Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(79)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

“Flea says that Caitriona is your new High Priestess,” I said. “Was she able to learn from the last one before she died?”

 

“Yes, but not for very long.” A curious transformation came over Mari. She stood straighter, her shoulders back as she led us up the stairs. Even her voice sounded clearer. “Cait was the first called of our Nine, but we chose her because she is the best of us.”

 

“Nobody is perfect,” I managed.

 

“Cait is,” Mari said, looking back at me with defiance. “She is the bravest soul I know, and the kindest.”

 

“She hasn’t been kind to Neve,” I pointed out.

 

“That’s only because . . . because she knows the old stories so well,” Mari protested, tucking the streak of white hair behind her ear. “The betrayal of sisters is not easily forgotten, nor forgiven.”

 

“Do you think the High Priestess ever taught her anything about Lord Death’s magic?” I asked.

 

Mari stared at me, her wide-set eyes the very portrait of bewilderment. “What makes you ask that?”

 

My stomach curled in on itself, cramping with everything else I should have said. It felt wrong not to tell her, knowing what was at stake for all the priestesses. I’d only wanted to plant that suggestion in her mind, to let it fester enough for her to find her own answers, but it suddenly felt breathtakingly cruel.

 

The Nine were fiercely loyal to Caitriona and one another, perhaps unbreakably so after what they’d faced together. For the first time, looking at Mari, I started to doubt my own eyes.

 

Why would Caitriona want to do any of this, knowing it threatened her sisters and had killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Avalonians?

 

She could be serving another, I thought, and this is all their design . . .

 

But that only brought up more questions my mind was too exhausted to handle. Instead, I asked, “What’s next?”

 

“I’m afraid if I tell you, you won’t want to help,” Mari said with a smile.

 

I was already intimately acquainted with the garderobes—essentially medieval lavatories that jutted out from the back of the tower. They were nothing more than a hole on a wooden bench that opened to the reeking, stagnant moat below, and to my eternal joy, I got to see every one of them as we emptied out the chamber pots and dumped used wash water into them.

 

Mari had a way of always staying at the very edge of things: the stairs, the walls of rooms, the courtyard. It was growing clearer to me by the moment that she was the unseen engine at the heart of the tower, quietly assigning the day’s tasks to all the others and shouldering the most thankless, invisible work herself. It was in the elfinkin’s gentle nature to tend to animals, and it seemed that extended to the human variety as well.

 

Hours later, Mari moved to her final task of the day: tallying their stores of food and other supplies and distributing the daily allotment to those assigned to cook the evening meal, including, as it turned out, Olwen, who had come to collect it herself.

 

The larder was in a room tucked away at the back of the sleeping hall, where many people were still milling about, greeting Olwen as they rolled the bed pads and folded the blankets to store at one end of the room.

 

The priestess’s smile grew at the sight of me. The simple dress she wore was the color of a faded rose and hugged her full curves; its draped bell sleeves rolled and pinned to keep them from interfering with her work.

 

“Just taking in the sights,” I said lightly.

 

Olwen passed a small basket to Mari, who lifted it with a look of obvious pleasure. The scraggly gray kitten inside examined her with equal interest, taking in her face with his unusually vivid blue eyes.

 

“I thought you could use a new mouser for the larder, or just a friend to join you as you go about your day,” Olwen said, smiling. “I’m not sure what’s happened to his mother and siblings. He just wandered into to the kitchen and took a bit of goat’s milk.”

 

“Oh, what a darling you are,” Mari cooed, lifting the kitten out of the basket. “Does he have a name?”

 

“Rabies?” I suggested. But the sight of his adorable little face made me miss the fiendish felines in the guild library to an almost unspeakable degree.

 

“That’s an unusual name,” Mari said, visibly relaxing as she cuddled the kitten beneath her chin. The creature happily accepted the attention with a soft purr. “I think . . . yes, you look more like a Griflet to me. Thank you, Olwen!”

 

“Don’t forget to eat something before this evening,” Olwen said. “The both of you. I’ll hunt you down and feed you bits of cheese if I have to.”

 

“Just so you know, you’re invited to do that anytime,” I said.

 

The larder was lit by three glass windows, which gave a clear view of the disaster inside. I turned. And turned again.

 

The room was as large as the bedchambers and smelled sweet with dried fruit, but there was food only on one wall of shelves. My stomach turned over at the sight.

 

“Where do you keep the rest of it?” I asked.

 

Mari set her kitten down to allow him to explore. Olwen quickly shut the door behind us, pressing a finger to her lips.

 

“They don’t know?” I asked, the words bursting out of me. I turned to survey the shelves again. “This is food for weeks, not months.”

 

“Now you understand the importance of the crops they’ll be growing in the courtyard,” Olwen said, glancing at Mari as she fussed with a nearly empty jar of dried berries. Seeing them reminded me of the almost decadent sweet bread they’d given us the night before.

 

Dread crept over me like a shadow. There was no way this would last until they had viable crops to eat. Unless . . .

 

“Can you use your magic to grow crops faster?” I asked.

 

“Yes,” Olwen said. “Though we’ve been reluctant to do so, with the magic of the isle feeling so . . . unpredictable.”

 

I did the math in my head, working out how much about two hundred people would need each day. “Do you think they’d be fully ripened within two weeks—a fortnight?”

 

Why are you doing this? my mind whispered. This isn’t your problem . . .

 

Wasn’t it, though? I wasn’t about to have any of us starve to death before we carved a path back to our world.

 

“Possibly,” Olwen said. “Why?”

 

“You’re in luck,” I told them, reaching for the first basket of grain. “Because if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s stretch a little bit of food to make it last.”