Page 4 of Fate’s Bane
T HE P UNISHMENT
He yelled at us both, a great belly-roaring, but most of his ire was for me. I led his child astray. I almost cost him his dearest treasure. The fens are dangerous in the darkness, even to those who know their paths, and the Baneswood—all knew the luck of the fates-bane.
“We were safe, Aradoc-Father,” I said quietly, bowing my head. “We stayed to the solid paths.”
“It was clear, Father. All the way to the spring.”
I inhaled sharply. In her dutiful honesty, Hadhnri had confessed something I knew should have stayed our heart-secret, more dangerous than the kiss we’d shared.
“There is no spring in the Baneswood,” Pedhri growled. He turned to me with his full body, and the weight of his regard sat heavily.
“I thought so, too, Father, but there was—”
“Go, Hadhnri.” Pedhri did not turn his gaze from me.
I bowed my head lower. From the corner of my eye, I saw Hadhnri’s eyes widen in understanding, then the resolute pout of her lips.
Don’t , I willed toward her, but it did not reach.
“Father, there was a spring, I swear it on the bones of—”
“Hadhnri!” Pedhri jerked his head at one of his men, and the man looped a thick arm around her. He lifted her feet off the ground and carried her into the roundhouse.
Pedhri guided me away from the light of the fire and into the darkness.
The flap of the roundhouse fell, cutting me off from the warmth, and the stirring hearth-sounds, and Hadhnri’s grunting struggle.
The cold stole into me as it hadn’t before, and I immediately began to shiver.
Aradoc-Father gripped my shoulder, his large thumb finding the hollow of nerves there and pressing.
“Where did you take my child?”
“To the spring, Aradoc-Father.” I gritted my teeth through the spasming pain in my shoulder. I was not a warrior, but I had puffed up my pride as much as Gunni had in our weapons practice. I tried to bear this punishment in hopes that Pedhri would see I could be trusted.
He slapped me across the face, knuckle-backs crashing like stones against my cheekbone. No inflated pride could stop my head spinning or wash the bright metal of blood from my mouth.
“You will tell me the truth, Agnir Ward-Aradoc.”
I dug the toes of my boots into the earth. They were crusted in fresh mud. If only that were proof—but the fens were full of mud. If only we had brought some of the water with us, honey-sweet, to share, but it would’ve trickled through our hands, quick as our joy.
I weighed silence against a lie; the lie measured safer. “Nowhere, Aradoc-Father. We wandered the fens.”
“Until after dark? When you should have returned to the roundhouse?”
“We lost track of the sun, Aradoc-Father. We were careless. I am sorry.”
“Why did you go, Agnir? What were you doing?”
“No reason, Aradoc-Father. Only to—to play. We were tired of the lessons, and Gunni, he—he slapped Hadhnri on the arse with his practice sword. We were angry.”
“What did you do with my child, when you led her away?”
I looked up then, eyes wide. “I didn’t hurt her, Aradoc-Father.”
This time, his knuckles knocked me to my knees. My fingers splurged the wet earth. Pride gone, I sniveled and reached my muddy hand up to my pain-hot cheek.
“Did you lay a finger upon Hadhnri Clan Aradoc?”
I was young, but I was not a fool. I closed my eyes tight and thought of the gentle press her of lips on mine and the bird-wing flutter in my belly. My cheeks ached then like they did now, burning from blush and aching with grin.
When I opened my eyes again, Pedhri Clan Aradoc glared down at me like I was filth. He’d never looked at me like that before, not even the day I arrived as a slave.
The sweet truth of that moment in the spring would only hurt more if I spoke it here.
“No, Aradoc-Father.” I hung my head and pushed myself to one knee before him.
He grunted. After a moment, he raised me by one arm and then tilted my chin up to the light of the moon. I blinked to hold in my fresh tears.
“You will not touch my child ever, First-Born Garadin Fein. It is not your place. She is not for you. Understand me.” His voice was hard as stone, but it was not unkind. The warmth of a hearth-brick could make you feel steady and safe, and it could burn. It could crack your skull.
“Yes, Aradoc-Father.”
Pedhri scrubbed his hand affectionately over my head and patted my shoulder before returning to the roundhouse.
I followed him, hiding my face, already swollen as a plum.
Though Clan Aradoc stared as we returned, no one gainsaid his treatment of me.
I went straight to my furs and buried myself in them, turning my back to the rest of the roundhouse so that they would not see me cry.
Though my stomach growled and then cramped, I refused to rise.
They whispered in reed-wind voices of the spring that Hadhnri and I couldn’t possibly have found and the fell provenance of it. They sang of Bannos the Clever and the fates-bane, and with every telling of the tale, I felt their eyes upon me.
With my own eyes shut, a shadow fell over me, darkening the red of my eyelids. I curled into myself. A hand upon my shoulder and I knew who it was. Pedhri’s warning throbbed in my head. I recoiled from Hadhnri’s touch.
“Agnir?” she whispered. “I brought you dinner.”
I wanted to turn to her. I wanted to read the concern in her voice writ across her face. I wanted her to put her hand on my shoulder again.
I hunched deeper into my furs and remained that way until her absence grew cold at my back.