Elena bolted to her feet. "This is ridiculous! Since when is the opinion of a sensitive considered relevant in any way?"

"Elena," Victoria began, tersely.

"No! You might be senior, but you're supposed to be upholding the laws, not helping to undermine them!" Elena shoved the table hard enough to send it a good three feet across the age-smoothed stone, and strode out to the centre of the floor; Neely instantly dropped a hand to Jonathan's shoulder, urging him to his feet so she could keep him behind her, backing them both towards Van and Andreas and away from Elena. "Elders, do you really think a sensitive is going to tell the truth?"

"You'll have your chance to question what he says, in turn, hunter," the Kalindi Patriarch said coldly.

"Question a sensitive. You seriously expect a hunter to question a sensitive. And that's supposed to prove what?" Elena spread her feet and crossed her arms, standing just behind the witness chair. "That his mage and the other Donovans and their out-of-control sensitives have coached him thoroughly on what to say to do the most damage? Who are you listening to who support this? An Eldridge who stole her sensitive out from under Brock and I and got away with that. A Donovan who stole her sensitive out from under Felipe and got away with that. A Donovan who rescued a renegade sensitive who attacked her own mage and got away with it. The whole Donovan family, whose sensitives are permitted to act far above themselves and interact with free sensitives!"

"Everything which has occurred," Andreas pointed out to his cousin, "has occurred within the laws that you are supposed to understand and support."

"Only if you believe all the lies!" The sheer venom in her voice was chilling, and the tension in her stance worried Van more than a little. She was about to explode, and there was nothing he could do about it, including predict how that explosion would manifest.

The most ironic thing, Van reflected, was that Elena was actually right in ways—they did lie to subvert the laws to their own ends.

"Perjury is not currently on the table, hunter," the Santiago Matriarch snapped. "You caught and trained Van's sensitive yourself, by the currently approved methods, and she nonetheless broke that training. You confirmed yourself that she was under Van's control, using his own methods, within the time limit. Are you rescinding your own judgement? Or claiming you were coerced?"

"Olaf could have tamed that little bitch, and should have been given the chance to do so, but any proper behaviour she shows now is all an act."

The explosion Van had seen coming wasn't verbal, or even magical, it was physical, the last thing anyone would expect from a mage. Elena's abrupt motion caught them all unprepared, but the direction of it even more so.

As soon as Van connected her move with Randi's location, he shoved his chair back and spun around.

Oblique was closer. Her arm pushed Randi back against Lila, as she interposed herself; Elena's reaching hand seized Oblique's wrist instead, jerking her forcibly to her feet with a mixture of physical strength and telekinesis. The hunter dragged her out into the middle of the room. "You're no better than the little bitch," she snarled. "Won't admit a sensitive exists only for one purpose."

Lila and Randi fell over each other in a desperate scramble to not trip Brennan or be stepped on as he went after his sensitive, and given his expression, Van would not have wanted to be the one threatening Oblique.

Oblique's face showed, not the fear that anyone would expect of a sensitive who couldn't get free from the grasp of a hostile mage, but something Van could only call hatred, and she raised her eyes to Elena's with no trace of submission.

The sudden spike of energy was unmistakable to every mage in the room.

Oblique's voice was icy-cold as she snapped, "Not yours, hunter."

Sudden as the flicking of a switch, the power was simply gone. Not used and channelled, not dispersed, just no longer there.

Elena crumpled bonelessly where she stood, Brennan very nearly stumbling over her.

Oblique... of course it was, that aura was familiar, but the shape under now poorly-fitting jeans and white T-shirt was male. Oblique dropped to her knees, buried her face in Brennan's thigh, one dark-skinned arm around his leg, the other around her own head. Brennan immediately ran a soothing hand over much shorter curly black hair; his expression hardened again when he looked up and realized that every mage in the room was watching—and in an alarming number, Van saw the beginnings of fear under the confusion.

"You touch my sensitive over my dead body," he growled. "Anything she does, I'm responsible for."

"What just happened?" Victoria demanded. "Oblique, what did you do?"

"May I explain instead, my Lady?" Sage said, one shoulder against Aiden's leg and his hands folded tightly in his lap, forcing his worried gaze away from Oblique and towards Victoria and the Elders. Brock abandoned his chair to kneel beside his partner, examining her; the Donovans closest all edged back, urging sensitives well out of his reach, and other shifted backwards to make room.

"If you have an answer, then yes. It might be more clear than hers just now."

"I think Lady Elena was beginning to draw power through Oblique." There was really no need to point out how profoundly inappropriate that was, or that Elena's intentions could hardly have been benign. "And Oblique just stopped her from reaching it. I think you'll find Lady Elena in the same kind of shock that comes from breaking contact at the wrong moment."

