Chapter 56

The Wolf Council convenes in Edinburgh on the eleventh of February, and Sebastien loses the room in under twenty minutes.

He does not lose it dramatically. It goes the way things go when the argument was already over before anyone arrived: politely, procedurally, with three people apologising afterward in the corridor. Elder Croft's petition has been circulated to all Wolf Council members as a courtesy under compact protocol. Nine of fourteen have signed a statement of support for the Assembly convening. Two have signed the petition itself.

"You're not being asked to condemn her," Fenella Drummond says, from the far end of the table, and Fenella has known him since he was seventeen and taught him the pack bond exercise he still uses. "You're being asked to allow a question."

"The question is whether the conduit function can be forcibly relocated."

"The question is whether it can be relocated. Nobody has said forcibly."

"Paragraph eleven doesn't need to say it. That's what a determination is for." He keeps his voice level because raising it would confirm what half the room already suspects, which is that he cannot be objective about this and knows it. "If the Assembly rules the function is transferable, the next petition asks under what circumstances, and the one after that asks who decides."

"And if the Assembly rules it isn't transferable," Fenella says, "then we have confirmed on the record that the entire supernatural order is permanently dependent on the continued goodwill of one woman with no oversight whatsoever." She lets that sit. "Sebastien. I lost four members of my line in the grey. Rory Grant is nineteen and he has not been right since. I am not going to be told that asking the question is an act of aggression."

He does not have an answer for that. It is the correct objection, and he has been rehearsing responses to it for a week and every response he has built collapses under the same weight: they are frightened, and they have cause, and the cause is Veira, and Veira would say so herself.

The vote goes eleven to three.

Afterward he stands in the close outside the Greymantle house in the rain with his coat open, doing nothing, which is a thing he has started permitting himself since a woman told him she wasn't done with him yet.

His phone buzzes.

Reykjavik was worth it. Coming back tomorrow. Are you free Thursday evening or is that the Council thing.

He types: The Council thing was today. It went eleven to three against me.

The reply takes ninety seconds.

Then Thursday. My flat. I'll cook badly and you can tell me exactly how it went, including the parts where they were right.

He looks at the message for longer than it needs.

You already know which parts they were right about.

I do. I want to hear you say them out loud, because I think you've been carrying them alone since the vote, and I don't think that's good for you.

He puts the phone in his pocket and stands in the rain a moment longer.

The message that arrives eleven minutes later is not from her.

Ms Ashcroft has asked that I contact you directly rather than through her, which I take as a courtesy and intend to repay. I would like to meet her before March. Privately, without counsel present on either side. I am aware how that sounds. I am asking anyway.

Croft.

Sebastien reads it three times.

Then he forwards it to her without comment, because she has told him what she needs and he has finally, at thirty-seven, learned to do the thing she asked instead of the thing that would let him sleep.