Chapter 10: The Guild Meeting

Sander stopped in front of me on the top step with the heart in his arms.

"Floor eight, Raes," he said. "Count it."

He walked across the square to the hall to be ranked, and the two Golds walked behind him.

"The Golds killed it," Daan said. "Everyone could see that."

"It's legal," Joris said quietly. "The law only cares who carries it up."

"I know," I said. "It's the same law I used."

The guild meets every season in the hall, and the spring meeting was four days later.

Every ranked hunter may stand up and speak at a meeting, but only the Silvers and the Golds vote.

The hall was packed to the walls.

The Golds sat on the dais with the Guildmaster in the middle and his hand on his chest.

Sander sat on the Silvers' bench in the front row with his new silver cord, and he kept touching it.

I sat on the Steels' bench with my party behind me.

The cordless healers stood along the back wall, all five of them now.

Two more had come to the Mouth the night before with their cords already gone.

When the clerk asked if anyone had business for the meeting, the floor-five healer walked up the middle of the hall.

He was carrying a long roll of paper.

"The House paints the name of every healer who dies below on its chapel wall," he said. "I copied them out last night."