The challenge itself was thin, the way most of Gerald's moves had always been thin, built less on substance than on the careful exploitation of a gap nobody else had thought worth defending.
The emergency council session that had ratified me had seated five members. The fifth had left before the session formally closed. Under specific procedural rules, a ratification session required complete quorum through formal adjournment, and the fifth member's early departure made his vote technically irregular.
Pack law did not care that the argument was thin. It cared whether the argument was technically correct.
The regional council had thirty days to rule. Until then the ratification was not void. It was contested, hanging in the specific limbo of something that existed and might not, simultan
