Page 20 of Fate's Bane
My father considered me, and considered again. The clan mark beneath my eye burned coal-bright with the weight of his regard.
“There will be a clan moot at Sunstead next. We are making a plan.”
I stopped breathing.
And how would my father’s regard fall, if I confessed? What would Clan Fein see when they looked at me? Would I still belong to Clan Aradoc, or would I finally be wholly theirs?
I had been silent too long. I spoke the first thing that came to my lips.
“Pedhri Clan Aradoc takes gifts from the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens.” The tale that spilled forth was not a lie, but I spoke with more certainty than my knowledge deserved. “And he sends gifts back. Many were the work of my own hand. Someday, someone from Clan Aradoc will marry into her family, and he will cede some of the Fens to her.”
Anxious glances, angry glances passed between my father’s council. Garadin Clan Fein’s face tightened—at the eyes, the lips, the nose, a great narrowing like a wary feline.
“What lands does he plan to cede to her?” he asked me.
“Does it matter?” said Laudir, the middle father-sister. “We will not let him barter clan land away. He will have to kill us to the last before he pries it from our fingers.”
“The better question is this,” said Modin-father-sister. “What will she do with them?”
“She will drain the fens to get to the peat,” said Hal-father-sister, the youngest. “Then they will plant, and where they cannot plant, they will build roads from her lands to the coast, and at the coast, ships. That is what she wants.”
I glanced sharply to Hal. “Drain the fens?”
With a pulsing ache, my thoughts flew swift to the lowlands where I had caught leaping frogs, tickled fish against my palms, watched the herons and their elegant steps. Where would they go? I felt the wrench of the loss and I had not even lost it yet.
Or perhaps I had. I had lost the home I knew once, and then once again. Could I bear it a third time, this time to a strange woman of gold and dye who did not love the Fens as I did?
“How could he do something like that?” I asked.
Laudir-father-sister laughed at me and its bite was unkind. “You are naive, little frog. What would a man not do for power? Even Bannos the Bold was tempted.”
I ducked my gaze and stared at my own hands, brown and smooth but for a few childhood scars.
“Thank you, Agnir. You may go.” Garadin Clan Fein’s dismissal was polite but firm. “We will raise this at the moot.”
I stood and saluted, bowing while covering my unmarked eye. “Whatever you need, Father.” I started togo, but my chest throbbed with a different ache. I turned back to him, to them, all of them waiting for me to leave so that they might speak their secrets. “I have—had a friend. Hadhnri Second-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc. She would be an ally. I know it.”
Laudir-father-sister sucked her teeth.
Garadin Clan Fein simply said again, “Thank you, Agnir.”
THEROAD
Shortly after Ha’night, I accompanied Dhorfnir and Solwin and a few others to trade with Clan Hanarin. We traveled east and north, keeping the Baneswood to our left as we walked, one temperamental donkey to carry the load. Clan Fein was largely isolated from the other clans, cut off by the darkness of the wood. It made for a journey of days instead of hours.
I had prepared our leather goods, belts and boots and also a thick jerkin for Erci Clan Hanarin, their chieftain. I’d tooled it with running wolves and leaping hinds, though I could not but remember the wolf at the herald’s man’s throat. I tried to reassure myself: There was nothing of the Making in this work.
For all that Solwin and I were sometimes awkward around each other, it was a pleasant journey. Dhorfnir told stories of Bannos the Bold in his deep, rumbling chant, and Solwin sang in the hauntingly high voice that seemed incongruous with her thick-corded arms.
When we camped, we set watches, but instead of watching the road for raiders, Dhorfnir bade us keepjust as close a watch upon the Baneswood, with its willowy shadows, deep pockets of dark between the trees.
The first night, when it was my turn, I sat cross-legged just beyond the ring of the low fire’s warmth. The seax Fein-Father had given me—the blade Aradoc-Father had refused me—was cradled in my lap. I stroked the leather of my bracers to ease my nerves and stared into the wood.
A chill shivered up my spine, but I felt it whenever I was this near the Baneswood—which was often, because Clan Fein’s meager allotment of the fens abutted its southern edge. The shiver wasn’t the fear-chill that overtook other members of Clan Fein, who called up quick luck by covering their unmarked eye or thumbed a torc or a pocketed love-lock. It was like something called to me, too high-pitched to be heard by anyone else. Sometimes, I imagined it was Hadhnri, standing on the other side, thinking of me.
Other times, though, I was certain it was the fates-bane, calling to the curse it had laid upon us.
“Agnir!” Dhorfnir barked, shaking me roughly. “You tempt the luck-hound.”
