Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Aaron was to ride messenger horses on his way back to Onekin, changing for fresh mounts at towns along the main road. Messenger horses were bred for speed, the stablehand said. Ours are particularly excellent at fording the local rivers, the stablehand said. Just watch out they don’t play tricks on you, the stablehand said.

“It’s just while you’re near the shore still, mostly,” the young man worked to reassure him. “And it’s easy as anything to check. You can borrow a comb.”

And that is how Aaron learned to thoroughly comb a horse’s mane to check for seaweed. Because occasionally shore-bred horses thought it funny to let their kelpie cousins take a turn with a rider.

“It’s real rare they actually drown anyone, these days,” the stablehand said. “All the crossbreeding they do, there’s more horse than water to even the wild ones. Still. Best check.”

Yes. Best check.

Aaron very diligently did so. The messenger horse stretched her neck long and low, relaxing under his thorough efforts. Locked in her own stall, Seventh Down stamped a hoof, and blew air from her nose.

“It’s your job to take care of the lieutenant,” Aaron told the flea-bitten mare, whose pooka blood was seeming a familiar and friendly thing. “Shenanigans, you know your job.”

The red roan continued nosing at the last crumbs in her food trough, and did not reply.

“I do not need looking after,” said Rose. She was, in a fit of rebelliousness, sitting perched atop the gate of an empty stall instead of somewhere more suited for royalty. She still had her legs crossed as properly as if she were wearing a dress instead of pants, but it was a start.

“Didn’t say you did,” Aaron said. He finished with his combing. Then he slipped an apple each to the Late Wake horses. Not a bribe, so much as a preemptive thanks for their services.

The princess scowled.

Closer to the stable’s front, their mutual half-sister cleared her throat. It was a more awkward sound than he’d yet heard from her.

“Are you ready?” Adelaide asked.

“My horse is saddled,” Aaron said, “and not currently a kelpie.”

She waited a moment, like she expected a straight yes from him. But traveling together had been her choice, and he was nothing if not a master of making people regret making choices for him.

“Let’s go, then,” she said.

He and Rose exchanged one last hug. She was careful of his bad side; he didn’t even need to remind her.

“Stay safe,” she said.

“You, too. Don’t get doppeled.”

She gave a little giggle into his shirt. “Wouldn’t that be something; proving I wasn’t a changeling by turning into a dragon. It would be quite definitive.”

“Do it back in the council chamber if you’re going to,” he advised. “Can’t make a reveal like that without the proper audience, and room to spread your wings.”

“I shall take that under advisement, Councilor Aaron.”

His sister was waiting by her scaled horse. With a final squeeze, Rose let him go. Aaron led his horse over the stone floor of the stables, with its thick carpet of hay. Out to the main passage, and through the gates at the plateau’s base and into the sun. It was a brilliant, clear blue day. Exactly the kind that made a camouflaged dragon hardest to spot.

High above, too high for anything to be done about it, a spot of off-blue was circling the plateau. Its lazy circles followed them westward, periodically casting the shadow of wings over the road ahead.

* * *

They followed the coastal road at a trot, because Aaron was still working up to a canter. It still seemed an unnatural thing, crossing so much ground on something else’s feet.

Patrols had set out ahead of them, and another followed behind. Ballistae overlooked the beach at regular intervals, manned during the day by crews that were always in sight of one another. The ocean heaved over the sand below them. Farther out, so far that he couldn’t have seen them were they not so large, dark shapes lurked just under the water. Each was as big as the Minnow. They breached the surface at intervals, bellowing columns of steam into the air, announcing their locations with a boldness that bespoke their confidence.

“Whales,” Adelaide said, following his gaze. “They’re harmless.”

Aaron didn’t trust them. Nor his sister’s little smiles, quickly hidden, each time she caught him checking the beasties’ positions. He was glad to turn inland.

* * *

There were fewer patrols as they moved west. They slowed their pace to match one moving their way, and kept their eyes on the sky.

“Why are you traveling with me?” Aaron asked.

“You’re my brother,” she replied. “I like to know my brothers.”

He didn’t trust that, either.

* * *

Aaron changed horses at the next town. His sister didn’t.

