Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

“So,” Aaron said, casual as can be. “Are you going to out me to our father soon as you open your mouth?”

Because she’d certainly wasted no time in doing so to all those lords and ladies on the committee yesterday. Which was a thing he couldn’t think on too hard, because if he did, then he’d be thinking of the sand clock he was now on. Even if his sister trusted all those people—even if they were trustworthy—they’d be talking. Talking to the less trustworthy, talking among themselves where servants could overhear; talking. It was only a matter of murmurs until word got back to the Lady, and he’d no idea how long he had until that happened.

His consolation: a good portion of mail from the castle to the dragon front would be going through him. Particularly any messages those nobles felt the burning need to write after that meeting yesterday. He didn’t think they knew that: Adelaide had outed him as a rat in noble’s clothes, not as a messenger. He could just… lose a few letters, from this batch. Terrible accident, but things happened upon the road, and it wasn’t like he was a messenger properly trained.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” Adelaide asked, with a look on her face like she was judging his thoughts. She was right to, but still.

“I think it would be interesting to know what he has to say to Markus. And I don’t want him having that truth to hold over me.”

“I already do,” she pointed out.

She did. But then, she’d been in his presence for ten consecutive minutes without disowning him.

“Dearest sister,” Aaron said. “Could you, if at all physically possible, refrain from outing me to the entire southern court? Courts in general. Or anyone else, really. If you please.”

And then the Captain of the Guard joined them, which put an end to that chat.

Well. He’d soon see how far his sister was willing to listen to him, at least.

They descended the stairs to the castle dungeon. The initial hallway was indistinguishable from any given side-scuttle in First Down, save for the general quiet. Even an empty hall in First Down would have had the sounds of a market ahead, or the laughter of carved-out homes behind doors, or the blankets hung to show a door. The walls here were too clean, as well; the ceilings, too. They’d not had centuries of people scuffing against them, nor the smoke from cookfires and candles that chimneys never totally caught. This wasn’t a place people lived; just a place where they were forgot.

Shillelagh was waiting for them in the guard room. The man was just as big as Aaron remembered, from his own stay here.

“ ‘Lo,” the guard said.

“ ‘Lo,” Aaron greeted back, and nodded downwards. “Almost finished, then?”

The big guard’s hands were dwarfing the little carving knife Aaron had once borrowed sans permission, as well as a carved griffin chick that had once been a block of wood.

“Almost,” the man answered, delicately working the barbs of a feather. It was one of a clump that stuck up from the back of the chick’s head, and looked particularly fluffy. Or as fluffy as wood could look.

“Any idea what you’re making next?”

“Whatever there is to make,” the man answered. And then he finished the feather in his own time, as the captain watched with accustomed patience, and Adelaide with the raised eyebrow of a polite outsider.

Work momentarily complete, the guard set the near-finished griffin on the mantle of the room’s fireplace, next to a block of darker wood yet untouched. Then he took out his keyring, and led the way to a corridor different from the one they’d once shoved Aaron down. But familiar, all the same.

“We’ll move him to a room, and you can talk,” the captain said, his own, distinctly smaller keyring at the ready. Apparently Shillelagh had the keys to get into the cell block, but not into the cell; a reasonable precaution, when only one guard seemed to regularly be down here, and there was certainly more than one interested southerner just a few flights up.

“We can talk to him just fine where he his,” Aaron said. To which his sister shot him a certain tight-lipped side-glance of Really?, which he returned with his own wide-eyed look of utmost What?

Sibling communication: it was easy to learn, so long as he focused on irritating her. He noticed she did not actually protest out loud.

Their father didn’t get two blankets. But he did get a lantern, and a tidy stack of books on his end table, and an actual mattress as a bed. None of which stopped him from looking cold. And a bit paler than Aaron remembered. No less haughty, though, with the way he’d stood to meet them with shoulders squared, before they’d ever come into sight. His pants were rumpled, but his coat wasn’t—had he been leaving the thing laid out, to keep himself presentable on the off chance of visitors? Aaron wouldn’t have given the man a second blanket, either.

“Daughter,” Duke Sung said. And, with only a brief glance to the boy he thought was Markus, distinctly stopped his greetings there.

Well. That was certainly a note to start on.

“Father,” Adelaide replied, with the same neutrality to which she’d spoken with her mother back at Salt’s Mane, after learning of the woman’s more regicidal inclinations. “Our people are concerned for you.”

“Not for long, I trust,” he said, with dry humor. “How goes the investigation?”

“Turns out at least one of those people you accused Orin of killing isn’t dead,” Aaron said. “So. It might take a bit longer.”

“Is this true?” the man asked Adelaide. Not his own son.

“You’re absolutely correct, father,” Aaron said. “My sister does know more. Stunning intuition.”

Adelaide shot another of those side-glances at Aaron, apparently not enjoying her own turn to be outed.

“Another of King Orin’s people came to us for sanctuary, after you’d left,” she said. “She’d faked her own death, or something’s made out that she did. In light of our previous guest’s disappearance, I did not spread the news far. I didn’t expect it to substantially affect the truth of your arguments before the council.”

