Home > The Broken Raven (Shadow Skye #2)(4)

The Broken Raven (Shadow Skye #2)(4)
Author: Joseph Elliott

Wait. Someone is talking in whispers. I only just heard it. It’s coming from the room next to this one. I didn’t know there was a room there. I go to the door of it. It is open only a little bit. I look in and there are two people there who are Kenrick and Catriona. They cannot see me. It is rude to listen to other people when they do not know that you are there. I am not rude but I do listen.

“This is not a monarchy, Catriona. I respect your opinions and — for the most part — I agree with you, but I will not silence anyone’s right to speak.”

“You’re stuck in the past,” says Catriona. “Times have changed. We’ve all seen what happens as a result of weak leadership.”

“I don’t know what you are implying,” says Kenrick, “but I do not appreciate the tone of your voice.”

“I’m not implying anything. What I am quite clearly stating is that sometimes hard decisions need to be made. After all we’ve been through, you should be putting the needs of our own clan first.”

“That’s exactly what I am doing,” says Kenrick.

“What? By giving Clann-a-Tuath half of everything we own? Half of all our food?”

“Clann-a-Tuath are earning their keep. What would you have me do? Turn them out to fend for themselves in the wild?”

“Precisely that, yes. All I care about is our clan — what precious few of us there are left — and I refuse to be manipulated by these bullish outsiders.”

“You will have your vote tomorrow, the same as everyone else. Until then, I suggest you hold your tongue. Clann-a-Tuath are our guests here, and for as long as I am the chief of this clan, they will remain so.” Kenrick turns to leave.

I need to hide or he will find me. Oh, it’s okay, there is a different door and he is going out of that one.

“One more thing,” he says to Catriona. “If you undermine me in public again, there will be consequences.” Then he is gone.

Catriona is staring at the door where he left. She is not happy. I should go too but I can’t stop doing the watching. She taps her fingers on the back of a chair. She looks around her even though there is no one in the room. I duck away from the door crack so she won’t see me. When I look back, her hand is fishing around under her clothes by her neck. She moves her hand around like she is searching for something. Then she finds it and she pulls it out.

I cannot even believe it.

It is Nathara’s necklace. The one with all the shadow things inside. It is on Skye and that lady Catriona is holding it in her hand.

 

 

“How did it go?” Aileen asks after I say goodbye to Aggie and step outside the meeting bothan. She’s been waiting for me, eager to hear any news.

“I don’t think I’m any good at playing elder,” I say.

“Was anything decided?”

The other people from the meeting mill around us, continuing the debates in irritable little groups.

“Not really,” I say.

“Come on, I want to hear about it.”

I shrug. I don’t know what to say.

“Okay, come with me,” she says. She grabs my hand and leads me away.

I flinch at her touch; I’m still not used to her being here, back on Skye, safe from the deamhain.

We weave in and out of bothans and around the loch that lies at the heart of Clann-na-Bruthaich’s enclave. We’ve been here nearly a month now, but I still struggle to find my way around. Aileen appears to be navigating it just fine. She stops by the giant oak tree that Clann-na-Bruthaich use for their big meetings. It’s the tallest and the oldest tree in the enclave. By the light of the moon, it’s autumnal leaves shimmer midnight red. Aileen starts to climb.

“Wait. Surely we’re not allowed . . . ?” I say, hovering below her. I’ve seen people tending to the tree as if it’s sacred.

“Probably not.” She looks over her shoulder and gives me a conspiratorial grin.

“What if someone sees us?”

“Well, the longer you stand there dawdling, the more likely that is to happen.”

I shake my head, glance behind me to check no one’s watching, and then place my hands on the trunk. The first few steps are easy; hand- and footholds have been chiseled into the bark, all the way up to what they call the speaker’s branch — a long, sturdy branch that has been cleared of its leaves. It’s where Kenrick stands when he leads their meeting circles. Although they don’t call them meeting circles here, because they don’t stand in a circle. They just gather below him at the base of the tree.

From the speaker’s branch upward, the climbing becomes trickier. I try to copy the route Aileen’s taking, but she’s already several yards above me. Damp leaves slap me in the face and the rough bark crumbles away beneath my fingers. My arms start to ache. While we were at Dunnottar, Cray told me that if I kept practicing with my sword it’d increase my upper-body strength. I’ve been training every day, but my arms still feel like weeds as I pull myself from branch to branch. I’m out of breath by the time I reach Aileen, who’s settled herself on a neat perch with enough space for both of us.

“Did we really have to come all the way to the top?” I ask her.

“Shhh. Look at the view.”

Now I see why she wanted to bring me here. We’re so high, we can see straight over the enclave wall, for miles around. The pitch-black water between us and the mainland shimmers with a mesmerizing allure as it shreds up the reflection of the moon.

Clann-na-Bruthaich’s enclave is closer to the mainland than ours is, but in this light Scotia is nothing but a gloom in the distance. What happened there already feels like a lifetime ago. Whenever I think about it, my heart aches with . . . I don’t know what. Grief or fear or longing or something. I can’t quite figure it out.

“So, tell me everything,” says Aileen.

“There’s not much to say, really.” I recount the arguments that went back and forth without any resolution, and explain about the vote that’s been agreed for tomorrow night.

“Which way are you going to vote?”

“I don’t know. It’s too much pressure. I preferred it when the elders made all the decisions for me.” A small bird flies toward us, as if to land in the tree, then changes its mind, altering direction at the last moment with a dramatic swoop. “How would you vote?”

“All I know is that this will never feel like home,” she says. “I’m as desperate as everyone else is to go back to our enclave and it feels like some members of Clann-na-Bruthaich aren’t all that happy with us staying here anymore. Like Catriona; she’s made it quite clear she wants us gone.”

“She didn’t hold back at the meeting. She’s worried there won’t be enough food for both clans over the winter. If it was up to her, we’d be thrown out of here by morning.”

“Miserable gobhar. And ungrateful too; we’ve been working our hands raw here. Maybe we should just go back to Norveg. At least they wanted us there. . . .”

I don’t laugh. I don’t even give her a polite smile.

“Oh come on, it was a joke,” she says. She knocks my side with her shoulder, then starts laughing, either at her own joke or at my unwillingness to acknowledge it.

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