Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Just before dawn, Aaron put on his wolf cloak and slipped into the forest through a crack in the town’s gate, quickly closed. There was new growth brushing his shoulders and old decay damp under his paws, and sounds and smells he still didn’t know. There was a strangeness to being outside of humanity’s walls before sunrise. An electric charge down the fur of his spine that kept his nose sniffing and his ears swiveling and made his legs itch to stretch out in a run. There were things to hunt, out here in the dark. And things to hunt him. He huffed, and paced, and waited.

As soft pinks touched the sky, a rider on a rather plain horse departed more openly. Their cloak was gathered about them and their hood up against the chill. One gloved hand held the reins, as the other rested on their leg. It was obvious they were a messenger, because no one else would be out so early, or so alone. But messengers were common enough in the spring, and this one didn’t stand out from any other.

Their horse whickered at the smell of wolf. Maybe he should have gone upwind. Downwind? Which wind was it, where a thing that was full of soft and tender bits couldn’t smell a toothy fellow? The breeze was currently in his fur, and going towards the horse, which was the wrong way. But being on this side of the road meant he wouldn’t ever have to cross it; wouldn’t have to put himself out into the open.

The rider nudged her horse along with soft words and a squeeze of her legs. The wolf shadowed.

It was lovely using his own paws. He finally stretched his legs out, and matched the pace of the trotting horse. Exceeded it, with bounds that took him over old lichen-dappled logs and set his panted breaths coming out as little clouds of fog. He ran until he could barely see horse and rider, then paused to pant even more, or laid down and waited until they caught up. Then the cycle started again.

“Having fun?” Adelaide asked, the next she caught up to him, her voice pitched low.

Aaron did not bark, because he was as inconspicuous under the cover of the trees as his sister was in her changed clothes, and he liked it that way. They had no way of knowing whether the dragon that had been following them knew of his cloaks. Or Adelaide’s prosthetic, for that matter.

“Why don’t you wear it all the time?” Aaron had asked, when she’d pulled the arm from a saddlebag. It was made of some light wood, the hand on clever springs that would grip an object tightly, the elbow on a joint that could be posed. Its upper end was a sort of cup with padding for her stump to fit inside, with straps to hold it tight.

“It’s mostly to protect the sensibilities of others, but it does have its uses,” she said. “None of them are in battle. I generally leave it off in spring.”

Behind them, dawn-shaded wings had taken up a high circle above the town they’d stayed at. With any luck, it would be looking for two riders, one of them atop a very distinctive mount. Not a single non-descript messenger, in only the usual hurry.

Her tianma had been extremely insulted to be traded in for a mere horse. The stablehands had promised to take good care of it until her return trip. Aaron wished them luck.

By noon they were into the foresters’ lands proper, with the sea far enough behind them that he might as well have imagined that expanse of too-suspicious water. There were no dragon patrols for them to attach themselves to, or towns built for such threats. But then, there were no wings overhead, either.

The main road crossed with others, littler paths that would lead towards towns. They were marked with signposts, but. Well. Aaron nearly overshot their goal, because the carved letters were weathered, and some interesting animal had left an equally interesting signpost of its own marked against the base, and one of these had felt more natural to read than the other.

“It’s this way,” his sister said, calling him back. “Do you have trouble reading like that?”

Wolves were excused from reply.

A line of rocks, the same deliberately set stones he’d seen when the caravan had traveled through the foresters’ lands, began to crowd him towards the road. The Lord of Seasons’ forest. Soon he was trotting on hard-packed dirt, glancing up at a sky that could suddenly see him, his ears half-laid back. Nothing, still. Nothing since the wings they’d left circling the town. He trotted at the horse’s side. It was less bothered by this development than he felt it should have been; perhaps it was hours of exposure, or perhaps horses could see through to the person underneath, once they were past their first displeased whiff.

He lagged behind. Caught back up, pulled a little ahead, and lagged behind again.

“Holding up okay?” his sister asked.

He caught back up again. Having ground under his own four feet, his pace entirely under his own control, was still a better thing than riding. And he felt in his legs and the easy breath in his lungs that he could keep going for much longer. But it was becoming clear that a trotting horse had a faster pace than a trotting wolf.

His sister was still awaiting an answer. He gave her a wolfy grin, tongue lolling. She received it as well as the others before her had, and declined to follow up on her question.

