole federation to hear.

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