Free Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 by Hilari Bell

than a good pair of boots? Or a satchel of dried salmon worth more or less than a bladder of seal oil? But the part about the trade being balanced . . . Your father never learned that.”
    “Lawyers don’t do balance,” said Jase. “It’s the system as a whole that’s supposed to provide that, by having a lawyer on each side.”
    His father had told his grandfather, over and over, that the Ananut corporation needed a better lawyer.
    “But you let me in, anyway,” Jase went on. “You let Mom in.”
    “I’d let your father in, if he’d overcome his own stubborn pride and come home,” said his grandmother. “They’re very alike, in that way.”
    They were. Jase sighed.
    “Why did you come?” his grandmother asked. “After the last time, I thought it would be at least six months before you came back. And Helen said that Nadia said you were shouting something about ‘shaman business.’ I thought you thought that kind of thing was . . . quaint.”
    “I did. I do! But . . . Gima, did those old Native shamans have some sort of magic? Really?”
    He felt ridiculous just asking the question, in the modern rainy reality of the shuttle dock.
    His grandmother was silent for a moment. Then she said, “My grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, could whistle for wind. I saw her do it, when I was a girl, out berrying. We’d climbed the hill behind the village to that big berry patch. I took you there once, remember?”
    Jase did. He’d been stung by a bee and rubbed a blister on his heel.
    “She brought a blanket,” his grandmother continued, “and four big plastic buckets. All of us, me and Leah and Janny and your great-uncle Arthur, we picked and picked. When the buckets were full, she spread out the blanket and made us sit on the corners to hold it, even though there was no wind. It was one of those misty days, when the fog drifts and everything is still.”
    The patter of rain on the canopy sounded very loud.
    “Then she began to whistle,” his grandmother said. “Not the sharp whistle you use to call someone back from the beach, but soft and breathy. The notes went up and down, very simple. But the wind came. First it ruffled my bangs. Then it began to blow harder and we all put on our jackets, and Arthur put his hands over his ears to keep them warm. Janny’s ponytail got all tangled, and later, when Mother was combing it out, she said that Grandee did it.”
    His grandmother smiled, but the wonder was there in her eyes.
    “When the wind was very strong, strong enough to make my jacket whip, she lifted up the buckets we’d filled and poured out the berries, and as they fell the wind blew all the leaves and bugs and twigs away, so only the hard round berries fell to the blanket. After she’d spilled out the last bucket she stopped whistling, and the wind died away. And we poured the berries out of the blanket and back into the buckets, and went home and froze them. Later, my mother and Aunt Mishka made them into jam. She was an old woman, and I was only four, but I remember.”
    If anyone else had told that story Jase wouldn’t have believed it. His grandmother . . .
    “Thanks, Gima. That helps. That helps a lot.”
    She smiled and let the silence return. She was better at silence than Jase, and a moment later he started talking about how his parents were doing, and asked about her knitting co-op. She asked him about school, about his driving job, and if he’d paid off “that car” yet.
    But all the while, the back of Jase’s mind was assimilating the fact that if Native magic was real, if their wise women could summon the wind, if their spirits could shift from girl to bird and back again—then maybe Raven was telling the truth. And if she was . . .
    He wanted no part of it.
    ***
    It was just past noon the next day, and the sun was shining down on Anchorage, when Jase pulled into his own driveway. He’d finally stopped driving and taken a room at Tok, but he’d still had trouble