Van expected Elena to come personally to fetch him for the hearing, so he made sure he was ready early, and sat at the table to wait, trying to read. It would be like her to try to surprise him, to catch him off-guard.

"Van?" Victoria's voice made him look up.

"I'm decent," he said, as lightly as he could, with his guts tying themselves in small tight knots. With any luck, this whole matter would be resolved today, since hearings rarely lasted longer. What worried him was what the resolution would be.

He wanted, badly, to hug Randi for about an hour. Then maybe this would be easier to face.

Victoria unbolted the door and gestured an invitation. "Your audience awaits. And quite a large one it is. I think every mage in the city old enough to understand is out there, along with a substantial number from other cities. Including virtually all the Elders of every city in this domain, and some from outside it."

Well, at least a lot of people will hear this, and maybe it will make some of them think. Does that make it worth it, no matter what happens? "Including Catherine's Matriarch?" he asked, following her upstairs. That was easier to think about, less frightening.

"Her included. Last I saw, Catherine was informing her that she intends to petition your Matriarch for permission to join your family. Andreas reminded her that she's been out of her home city for a full year. There are details to take care of, but your Matriarch was, well, delighted might not be too strong a word, so I don't imagine there will be any real problems. I doubt any Eldridge will bother contesting it."

"Even you?"

She glanced at him, eyebrows raised. "She would have made an excellent hunter, certainly an asset to mage society, and I'm fairly sure I could have convinced her to stay if I'd tried. I know her too well, there are buttons I could have pushed, and all her strength and intelligence and skill would have been no defence. But she would never have been happy, so I let her go. She's certainly never felt like she belonged with our family. If she's happy with yours, then I'm in favour of it, regardless of what personal reservations I may have about what you've been doing. I still intend to catch you for that talk you promised me, once the timing is a bit more appropriate."

He thought he might be beginning to understand her, and the sense of honour that currently had her walking a very fine line as she tried to stay impartial. Empathy with a hunter was an odd idea, but he was getting used to it.

Even after Victoria's warning, the sheer number of people present made him stop in his tracks in amazement. Under normal circumstances, there were more than enough chairs for all the Masters in the city, and they were arranged comfortably, with plenty of space left over; at the moment, every chair was full, more had been added to fill up the empty space, all had been compressed about as much as traditionally-raised mages could bear, and there were others on their feet around the edges.

Brennan was at the front, with Oblique, and Catherine beside him, with Lila, and Randi knelt between the other two pairs. It surprised him a little, how good it felt to see Catherine there with Bren, but mostly he was glad he could at least see Randi. She looked pale and unhappy, but not actually frightened, and it was comforting just to know she was present. Neely and Jonathan were beside Catherine, Aiden and Sage beside them, then Kerry and Shvaughn with Rich and Azure. Grania was behind, with... her sister Ysolde? Ysolde, a biologist and ecologist, and her sensitive Willow were usually busy up north trying to save forests and wildlife. Their brother Connor, a research scientist who rarely left his job in the Maritimes, was with them, alone; Connor had decided ages ago that he would never take responsibility for a sensitive. Maya, Aiden's brother and sister Nairn and Oona, Oona's younger teenaged children Calum and Emer.… The first few rows on that side had been claimed unequivocally by his family and their allies, in a rather blatant show of support and unity.

It took him a second to realize that every one of the feral sensitives was in everyday human shape, whatever version of that had been self-defined as "normal." A reminder that they were, in fact, human under all the shapechanging?

Two chairs waited to the right, behind a smaller table, and Andreas was there already, looking calmly through his notes. His sensitive, no more shapechanged than the feral ones though probably not for the same reason, knelt patiently at his side on a cushion, one hand resting lightly on Andreas' now familiar brown briefcase. Much to Van's relief, he showed none of the subtle signs of constant abuse; his body language suggested alertness and attentiveness but no anxiety. To the left were three chairs and a table, in one of which Elena sat and glowered, Brock at her side, his expression dark. Two sensitives knelt at the end of the table beside Brock; a third knelt at the other end.

Between the two sets and also facing the long oval table of the Elders was a lone chair, a place for a witness to sit while questioned. That one rested within a simple chalk circle drawn on the floor, a visual shortcut to help provide a bit of magical acoustic help so anything from inside it was more clearly heard.

Van, without needing to be told, took the one beside Andreas. Victoria nodded and made her way to her own, with the other hunters. The sensitive beside her chair, he couldn't help but notice, was a contrast to the pair kneeling beside Brock and Elena—still and silent, of course, but there was a subtle difference in body language despite that, and none of that terrible sense of absence he got when looking at a sensitive who had shattered under worse abuse than even they could bear. And hers had a flat pillow to kneel on, protection from the hard bare stone.