The duke sat down on his mattress, which was raised off the floor and everything. Fancy.

“I would have preferred to know,” he said. “Though I don’t see how that affects me, now.”

To be fair, it didn’t. Not unless someone were, say, to testify to the duke’s innocence in the former king’s murder. And it would be helpful, on that count, if the duke would deign to testify on his own behalf, instead of just stoically standing there as the king’s council came to its own conclusions. As he’d done at his previous, brief trial.

He’d known, Aaron realized, all over again. By the day of the trial, for certain. How long before that, had he known what the Lady had done? Or had been planning to do?

“What did you think I was doing at the castle?” Aaron asked. “When you saw me here.”

Duke Sung’s eyes flicked this time to Adelaide, and wasn’t that interesting. Still no words for his son.

“I’m already aware of what my mother has been up to, and with whom,” Adelaide said. Which was certainly a fun way of phrasing a regicide. The captain shifted rather awkwardly; he was down the hall from them, just far enough to pretend at privacy, but not far enough to avoid a conversation he likely assumed to be about the Lady and his late king’s affair.

“It has been many years since King Orin and I were truly friends,” the duke said. “And your mother’s hobbies are her own.”

“Hobbies,” Adelaide repeated.

Aaron refused to snort, on principle that his father was not funny. The captain coughed lightly into his hand, and not-so-discretely looked away from this conversation his prince had volunteered him to witness.

“Why didn’t you stop her?” Adelaide asked.

The duke closed his eyes, briefly. Breathed out, more slowly. None of them looked at the captain.

“Your mother sees opportunities in situations that I would overlook. And we did get a new royal heir, because of it,” he said, a bit wryly.

Ah. So now they were talking about the affair. Which could quite naturally lead to murder, for a woman who had her own line of succession secured. And a new heir had indeed been the duke’s own goal, when he’d come asking after Orin’s head.

Well. That was certainly one way to combine hobbies. But still.

“Heirs,” Aaron corrected. Because Rose deserved recognition from the man she’d stabbed.

“Why,” Adelaide repeated, bringing them both back to task, “didn’t you stop her?”

“I did not quite realize the… extent, until it was too late to intervene without the court’s judgment.” By which he meant their literal judgment, at trial. Not the sort of gossiping judgment that had the captain still pretending to ignore this conversation. “It would not serve Last Reign, for us both to be out of favor with the new king.”

“Oh,” Adelaide said, lightly. “I think the new king is aware of what my mother was up to with his father.”

“Speaking of,” Aaron said, while they still were half-speaking of affairs. “Were you aware that you’ve other sons? Because it came as quite a shock to me, that I’ve a brother.”

“You’ve what?”

So that was what it took, to get the man speaking with him.

“Do you even know who his mother was?” Aaron asked.

“I… the only woman who came forward was your own mother, Markus.”

Of course. Of course the man couldn’t even remember his mother’s name. Aaron didn’t, either, but he’d at least the excuse of being too young to remember much at all. He’d already been five, when his memories of Twokins started. Before that… he’d lived somewhere with more sunlight. And places to run, with proper trees and grass and everything, that weren’t the confines of carved tunnels or the uncertain footing of natural stone.

He didn’t remember those places. But he remembered missing being able to run. And being warm. And the voice of a woman singing, who’d been with him when they first went down, but hadn’t fought to keep him.

“How old is he?” the duke asked, like he’d a claim on the answer. Or an interest.

“Around the same as Markus,” Adelaide answered. “Should we be expecting any who are younger, father? Or older?”

“No. No. They would… be around the same.”

She let out a breath. “If you could be bothered to make a list of those women you do remember, I’ll make inquiries.”

“And my son?” the man said, to his daughter. While ignoring, once more, the son in front of him.

“I’ll take care of him,” Adelaide promised.

“Besides,” added Aaron. “He’s about as much to say to you as I do, I’d wager.”

Aaron was seventeen; Markus had been near enough the same. Rose and Connor were thirteen. There was very little math involved, in who had partaken of their hobby first. If that was what they were calling it. Not that the Lady was blameless, if it was a thing for blaming. Aaron fundamentally did not understand how it was so difficult for people to just… not do that, with people they shouldn’t. He sincerely doubted anyone had been forcing either Duke Sung or the Lady.

The duke was looking at him again, as if his scowls held any sway.

“I will not accept criticism from a man who killed a guest in my own home,” he said. “Did you at least lure him out of Three Havens proper before you spilled his blood, or will the fey start making light of our hospitality?”

A salient point, had Aaron been Markus. “Out of curiosity, have you proof I did anything to the man? Or did you just connect an absence with a leaving-taking?”

Duke Sung very distinctly did not answer, in the presence of his daughter’s kirin bone sword.

“Right,” Aaron said. “So let’s say I didn’t. Was there anyone else it could have been? How are you sure the fellow is even dead?”

Because they’d at least one murder that wasn’t, and a man whose body hadn’t even been found seemed an easier death to fake. Particularly if Jessica—Jeshinkra, known faker of deaths—had been in the area.

The duke narrowed his eyes. “Are you truly claiming you had no hand in it?”

