“Move faster.” The little leader’s voice, uneven with the cold, rung out over the black slots in the ground. Beneath him, in the earth that was near-frozen despite the summer, Inferiors pawed away at dirt, and stones, and roots, some silent in their exhausted misery, some making sorry grunts as their sore paws cut at shards and bloodied themselves. Kier was overseeing a grave digging outing. “We don’t have all night. It’s getting cold — I want to go inside.” He did look it; with so thin a pelt and such large ears, the warmth had nowhere to hide and everywhere to leave from. His nose had gone faintly blue and he kept sniffing, his cheeks stinging. They were near the stone circle, eerie in the freezing moonlight, close to where he had tossed Duskpaw into her mother’s open grave.

He stalked back and forth above the graves, looking down at the diggers within like they were making the personal decision to take so long. Really, though, he didn’t look angry; he just looked miserably cold, almost deceptively sweet, all shivering and hunched in the unseasonably icy wind that whistled eerily through the pines. Everything was black and blue and white — the trees, the rough, wild expanse of meadow between this wood and the next, the moon. It cast the distant treeline’s shadows across the tough grass; the stone circle was far off, but not far enough. The sky loomed over them, unfathomably vast and unfathomably frosty. It was a clear night; it only made it all the colder. Kier’s breath fogged in the air. He didn’t often personally supervise an outing like this, but like with everything, it was good to show his face every now and then — and one thing was for certain: they talked less when he was watching.

When it came to digging the graves of more deserving dead, Inferiors overseen by any old Superior were fine for it; it was only when it came to the disposing of the executed masses — let’s not be coy; dumping bodies — that more tact was needed, and then it was the silent Superiors apt to keep a secret who did it, all done in careful quiet. He couldn’t have the Clan finding out their loved ones’ bodies were rolled into a ditch — there would be anarchy! He could kill them, but denying them of a deserving resting place — oh, that was where their little minds would draw the line. The Inferiors never wandered far beyond the camp when they were let out to hunt — staring, frozen little idiots either too frightened or too numb and hollow-eyed to wander off, just swaying there in their place like rats who’d been zapped too many times to get up to eat or move away from the current, like they would’ve let snow fall and turn their limbs black before they thought to move — and the bodies had been taken before anyone else stumbled upon them. His solution was a remarkably effective one — foxes left NightClan alone, sated on bloated corpses, and their kits were left to thrive without incident. It was like he had smiled and signed a deal with the predators themselves, Kier’s eyes locked with the fox’s, the lynx’s, the raven’s; many said he had. How had he managed to keep them away? Why, with your brother’s body. But don’t anyone tell.

A few Guards and one or two average NightClanners sat or stood near the corners of the graves, just as cold as Kier but making more of an effort to hide it; only he could be so openly dissatisfied and impatient. So melodramatic; if he was unhappy in a meaningless situation, everyone had to know. He sat suddenly and lifted his forepaws to blow his warm breath onto them, rubbing them together. “Hurry them up,” he suddenly snapped to the nearest cat, pointing angrily to the Inferiors in the various graves. “Two more minutes or they’re all being covered up in there — let them choke on some dirt. It’s cold.” He shivered again. He wanted to do it sooner — what were 10 Inferiors? Their lives didn’t mean anything. He was being generous out of the goodness of his heart with two minutes.