Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes (7 page)

Skylur strode onto the podium, where a table and chairs waited. He took the center seat. He was flanked by three other Houses. I recognized one as Eugenie, Herzogin von Urach-Passau, House Passau, the foremost House of Europe. Another I remembered from the last Assembly: House Stanbrigge, the representative from the Midnight Empire. The last I didn’t recognize, and I assumed she was Hidden Path.

Skylur looked out into the dim room until his eyes found mine and paused for a second.

A slight nod.

An Athanate over on the far left stood.

Old Athanate
.

Some older Athanate actually looked old—let their hair go gray or their face wrinkled. Skylur didn’t, and neither did the Athanate who confronted him.

“Juanuarte Ibarre, House Ibarre,” Elizabetta murmured.

No shit.

The face was bleak, the brow heavy.

I’d learned he’d come to Maine with the Basque fishing fleets in 1657, master and owner of the whaler
Catalin
. He’d stayed, establishing a domain that was centered in Portland. He had a reputation for being an eccentric; when the whaling industry ended, he’d incorporated his whole ship as the front hall to his house. Others said all older Athanate liked the feel of their origin and history about them.

Just in standing, Ibarre made me think of the sea. He was a giant of a man, and he rose like a wooden ship’s prow cresting a storm wave. He wore a long charcoal-gray woolen jacket, almost a cloak, stretched across his broad shoulders. His sleek black hair was braided, bound with a scarlet ribbon. It reached down his back like an ornate scabbard.

He glanced around the room. His eyes were rain-cloud gray and cold as the Arctic sea.

“House Ibarre,” Skylur said.

“Ykos Altau.” House Altau in Athanate. Ibarre’s voice was as cold as his eyes. I had no chance of following this nomicane if they spoke Athanate.

“You’re well aware that we delayed proceedings to include the presence of a witness who doesn’t speak Athanate, House Ibarre,” Skylur said, relaxing back in his seat. “I suggest we proceed in English.”

“House Farrell, of course,” Ibarre said. “A so-called Athanate barely through crusis, ignorant of our language and ways. Let us by all means accommodate the witness.” His ice-cold gaze picked me out of the crowd, and I shivered.

Skylur just smiled.

Ibarre was Panethus, I reminded myself. Somewhere, he had kin, and they loved him. I needed, for my own sake, to see the whole man, not just the opponent in this nomicane. I needed it because I might say or do something today that would condemn him, and I would have to live with the result: a tragedy to his kin and House, balanced against a tragedy for the rest of the world if Emergence were not controlled.

Of course, he might say or do something that would condemn me instead.

A second Athanate stood up. Ibarre showed no surprise, but immediately sat back down, yielding to her.

They planned that.

Another shiver of worry.

What was this?

In a nomicane, Skylur was simply a convener. He was obliged to ensure all sides of a question were examined. It seemed like the Eastern Seaboard association were going to use that to their full advantage.

“House Prowser,” Skylur said.

Unlike Ibarre and Skylur, Amelie Prowser was one of those Athanate who cultivated a look of age. Her hair was gray, drawn away from her face, and her cheeks had the look of an outdoor woman—a farmer’s wife, maybe. Her clothes were dark and plain.

I knew she was even older than Ibarre. Still not as old as Skylur, but possibly earlier to the US than him. Her territory, if she held onto it after this, was the state of Michigan—she was the only member of the Eastern Seaboard association who didn’t actually have a domain on the Atlantic.

I knew that Ibarre had agreed to betray Skylur; I’d heard Amaral’s phone call with him. I wasn’t sure about Prowser. I’d heard Amaral call her, but I hadn’t heard what happened.

Maybe I was about to find out: the handover from Ibarre to Prowser had so obviously been pre-agreed.

Did that mean she was on his side?

“I have spoken with House Ibarre regarding these proceedings,” she said. “I share some of his concerns, and I have therefore agreed to speak on behalf of all of the unaligned Houses of the Eastern Seaboard.”

Her voice carried age and wisdom, a style of speaking and an accent of old Britain, a weight of history behind it. They had chosen her well.

On the podium, Eugenie whispered something in Skylur’s ear.

He shrugged. “I dispute your use of the word
unaligned
. However, continue,” he said to Prowser.

Her head dipped fractionally to him. I was too far away to gauge how that acknowledgement was intended.

She stood straight and spoke clearly. “We concede openly that some among us agreed with proposals made by House Amaral.”

There was a collective drawing of breath throughout the room. She was taking a huge risk; if Skylur made his argument that Assembly law had not been in force at the time of the Convocation, then she had just consigned her associates to a death sentence. Ibarre had to be pretty sure they could successfully argue that Assembly laws had still been in force. Or, he didn’t think it would matter. He had a different plan.

My feeling of unease grew as Prowser continued to speak.

“We were unaware at the time that House Amaral had betrayed and murdered his own Master, House Romero. We were similarly unaware of the heinous capture and torture of Diana Ionache. Those actions we utterly condemn. Nevertheless, not knowing of those matters, some among us would have joined him in calling a Convocation, under Assembly rules, with the express intention of deposing you as leader of Panethus.”

Prowser walked out into the space between the ranked rows of seats and the podium.

“We say this so there will be no need for further time-wasting investigations on the point of who did and didn’t agree to call a Convocation.”

“
Some among us
is a little vague,” Skylur said.

Her head dipped again.

“That’s why we are seated as we are,” she said. She indicated Ibarre and made a sweep with her arm. “House Ibarre and the Houses seated to his left supported a Convocation.” Including Ibarre, there were five Athanate seated in that space. She turned and indicated her empty seat. “I, and the remaining Houses, did not.”

