Page 17 of Fate's Bane
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 theirsafety—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 backedge 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.”
CLANFEIN
THETEST
The next afternoon, Clan Fein gawped at what modest gains they had risked their lives and their peace to steal. Garadin Clan Fein led me through them to a patch of sparse grass where a scant handful of scrawny sheep grazed. A small circle of the clan was there, the same who were in the roundhouse last night. In the hazy afternoon light, I could trace the similar patterns of their features, how they mapped close to Garadin Clan Fein.
“You can use a sword?” Garadin Clan Fein said over his shoulder. “Or an axe? Any blade?”
“I can,” I said softly.
“Speak up.”
“I can, Garadin Clan Fein.”
“Which?”
“The seax and the axe. I trained with Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s own children.”
They appraised me with wolfish eyes, ready to pounce.
