Raven Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Raven slipped back into the communal nest as the first workers stirred. She kept the lipstick tube buried in her fist and made straight for the wash alcove, hoping the running water would explain her flushed face. She had stripped her shift and stepped under the spray when a shadow leaned into the archway. A male cousin she barely spoke to stood there with his arms crossed, watching water run down her hip. He said he had seen her come in from the ridge. He said he could tell the elders, or he could keep quiet, and the price of his quiet was one hour alone with her, in this same alcove, tomorrow, with the curtain drawn. He smiled like he had already won. He left before she could answer. Raven stood in the water and thought about tomorrow night at the stone, and how this cousin would take that hour from her and every hour after. Then she remembered the small camera she had pulled from a courier's dropped satchel weeks ago and hidden in her pouch, a squat thing with a suction base meant to stick to smooth walls. She dried, dressed, and waited out the day awake. That night, before her shift ended, she pressed the camera to the tile above the wash alcove, angled at the spot where she always stood. She tested the suction with two fingers. It held. In the morning she stepped under the spray on purpose and did, slowly and openly, the things she had once only done under a blanket. She let the lens see everything. When her cousin arrived at the archway grinning, she toweled off, walked past him, and told him flat that a recording of her in the shower now existed, and that if he spoke one word about the ridge, the same recording would reach the elders with his face edited in beside hers. He went gray. He nodded. He left. Raven pulled the camera down, tucked it into her pouch, and realized she had not only bought her silence. She had made her second witness, and this one she owned. Tomorrow night at the stone, she would bring it with her.