Even when Bramblestar and the rest of the cats reached the lakeshore and crossed into WindClan territory, the impostor still kept up his search for Squirrelflight.
Why? Bristlefrost wondered. Does he feel threatened by her? Does he think she might come back and try to take leadership of the Clan? Then she saw how Bramblestar’s tail began to droop with disappointment when he couldn’t find any definite traces of the former deputy. Bristlefrost realized there must be something more behind his search. He misses her.
But then why had he sent Squirrelflight away in the first place?
As soon as she pushed her way through the bushes into the clearing around the Great Oak, Bristlefrost was aware of tension in the air. Cats were glaring at one another, their shoulder fur twitching and their tail-tips flicking back and forth. She realized that one wrong word could break the Gathering truce and lead to all-out fighting.
We couldn’t be more jumpy if we were gathering in a badger’s den!
Because Bramblestar had paused so often in his search for Squirrelflight, the ThunderClan cats were the last to arrive. Tigerstar was scraping his claws impatiently on the bark of the Great Oak as Bramblestar hauled his way up the trunk and settled himself in a fork between two branches.
“You took your time,” Tigerstar snapped. “Why did you call this Gathering just to keep us all waiting?”
Bramblestar ignored the question, and after a couple of heartbeats the ShadowClan leader rose to his paws and addressed the Gathering.
“Shadowsight is still missing,” he announced. “If any cat has seen or scented him, for StarClan’s sake tell me now.”
A sympathetic murmur arose from the cats in the clearing. Bristlefrost, who was sitting close to the oak roots with Stemleaf and Spotfur, wished that she could tell Tigerstar something that would help, but she knew that there had been no trace of Shadowsight on ThunderClan territory since the night he disappeared.
As Tigerstar waited for a response, he flexed his claws in and out, his ears flattened in distress. The loss of a young cat was a terrible burden for any Clan, and this was not just any cat: This was a ShadowClan medicine cat, and, more important still, Tigerstar’s son.
“Something happened to Shadowsight,” Tigerstar went on, his voice distraught. “He wouldn’t just leave without telling any cat. That means something—or some cat—attacked him.”
Tigerstar’s accusation was met with a thick silence. The tension in the clearing mounted until Bristlefrost could feel it in every hair on her pelt, as if a whole nest of ants were crawling through her fur. She clamped her jaws tight shut to stop herself letting out a yowl of fear and frustration.
Her thoughts flew back to the night when she had seen the false Bramblestar returning to camp, his chest fur matted with blood. It hurt like a fox’s fangs to suspect that the ThunderClan leader had had something to do with Shadowsight’s disappearance. But she stood by her decision not to accuse him. She had no evidence; if she brought this up, she would give away her hostility to Bramblestar for nothing. If the false Bramblestar stopped trusting her, how would she be able to work against him? Without proof, would any cat in ThunderClan believe her? The real Bramblestar would never have hurt a medicine cat.
Bramblestar let the silence drag on for several heartbeats before he rose to his paws and advanced along the closest branch until he could easily look down on the cats in the clearing. He surveyed them all calmly, and when he began to speak, his tones were clear and decisive. Bristlefrost felt a shock of surprise contrasting this cat, in command of himself and the situation, with the miserable lump of fur she had encountered earlier in his den.
“Tigerstar,” Bramblestar began, “it’s time to stop looking for Shadowsight.” He raised a paw as Tigerstar opened his jaws to protest. “I understand you don’t want to believe your son would leave,” he continued kindly, “but there’s no evidence of an attack of any sort. There’s no sign of him or his corpse. We must assume that he has run away from the Clans. Probably he has gone to be a kittypet, where he can forget all about the difficult job of speaking for StarClan.”
Bristlefrost’s heart sank as she listened to Bramblestar. He makes it sound so reasonable!
She saw Tigerstar’s shoulder fur began to rise at the suggestion that his son would ever want to be a kittypet, but when he replied to Bramblestar, his voice was tightly controlled.
“Why would Shadowsight do that?” he asked. “He loved being a medicine cat.”
“He did,” Bramblestar agreed. “Until one of his parents was named as a codebreaker.”
Now all of Tigerstar’s fur bristled, and he dug his claws hard into the branch where he was standing. Bristlefrost’s belly lurched in fear that the ShadowClan leader would leap at Bramblestar and tear his throat out, right here at the Gathering.
Is that what Bramblestar wants? she asked herself. Does he want to start an all-out war among the Clans, and have Tigerstar disgrace StarClan as well? No cat knew how StarClan would react to some cat breaking the Gathering truce.
She glanced upward to see if clouds were covering the moon as the sign of StarClan’s anger. But the sky had not changed: Faint gleams of light were still struggling through the cloud covering. Maybe an emergency Gathering is different, she thought. There’s no full moon. And anyway, it’s been so long since StarClan gave us any sort of sign. . . .
Tigerstar held himself very still, fixing Bramblestar with an icy glare and keeping a tight grip on his self-control. “You’re wrong, Bramblestar,” he rasped.
Bramblestar dismissed his words with a flick of his tail. “Cats of all Clans,” he began, addressing the Gathering, “you no longer have a choice. Moons have passed since StarClan last communicated with us, and their intent could not be clearer. Their demands are hard to bear, but there’s no doubt that obeying them is the right thing to do. We must exile each and every one of the named codebreakers. They must leave the lake, or StarClan will never return to us. I have already sent Jayfeather and Lionblaze away.”
Bristlefrost noticed that Bramblestar didn’t mention Twigbranch, and she wondered if he was hiding the fact that he had given her the chance to atone.
As the impostor finished speaking, yowls broke out among the cats in the clearing: some protesting, while others sounded simply confused. Bristlefrost saw many cats glancing around, and she knew they were trying to work out which of their Clanmates they would have to send away.
She noticed that Crowfeather and Mothwing were both there in the clearing; they would be among the first cats who had to leave if the Clans agreed to exile their codebreakers. Dovewing wasn’t there, but she too was a cat who had broken the code in the most flagrant way possible.
Meanwhile, Harestar of WindClan had risen from the branch where he was sitting, a tail-length above Bramblestar. His chest was heaving, and his voice was unsteady as he spoke.
“Crowfeather was named as a codebreaker,” he began, “and he’s my deputy. I can’t lose him to this! Many of the codebreakers are good cats. And Shadowsight’s vision is the word of one cat, a cat who—no offense, Tigerstar—seems to have left the Clans. Can this truly be what StarClan wants?”
Bramblestar tilted his head to one side as he looked up at Harestar. “Shadowsight’s disappearance is proof that this has to be done,” he responded calmly. “Clearly, he ran away because he saw the truth. His own mother, as a codebreaker, must be exiled. It’s difficult and painful to do StarClan’s bidding, but we have no alternative, if we’re to have any hope of seeing the spirits of our warrior ancestors again. Shadowsight understood that. He gave us our orders, but he left because he wasn’t strong enough to see it through.”