[KAEL — POV]
Elder Theydon brought lemon cake.
Not a gesture — an actual cake, on a plate, on the table between them in the small meeting room he'd requested for their private session. He was eight hundred years old and looked like a retired professor, slightly rumpled, with eyes that were constantly a step ahead of whatever was being said.
Kael looked at the cake. Then at Theydon.
"I voted against the findings," Theydon said. "You should know why."
"I assumed—"
"Not because I believe they're wrong." Theydon cut two slices and handed one across the table with the matter-of-fact manner of someone who has served cake for several centuries and sees nothing irregular in the act. "I voted against because formal acknowledgment of the Garrison attribution—admitting our forces were blamed fo