The auditorium sat in stunned silence. Under Hidden Path law in the Agiagraphos, that was at least five death sentences, and not necessarily only for the head of each House. The audience had packed in here to see the show, but none of them had expected this abrupt acceleration.

“As you say, House Prowser, you’ve neatly concluded the first steps of our proceedings,” Eugenie said. “If you planned to concede this point all along, I would like to ask why you allowed the proceedings to be delayed to accommodate the availability of a witness whom you knew would not be needed.”

If the rest of the room had been stunned, Eugenie certainly hadn’t. And she was right; why wait until I showed up?

The answer had to be because Ibarre’s attack would involve me.

Prowser turned to face the podium, clasping her hands in front of her, frowning.

“A change of plan, House Passau.”

Eugenie raised an eyebrow.

Prowser continued regardless.

“I agreed to represent the association specifically to remove the element of time wasting,” she went on. “What this proceeding needs to focus on is not just the case in point, but the underlying assumptions behind legal systems which the new Assembly will need to take forward.”

What?

Athanate stirred throughout the room.

“They’re deliberately highlighting the split in Panethus support,” Elizabetta said quietly. “Clever ploy.”

“But on the basis of what she’s said,” I replied in a whisper, “one half of the Eastern Seaboard still need to swear oaths or leave, but the other half are condemned.”

“Not if she can get Skylur to back down. If withdrawing his original domain claim is less damaging than splitting Panethus on traditional-progressive lines…”

“And if she loses?”

“She’ll argue somehow they all still have the option to leave the country.”

To go where? These Houses were old and established. They had prime locations and huge domains. Still, begging domains from the Hidden Path party would be preferable to death, I assumed.

All of it secondary.

Prowser went on: “Our hosts here in Los Angeles are Panethus, the party of Emergence. Their political argument runs that we must reveal ourselves to humanity, and for humanity to most easily accept us, we must have ethics and morals and behavioral structures that are more reassuring to humanity. Structures that the new Assembly will impose on us all.”

More stirring in the auditorium. They’d come to see Skylur and the Eastern Seaboard argue a matter of life or death. Prowser was making it an academic lecture, however key the points.

I didn’t have the luxury to be bored. Somewhere in this process an attack was lurking that was directed at Skylur, and delaying the nomicane till I was present meant it had to come through an attack on me, whatever Prowser said.

But where was it?

“The Panethus creed is based on treating our human kin as our equals,” Prowser said, as if oblivious to the mood. “They say Emergence would need that equivalence recognized in our law, and to ease the minds of humanity, that would mean our laws would need to resemble theirs. However, humanity’s various judicial systems are predominantly concerned with the presentation and testing of evidence. Their penal system is hampered with the knowledge that the legal process might be faulty and the hope that incarceration or punishment might bring about redemption. They are largely founded on the basis that all are equal in the eyes of the law.”

She raised her arms. “We are not limited like that. We taste the truth. We know who the guilty are. We assess the possibility of redemption. Our systems of reward and punishment have served us well for longer than
all
of humanity’s empires have stood. If we abandon them, we abandon part of that which makes us Athanate.”

She dropped her arms dramatically. In those last couple of sentences, she’d caught them again. There was a rumble of agreement sweeping through the room. She’d turned her listeners around.

And there was something in Prowser’s voice that told me she was exactly as she presented herself—implacably against changing Athanate laws. I guessed it was coincidental if that put her on the side of the Hidden Path party. Or defending Ibarre’s betrayal.

She’d certainly gathered a worrying amount of support in the room.

At that moment, Ibarre stood up. I could see confusion in the ranks behind Prowser.

Not as planned.

Ibarre was deviating from the script. And he had waited till Prowser had a good following.

Skylur steepled his fingers in front of him.

“House Prowser has the floor,” he said quietly.

Ibarre continued to stand.

Prowser frowned, but she did that little dip of the head and returned to her seat.

“Thank you,” Ibarre addressed her, painfully polite, then walked out into the space in front of the podium. In his hands, he carried an old leather-bound book.

He turned and looked through the audience until his eyes found me again.

Bad, bad feeling.

My gut was telling me Prowser really hadn’t known about this; about Ibarre’s second change of their plan. And that look from him only confirmed it involved me.

Ibarre started, subdued and formal. “My colleague, House Prowser, has raised a point of principle that underlies this nomicane. How are we to regulate our community? For all the groundswell of opinion backing Emergence, here in this room we have felt the strength of support, even across the political divide, for our Athanate traditions and beliefs.”

He took slow steps to one side, head bowed and a frown creasing his forehead as if he was in deep thought.

“The way we govern ourselves is codified.” He held up his book. “Laid down in books like this, which every House has:
Agiagraphos
. The Hidden Path. The guide to our survival.”

He opened it and began reading, but immediately stopped.

“Of course, not all here speak our language.” He snapped the book shut. “But most of you know it anyway. It molds our society. It dictates our behavior.”

He stopped and turned to the audience.

“The Agiagraphos has endured for millennia, and it has done so because we allow it.” He scanned the faces and repeated. “Because
we
allow it. Yet here we are, Panethus and the Midnight Empire and the Hidden Path, all in one room. Dozens of you have sworn oaths to kill each other. You would, if you met anywhere else.”

He pointed out over the seats. “House Karamazin, you sit not four paces away from House Argonne. Have you put aside your oath? A Blood oath? One I witnessed, sworn in accordance with the Agiagraphos.”