gathering_blue_novel-2

He opened to a page he had marked during the proceedings. Kira had seen
him turning the pages of the volume as Vandara had made her accusatory
presentation.
"The accuser is correct that it is the way," Jamison said to the guardians. Kira
felt stricken by the betrayal. Hadn't he been appointed her defender?
He was pointing now to a page, to its densely written text. Kira saw some of
the men turn in their green volumes, finding the same passage. Others simply
nodded, as if they remembered it so clearly there was no need to reread.
She saw Vandara smile slightly.
Defeated, Kira felt again the small cloth square in her pocket. Its warmth was
gone. Its comfort was gone.
"Turning, though," Jamison was saying, "to the third set of amendments —"
The guardians all turned pages in their books. Even those whose volumes had
remained closed now picked them up and looked for the place.
"It is clear that exceptions can be made."
"Exceptions can be made," one of the guardians repeated, reading the words,
his fingers moving on the page.
"So we may set aside the assertion that it is the way," Jamison announced
with certainty. "It need not always be the way."
He is my defender. Perhaps he will find a way to let me live!
"Do you wish to speak?" the defender asked Kira.
Touching her scrap of cloth, she shook her head no.
He went on, consulting his notes. "She was imperfect. And fatherless as well.
She should not have been kept." The second repetition hurt, because it was true.
Kira's leg hurt too. She was not accustomed to standing so still for so long. She
tried to shift her weight to ease the pressure on her flawed side.
"These accusations are true." Jamison repeated the obvious, in his steady
voice. "The girl Kira was imperfect at birth. She had a visible and incurable
defect."