"Just stopped her," Victoria echoed three innocent-sounding words in the deafening shocked silence, and then asked the question on the mind of every mage present and probably most of the sensitives as well. " How?"

Sage closed his eyes. Van was certain he'd never seen Sage look frightened before—but with good reason. Fear created mobs. "It's... it's common knowledge among sensitives in Western Europe and Australia. Sensitives there learn about their abilities. Including how to consciously channel more power for their mages to use. And... and how to cut it off completely."

Which, apparently, snapped her back to the original form her genes had given her, undoing all shapechanging, desired or otherwise. Van wondered how many had noticed that bit. He had no intention of pointing it out. A sufficiently enormous can of worms had already been opened, and there was just no way they could be stuffed back inside.

A small voice said, Oblique's known she could stop us cold if she chose to?

Both he and Bren had trusted her countless times to maintain contact herself, no longer thought anything of it. Why was it vaguely unsettling to know that she could do the same thing without physically breaking contact? Or was it unsettling not knowing what else she might have learned?

I trust Oblique. She and Sage made a reasonable decision not to say anything. The more people that know a secret, the less secret it really is. Why the hell is it unsettling at all?

It's because the rules just changed.

And people get very nervous when the rules are changed, especially suddenly and unexpectedly. And very nervous people, en masse, can be a very very bad thing...

"Sensitives can't do that," someone said incredulously from somewhere across the room, in the face of current evidence.

"And you know this how?" Victoria asked Sage, ignoring the interruption and the subsequent rumblings.

Van was much less sanguine about that background noise, and judging by Catherine's expression, the crease that had appeared between her eyebrows and the way she was biting her lip, her eyes never still, she shared his misgivings.

"Oblique and I have been talking on the Internet with sensitives from other places. For a few years now. Our Lords knew that. We didn't tell anyone that sensitives there learn control. Not our Lords or any other mages, not sensitives tame or free. It seemed like a really bad idea for lots of reasons. Neither of us has ever had any reason to want to use it before, it was just an abstract bit of theory. I think Oblique was scared and angry because of what Lady Elena did, and because she knows it's possible, she just did it."

Van doubted Oblique had been scared at all at that instant, that wasn't what he'd seen, but it was a motivation that would soften the whole thing a little.

But those rumblings were getting louder anyway.

"Brock, how bad?" Victoria asked.

"Pretty bad," Brock said. "Like running headfirst into a wall at full speed. She was pulling a lot of power fast, obviously. It's going to be a while before she wakes up. And I don't know how long after that before she's able to use magic again."

Victoria turned to look at the Elders. "Obviously this bears further investigation. However, regardless of how Elena was stopped, she was injured while doing something unforgivable for anyone, let alone a hunter—attempting to use a sensitive belonging to another mage, against that mage's wishes. Brennan and his sensitive are well within the law using any method available to prevent that."

"Agreed," the Kalindi Patriarch said swiftly. The Elders probably saw the same risk of riot that Van did.

"May I suggest that Elena be moved to one of the cells for the time being?" Elspeth said, her voice deceptively calm. "It would be a better place for recovery than the middle of a stone floor. And we'll know where she is when she wakes."

Victoria nodded. "Brock? Can you and your sensitives handle that? With some telekinetic support, a blanket will work adequately as a stretcher." She barely waited for his acknowledgement. "Everyone resume your seats, please. We were in the middle of a very important hearing before this unfortunate incident. That has yet to be concluded. Back to your seats now, please."

Oh, she definitely saw the danger.

People grumbled, but hunter authority was deeply ingrained: they drifted back towards their previous locations.

Van figured he was justified in taking a few seconds to drop to one knee in front of Randi, cup a hand around her cheek, and ask her if she was okay. She assured him, a bit shakily, that she was.

"It was me she was reaching for," she whispered.

"I know. Hang in here. It'll be okay. And it'll be over soon." He hoped he sounded more convincing than he felt.

Brennan, who had coaxed Oblique back to her feet long enough for a hug and to cross a few feet of floor, sat back down beside Catherine; Oblique fell to her knees again, never breaking contact. Under Brennan's gentle stroking, her form fluxed back to her chosen normal, which seemed to help a little, but she was still trembling. Randi moved towards her, cuddling close with some disregard for propriety, but under the circumstances, Van doubted anyone would be surprised or take offence. Quite possibly, no one would even notice.

Neely and Jonathan were back in their spot, and Lila looked torn between Randi on one side, Jonathan on the other; the latter won, she edged nearer to lace a hand through his, and on his other side Sage, also badly shaken, shifted closer so he could catch Jonathan's other hand, the best he could do while still leaning against Aiden.

