Chapter 175 Castelcicala Politics
POV: Vittoria Foscari | European Covenant, London Delegation Suite
The suite the Covenant has taken in Mayfair is large enough to conduct actual business in, which is the point, and it has the quality of spaces where powerful people have been making decisions for a long time: heavy curtains, old furniture, the smell of expensive things maintained carefully. Vittoria Foscari has been in rooms like this across six countries and she reads them the way she reads everything, which is as architecture designed to project authority.
Tonight there are nine of them, representatives from the four major European vampire courts, and they have been in London for eight days observing the aftermath of the Thames incident and drawing conclusions.
The conclusions are not favorable to the British supernatural community.
"The hybrid program," says Renard, from Paris, and he says it with the particular inflection of someone tasting something they expected to be unpleasant and finding it worse than anticipated. "We have rules about this. We have had rules about this for two hundred years."
"We have customs," corrects Margit, from Vienna, who is always precise about the distinction. "Customs the British appear to have decided do not apply to them."
"Children," says someone from Amsterdam. "Experimental subjects. Dozens of them, over sixty years." He sets down the report that Vittoria's own sources compiled from four different information networks. "Even we have limits."
Vittoria lets the room absorb that for a moment before she speaks, because the room responding to the information before she speaks means she is not the one driving emotion, she is the one channeling it toward a conclusion, which is more effective.
"The British lost control of their supernatural community," she says. "Parliament is divided, the wolf packs are fractured, the Hermetic Order is operating programs that would have required Covenant approval if the British had bothered to notify us, which they did not." She looks around the table. "This is not instability. This is collapse. The Covenant exists precisely for collapse."
"There is also the question of the American offer," says Renard.
Vittoria had been waiting for this.
Alpha Jax Ironhide, representing the Montana Confederation, had made contact with three Covenant members in the past four days. The offer was simple: American packs stabilize London, in exchange for territorial recognition. The Americans had framed it as partnership. What it actually was, Vittoria did not need to explain to anyone in this room.
"The American offer is expansion dressed in assistance," she says. "If we accept it, we establish a precedent that the Covenant can be circumvented by bilateral agreements with foreign powers. We spend thirty years trying to reverse that precedent." She places her own document on the table. "Send the legion. British vampires lost control. The Covenant will restore order."
"And the hybrid children?" asks Margit.
"The hybrid children are evidence," Vittoria says. "They are not a reason to hesitate. They are the reason the motion is justified."
The room absorbs this differently than it absorbed the earlier information, the weighing that happens when moral outrage meets strategic interest and people work out which one they intend to follow.
Renard speaks first. "What does the legion mean for the wolves who ran the rescue operation?"
"It means," Vittoria says carefully, "that whoever is operating outside Parliamentary authority will be operating with Covenant oversight instead. Which is different." She pauses. "Whether it is better depends on whether they are reasonable."
She does not say what she means, which is that she has read the reports on Callum Brennan carefully and she has not yet decided what he is, but she has decided he is not nothing, and in her experience not-nothing was worth assessing before sending the legion in without context.
The vote is seven to two in favor of authorizing the legion. Vittoria notes the two dissenters for future reference, because dissent in rooms like this is information.
She writes one sentence in her private notes afterward: British vampires lost control. The Covenant will restore order. Send the legion.
Then she underlines it, because underlining in her private notes means she has decided.