“Bluestar,” Tallstar spoke again. “Will you come here to me, between our warriors? Bring your deputy with you, and let us see if we can make peace.”
“Peace?” Bluestar spat. “How can I make peace with prey stealers and rogues?”
Yowls of protest rose from the WindClan cats. Mudclaw sprang forward, but Onewhisker leaped after him and bowled him over, holding him writhing on the turf. Fireheart saw Darkstripe lashing his tail to and fro; if Mudclaw attacked, Darkstripe would meet him, and all hope of peace would be over.
“Do as Tallstar says,” Fireheart mewed desperately to Bluestar. “That’s why we’re here. WindClan have suffered from stolen prey, just like ThunderClan.”
Bluestar rounded on him, a look of venomous hatred blazing in her blue eyes. “It seems we have no choice,” she hissed at him. “But there’ll be a reckoning for this, Fireheart. You can be sure of that.”
Stiff-legged, her fur bristling, she paced forward until she stood in front of Tallstar, right on the border of WindClan territory. Fireheart followed, murmuring to Sandstorm, “Keep an eye on Darkstripe,” as he left the line of warriors.
Tallstar watched Bluestar coolly as she approached. The WindClan leader had never forgiven her, Fireheart knew, for sheltering his old enemy Brokentail, but he had the wisdom not to let his grudge influence him now. “Bluestar,” he meowed, “I swear by StarClan that WindClan have not hunted on your territory.”
“StarClan!” Bluestar sneered. “What’s the worth of an oath by StarClan?”
The black-and-white tom looked taken aback, his gaze flickering to Fireheart as if he were looking for an explanation. “Then I will swear it by anything you hold sacred,” he went on. “By our kits, by our hopes for our Clans, by our honor as leaders. WindClan did not do what you accuse us of.”
For the first time his words seemed to reach Bluestar. Fireheart saw her fur begin to lie flat. “How can I believe you?” she rasped.
“We have lost prey too,” Tallstar told her. “It may be dogs, or rogues. It is not cats from WindClan.”
“So you say,” meowed Bluestar. She sounded uncertain now. Fireheart thought that perhaps Tallstar was beginning to convince her, but she did not know how to back down without losing dignity.
“Bluestar,” Fireheart mewed urgently, “a noble leader doesn’t take her warriors into battle without need. If there’s the least doubt that—”
“Do you think you know more than I do about how to lead a Clan?” Bluestar interrupted. Her fur had bristled again, but this time it was Fireheart who was the target of her anger. He caught a glimpse of the old, formidable ThunderClan leader, and it was all he could do not to flinch from her.
“Young cats think they know everything,” Tallstar meowed. There was a hint of sympathetic humor in his voice, and Fireheart felt a flash of gratitude toward the WindClan leader for his sensitivity to Bluestar’s fears. “But sometimes we have to listen to them. There is no need for this battle.”
Bluestar’s ears twitched irritably. “Very well,” she mewed reluctantly. “I accept your word—for now. But if my patrols scent WindClan one tail-length over our border…” She whipped around and called to the ThunderClan cats. “Back to camp!” she ordered, leaping ahead of them.
As Fireheart turned to follow her, Tallstar dipped his head to him. “Thank you, Fireheart. You did well, and my Clan honors your courage in averting this battle—but I don’t envy you now.”
Fireheart shrugged, and followed the rest of his Clan. Just before he plunged into the hollow at Fourtrees, he glanced over his shoulder to see the WindClan cats racing back across the open moor toward their camp. The turf gleamed pale in the soft dawn light, unstained by the blood of any cat.
“Thank you, Spottedleaf,” Fireheart murmured as he turned away.
Bluestar led her warriors back to camp in tense silence. At the entrance to the clearing, Fireheart bounded ahead to talk to Mousefur, who was sitting outside the warriors’ den.
“Any problems?” he asked.
Mousefur shook her head. “No trouble at all,” she reported. “Frostfur has taken out the dawn patrol with Brackenfur and a couple of the apprentices.” Looking him over, she added, “You don’t seem to be missing any fur. I suppose the peace talk worked.”
“Yes, it did. Thanks for taking care of things here, Mousefur.”
Mousefur dipped her head. “I’m going to get some sleep,” she meowed. “You’ll need to send some cats out to hunt. There’s hardly any fresh-kill left.”
“I’ll lead a hunting party,” Fireheart promised.
“No, you won’t.” Bluestar came padding up behind him. Her eyes were chips of blue ice. “I want to see you in my den, Fireheart. Now.” She stalked across the clearing without looking back to see if he was following.
