good. Water had soaked into his clothes, which stuck to his skin, cold and clinging.
As he sat there, blind and trembling, a strange thought occurred to him. Now I know what it was like for them. Now I know.
It was impossible to track time in the cell. He slept fitfully and woke up hungry and thirsty. When he went to the door and called to the guards, asking for food and drink, no-one answered. In the end he resorted to sucking the water out of his tunic. It tasted of dirt and blood, but he drank it anyway, glad to have something to take away the stickiness in his mouth.
He was too cold and anxious to sit down again, so he started to pace back and forth in the dark, his chains rattling. All he had to do was wait. They would take him out of here eventually. They had to. They’d take him out of this place, and then—
The door opened and light flooded in. It was so bright it hurt his eyes, and he backed away, raising his arm to cover his face. He heard footsteps as someone entered the cell, and a voice said, “All right, time to go. Hold out your hands. No funny business.”
Arren stood with his back to the wall and held his arms out, closing his eyes to blot out the light. The guards took him by the elbows and shoved him toward the door, and he went meekly enough. There was no point in fighting back.
“Where are we going?” he asked as they took him back out along the corridor.
One of the guards struck the collar. “To the council chamber.”
Arren cringed. “Why?”
“Well, I’d have expected them to just throw you in the Arena and be done with it, but Lord Rannagon insisted you get a fair trial,” said the guard. “Move it.”
They climbed a flight of stairs that led to the upper levels of the Eyrie and thence to the doors leading into the council chamber. There were guards there, clad in ceremonial armour. They opened the doors immediately and Arren was taken through and into—
His heart seemed to pause in its beating.
They were all there.
The councillors’ seats were all occupied. The gallery was full of people and griffins sitting together, the humans finely clad and the griffins adorned with their own kind of formal outfit: forelegs decorated with bands of gold, silver and copper, some decorated with jewels, and their heads crowned by plumes and tassels. The place was brightly lit by fine glass lanterns, and light also filtered in from the windows in the roof. But the banners had been taken down and there was a formality, even a coldness, to the room.
In the centre of the floor a kind of wooden pen had been set up, about chest height and open at the back. The guards led Arren toward it.
The pen was facing Riona’s seat, but Riona was not sitting there. Rannagon was. He stood up as Arren entered the chamber, and watched as the guards made their prisoner stand inside the pen, facing him. His wife, Kaelyn, was by his side, and their griffins flanked the pair, staring balefully at Arren.
Arren stood in the pen, holding on to the front of it, and stared around at the chamber, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. Surely every griffiner in the city was there, and every griffin as well. He recognised dozens of faces. Roland was there, and Flell, watching from a seat in the gallery just behind her father, and Deanne, and Tamran. People he had known. Some he had been trained alongside; some he had just spoken to briefly on official occasions. Even Vander was there, with Ymazu, his dark eyes watchful.
The moment Arren entered the chamber, the mutterings started. Human and griffish voices filled the air, low and ominous, and there were a few shouts, though he couldn’t catch the words.
He stood in the dock, his eyes on Rannagon, and terror paralysed him. The guards silently took up station on either side of him, and then Rannagon stepped forward and raised a hand for silence.
Almost instantly, the chattering stopped.
Rannagon said nothing. He was wearing a tunic made from yellow velvet trimmed with blue and silver, and there were red lines painted on his forehead, the ancient signs of justice and authority. His sword was strapped to his back, its hilt gleaming.
For a moment, the Master of Law regarded Arren, his expression not hostile but a