She wasted no time upon returning Home. Bella found the others in the council offices where she'd expected them to be, preparing for the hearing.

Margaret and Maya looked up as Bella all but stamped into the conference room where the other permanent members had gathered to await her return. But it was Marc who spoke. His voice, as usual, calm, his affect diffident, in sharp contrast with Maya and Margaret who leant forward to hear her all the better. "I gather it did not go well."

Bella tried deep breathing for a time. It didn't really help. "He intends," she finally said, "to create chaos. He threatens to argue that the Covenant is null and void."

"What? What sort of absurd ..." Margaret hissed, looking over at Marc, who was leaning back in his chair looking thoughtful.

"Well, just let him. No one will accept that as an excuse for his breaking the Covenant with regard to this incident. The argument is patently ludicrous. He'll merely offend even more of the elected members." Maya looked over at Marc.

He regarded the three women for some time before he spoke. "Since we haven't been able to kill him, I suppose we shall have to out-think him  

It had actually occurred to Bella to wonder as she left if she had misread him, to wonder if Stephen actually wanted the hearing to go forward and their conversation had been his way of ensuring that.  She rejected it as nonsense.

She was right to do so. Stephen hadn't been manipulating her. He had meant what he said, but he hadn't said that what he'd said was to be his defense, though it was one possibility. She had assumed it and he had let her. Instead he had been trying to explain something much more fundamental to her and through her to the other three and that was that he no longer felt bound to the covenant in the ways they continually assumed he should feel bound. That he had changed  in that regard may have been, to some degree, a result of what he  believed to be their grossly improper and unutterably, inexcusably  immoral behavior over Richard and Lily's children in the face of  Lily's successful defiance of them.

But it went far beyond that. In short, in his view, they'd wanted revenge and gotten it. That they had been found out was the aspect they regretted, not the act itself. That Doni had died was simply a tragic and unforeseen result of her own rash and ill-considered behavior when they'd been found out. And that fact was why he had, finally, reached the position he had.

He was well aware of the problems with the position he found himself in but the only way he could see to ensure a change in the Covenant and hence the Council was to force a situation in which the flaws of the current document were painfully obvious. It was a risky play, made riskier because while he had at first thought he could enlist the support of the Listeners and create a power center that would easily be able to challenge the status quo, that approach upon reflection had proved to be both unwise and unfair, a desire for confrontation arising from the rage he felt about Doni that was contained but not gone.

In the event he was unsuccessful it was incumbent upon him to ensure the Listeners were not destroyed as well. Secondly, he had concluded after a great deal of thought that this first move had to be his alone otherwise it would not be as effective. If he successfully defied the Council this afternoon, and he fully expected to do that by the simple expedient of simply refusing to comply with any directive to separate Charlie and his children, for reasons that should resonate with every parent who attended, the groundwork for the rest would be laid.

The council would have to try to convince Charlie Palmer to comply and voluntarily give up his children on demand. It would be Charlie,  refusing and hence rejecting the authority of the council and by  extension the Covenant which was the basis for their power over him  in a matter most fundamentally his alone to decide and not within  their purview at all that would act as the small stone beginning the  avalanche. He hoped.

The Council of course could surprise him and not attempt to separate Charlie and his children. But if that happened, the end result would be the same, because to do so was to assert the same principle though from a different direction. And they themselves would be asserting that the Covenant was defective and lacked authority or forced to at least consider the possibility. If that happened it wouldn't be necessary to oust them. Then all that would be required was a simple  motion to the full body in the presence of the Awakened there today  that a new covenant, in this case an actual constitution be drafted  and the thing was in motion.

If that happened the only charge he would have to answer was the one of not informing them. They might rap his knuckles for that but that would be about it.

All Baylee had to do, no matter what happened, was remind the Council  of the reality of the healing imperative and look penitent. All the babies had to do was look cute. That Charlie himself would refuse Stephen never doubted. He didn't need to; he'd seen the man with his daughters.

It was as fool proof as he could make it, but if it failed he had a fall back position. He just didn't want to go there.