Chapter 266 The Legitimacy Hearing Begins
POV: Alteroni | Parliament chamber, formal hearing
The chamber has been arranged for a formal hearing rather than a session, which is a physical difference and a procedural one, the twelve members seated in the elevated arc that Parliament uses for adjudicatory proceedings rather than the parallel rows of ordinary sessions, and the elevated arc has the specific quality of a judgment architecture, the bodies of the twelve positioned to receive and assess rather than to debate and exchange, which is the framing I have been trying to argue against since the session was called and which the traditionalist faction correctly identified as the framing that benefits their position.
I argued for a mediation format. I lost that argument seven to five, which is the same margin that produced this hearing, which tells me the margin is stable and which means the traditionalist faction has done the specific work of coalition building that I have not yet managed to counter, and I have been doing the work of figuring out where the instability in their seven is and I have not found it yet, which is the problem I am bringing into this chamber.
Callum is in the gallery. He is there as a party to the hearing rather than a member, which is the procedural position that the rules require when an Alpha's legitimacy is under examination, and he is there with Cormac beside him and Dante on the other side and the specific quality of three people who have decided to be present together regardless of what the present contains.
Finn is in the gallery on the opposite side, with Moira and MacCorr and three other traditional elders, and he has the quality I have been observing for the two days since he arrived in London, which is the quality of a seven-year-old who is managing a large amount of new information by being very alert to everything around him, and who is sitting with the specific stillness of someone who has been told to sit still and who is doing it but who is also tracking everything in the room simultaneously.
The hearing opens with the formal statement of the question, which is delivered by Parliament's senior clerk in the flat precise language of legal procedure: who holds legitimate Alpha status over London's primary wolf pack, and by what authority.
The traditionalist argument is delivered by Cassel and it is the argument I have been hearing in various forms for six months, which means I know its shape and its strongest points and its weakest points, and the strongest points are the ones I cannot argue around because they are accurate.
Cormac was elected Alpha through proper pack process. Cormac's firstborn son is a born wolf and pureblood heir. Traditional law specifies that the firstborn son of a former Alpha inherits the position in the absence of a legitimate challenge from within the bloodline. Callum's challenge, which occurred eight years ago, predates his knowledge of Finn's existence and therefore cannot be read as a challenge to a bloodline claim that had not yet been formally made.
And Callum is a turned wolf. This is the point that lands differently from the others in the chamber, because turned wolves and born wolves are a distinction that the twelve Ancient vampires in the elevated arc have opinions about, the specific opinions of people who were born to what they are and who have been managing the world on that basis for centuries, and the opinions are not identical across the twelve but they are not evenly distributed, and the distribution matters.
The reformist argument is mine and I have been constructing it for six months and it has the specific quality of an argument that is right and which is losing, which is the most frustrating quality an argument can have.
Callum won the Alpha position through direct combat challenge, which is the oldest and most fundamental form of pack leadership determination. Cormac's Alpha status was obtained fraudulently, through the framing of Callum for crimes he did not commit, and fraud-obtained positions do not generate legitimate hereditary claims. Finn is seven years old and the imposition of Alpha leadership on a seven-year-old child in a community of three hundred wolves is not stability, it is the establishment of a regency under traditional elder control disguised as hereditary succession.
The chamber receives both arguments with the specific quality of an institution that has heard many arguments and which has already formed its views and which is conducting the hearing for the procedural record rather than for the purpose of being persuaded, and I read this quality in the elevated arc with the accuracy that five years of watching this institution has produced.
We are three hours into the hearing when Parliament's senior clerk calls a recess and Parliament's speaker, who is Isolde in her role as the neutral facilitator that her position requires, makes the statement that changes the hearing's direction.
"Let the boy speak," Isolde says. She says it from her position in the center of the elevated arc with the specific quality of a person who has been waiting for the procedurally correct moment to introduce the thing she has been thinking about since this hearing was announced. "What does Finn want?"
The chamber absorbs this.
MacCorr, from the gallery's traditional elder section, begins to object, and Isolde looks at him with the expression that is several hundred years of a woman who has been in these rooms for a very long time and who does not require his input at this moment.
"The claim is the boy's," she says. "If we are applying traditional law, we apply it fully. Traditional law gives the heir a voice. We will hear it."