I stood off to one side, quietly dying. I was a half-blood mutt. I was abandoning the clan of my birth to join the Wind Clan. While Wolf Who Rules accepted me unconditionally, there was no reason for his clan to do so. On hand to witness my testing—and thus also my mother’s treatment of Otter Dance and her child—were all the Wind Clan sekasha who would be protecting my back for the rest of my life, however long that turned out to be.
And there was my mother, indulging her fetish.
I wanted to snatch up Pony, who was still unnamed at that point, and rush him out of the room. (It turns out that I was suffering needlessly. Otter Dance had helped raise Wolf Who Rules and his nine siblings; screaming babies do not rattle her. Nor did Pony actually cry. He glared up at my mother angrily and aimed a few kicks in her direction.) Still I stood, wallowing in embarrassment and anger at my mother.
Finally Pure Radiance tired of playing with fingers and toes. Or perhaps she remembered that Otter Dance was the Wind Clan First and probably was fairly short tempered after giving birth. Certainly Otter Dance’s mouth was pressed into a blade-thin line of anger. (I learned later that Otter Dance had seen this act ten times before, had come to the same conclusion that I had and was not amused by it.)
Placing Pony naked on the weapons table, my mother reached into the sleeve pocket of her white robe and took out the long red blindfold of her office. With a theatrical flourish, she tied it into place.
“Ah, there you are!” She canted her head as if peering down at Pony. “I’ve been looking for you. Yes, yes, I see now why it’s you and no one else.”
“What do you see?” Otter Dance asked tensely.
My mother ignored the question as usual. “His name will be…” She paused for a moment, obviously seeking the most poetic turn. “Galloping Stormhorse on Wind.”
Otter Dance glanced hard at me.
The goddess of war rides a storm horse across the skies, its hooves the sound of rolling thunder. With her fly the storm winds, a thousand winged furies that sing of her glory. In the goddess’s wake, like a tornado or a flood, she leaves a landscape changed by her passing.
Until that moment, I never realized what my name became when I changed my clan. Singing Storm Wind. My mother had named me for the furies that accompanied the goddess of war. Now she’d named Otter Dance’s infant son after the goddess’s steed. With four simple words, she’d tied our fates together in everyone’s mind. Worse, there hung the unspoken implication that our path took us to the service of the goddess.
Only today I would pledge myself to Wolf Who Rules Wind. Everyone knew our plans, even though we’d follow custom and say our pledges in private. There was no other reason for my winning my sword at the Wind Clan training hall.
Wolf had a warrior’s name. He had filled his First and Second Hand with veterans of the Rebellion. (I was the exception, a mutt newly out of her doubles.) With the strength of those hardened warriors at his back he built a large household with a score of the best laedin-caste fighters. In addition to that solid base, he had the support of two hundred or more laedin scattered across dozens of Beholden households. Yes, he held a small army, but his dream was of exploration and settlement, not war. A set of Spell Stones had been commissioned and a quarter of the virgin Westernlands had been granted to the Wind Clan. We were to set sail for the river that the humans named the Hudson within the decade.
Wolf had been born to two clans, tapping both esva. He could have chosen either at his majority. He’d bonded with his Fire Clan cousins; they, in turn, treated him like their own son. In the end, he picked Wind Clan for sheer political reasons. He even furthered the late king’s vision of unity by courting a Stone Clan female to be his domi. There were few more bound to the ideal of peace than Wolf.
By our names, however, my mother was suggesting that Otter Dance’s son and I were fated to serve the goddess of war. Such a thing would only be possible if I abandoned Wolf. I stood there, feeling utterly slandered and betrayed. If this was the grand scheme Pure Radiance had for me, why did she wait until today to reveal it? After I had committed myself heart, soul and body to Wolf?
I wanted to scream “why” but I knew she wouldn’t answer me. The only answer she’d ever given me since I was old enough to ask was “If you cannot see the path, then you cannot know it.” It meant that unless I could see the future that she was trying to create, then she couldn’t explain it to me. She couldn’t risk me tipping the delicate balance of chance.
Pure Radiance handed me the naked baby. Pony and I both glared at her in anger. Never in my life did I want to kill her more, though I knew that even trying was useless. The damn woman was like smoke when trying to land a blow on her. (And yes, when I was a child, I tried many times to do so.)
While I could not score a hit on her, I could thwart her. If she could not tell me the future that she had planned, I could make the one I wanted. If I handed Pony off to Wolf, it would suggest that Pony’s destiny (and thus my own) would be tied permanently to Wolf Who Rules.
I marched across the room to where Wolf stood, and I unceremoniously dumped the naked baby into his arms. He accepted the burden with a nod; he understood what I was desperately trying to do.
Still my mother’s vision seemed to have already expanded, filling the training hall and holding fast everyone within it. I could see it in their eyes. Simply handing the baby to Wolf was too bare an action. It needed words to counterbalance the name of Stormhorse.
I opened my mouth without knowing what to say and words just came. “This is your blade brother. He will love you well and will guard your heart with his life.”
And I felt the words go through me and knew that I had spoken truer than I meant to—and it wasn’t the truth that I wanted. I floundered in that moment, wondering exactly who Wolf’s heart would be. Surely I didn’t mean Jewel Tear. So far she had not impressed me, and her vanity Hand would never be a fit for Otter Dance’s child. That much I knew with only my father’s blood to guide me.
Wolf knew me well enough to see the truth hit me. He nodded again to me, accepting it. He smiled warmly down at the newborn in his arms. “Hello, Little Horse, I’m your Brother Wolf.”
Pony gave him a long serious look, gurgled out a laugh, and then peed on him.