"Good morning," Andreas said. "Did you sleep?"

"Not well," Van admitted.

"This should be far simpler and more straightforward than you're expecting. It will all be over today, and you can go back to Pride and your own bed."

"I hope so." Desperately, in fact. He shifted position on the chair. To all appearances it was the same one that he'd sat in during his Master's exam, with Oblique at his feet; he'd found it uncomfortable then, and it was no better now. There was just no position that didn't feel unnaturally stiff, make bits of him hurt, or both. How was he supposed to concentrate on the fact that his entire future was about to be decided?

"You are innocent unless Elena can prove either malice or negligence leading to harm to mage society. That sensitive of Neely's is, in himself, sufficient evidence to cast doubt on Elena's claims. And I believe the current number of witnesses will protect you from any possibility of being sacrificed to expediency." He flashed Van a brief smile. "It seems somehow appropriate that a sensitive should be your salvation."

Van wanted to ask how that was going to save him from perjury charges, among others, but didn't get the chance.

The Elders emerged via the same door Victoria had brought Van through, and took their seats, each with a sensitive who dropped to kneel on the flat cushion beside his or her chair. Normally, the Donovan Matriarch, as head of the largest and oldest family in the city, had the central seat, but today she'd relinquished it to the Kalindi Patriarch, the second-largest. At least it wasn't the Vladislav Patriarch, as head of the second-oldest family; that would only have resulted in bias the other way.

"Be seated and be still," said the Kalindi Patriarch, and frowned. "Well, be seated as best you can, at least, given the situation."

The whispers and murmurs faded out into silence.

"Thank you. Rory Donovan. You stand accused of a considerable list of offences against mage society and hunter authority. However, Andreas and Victoria and I met earlier, in the interests of saving us all a great deal of time and aggravation while still seeing that justice is done, and it has been agreed that the minor charges will be dropped."

"What?" Elena sat bolt upright in her chair. "All charges are required to be heard!"

Van was very nearly as surprised, but it was coloured with relief. No wonder Andreas was so confident!

"Not always," Andreas countered. "If there are numerous charges, any minor ones which can be considered as subsumed by major ones can be dismissed if both sides agree. That ruling was passed to prevent hearings from being bogged down by endless lists of trivial charges that make it more difficult to focus on the primary issue."

The look Elena threw her cousin was positively venomous. "I laid the charges, and I agreed to no such thing."

"No," Victoria said, and her voice had a warning edge to it. "I did, and I rank you. It's in no one's best interests for this hearing to be complicated any more than necessary. All evidence will be presented, but only in support of the remaining charges."

"Quite," the Kalindi Patriarch said dryly. "Now that we've established that... Rory Donovan, you stand accused of seditious and immoral acts, in the following forms. You created a book claiming to be observations regarding mages and sensitives. Said book has been distributed to mages, thus encouraging beliefs which undermine tradition, to tame sensitives, thus encouraging beliefs which undermine their acceptance of their proper place, and to free sensitives, thus granting them access to inappropriate information and undermining their acceptance of their proper place. Do you have anything to say?"

Van glanced at Andreas, who gave him a nod and a reassuring smile. They’d discussed this on Andreas’ last visit, so at least Van didn’t need to worry he’d say something that would be a problem.

He stood up, facing the Elders. The Donovan Matriarch met his gaze, not with a smile but with encouragement in her eyes, and he took what strength he could from that, drew a deep breath. "For as long as I can recall, I’ve been writing down observations about the abilities and behaviour and interactions of mages and sensitives. Those observations for more than a decade have been recorded as a trained and practising mental health professional. Recently, I compiled them into a book, along with my own preliminary analysis of the material I had, based on my skills and experience, although I haven't yet reached any conclusions worth putting into print. To the best of my knowledge, every word in that book is simply factual information about a subject fundamental to our lives but that we tend not to look too closely at."

He heard voices some way behind him, whispers that climbed rapidly, and stopped, licking dry lips.

"Quiet," the Kalindi Patriarch said. "We need to be able to hear without interference." He paused, nodded when the whispers subsided. "Thank you. Continue."

