Page 32 of Fate's Bane
“I’ve made one true choice in my life, Agnir—do not take it away from me.” She kissed me slowly. “I loved you the moment I saw you in the dark, with the slaves—before I even knew what love was. And when I learned, I loved you all the more.”
Far from reassuring me, her words rang even more sharply of fate. She described something out of our hands, moving us without our knowing better. Withoutthe fates-bane’s own luck, her father would not have raided mine when he did, and I would not have been taken ward. I would not have known her as anything more than Hadhnri Second-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc, child of my father’s enemy. Not simply as Hadhnri,myHadhnri.
I said none of that. I would not take that choice from her, because I wanted it just as badly.
“Then what will we do?” I asked, turning the subject back. “We build a workshop in the Baneswood?”
“We can Make what we need on our own. If you remember me. I—I think of you, when I work. Sometimes it is enough.”
She sat up and reached for my dagger before reconsidering. She took up her own instead and cut off a new lock of hair, wrapped it around her finger, and then pushed it into my hand. Then she ran her fingers through my braids.
“May I?” she asked.
I nodded, and she cut the end of one. “And then?”
“And then…” Hadhnri hesitated, as if only now realizing how we tempted fate. “We arm our clans with the luck-hound’s gifts.”
THEWARNING
We parted, eventually, after loving each other again and drinking from the spring in great, thirsty gulps. The journey home was oddly easy—or perhaps I was too drunk with the feel of Hadhnri on my skin to notice the tangles the trail led me down until it spat me out on familiar ground. I picked my way through the wetland at the borders of Clan Fein, feeling Hadhnri’s absence, and at the same time, full of her warmth.
What did the fates-bane know of love, I wondered? We told no tales of that.
I froze in the dark at the sound of a buzzard call. A warning. I responded with the hoot of a marsh owl, and the sentries on guard made themselves visible.
“Agnir?” said one. It was Solwin. How beautiful she was, with arms thicker than Hadhnri’s and a chin as hard as her anvil. And yet.
“Solwin,” I hailed her and continued toward home.
“Where have you been?” she asked, cutting a zagged path to intercept me. The coolness of her voice surprised me.
I gave the lie I’d planned: “I wanted to walk in the woods. It calms me. I didn’t go far, don’t worry.”
Her scowl deepened. How well did she remember the night she had to finish my watch, or that ill-luck journey home from Clan Hanarin?
“You were gone a thre’night,” Solwin growled.
My mouth dropped open, all pretense gone. I jerked around to find the moon, and yes, fine slivers had been shaved off her coin. I stared dumbly at Solwin and she took my arm roughly.
“I’m to take you to Garadin Chief.”
Solwin marched me to the roundhouse, where the fires were still burning. Garadin Clan Fein stood from his great chair when Solwin brought me in.
“Agnir?” He came hesitantly toward me, flanked by all three of my father-sisters.
“Father.” I freed my arm from Solwin’s and knelt before my father.
“My own dear one.” He knelt to meet me and whispered, “Where were you, Agnir First-Born Garadin Clan Fein?”
The keen, dangerous edge of his voice slid against my ear.
“I was in the Baneswood, Father,” I said. Those in the roundhouse gasped.
Garadin Fein looked around us, nostrils flaring. He got up and left the roundhouse, and I followed back into the night. Insects buzzed above the water and frogsplopped in and out. We heard the tinny squeaks of bats and even the odd bark of a fox. And of course, the noise of the clan’s evening: the food, the laughter, the grumbling complaints, the last of the chores.
When we were alone—almost alone; I heard Laudir-father-sister’s deliberate footsteps behind me—he said, “We sent a search party into the Baneswood. They didn’t find you.”
I thought of the way the paths twisted and turned. If the fates-bane did not wish me found, no one would have found me.
