Chapter 21: A Favor

"No," I said.

Edmund stared at me.

"I won't speak for you," I said. "Your pack will, and so will your own paper."

I turned to the eldest.

"I ask nothing for him," I said. "Not a word either way. Let the pack judge what you've read."

The vote took the time it takes to say yes four hundred times.

Edmund Molyneux was stripped of his name, his house and his charter, and sent down the river road alone with a day's bread.

He was never to set foot in Riverbend water again.

Clara watched him go until the road bent.

She did not wave and she did not cry.

When I put my arm around her she said, very quietly, "I'd like my own room now."

"You'll have it," I said.

That night I found Alaric on the guesthouse porch with a sheet of vellum in his hand.

He had written it the night of the Council, and the folds had gone soft.

"I never signed it," he said. "I'd like to now."

I looked at the first line.

I, Alaric Rooke, give up the crown of my fathers.

"Tomorrow the Council meets to crown you," he said.

"The old king's in a cell, and so is the chancellor."

"The decree is a dead letter the moment you take your seat."

"And then?"

"And then I go north, where I belong."

"Why?"

"Because you vowed you'd never ask me for a favor." His voice cracked.

"I've watched you refuse everything the Crown could offer you."

"I can't picture you wanting any of it."

I took the vellum from his hand and tore it down the middle.

He didn't move.

"I'm not ruling alone," I said. "I'm not sitting in that chair by myself for forty years."

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