The rocks went right up to the road’s left-hand side, now. Each was hung with a thick rope, in various states of newness or decay, clearly replaced as they rotted back to the earth. The right side of the road was equally forested, but the trees there were smaller. Some had been trimmed for wood, or coppiced entirely, growing back around their stumps in the sort of thin straight shoots that were excellent for arrows and staves and long straight beams. The animal paths were wider, the sunlight cutting through into clearings he could see even from here. It seemed to have more berry canes and fruiting plants than the Lord of Seasons’ forest, as well, growing on the sides of paths as if they’d simply sprouted there. But putting them side by side made the difference clear to see: here was a forest cultivated by and for humans, and there was one that did not care what humanity’s needs entailed.

Jessica’s village was at the road’s end. Aaron backtracked a ways while Adelaide waited. Took off his cloak, and stuffed it away in his sister’s saddlebags. The Lady’d had them put away their cloaks in these lands. He trusted whatever her reasons had been, much as he didn’t trust her.

They walked into town. Just… walked. The lack of a town wall or defenses were even more striking to him on the return trip. There was a dragon half a day from them. Granted that it had likely only come this far because of them; dragons hadn’t come so far inland since before there was a pact. But what would they do, if it came here? The longhouse here felt just as unused as in the first forester village he’d seen, a farce for outsiders who expected its presence; the real homes were again those small constructions of poles and sod, built right up near the stone boundary. Did they retreat into the forest when things attacked? Did walls just not help, with the things that came for them? Or did they know a way of living, that things didn’t come for them?

“Riders,” came the shout, as they came into sight of the village proper, around the road’s gentle curve. Which sounded quite a bit like an alarm call.

There was nothing suspicious to Aaron’s eyes when they got there. It looked like something of a village-wide chores day; a chance to take old bedding and rugs out into the spring sunshine to beat, to sit and mend clothes next to friends, for the adults to gather and gossip and offload the community’s youngest children on a few particularly harried looking teenagers. As a whole, the little village was doing nothing more nefarious than taking a few furs back inside.

This was apparently suspicious enough for Adelaide, judging by the complete non-expression with which she watched it. Her mouth went so far as to twitch briefly into a frown, as she beheld the particularly offensive sight of an elder bundling a white fur into her arms.

“These are—” the elder said to them, but her tongue tripped over whatever words came next, likely because Adelaide’s horse had just brought her close enough to make lying a bit moot. The old woman gave a frown of her own, much longer-lasting than Adelaide’s. Her eyes searched for and found the kirin’s bone hilt. “This is an heirloom, my lady. Have you a message for us? Or are you more vultures?”

…They weren’t the first to come asking over Jessica. A village this small might report its deaths to whoever and wherever the local lord was, but they likely didn’t get investigators dropping by about them. Particularly not multiple times, and multiple people. And certainly not carrying kirin’s bone, as if to imply that the answers received in the past had been lies.

“Her sword’s an heirloom, too,” Aaron said. “Please forgive any insult, ma’am; she really does just wear it everywhere. We’ve news the other vultures didn’t have, and your Jessica’s husband should hear first. If he’s about.”

He was. They tied up the horse where children could creep up to it with handfuls of dandelions and clover, and followed the elder to the other end of the village. Jessica’s husband sat on the ground outside one of those sod-covered houses, with a small group of friends and a heap of dried grass they were working into ropes, some buffing the fibers between their hands, others twisting. He was easy to spot, as the one smiling the least.

“Kian,” the old woman said, and the man turned around. First curious, then with a darkening face. He did not rise to greet them.

His sister stepped forward.

“My name is Adelaide Sung.” She didn’t pull rank. Which was good, given that the man probably still wouldn’t have bothered rising. “This is Aaron. We’re here—”

“I know why you’re here,” he interrupted. “Do you? Because I’ve already given my story to the Late Wake. And I gave it to that Duke’s people, far north as they were—a Sung too, that one. I’ve given it to everyone who’s come asking. What questions do you have that I haven’t answered?”

“May we speak to you alone?” Adelaide asked.

“No,” he said, even as his friends were sneaking away. The old woman had, as well. He sighed. “...Apparently.”

“A few weeks past,” Adelaide said, pulling out a rolled scroll she’d taken from her saddlebags, “this woman came to my people for protection.”

The man took the scroll. Unrolled it, and froze, a hand coming up to cover his mouth. “Jeshinkra.”

“Jeshinkra?” Adelaide repeated.

“A nickname,” the man said.

It didn’t sound like a nickname. It sounded like the Jahnalistrin that John Baker had let slip once and only once, so far as Aaron knew, in a city where people still occasionally asked him to speak bird. Though it had to be a bit of a nickname, too, if the kirin’s bone had let that past.

“I would like to know how sure you are that it was your wife you found dead,” Adelaide said. “I know you do not want to tell your story again. But we would hear it, if we could, so we do not have to hear instead what others have said you’ve said.”

“She’s alive?” the man asked.

“The woman who came to me is,” Adelaide replied, and the man began his story.