Page 8 of Fate’s Bane

T HE G IFT

First Sunstead came. The end of the year brought the aging celebration and the troth-lock announcements and any clan honors Pedhri Clan Aradoc chose to bestow.

The sun set on the year’s shortest day to the sound of children shrilling and dogs yapping and the fire crack-popping as it burned.

Soon, it would be a bonfire large enough to scour the sky and help us through the longest night of all.

Over smaller fires, sheep roasted on spits and tubers boiled in cauldrons.

Inside the roundhouse, the noise only grew more condensed as we gathered. We tapped the cider barrels and the single precious cask of wine from the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens, which rumors said she had bought from the Land-Beyond-the-Sea. We grew boisterous with drink.

Pedhri Clan Aradoc called for silence, though, and the world stilled.

“Clan Aradoc,” he said, stepping before the chieftain’s chair, where tomorrow he would hear the plights of clan members and receive visitors from other clans or beyond.

We all raised our mugs and howled for him. This was the joy of the day. The wildness of year’s end. My blood sang with the noise, and when Hadhnri grinned at me from her sprawl-legged spot on the bench at my side, the song grew louder.

Pedhri Clan Aradoc spoke: “A true member of the clan is a shoulder for their fellow. They help us pull the weight of our burdens and raise us in our glories.” He spread one arm to gesture at the youths standing off to the side of the roundhouse.

Gunni and his age-mates waited gawk-eyed, trying their hardest to look strong enough for the burdens Pedhri Clan Aradoc spoke of.

“Today, another band of Aradoc children crosses into the clan fully, children no more. Who will welcome them?”

We howled again as the parents and guardians of the youths gathered opposite them, all of them bearing gifts in their arms.

One by one—except for the twins, Nocrin and Hagnor, who approached together, moving in step, as inseparable as Hadhnri and me—the youths came before the chieftain’s chair, where their guardians gave them their welcome gifts.

Then, the youths knelt before Pedhri Clan Aradoc and their guardians, made their oaths, and received their cuts. Last of them was Gunni.

Gunni knelt on both knees before his father, as the others had done, but there was a special quiet as he made the oaths.

“By my name and my clan, I swear to protect this clan. With my wits and my body, I will strengthen it. In the darkness and the light, I will guide it, linked arm in arm with those who rose before me and those who shall come after.”

With his keen knife, Aradoc-Father cut the crossing pairs of parallel lines beneath Gunni’s left eye. Gunni accepted the pain silently. Then Aradoc-Father anointed him with water from the fens, and it dripped down Gunni’s forehead, mingling with the blood down his cheek.

“Rise, then, Gunni Clan Aradoc, First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc, and join your clan.” Aradoc-Father helped Gunni to his feet and handed him the sword in its tooled scabbard.

Gunni took the sword with reverence and admired the art of the scabbard, but he lingered longest over the hilt. Pride swelled in me. Though we had tooled the scabbard, too, it was not a Making; nothing had overcome us that day. Hadhnri and I shared a secret smile.

But Aradoc-Father was not done. “Next, we will celebrate the heroes of Clan Aradoc. Come, Hadhnri Second-Born. Come, Agnir Ward-Aradoc.” He beckoned us, proud dignity.

The clan whooped as they turned to us, but we were both bewildered.

It was not our aging year, and we had performed no heroic feats.

While we untangled ourselves from the crowded bench and walked toward the chieftain’s chair amid the staring, Aradoc-Father turned to collect two gifts from the basket behind him.

I had never expected to be brought before Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s seat, especially not in honor. My eyes grew wet.

When we stood before him, he bowed his head at each of us before speaking to the clan.

“Hadhnri’s and Agnir’s talent has made us even more prosperous in the last ha’year.

With their help, we have snared the attention of the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens, and all other clans know us as first among them.

Their work is like the best of Clan Aradoc—we are strong, and we are beautiful.

” His solemn mien split, broken by a wolf-tongue grin and a wink, and the rest of the clan laughed. Then he sobered.

