Page 61 of Havoc

"Now the woman."

Tyrant's already turnin' pages.

"Fore anybody talks," he says, "I want it read, because half this table's about to argue somethin' that's already been decided by men who're dead." He finds it and puts his finger on it. "Article four. Been in the book since oh-four and it come out of the Gallow Kings' book before that, word for word.

"A patched brother's claim descends to his old lady and to his sons. A brother's daughter holds no claim upon the club, its property, or its charter."

Nobody says anything.

"That's the law," Tyrant says. "I didn't write it and I don't like sayin' it out loud in this room this mornin', and I'd thank every one of you to notice I read it instead of quotin' it, 'cause I ain't got it memorized and I don't want it."

"Then say what you mean," Deacon says.

"I mean her daddy's name bein' on that wall don't give her one thing. Not by our own book. It's the whole argument half of y'all are fixin' to make and it ain't got legs."

"Say it plain, Tyrant."

"I am sayin' it plain⁠—"

"No, you ain't." Deacon's voice comes up about two notches, which from him is a shout. "Say it the way it is. Say if she was his son we'd already be votin' on the other thing."

The room goes.

"Would we?" Deacon looks around the table. "Any man here want to tell me that's not so? If a twenty-eight-year-old fella come through that door last night and pointed at that wall and said Doucet, would we be sittin' here readin' out of a book at him?"

Warden doesn't say anything.

Raider brings his chair down onto four legs.

"No," he says. "We'd have had him prospectin' by Wednesday."

"That's right."

"Don't matter," Tyrant says. "It's the book."

"It matters."

"It's the book, Raider."

"Then the book's wrong," Deacon says. "And I've been sayin' words over men out of that book for eleven years and I'll say that too."

Nobody has an answer for it.

That's the part I want down. Nobody argues with him. Not one man at that table stands up and defends article four out loud, and not one man moves to strike it either, and it sits there in the middle of the room like somethin' dead on the road that everybody's drivin' around.

Storm doesn't say a word through any of it.

* * *

"Vote," Storm says.

"On what?" Warden asks.

"On whether this club hands that woman to Lucien Arceneaux. Yes or no. Nothin' else is on the table yet."

Warden goes first, because he always does.

"Yes."