Page 5 of Fate’s Bane

T HE A TTRACTION

Years passed. Garadin Clan Fein—or “Garadin Fein!” as Clan Aradoc liked to curse his name—did not attack Clan Aradoc or encroach upon the allotment of its fens.

I grew taller, though not much taller. I settled on the path of the craftsman; no warrior, I, though I was competent enough to split Hadhnri’s lip in the training yard.

She taught me how to disarm Gunni, and Gunni humored me, laughing, when I tried.

Near-grown, he began to court and be courted by young women and men—within Clan Aradoc and without.

They brought him love-locks tucked within gifts of leather or wool to signal their interest. Never a suit from Clan Fein, though.

One year, a wave of bog fever took infant and elder and almost took Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s pregnant wife. She survived; the babe did not. Pedhri glowered in the roundhouse then, and more cursed Garadin Fein in my hearing, the continued existence of my clan a failure that brought ill-luck upon him.

It ceased to bother me, for I was distracted.

I had begun to notice Hadhnri in a new way.

She’d developed the same muscles I’d once admired so in Gunni; only, I had wanted to emulate Gunni, to see those muscles swell beneath my own skin, hard as stones beneath flexing flesh.

And I had! I knew well the strength in my back and my legs. But with Hadhnri, I felt different.

I was finally able to name what I couldn’t as a child: I wanted Hadhnri, not only because of the deep, ever-certain timbre of her voice or her quick laughter and quicker kindness.

It wasn’t because she was skilled with axe and leather needle or deft in the dancing ring.

I wanted her in the way of other adults, in the way of nights beneath furs.

I wanted to run my thumbs along the swell of her arms and press my lips there.

My tongue… I rarely allowed myself that thought unless I was alone; I had learned, as well, how to subtly ease the ache I felt after a long day at Hadhnri’s side.

Despite the glances I had caught from Hadhnri, as furtive as my own, I kept my feelings from her. I had not forgotten Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s knuckle-crack warning against my cheek. No doubt it would be worse now; I was no longer a child with innocence as excuse.

I sought other occupations for my hands, but Hadhnri had ever been braver than me. She could afford to be.

She found me one day as I carved the face of a dog into a block of wood. The snout wasn’t right—it was too fox-sharp, but to shave it down farther would dull definition I’d already cut.

“That looks like Ha’Blue.”

I startled at her voice and turned to where Hadhnri knelt beside me.

In the clear sunlight of early lententide, her hair took on the red-brown of her father’s, and her hazel eyes turned like harvestide leaves from brown to ocher to mossy green and back again.

Her smile showed a crooked eyetooth beneath her scarred lip.

Her smile fell and she took my hand, holding it to her. She rubbed away the upwelling blood. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I hadn’t noticed. My face was aflame, but I was too sunstruck to turn away, to take my hand back. “Do you really think it does?”

“Yes.” She pointed with one finger at the carving, but she didn’t release my hand. “The muzzle wrinkles just like hers.”

“Oh.” I looked back down at our hands and started to pull away. She held me fast.

“Come to the workshop with me?” At my hesitation, she added: “I’m working on something new. I could use your help.”

I hesitated, still. She held me, still. Then she rose, bringing me up with her, and led me to the workshop, my mouth dry as hay.

The clan sparked with life that lenten noon.

The smoke from the roundhouse chimneys smelt of rich peat.

I took a deep breath and let it settle over me.

Rinach, one of the elders who minded the children, shouted from a chair in front of the roundhouse while the children ignored her warnings.

They blurred past our knees, and Hadhnri’s giggle echoed theirs as we dodged their tiny ferocities.

Inside the workshop it was dark as a secret and just as quiet. I expected her to come to me then, my cheeks already burning. Instead, she riffled through the shelves and returned with a cut of leather and a cloth.

“Will you wet this for me?” Hadhnri held the cloth out to me as she straddled the bench.

I did. “What will it be?”

Hadhnri frowned in concentration. “A hilt grip. I took the measurements from Father’s sword, but I wanted—It’s for Gunni. I’ll make a sheath as well.”

I joined her on the bench and ran my fingers over the dry leather, taking the measure of flesh with flesh.

“For his aging day?” I asked. Gunni would be an adult soon, a full member of the clan, free to wed, to leave the clan if he wished, though that wasn’t likely. He wanted to be chief of chieftains, like Aradoc-Father. Everyone knew it. A sword meant that Aradoc-Father supported that ambition.

Hadhnri’s aging day would come soon after, and so, I supposed, would mine.

The world would not open up to me, though.

The Ene would not carry me away, its waters silver as a belly-up fish beneath the sun.

Though my fingertips brushed the leather of Gunni’s one-day hilt, it was the collar on my neck I felt.

My throat scraped against it. It was possible, yes, that on my aging day, Pedhri Clan Aradoc would offer me a place within the clan.

If he deemed me worthy. I doubted he could forget where I came from.

I was not sure if I could either. For Hadhnri’s sake, though? Perhaps.

“Yes.” Hadhnri’s eyes dropped to my collar, also, or maybe to my lips.

I sat and traced the shapes that came to my mind, where I would cut for the leather, the proportions for suppleness without slack.

I closed my eyes and saw the design that would suit my foster brother.

Gunni thought himself a wolf, but he was too kind for that, his smile too easy.

I thought of Ha’Blue and her flopping ears, chasing waterfowl or curled by the fire.

I thought of the shapes that would flow around her, balancing the movement about the hilt.

I took the wet cloth and wiped the leather until it was damp but not soaked.

I picked up the dullest awl and held it over the leather.