Reluctantly, Van left his family and went back to his seat.

Jonathan's water glass had found its way onto the table, presumably abandoned when Neely urged Jon back to their seat. Just as well she'd gotten him out of the way so quickly, he could easily have been an alternative target for Elena.

The Kalindi Patriarch looked at his peers questioningly. "Are we able to continue the hearing effectively?"

"We've just had a very large item dropped in our laps," the Santiago Matriarch pointed out drily. "If, in fact, sensitives are able to learn to do things like increase available power and deny it to a mage in contact, then we clearly know less than we believed we did about sensitives."

"I think any practical research should stay on hold for the time being, don't you?" the Ingemar Matriarch said, a bit uneasily. "I'm not certain we want to encourage tame sensitives. And the thought of free sensitives learning this is... disturbing."

"I fail to see how we could sweep this under the rug," the Donovan Matriarch said. "I'm not terribly happy with this situation myself, but unless you plan to kill every sensitive present and coerce the mages into an oath and then trust that none break it out of resentment if nothing else, the fact is that there are several hundred people in this room. Few sensitives are kept entirely isolated. There will be no possible way to track the source of any leak. The facts exist. If it's an innate sensitive ability, then it was bound to turn up sooner or later." Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "In fact, it seems improbable that it has never been triggered previously by fear and anger, and those tend to be greatest within the first few days."

"There are accounts," Victoria said, "not many, but a few, of recently-captured sensitives injuring their mages magically. It has always been assumed that the aftereffects left the mage unclear as to the details of the last few moments before blacking out, or that they were unwilling to admit to allowing the sensitive to maintain contact too soon or otherwise being careless. Clearly those accounts need to be reassessed."

"And we're continuing to discuss this subject in the hearing of hundreds of sensitives!" the Ingemar Matriarch said nervously.

"I don't think we're in for a sudden insurrection," the Kalindi Patriarch said firmly. "I doubt any reasonably well-treated sensitive would be able to muster the level of fear and anger that appear to be required to do this instinctively. Elspeth is correct, we are going to have to acknowledge this and deal with it."

"This is proof that allowing sensitives to learn is dangerous," the Vladislav Patriarch protested. "If Brennan's sensitive had been trained and handled properly and knew her proper role, instead of being allowed unsupervised conversations with god-knows-who..."

"Then Elena would be conscious and in extremely deep trouble anyway," Victoria said acidly. "I consider this sufficient reason to look into her contact with the novices as well, on grounds of similar behaviour that may have been influenced by her. I believe I'm going to extend that to all support staff. She's unstable and should have been dealt with years ago, but within the limits of the law I couldn't."

"This goes beyond one hunter! Sensitives who can, on a whim, deny access to power are fundamentally destructive to mage society!"

"So," Andreas said, "we're back to that? The only way to control a sensitive is with methods along the lines of Olaf's? You're advocating every single mage in this room isolating their sensitives absolutely from all outside sources of information? No TV, no radio, no books? No allowing them to do the grocery shopping alone or wait for the cable tech while you do something more interesting? No allowing them library or Internet access to teach themselves how to cook better, how to knit, how to keep your computer running, how to grow a garden for you? No allowing them to take massage classes to use on you? No thinking out loud to them while you're trying to work out a problem? Keep them absolutely silent and terrified at all times, never allow them a single moment of being playful or affectionate? Punish every tiny show of intelligence or individuality with irrational levels of ruthlessness? Is that seriously what you're telling every mage in this room, and in fact every mage in North America, to do?"

"The alternative is the breakdown of the current structure!"

"Then," Andreas said softly, "the current structure is fatally flawed and doomed, and as frightening as it is to realize that, and I'm including myself in that, we're all just going to have to figure out what that means and what to do about it."

"Do we proceed?" the Kalindi Patriarch repeated. "Is there any further ground to cover?"

"I would say there is not," Victoria said calmly. "You are aware already of the consequences of a verdict in Van's favour. I have no evidence to add and I believe we've gone far beyond rhetoric. Anything further is a waste of time. The hunters will accept your judgement as fair and valid, whatever that judgement is."

"Andreas? Van? Do you have anything further to add?"

Van looked to Andreas.

"I would suggest," Andreas said in an undertone, "that we follow Victoria's lead."

"Is an emotional reaction to what Oblique did going to bias the result?"

"It's hard to imagine anyone not having an emotional response, but they also know to watch for exactly that. I very much doubt anything we say at this point will have any useful impact. I doubt we could have come up with anything with more of an impact than Neely's sensitive made, honestly."

Well, Andreas had been right so far.

"Nothing further to add," Van said.

"We will return with a decision, then," the Kalindi Patriarch said, as all five rose to return to their own room in the back.