Page 7 of Fate’s Bane

T HE S TRANGERS

Pedhri Clan Aradoc gave Hadhnri and me special requests: leather armor for this clan chief, a sheath for that one, tooled boots for this warrior, and a belt for that one.

I was honored by the trust he put in me, though his eye was ever sharp upon us; Hadhnri and I were rarely left alone during the space of a working.

Within months, it became known that Clan Aradoc’s leatherwork was of surpassing quality, and with that interest came more trade.

Clan Aradoc grew rich, richer than before as the head of the clans of Bannos.

Rich enough to draw the interest of a woman who called herself queen in the lands-beyond-the-Fens.

One day, some months after our first Making, strangers came on tall horses, wearing thin cloaks of bright cloth and buckles that shone gold as hay grass, picking their way clumsily through the fens, cursing in a tongue I didn’t understand as they sank into patches of the wetlands.

They didn’t belong. Gossip spread wind-swift through the lowlands of these strangers from this Queen-Beyond-the-Fens.

When we feasted them, I bore a jug of beer along with Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s other children and poured for the guests while they spoke our tongue on stilt-legs to Aradoc-Father.

It was hard to understand their meaning, especially keeping two paces behind the table beside Hadhnri and Gunni.

They spoke of land and drainage and peat, but I could not weave together the full tapestry.

The representatives of the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens left with a leather purse that Hadhnri and I had made, tooled with a flock of herons walking through the marshy wetlands on reed-stalk legs.

Hadhnri and I made many things in those months, but we weren’t always overcome by that…

feeling , as we had been the first time, when we worked on Gunni’s hilt.

The feeling that we were more than ourselves, more even than the pair of us.

I noticed the pattern first. We had made several items for the joy of the making, for the joy of giving gifts to members of the clan, but occasionally, the gifts were for those we liked less.

In jest, we would utter a curse against them, and we felt a pleasure come over us.

Like my secret, solitary fumbling in the dark.

It made my cheeks flush hot to feel like that beside her.

At first, I didn’t know if she felt it, too, but the third time it happened, she let out a flustered laugh and refused to meet my eye until I confessed.

We never did it when others were working in the workshop with us, honing or carving or mending or weaving, and there was often someone there.

Chaperones, though no one acknowledged it, to keep an eye on the untrustworthy ward as I grew older and more capable of treachery.

I wished to cross only one line, and Pedhri Clan Aradoc knew it well.

Though I could see how Hadhnri struggled with our desires, I was too afraid.

I let her brush my hands with her knuckles.

I held tight and inhaled deep the scent of her when she hugged me—we were friends, were we not?

We had been friends longer almost than I had lived with my own Clan Fein.

So what, if friends embraced? So what, if, in the brief moments we had alone in the workshop, with the feeling of our Making upon us, she kissed me again, feather-light upon the corner of my lips, before a chaperone could appear?

So what?

Hadhnri received many love-locks that lententide, but she did not return them, nor give any herself. Soon, I would not be the only one who noticed.