The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 11 of 32
Chapter 11: The Pet's Right
I didn't sleep.
I lay in my own bed with the window open over the river and counted.
Three months from Tribute Day to the first frost.
Nearly one of them gone.
One more winter for him, if the river let him have it.
At dawn I went down to the kitchen.
Agatha was at the table with a stack of old law books and a pot of tea gone cold.
She'd been up all night too.
"I found something," she said before I could speak. "Sit."
She turned one of the books toward me.
The page was so old the ink had gone brown.
"The Pet's Right," she read. "The Emperor's pet may once in her life stand in open court and ask a boon of the throne. The throne shall answer before the court, and no minister may set the answer aside."
"No minister," I said.
"Not even a chancellor." She tapped the page. "The last pet who used it asked for a pearl necklace. Two hundred years ago. Everyone's forgotten."
"Why are you showing me?"
"Because you've got that look." She poured me cold tea. "The one where you're about to do something in front of everyone."
Court sat at noon.
I walked up the long black floor in the white gown the tributes had stayed up altering for me.
It left my shoulders bare.
My scars were bare too. I'd asked for short sleeves.
The whole court watched me come.
The chancellor stood at the foot of the throne with his chain on and his beard combed.
He smiled at me.
Like he didn't know a girl had nearly died in a courtyard because of him.
Like he didn't know I'd seen his seal in a fish-market ledger.
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