He raised one of the items in his hand. A seax with a silver hilt in a smooth leather sheath. “Strength,” he said as he handed it to Hadhnri.

I looked to his hands eagerly, hoping for a blade of my own.

Instead, he held up a bright woven belt. “Beauty.” He draped the belt over my outstretched hands.

Then, with a fierce hug, he crushed us both against his thick chest and thicker belly. I was grateful; it gave me time to hide the disappointment that surely showed on my face.

I mastered myself by the time he released us and offered him, and then the clan, a tremulous smile that could be blamed on my gratitude and not the falcon-swoop of my stomach.

The gifts and honors continued, but the words and the cheering all blurred in my ears. When it was finished and time for us to eat and drink and dance the new year into being, I no longer had the heart for it.

I stepped out of the great roundhouse and stood before the bonfire.

It had grown while we sat the ceremony inside.

The sky above was black as pitch as the fire devoured the light of every star.

It was the brightness of a new year. A new future.

And the shadows that danced around that brightest of hopes?

That was where I told myself I belonged.

So I settled in the darkness on the far side of the roundhouse, away from the celebrants and the new adults of the clan and the newly troth-locked.

I wrapped my new belt around my fist and drew my loneliness over me like a blanket.

I was not so drawn into myself that I didn’t recognize the deer-step of Hadhnri’s boots as she came to find me. No matter what, I could not hide from her. I did not want to, not truly, but I was embarrassed as she sat beside me. I drew my knees to my chest and laid my cheek upon my thighs.

She crossed her legs and held her new knife in her lap. Not carelessly, but not as if it were precious. Not like I would have held it. She held it as if it were already hers, had been for years. Hadhnri followed my eyes and then looked to my new belt, which I clutched in my hands.

“Your gift does not please you?”

“It is not a blade. Not like yours or Gunni’s. It’s not a gift for a child of Pedhri Clan Aradoc.”

Hadhnri’s brow knit, and I saw the words stop behind her mouth as she weighed them. But you are not a child of Pedhri Clan Aradoc. You are just his ward. Trueborn child of his enemy.

Hadhnri stroked the belt, tracing its intricate weave. “He cares for you, Agnir. He chose this belt because he knows how skilled you are, and because you of all people would appreciate its beauty. He must have gotten this at great cost from the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens.”

I glared sullenly into my lap. In the shadows, I could no longer see the brightness of the belt’s colors, but they had been so vividly dyed.

Purple deep as plums and blue bluer than a summer morning.

The cream threads were clean and pure as milk.

Hadhnri was right. It was likely an expensive gift.

But it was not a blade, as Pedhri had given his trueborn children. I jutted out my jaw.

Hadhnri nudged me playfully with her shoulder. “Besides, you and I both know that you do not want to fight.”

The words stung me where I was already wounded. “You think I am not brave.”

Hadhnri frowned. “That’s not what I think.”

“You know why he will not give me a weapon. What fool arms an enemy’s whelp to kill?” I grumbled. “I’ve given him no reason to doubt me.”

I wondered, then, if that was wrong. Should I have planned Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s doom, as a child of Clan Fein? What would Garadin Clan Fein, my own true father, say if he saw his lost child so close to his blood enemy’s second-born?

No matter my pain in this moment, I could not see myself hurting Pedhri Clan Aradoc.

He had raised me beside his own children, fed me at his table.

He had seen my worth. I fingered the braided belt in my hands.

Pulled it tight and felt the supple fibers creak.

To turn on him would be to turn on Hadhnri, who loved her father as he adored her.

But was that enough for me to wish myself marked as he had marked Gunni, to scar me Clan Aradoc for good?

Hadhnri was quiet beside me, and all was the sound of celebration in the roundhouse. I heard frustration in her breath the way a dog’s huff warns of his whine, or his growl, or his bite. I did not know which would come from her.

Without warning, she unsheathed her new seax and pressed the shining blade against her cheek. I startled, afraid she had heard the traitorous beat of my heart—then I heard the whisper through her hair, a sickle cut against high grass.

