Page 12 of Fate’s Bane

T HE C OLLAR

I woke gasping for breath, throbbing pressure in my head, a grip around my throat.

I thrashed and flailed with fish-gaped mouth.

No second blow sent me back into darkness.

Instead, the shh-shh-shh in my ear as chains wrapped around my chest and pulled me flat.

The more I fought, the tighter the chains gripped, and the less I could breathe—

I stopped fighting.

The chains released me, slowly, and I realized that they were not chains but arms. As my eyes adjusted to the brightness of a roundhouse and the center fire, I recognized the man. The one who had carried me away from Hadhnri as I screamed.

At first, I thought I was in the great Aradoc roundhouse.

The same pelts hung from the walls, the same firepit burned in the middle with a pot raised over it, the smoke lingering just enough to scent the room; the same benches, well-worn, the same pallets scattered on the floor with a rack of weapons near to hand.

But the chieftain’s chair was different, and the people surrounding me were too.

Another man knelt over me, his thousand braids a curtain around us. He gripped my collar tight, held me like I was a rabid-bite hound, the knife in his other hand hovering at my pulse. My throat rolled against his fingers as I swallowed, and my eyes followed the star-keen edge of the blade.

“Agnir, First-Born Garadin Clan Fein?” The man’s voice was rough, smoky as burning peat and harsh as spirits. His eyes were deep brown and hooded warily, and a scar curled through his short beard and his thin mustache. His clan tattoo was a faded blue-black triangle pointed down. Fate’s Dagger.

“I am Agnir Clan Fein,” I said.

The man’s face softened and he brushed my cheek with the back of his knuckles. The knife was still in his hands.

“I am Garadin Clan Fein. You are home again. Be welcome.”

I held rigid, and a furrow creased deeper the lines of his brow. A strong brow. A proud, crooked nose. A spatter of dark freckles, as if someone had splashed him in the mud flats. He tightened his grip on my collar, and I pulled away automatically.

“It is well,” he said, gentle, gentle. “You are not a slave. I will take this off you, my own dear one.”

I shivered at the endearment. It felt strange. Pedhri Clan Aradoc had certainly never called me such. How was I to accept it from this stranger claiming to be my father?

And why not? I asked myself. Why could he not be my father? I had seen my face in burnished silver, and perhaps it was not so different.

Garadin Clan Fein pulled harder at my throat.

“Please.” My voice, the backhand scrape of metal on bark. “What happened?”

Garadin Clan Fein hesitated and glanced at the Clan Fein members gathered around us.

A tight circle, not the full clan. The trusted heads of families, then, or maybe direct relatives.

This was not going as he had expected. He eased his fingers from the leather of my collar and sat back on his heels.

The man who called himself Garadin Clan Fein explained how he had ordered a raid to the other side of the fates-bane’s forest for one thing and one thing only: First-Born Garadin Clan Fein, the chieftain’s child given up for peace.

“Then there will be war?” I croaked.

Garadin Clan Fein flicked his fingers once and, a moment later, water was pressed to my lips.

I tried not to think of Hadhnri. Of Pedhri Aradoc-Father.

Of Gunni and his new wife. The twins. Everyone was watching me as I walked through a stranger’s bog.

To ask for their safety—to step false and stick fast—would be a betrayal I couldn’t yet understand.

His scar crooked dangerous his smile. “No one was killed.” He arched a questioning eyebrow to the man who had taken me.

His second, perhaps. The man shook his head and Garadin Clan Fein nodded, satisfied.

“It was not that kind of raid. A trespass, but a small one. Clan Fein will take what comes, but I am not worried. I have what I wanted, and Pedhri Clan Aradoc will see he has nothing to gain.”

Garadin Clan Fein’s fingers twitched toward my collar again.

Unconsciously, I leaned away. “What did you want?”

“You.”

The answer did not surprise me, because I had asked the wrong question, again—side-sliding against the truth. I knew I was what he had come for, because I was there, in his roundhouse. He did not strike me as someone to sit jawing easy after failure.

What I really wanted to know was, Why now?

“Be still. Let me take this off you.”

I knew a command when I heard it. I could not help eyeing Garadin Clan Fein’s knuckles. They were bony and hairy, his fingers willow-grace long, but I did not doubt their strength.

I held my eyes shut as the man who called himself my father sawed methodically at the leather collar. The back edge of his steel pressed cold into my throat, jarring me. I stretched my chin far as I could from the point. After an age, I sprang free, toppling backward at the sudden release.

The air was cool against my neck. Tentatively, I touched the naked flesh. Smooth—too smooth—in the center. Calloused along the edges where the leather had rubbed. A crust of dirt and sweat on the outside.

Garadin Fein clenched the cut collar white-knuckled. A tear streaked down his weathered cheekbone.

I remembered the first time Hadhnri had touched my first collar. I remembered how, only earlier tonight, she had traced it with her fingers and then her lips. I wanted to ask for it back.

Instead, I was silent as he stood and dropped it into the center fire.

“Welcome home, Agnir First-Born Garadin Clan Fein.”