He gave his new gelding’s mane a thorough combing. It did not occur to him until that moment, with the stablehand staring at him, that the man at Salt’s Mane might have been having a joke on him.

This stablehand set her hands on her hips.

“Did Salt’s Mane put you up to this?” she demanded. “Have one rider drown, and you never hear the end of it.”

Aaron continued combing, significantly more carefully.

* * *

There were bridges, of course. But they were not always the fastest routes among local towns; just the ones most amenable to caravans. A pair of riders could cover terrain that wagons could not.

Which was to say: Aaron stared down at the river. His horse tugged at his reins, not seeing the same cause for hesitation as his rider.

“He can swim,” Adelaide said, bothering to hide her amusement over this even less than she had over the whales. “Just don’t fall off. I’ll come after you, if you need a hand.”

Aaron took a pointed moment to glare at the one-armed woman. Then he let his horse do what he wanted, which was trot down the slope and splash into the water. It went up to the gelding’s ankles, then Aaron’s ankles. Then the horse’s chest, at which point he began swimming as if born to it. Aaron clung to his neck. He did not fall off.

For some reason, he expected his sister to be behind him. But when the gelding had pulled them up on the opposite shore, there Adelaide still sat, watching from the other bank.

She wheeled her horse, and backtracked down the trail they’d just come. Which was possibly the most abruptly that Aaron had ever been ditched before.

She turned back. Cantered, then galloped, and when her horse’s hooves touched the river it was light as a skipping stone as it ran over the water.

“What even is that horse?” Aaron glared at the thing as it pranced a circle around him and his dripping mount. Nominally, it was slowing itself down. But it was staring him down as it did, and he had a feeling it was being smug about it.

“A tianma,” Adelaide replied. “They haven’t the affinity for true cloud stepping that kirin do, but they can come close.”

Aaron’s horse whickered. Then it shook itself, dislodging an inordinate amount of water. He suddenly found himself quite dry.

The same could not be said of the tianma, which laid its dripping ears flat.

Salt’s Mane’s horses weren’t kelpies, with a kelpie’s affinity for water. But they could come close.

* * *

“Where did you even get that thing?” Aaron asked.

“Markus gave her to me,” his sister said, which rather ended that conversation.

A shadow passed over them. The next town was already in sight, standing on stilts above the rush of the broadest river they’d yet crossed.

Aaron got over his hesitation to canter, and went straight to galloping. Similarly, his hesitation to let his horse jump straight into rushing water with him on their back.

* * *

Aaron changed horses. Adelaide didn’t. The tianma seemed to make a show of breathing slow and steady as his own horse bellowed out air. A stablehand took the gelding, and began walking it in clattering circles over the wooden platform. This town had ballistae like the others, but Aaron suspected that its strongest defense was that dragons simply couldn’t land anywhere here without crashing straight through.

His next horse was led out, the boards creaking under him. Aaron took out his comb.

“Oof,” the stablehand said. “Bet the last stable went off on you for that, didn’t they?”

They made small talk until another patrol passed out on the road, then left with them. Aaron’s latest horse got a very thorough mane-combing in the meanwhile, and a few braids besides.

* * *

They’d reached more forested lands. This made it significantly more difficult to check the sky.

Aaron had been told that a proper messenger could cover a hundred miles in a day. Two days to Onekin, at such a rate. As the smell of salt weakened and the patrols hunting for dragon sign thinned and the ballistae on town walls became less common… they did not cover that distance. They did not even try.

* * *

“One room is fine,” Adelaide told the woman sorting them out for the night, without any input from Aaron. “He’s my brother.”

Ah. So this was a bonding thing.

They were given a room towards the village longhouse’s end, with two clean beds and an invitation to dinner in the commons; they’d smell when it was ready, and the woman would send one of her kids to get them besides. Someone had left out clean water and towels, which was nice of them. People could be weirdly kind to others, when either they liked them or didn’t know them at all.

“So,” Adelaide said, getting the bonding started. “Do you think it’s following us?”