She held the lock out to me in one shaking hand. I had never seen her tremble so. Not my Hadhnri, brave Hadhnri.

I stared at the offering, my mouth dry and my stomach knotted but my heart oh so full—I had not realized until then how badly I had craved this moment while denying it, how Aradoc-Father’s warning had dragged me like a leash attached to the collar around my throat.

“Will you take it?” Hadhnri asked, her voice— Fate, how it shook.

I took it. Of course I took it. I clenched the love-lock so tightly in my hand the luck-hound itself could not pry it from my grip. But I could not stop myself from saying, “We cannot. Your father forbade—”

“I don’t care. I am my own. Chieftain of my own heart. Master of my own path. Not my father, and not you, sweet Agnir. I swore an oath to you once. Do you remember?”

I would never forget. “We were children.”

Hadhnri clasped her hand over my clenched-tight fist. “I meant it then. I mean it now. By my name and my clan, I pledge myself to you, Agnir Clan Fein.” She stared at our hands, gathering her courage for something else.

In a rush, before I could lose my nerve, I slipped my empty hand behind her head and pulled her face to mine.

How different this was from our first kiss in the spring, or that second kiss in the workshop before our first Making.

Something within me snapped free at the first press of her tongue against my lips.

I surged into her, trying to pull her closer, clumsy in my eagerness.

I stopped once to think— Does she like this?

Am I doing it right? —but her small sigh satisfied my fears.

Hadhnri pushed me back onto the cold ground, and I stared up at her.

Behind her, the map of the sky stretched across the land, and we were all and only.

She lowered herself upon me; she tasted of mead and smelt of smoke and salt and leather.

Her hand tangled in my hair was an unexpected pleasure that cinched my belly tight.

This was a new spell tying us together. Not a joy-spell, but something deeper. Something starved and greedy with it.

What have I done?

I had crossed a line over which I could never return. How could I refuse her, now that I had tasted her? Her mouth was as irresistible as the water of the spring. If only given the chance, I would drink her up until my belly was swollen and I was nauseous with it, and still I would thirst.

I would never be able to deny her again.

“Hadhnri,” I whispered, holding her hips against mine, her love-lock clutched in my hand. “Hadhnri, what shall we do?”

She never answered me. The scuffle of boots and the boisterous jests of Gunni and his age-mates approached from the other side of the roundhouse. We rolled apart.

“My sisters!” he called, wearing a grin of smoke and swagger as he strutted with his hand upon his new sword pommel. “I have not thanked you for this handsome gift. It’s well worthy of the King-Beyond-the-Fens.”

His friends snickered at the long-running joke among the youth of Clan Aradoc.

None of us had seen the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens, but we knew the riches her people brought us.

Fine furs, gold and silver that we turned into torcs and armbands, jewels the color of berries but cold as ice, cut to refract the light as a raindrop did.

Surely, we thought, she must be as beautiful?

And Gunni had taken it closest to heart, his dreams shifting from chieftain to king.

He was Gunni, First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc—his father was already married and could not take the beautiful Queen-Beyond-the-Fens to wed, but Gunni—how eligible he was!

Hadhnri and I sat apart, clutching seax and belt respectively.

Gunni’s eyes narrowed, his thin lips pursing beneath the pup-fur of his mustache, and I knew then for certain that Pedhri Clan Aradoc had bade him keep Hadhnri and me apart.

And yet, I felt warm: He’d called me sister.

He, at least, saw no difference between me and him, between me and Hadhnri. He opened his mouth.

“You’re welcome, brother,” I said, recovering before Hadhnri and couching our crime in a tease. “But you will need more than a handsome sword to be worthy of the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens.”

Hadhnri stood and I followed the sway of her broad back hungrily.

“And do not be too proud of your blade. She will think you are compensating for something.” She slapped the sword scabbard where it rested astride Gunni’s hip as she passed him.

“Come along, Agnir. Let’s see what food the King-Beyond-the-Fens has left us. ”