"As for distributing it… I've done that, yes. Mages do share information gathered, discoveries made, and conclusions reached, do we not? I haven't forced my observations on anyone, only made them available to those interested. I have given copies to free sensitives, although copies read by tame ones have always been given to their mages and passed on by them to their sensitives if they so choose." More whispering, until the Kalindi Patriarch stilled it with a scowl. "Is our power over them such a fragile thing that it threatens us for them to have a little real information? Does our strength depend on keeping them ignorant and helpless?" Actually, Van rather thought it did, but rhetoric was such a useful thing. "I have neither seen nor heard of any instance in which access to my book has caused any tame sensitive to behave inappropriately. I have evidence of my own, admittedly a small sample size so far, that it may actually be easier to tame a free sensitive who understands." He hated to drag Neely and Jonathan into this, but Andreas had checked with Neely and she had assured him that she was quite willing to speak. "I don't believe I've done anything immoral, as uncomfortable as some may be. I don't believe I've done anything detrimental to mage society as a whole, though perhaps some see a threat in anything that can potentially alter our collective views on sensitives and our relationship with them. My calling is to heal and comfort, the last thing I have any desire to see is increased suffering." Aware that he was trembling slightly, he sat down again.

"That's all?" the Ingemar Matriarch said, eyebrows raised.

Van shrugged, trying his best to look calm and casual and certain that he was failing. "I don't deny my actions. I only deny that they were in any way seditious or immoral. I don't believe I have anything more to say at present that will help."

"Proceed, hunters," the Kalindi Patriarch said.

Van listened in numb silence as the hearing progressed. Elena offered herself as first witness, and she brought up everything she could think of to prove his real intent, from Van's long lack of a sensitive of his own while living with his uncle and a sensitive who frequently wore no collar, through the whole mess with Randi, to her personal knowledge of the book in question. She even dragged in having spotted two free sensitives—Claire and Kirk, presumably—who showed his signature on their auras; not the consequences he'd feared would arise from that night, though he would have yielded to Randi's insistence anyway.

He wondered whether this was honestly how she saw everything that had happened, and if so, whether it would be unthinkable to feel some degree of pity for her. Even if she was doing her level best to make him out as being some mutually contradictory kind of perverted semi-intelligent deviant and malicious manipulative genius, as near as he could tell.

When she fell silent, the Kalindi Patriarch glanced at Van and Andreas. "Your response?"

Van rose, hands resting on the table for whatever support that was. "No law says one has to have a sensitive by a certain age, or at all, so I fail to see how that's relevant. The laws do allow for using a mentor's sensitive during teaching and testing, if one doesn’t have one's own, obviously with the consent of that mentor and Brennan can confirm that. My behaviour was never called into question at the time when I had no sensitive, to the best of my knowledge. I caught Pride as a runaway, and proved to Elena and Brock within the granted minimum time limit that she was under my control, which makes her legally mine—if the hunters now retract their own judgement, I'm quite willing to be tested again. As far as I know, there's no law that says a free sensitive can't be used magically, it's generally just not an option—in this case, the pair in question were in serious danger of death, so I intervened even though I had no intention of claiming them. One is a young healthy mother who can now raise her child and very probably more, the other a young male who will, I imagine, make a very good sensitive for someone." I'm so sorry, Claire, Kirk. "As for my book…. As I said, I admit to writing it and distributing it. I'm sorry to have given the hunters such a shock when they found a copy on a free sensitive they'd just caught in another city, especially after having that sensitive throw rocks at them," he hoped the one who'd had the nerve to do it was with a mage who appreciated spirit, "but I'm curious as to how that sensitive reacted to training." He didn't need to look to know that every sensitive in the room flinched at the final word.

Van saw Elena's near hand curl into a fist. "More or less normally," she said tersely.

"More or less?" Andreas echoed.

"Accurately and completely, please, hunter," the Santiago Matriarch said.

"He stopped running after only two days, and stood there waiting for us," Elena said unwillingly. "Given that, I expected training to take much longer than usual before we got the proper responses. It didn't. We warned the Alexeiev we sold him to that he should keep a very close eye on him, that there were unusual circumstances involved, but the last we heard, he was satisfied with his new sensitive."

"Seems like this sensitive being in possession of this book caused you no difficulty, hunter," the Santiago Matriarch observed.

"Having a sensitive fight back and attempt to claim control of the situation is hardly normal, Matriarch."

"Have either of you anything further to say?" the Kalindi Patriarch asked.

Van shook his head and sat down. "Too bad that Alexeiev isn't here," he murmured to Andreas, as Elena returned to her own seat.

"I've seen at least four Alexeievs from Enville," Andreas whispered back. "Though I don't know whether any have recently acquired a new sensitive. There may be others from farther afield that I don't know. He might be here. Especially if he knows his sensitive had your book. Would you like to try?"