“I’d like to be excluded from this ‘us’. I’m not the one who had a dragon climbing up to my particular balcony,” Aaron said. He eased off his shirt, which was an easier thing to do with one arm than the other. Time to see just what a day of riding and partial dunking had done for his fresh stab wound. “The real question is if it’s out to doppel or kill.”

“Same result. But yes,” she acknowledged, dropping her bag on her bed, “different approach. And hard to tell; it seems patient enough to wait until we’re past the front lines. Dragons don’t usually come so far inland.”

Dragons didn’t usually fixate on one specific target, either.

Aaron unwound his old bandage. The wound underneath was puffier around the edges than he’d have liked, but he’d a salve for infection with him, and it didn’t show any signs of spreading. It just hadn’t appreciated a full day of dusty, soggy travels. He sympathized.

“Do you need help with that?” she asked.

No thanks, would be the polite reply. People who stab me don’t get to come back in stabbing range, would be honest. But she was trying to learn more about him, apparently, so he decided to oblige her:

“It’s not the first stab wound I’ve done up alone.”

“…You did see a proper healer at Salt’s Mane, didn’t you?”

“Did I,” he said.

Yes, he’d seen one. He almost hadn’t, when he’d seen how few stitches the nick would need. Not with how much an unknown hedge wife might charge. But they were stitches at a bad angle for self-sewing, and money wasn’t a problem that Councilor Aaron had.

…He’d need to find a better place to squirrel his extra coins away than inside the castle walls. If ever he really needed them again, ‘the castle’ was probably not where he’d want to be. He’d have to keep his eye out for likely places elsewhere, now that he was becoming such a well-traveled sort.

Adelaide unlaced her boots, then left them in the middle of the floor, all on their sides and askew where anyone could trip over them or sneak them away from her in the night. She flexed her ankles, and stretched out her toes, and kept all the while pretending not to watch him dab new salve on his side. Smearing it on would be faster, but dabbing led to less wincing.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said, finally.

“You weren’t at the time.”

“Apology not accepted, then?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never seen the point in apologies for things you’d do the same again. I’m a sketchy fellow wearing your brother’s face. That’s the kind of person people stab.”

“Well,” she said, after a moment. “Now I’m the kind of sister who’s promising not to do that again.”

Having never promised not to stab someone in his life, Aaron was not sure that was an oath he could hold her to. It was a pleasant sentiment in want of caveats. But she must be sincere enough at the moment, to speak it over bone.

“I do appreciate not being stabbed,” he said. “It’s one of my finer hobbies.”

“Would you say you’re good at this hobby?” she asked, with faux neutrality.

“Excuse you, I’m generally excellent at it. I’ll have you know that it’s been near a year since I was last…” Except he’d taken a knife at the Wake for the Old Year, hadn’t he? The scratch on his collar bone, from defending Rose. And there’d been that slash to his leg, last harvest, when he’d been leaving Twokins. Both of which barely counted, but it was enough to trip up his tongue, which was enough to have his sister raising an eyebrow, all because some dead kirin didn’t understand technicalities.

“...Since I’ve been seriously hurt,” he finished. Which was honest.

“I hope,” his sister said, “that you’ve found greater success in your other hobbies.”

Aaron scowled at her, and put a fresh wrap around the hole she’d left in him. And pulled back on his shirt. And kept scowling, for good measure, as he rummaged in his own bag. It was a waterproof one; Salt’s Mane knew its horses.

He took on the route map he’d been given.

“Given that your hobby is acting as dragon bait,” he said, “how would you feel about a detour?”

“Well this conversation just became incredibly suspicious,” she said. And then added, to the look on his face, “I’ve promised not to stab you; I’m still deciding on trust. You’ll have to tell me how you won over the royal family, sometime.”

“I’d really better not,” Aaron said. And poked at his map, which he’d gone over with in the company of one of those royals. The writing was a little small for him, but he could follow a picture well enough. “I don’t think anyone’s expecting us to veer off, which should be incentive enough.”

“Not being followed is a hobby of mine,” she said, leaning over to look at where he pointed. “...Ah.”

So she knew it, then.

“Seems to me,” Aaron said, “that if you’re willing to stab a fellow for looking like another, you should at least question how a dead woman’s still alive.”

Jessica’s hometown was on their way. More or less.