I turned to Hadhnri. “Do you want me to—?”

Her lips were parted as she watched me, and heart-flush burned my cheeks anew. “Yes. I trust you.”

“If you don’t like it, we can start over.”

“I will like it.”

Shyly, I traced the design in my mind’s eye onto the wet leather, light as I could. I paused to assess my handiwork: in the thin strip, a hound head with a lolling tongue and ready ears. It was small; it had to be, to fit the flat handle. On the other side, the birds and the rabbits.

“Can you tool something that tight?” I asked Hadhnri. She was the true leatherworker. I only had the eye, not the hands. “And the lacing, here?”

She smiled at me, then brushed her fingers over the shallow grooves. I shivered as if she’d run her fingers over my skin.

“If you can see it,” she said, “I can make it.”

I began to trace the rest, my belly warm and my chest full, but Hadhnri spoke again.

“Feinur gave me a lock of hair.” With her elbow on the table, she faced me, sitting astride the bench as she would a horse.

I froze, my tool hovering over the leather. Feinur was the weaver’s apprentice, tall and rangy, with an easy smile and a flop of thick, dark curls that he held back with a leather thong when he worked. I looked to her hands, half expecting to see the snipped curls.

Hadhnri’s fist clenched around nothing.

“Will you give him one back?” The warmth in my belly curdled until I felt queasy.

“Should I?”

She held me with her eyes, asking a question I knew only one answer to.

“We can’t.” I swallowed, my throat thick as mud. “Aradoc-Father. He said that if I touch you—”

“On my aging day, I can go where I please. With whom I please.” Hadhnri paused, biting her lip. Then, her voice rose, hopefully: “Or sooner? After Gunni’s aging day.”

My hand went to my neck. To the leather there, solid and warm. My second layer of skin. “No one in all the clans will remove this. They’ll know me.”

“Clan Fein, then. We will go to your people.”

“It would break the peace.” I sighed, dropping my chin as low as the collar allowed. “We cannot.”

Hadhnri—brave Hadhnri! stubborn Hadhnri!

—did not accept defeat as easily. She raised my chin and turned my head.

She stroked up my jaw. Her fingertips were cold, and I remembered instantly the spring we should never have discovered, with its sweet, frigid water.

A shock passed between us and she jerked away.

But she came back. This time, she pulled me to her and pressed her lips against mine.

Not swift innocence, but bold and lingering.

My breath fled and I slammed my eyes shut—why? Out of fear? Out of instinct? So that I could pretend it wasn’t happening, so Aradoc-Father could not say it was my fault? Or so that I could feel more present in the heat of mouth and mouth?

Yes and yes and yes and yes. Nothing existed for me in that second but the warm breath from her nose on my face, and yet nothing waited in my future but dread that Aradoc-Father would know. That dread made a snake-coil around the glow in my belly, threatening to snuff it out.

Boots tramped up the steps leading to the workshop, and we sprang apart as Gunni ducked under the flap.

He blinked in the dimness, his thick eyebrows a low scowl. “Hadhnri? Is that you, here in the dark? Agnir?”

“Yes, it’s us. We’re working on something for Father, and he’d hide you if he found you knew of it.”

Hadhnri—clever Hadhnri!—had disguised our hurried separation into an attempt to cover the leather on the table. It was Gunni’s gift, after all. It was meant to be a surprise. My face, however, was scalding, a burning-sun wonder in the dark. I spread my hands over the damp leather belatedly.

Gunni stepped closer, and I stood, hunching over the table. I laughed, short and bright as lightning.

“Go away!” I played along. “Or we’ll tell him you were nosing.”

Gunni grinned back, eager. He knew what to expect with his aging day on the horizon and was torn between the desire to know and the delight of anticipation.

Hadhnri and I bunched closer together to hide the leatherworking.

Her forearm warmed against mine, and I melted butter-soft into her.

I forced myself not to look. To watch the childish glee on Gunni’s face.

The plump of his cheeks had not hollowed, might not ever hollow—Aradoc-Father’s cheeks were round beneath his beard, and Hadhnri, too, had a softness in her face that I wanted to brush with my fingertips.

“I’ll leave you be, little shadow-wights,” he said, backing away with his hands raised, while he craned his neck for a peek through the gaps between our arms. (There were no gaps between our arms.) “Father says you’re not to be scheming, Hadhnri, and that he knows you both skipped weapon-work with Lughir yesterday. He says not to do it again.”

Gunni finished with a grim note of warning, the heavy timbre of his deepening voice surprising them all.

Hadhnri shooed him. “I’m no sheep, Gunni, you’ll not hound me. Now get out.”

When we were alone again, I sat with my hands in my lap.

Hers rested on the table while she idly flicked the edge of the leather I’d been drawing on.

Our heavy breaths and heartbeats were the only sound in my ears.

Then Hadhnri sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and reached for my hand.

I flinched away before I could command my body not to.

I winced at the pain in her face. I grabbed her hand before it could retreat, but I held it low, beneath the table, as I glanced over my shoulder.

“He’ll tell Aradoc-Father we were here.” I pushed my curls back from my face with one hand, then clasped it back around hers.

“We—we have to work on Gunni’s gift. So we have something to show him.

Elsewise…” Elsewise, he would know. He already suspected, or else why would he care so much for where Hadhnri spent her time?

Hadhnri set her mouth, her heavy brows in a scowl that matched Gunni’s. Slowly, though, she realized I was right. Her grip on my hands slackened and she scooted closer to me while she pulled the damp leather close.

“Finish, then, and let us see.”