Fireheart’s fur prickled with dread. He had expected some sort of recrimination from his leader, but that didn’t make it any easier now that it was about to happen.
“I’ll see to the hunting party,” Whitestorm meowed, giving him a sympathetic look as he came up with Sandstorm and Dustpelt.
Fireheart nodded his thanks and headed toward Bluestar’s den. By the time he reached it, his leader was seated on her bedding with her paws tucked under her. The tip of her tail twitched back and forth.
“Fireheart.” Her voice was quiet; Fireheart would have been less afraid if she had yowled at him. “Tallstar couldn’t have picked a more convenient time to talk to me about the prey theft than if StarClan had told him themselves. That was your doing, wasn’t it? You’re the only cat who knew that I was planning to attack WindClan. Only you could have betrayed us.”
She sounded as if her mind was clearer than it had been for some time, as if the instinct that had sharpened her senses on the moor had settled into hard certainty. She was behaving like the noble leader he had once respected, giving Fireheart an even more agonizing sense of what they had lost. He still believed that he had not betrayed his Clan, but he had given away the advantage of surprise, because Tallstar had been wise enough to realize that battle must be close. Would Bluestar send him into exile? Fireheart shivered at the thought of being forced to live as a rogue, stealing prey and with no Clan to call his own.
He came to stand in front of Bluestar and dipped his head. “I thought it was the right thing to do,” he meowed quietly. “Neither of the Clans needed to fight this battle.”
“I trusted you, Fireheart,” Bluestar rasped. “You, out of all my warriors.”
Fireheart forced himself to meet her flinty gaze. “I did it for the good of the Clan, Bluestar. And I didn’t tell him about the attack. I only asked him to try making peace. I thought—”
“Silence!” Bluestar hissed, lashing her tail. “That is no excuse. And why should I care if the whole Clan had been slaughtered? Why should I care what happens to traitors?”
A wild light was growing in her eyes again, and Fireheart realized that the moment’s clarity had gone.
“If only I’d kept my kits!” she whispered. “Mistyfoot and Stonefur are noble cats. Far nobler than any of this ragtag bunch in ThunderClan. My children would never have betrayed me.”
“Bluestar…” Fireheart tried to interrupt, but she ignored him.
“I gave them up to become deputy, and now StarClan are punishing me. Oh, StarClan are clever, Fireheart! They knew the cruelest way to break me. They made me leader and then let my cats betray me! What is it worth, now, to be leader of ThunderClan? Nothing! It’s all empty, all…” Her paws worked furiously among the moss. Her eyes were glazed, staring at nothing, and her mouth gaped in a soundless wail.
Fireheart shuddered in dismay. “I’ll fetch Cinderpelt,” he meowed.
“Stay…where…you…are.” Each word was rasped out separately. “I need to punish you, Fireheart. Tell me a good punishment for a traitor.”
Nearly sick with fear and shock, Fireheart forced himself to reply. “I don’t know, Bluestar.”
“But I do.” Now her voice
was a low purr, with a strange note of amusement in it. Her gaze locked with Fireheart’s. “I know the best punishment of all. I’ll do nothing. I’ll let you be deputy still, and leader after me. Oh, that should please StarClan—a traitor leading a Clan of traitors! May they give you joy of it, Fireheart. Now get out of my sight!”
The last words were spat out. Fireheart backed away from her, into the clearing. He felt as if he had been in a battle after all. Bluestar’s despair pierced him like sharpened claws. But he couldn’t help feeling that Bluestar had let him down too, by not even trying to understand his motives; she had labeled him a traitor without even considering what would have happened if they had fought WindClan.
Head down, Fireheart padded across the clearing, not even aware that another cat had approached him until he heard Sandstorm’s voice.
“What happened, Fireheart? Has she sent you away?”
Fireheart looked up. Sandstorm’s green eyes were anxious, though she did not move close enough to comfort him with her touch.
“No,” he replied. “She didn’t do anything.”
“Then that’s all right.” Sandstorm sounded as if she were forcing optimism into her voice. “Why are you looking like that?”
“She’s…ill.” Fireheart couldn’t begin to describe what he had just witnessed in Bluestar’s den. “I’m going to get Cinderpelt to see her. Then maybe we can eat together.”
“No, I…I said I’d go hunting with Cloudpaw and Brindleface.” Sandstorm scuffled her front paws, not looking at him. “Don’t worry about Bluestar, Fireheart. She’ll be all right.”
“I don’t know.” Fireheart couldn’t repress a shiver. “I thought I could make her understand, but she thinks I betrayed her.”