Chapter 20: It Fits

Nobody brought the Stone.

The two guards at the winch looked at the old man in the white ring, and then at Rhys, and they did not move.

"I gave an order," Godfrey said.

"Not one I'll carry out," said Rhys.

Godfrey turned his kind face to the elders.

"Seven of you sit on my bench. Bring the Stone."

Not one stool scraped.

"Then I will sign, and the pack will carry it," he said, and bent over the page with the pen.

"Read it first," Cade said.

He had put his hand inside his shirt.

He drew out the brown page, folded once and soft with age, and held it out across the shelf to the old woman.

She took it with both hands.

"What is it?" Godfrey said.

"The page you tore out of the Law Book."

"A forgery."

"Then it won't fit," the old woman said.

She walked to the ring on her stick, and she took the Law Book off Godfrey's arm.

He let her.

It surprised me that he did.

He had no way to stop an old woman with two hundred wolves watching her.

She opened the book to the white page and ran her thumb under it.

The glue gave way.

It came up at the edge in a long wet strip, and under it was a thin brown stub, stitched into the spine.

She laid the torn side of the brown page against the stub.

The edges met, tooth for tooth.

"It fits," she said.

A sound went through the shelf.

She lifted the page and read it aloud in her cracked voice, every line, until she reached the fourth.

"The law-keeper who draws the ring must read the price to the signer before he steps inside it."

"The law-keeper who withholds the price forfeits his seat, his name and his voice in the pack."