Half Claimed novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Debt

They tried Cutter Torrance at dusk, in the long hall, with his right hand wrapped in my linen and his nose set crooked.

He stood before the Moot in a chain of Silverpine iron that I thought rather poetic.

The six Alphas filled the left benches, five of them now, with an empty seat where he had sat.

"The charge is the bell, the beacon and the clause," said the oldest Elder. "The Moot will hear what moved him."

"A debt," I said.

I had not been called, and nobody stopped me.

I carried the ledgers up to the high table, the note on top.

Beside them I laid a stack of letters tied in grey string.

"The note says a tenth, and the steward has demanded a fifth three times," I said.

"That difference is a winter of bread for eighty children."

The hall muttered.

Torrance looked bored.

"The steward's pen slipped," he said.

"It slipped the same way three times, in three hands," I said.

"The copyists examined them. They'll swear to it."

"Then they are mistaken."

"Then you will not mind if the Alphas of this Gathering read the Blackwater account books for themselves," said Lorne.

He stood against the wall with his left arm bound to his chest and his face still pale.

"I rather think they'd like to," he said. "I think a good many of us owe Blackwater."

The old Alpha with the limp stood up.

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