Page 19 of Fate's Bane
Bannos the Bold killed the fates-bane.
Bannos the Clever trapped the fates-bane in a cage of briars.
Bannos the Bold stole the fates-bane’s child.
Bannos the Clever tricked the fates-bane from the Fens.
And how did Bannos the Clever, Bannos the Bold defeat the fates-bane? How did he turn his ill-luck to the fates-bane’s own doom?
Before the twig could crack beneath his boots, before the frog could startle his prey, Bannos the Clever strung chimes throughout the trees, and when the fen winds blew, their noise was the birdsong of a hundred hundred starlings. No other noise could be heard beneath it.
He carved out his own eye and threw it at the fates-bane’s feet, and his arrow pierced it in the throat while it bent over the gift.
Before his hilt could fall apart, Bannos the Bold held his sword high over the luck-hound, so that the blade plunged, falcon-dive upon its breast.
Bannos the Clever could make anything grow.
Bannos the Bold had no mercy in his heart.
Bannos the Clever had a tongue like honey.
Bannos the Bold kept his clan safe from the dark.
THEPLAN
I found my place in Clan Fein among the crafters. Garadin Clan Fein paired me with Yordi, the squint-eyed tanner with a constant sneer from the smell. It took some time for the woman’s hands to catch the intricacies of my designs, and she complained at first—they were impossible, too complicated, a waste of her time. We compromised. She resisted less and I simplified my plans, or I tooled the more complicated bits myself. I was content with the pieces, but they were nothing like the work Hadhnri and I did together.
I never tried to do a Making without Hadhnri. It ached too much to think of it, that feeling coming over me without her there.
Days passed. Weeks. Months. Seasons. A full year and I never stopped thinking of the gentle surety of her fingers. On leather. On my collar. On my skin. I wore her bracers even when I slept, as much to be close to her as for the protection she swore would be mine so long as she lived.
After another year, though, and another, time sweptin like the rivers, burying the peat of my memory deeper and packing it tight. One young woman offered me a love-lock. Solwin, the blacksmith’s apprentice. We shared company for a time, after I’d reconciled myself to never returning to Clan Aradoc and accepted the likelihood that Hadhnri had been made to move on by Pedhri Clan Aradoc. It was a selfish solace, though, for I refused the lock, and eventually, Solwin ceased to seek me out. I wondered, briefly, how much of her attentions had been another attempt to keep me hound-bound at Clan Fein’s heel. It mattered not; I was part of Clan Fein now, part of its rhythms. I had learned its twining relationships, its moods, its petty rivalries as well as I’d known Clan Aradoc’s. Maybe I would never see Hadhnri again. I started to reconsider the blacksmith’s love-lock.
And then, one day near first Ha’night, when the flies were buzzing over the lowlands and the geese had returned from their southern winter, Garadin Clan Fein called me into the roundhouse while he was meeting with my father-sisters and his other advisers. Dhorfnir, the man who had found me during the raid, sat beside my father, picking his teeth with a reed. He hailed me with a grin, raising his hand, great as a wolfhound’s paw.
I had never been invited to a meeting of Pedhri Clan Aradoc and his advisers. I stood straighter as I joined my father. I was only a craftsman, but my cloak sat well over the breadth of my shoulders.
“Come, Agnir First-Born. We need your guidance.”Garadin Clan Fein poured me sweet apple mead and sat me on the bench beside him. His eyes crinkled with affection. His clan tattoo matched mine, though it was faded, bleeding soft at the edges where his skin had slackened.
I laughed, uncertain what guidance I could offer. Probably the prices our traders should ask for my next batch of leatherwork. “On my name and my clan, it is yours.” I covered an eye with one hand.
No one else laughed, not even Dhorfnir.
I paused with my cup at my lips. “What do you need?”
“What do you know of Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s plans for the Fens?” my father asked.
I froze rabbit-still, sighted by the hawk. “Nothing. Pedhri Clan Aradoc did not think me worth his confidences.”
Garadin Fein cocked one hand on his skirted thigh and stared into his cup. “You were there a long time, Agnir First-Born. You’re observant and careful. What did you see? What did you hear?”
“Tell us any small thing,” Modin, my eldest father-sister, said. “We’ll fit it where it belongs.”
The only secret I knew was my own, mine and Hadhnri’s. Did I dare tell him what she and I had done together? Hadhnri said she had done a Making on my own bracers, alone. Could I too?
I looked from one Fein to another, stroking the bracers. A nervous habit, these last years. Garadin Clan Fein’s glance dropped to them and I stopped.
“What is it you want to do?” I asked.
