Page 6 of Fate's Bane
I hesitated, still. She held me, still. Then she rose, bringing me up with her, and led me to the workshop, my mouth dry as hay.
The clan sparked with life that lenten noon. The smoke from the roundhouse chimneys smelt of rich peat. I took a deep breath and let it settle over me. Rinach, one of the elders who minded the children, shouted from a chair in front of the roundhouse while the children ignored her warnings. They blurred past our knees, and Hadhnri’s giggle echoed theirs as we dodged their tiny ferocities.
Inside the workshop it was dark as a secret and just as quiet. I expected her to come to me then, my cheeks already burning. Instead, she riffled through the shelves and returned with a cut of leather and a cloth.
“Will you wet this for me?” Hadhnri held the cloth out to me as she straddled the bench.
I did. “What will it be?”
Hadhnri frowned in concentration. “A hilt grip. I took the measurements from Father’s sword, but I wanted—It’s for Gunni. I’ll make a sheath as well.”
I joined her on the bench and ran my fingers over the dry leather, taking the measure of flesh with flesh.
“For his aging day?” I asked. Gunni would be an adult soon, a full member of the clan, free to wed, to leave the clan if he wished, though that wasn’t likely. He wanted to be chief of chieftains, like Aradoc-Father. Everyone knew it. A sword meant that Aradoc-Father supported that ambition.
Hadhnri’s aging day would come soon after, and so, I supposed, would mine. The world would not open up to me, though. The Ene would not carry me away, its waters silver as a belly-up fish beneath the sun. Though my fingertips brushed the leather of Gunni’s one-day hilt, it was the collar on my neck I felt. My throat scraped against it. It was possible, yes, that on my aging day, Pedhri Clan Aradoc would offer me a place within the clan. If he deemed me worthy. I doubted he could forget where I came from. I was not sure if I could either. For Hadhnri’s sake, though? Perhaps.
“Yes.” Hadhnri’s eyes dropped to my collar, also, or maybe to my lips.
I sat and traced the shapes that came to my mind, where I would cut for the leather, the proportions for suppleness without slack. I closed my eyes and saw the design that would suit my foster brother. Gunni thought himself a wolf, but he was too kind for that, his smile too easy. I thought of Ha’Blue and her flopping ears, chasing waterfowl or curled by the fire. I thought of the shapes that would flow around her, balancing the movement about the hilt. I took the wet cloth and wiped the leather until it was damp but not soaked. I picked up the dullest awl and held it over the leather.
I turned to Hadhnri. “Do you want me to—?”
Her lips were parted as she watched me, and heart-flush burned my cheeks anew. “Yes. I trust you.”
“If you don’t like it, we can start over.”
“I will like it.”
Shyly, I traced the design in my mind’s eye onto the wet leather, light as I could. I paused to assess my handiwork: in the thin strip, a hound head with a lolling tongue and ready ears. It was small; it had to be, to fit the flat handle. On the other side, the birds and the rabbits.
“Can you tool something that tight?” I asked Hadhnri. She was the true leatherworker. I only had the eye, not the hands. “And the lacing, here?”
She smiled at me, then brushed her fingers over theshallow grooves. I shivered as if she’d run her fingers over my skin.
“If you can see it,” she said, “I can make it.”
I began to trace the rest, my belly warm and my chest full, but Hadhnri spoke again.
“Feinur gave me a lock of hair.” With her elbow on the table, she faced me, sitting astride the bench as she would a horse.
I froze, my tool hovering over the leather. Feinur was the weaver’s apprentice, tall and rangy, with an easy smile and a flop of thick, dark curls that he held back with a leather thong when he worked. I looked to her hands, half expecting to see the snipped curls.
Hadhnri’s fist clenched around nothing.
“Will you give him one back?” The warmth in my belly curdled until I felt queasy.
“Should I?”
She held me with her eyes, asking a question I knew only one answer to.
“We can’t.” I swallowed, my throat thick as mud. “Aradoc-Father. He said that if I touch you—”
“On my aging day, I can go where I please. With whom I please.” Hadhnri paused, biting her lip. Then, her voice rose, hopefully: “Or sooner? After Gunni’s aging day.”
My hand went to my neck. To the leather there, solid and warm. My second layer of skin. “No one in all the clans will remove this. They’ll know me.”
“Clan Fein, then. We will go to your people.”