And, well. Who was Aaron to deny the prisoner a bit of drama? It was the man’s own fault, for not being able to recognize his son. Sons. Whichever.

“May I?” he asked his sister. And poked the hilt of her sword, with one finger that tingled coldly at the touch. “I didn’t. Who’s your second suspect?”

Duke Sung was taken aback only for long enough to scoff. “Still you, Markus. I’ve it on good report that fox tongues taste as good as their lies. What’s your opinion?”

“That you continue to disappoint,” Aaron said. He kept his touch on the kirin’s bone while he said it, for sincerity’s sake.

To be fair, Markus might have done for the man. But Aaron thought himself entitled to be offended on the other boy’s—on his brother’s—behalf. Particularly when murder accusations could get a man hanged, and Aaron’s neck was the same as his brother’s at the moment.

“Ready to go?” Aaron smiled at his sister, with good cheer. “I’ve things to do today, and there’s nothing of use down here.”

* * *

He went to the blacksmith, first off. Not the blacksmith; just one that worked at the castle’s forge.

“Another day,” the man reported. Aaron thanked the fellow, and left.

His second order of business was rummaging. As the Lady’s own apprentice, he’d a copy of the key to her cloak room. The one that was rather bigger than usually required, and which held things most were glad to keep locked out of sight.

He set his borrowed griffin cloak back on its shelf, next to its cousins in their line of funerary white. It was decent enough in a fight, but fighting wasn’t the way to a long life. Flying was fun enough all on its own, as well, but a good way to be spotted from a distance by others in the air. And wings were still a thing that felt strange on his back.

He briefly stared at the dragonscale cloaks, but he’d had enough of pretending to be a thing.

He settled, finally, on the tawny brown cloak of a stag. A bit less conspicuous than a wolf, if he was traveling alone, and less likely to make a messenger horse overly nervous if he needed to change for a bit.

There weren’t any reindeer, he noted.

The back of the cloak room—the front, from another perspective—connected to the Lady’s suite.

Aaron spent the rest of the afternoon practicing two equally vital skills: lockpicking and reading.

It seemed a good idea, to know what was in her records.

* * *

…There were a lot of population reports.

And Aaron really, really needed to get faster at reading.

* * *

He and Adelaide were leaving in the morning, which left one last piece of business. When night fell, Aaron paid his blood to the old ways, and stepped through into the castle’s hidden halls. Connor’s room was just past Rose’s. He knocked, because he was polite.

“...Rose?” came the crown prince’s voice, rather muffled through the stone.

“Different relative,” Aaron replied. “Do you want me to come in, or do you want to disappear from your guards for a bit?”

“Yes,” Connor said, which answered the question well enough.

Aaron made sure the boy put a coat over his nightclothes. Then he took him up to the roof, same as Rose had once brought him. It was a more impressive view than the little rooftops and wagons they’d perched atop on the way out to the coast. And there was a comfort, to seeing the whole of the city and its walls so high up above the land. The mountains ringed them in, their peaks like the points of a jagged crown, cutting black swaths from the starlit sky.

Connor settled quite comfortably next to the gargoyle Aaron usually picked, which left Aaron to take Rose’s usual spot, and also preemptively cleared up any question as to whether the twins spent much time together up here.

They talked about the trip out west, mostly. And the first battle his sister had fought in. Well, Aaron talked; Connor peppered him with questions. Like was anyone being weird about his sister’s fey mark, and was she safe with just one guard and not even Aaron there to help her stab people. And had she done anything embarrassing, like falling off the horse he knew she couldn’t properly ride, because he needed to know for brotherly reasons. And whether Aaron had gotten a look inside any of the dead dragons’ bones, and did they have the same thin struts in them as a bird’s, or had they adapted something different for their larger size—

Aaron didn’t really know the boy at all. Not as a person in his own right. But he was definitely Rose’s brother.

“Those babes she and your brother blessed,” Aaron said. “Their mother would appreciate one from you as well, if you’ve the time to write it before morning.”

“You’re leaving already?”

Aaron gave a one-shouldered shrug. There was never a right answer, when it was a child asking that.

Connor slumped, in a manner altogether unregal. “Would she even want a blessing from me? She already has Orin’s.”

“I think it would mean a lot to her,” Aaron said, and did not say it wasn’t the king’s she’d really been asking for: it had been Rose’s. One-half of the royal twins. He wasn’t even sure how important the “royal” part of that was, to her and her people.

“What did Orin and Rose say?” the boy asked, and Aaron told him, best as he could recall. “...Okay, that isn’t so hard.”

“Of course,” Aaron said, “theirs were just spoken. Yours will be written. Probably she’ll frame it up on a wall. Pass it on to her children, who’ll pass it on to their children…”

The crown prince dropped his head onto his knees and groaned. Aaron considered patting him on the back.

“Don’t worry,” he said, instead. “There’s probably not many in that village that can even read.”

“...So it doesn’t matter what I write?”

“So it matters that your handwriting makes a very pretty keepsake, for after I read it to them.”

This did little for the groaning.

Aaron cleared his throat, in the least awkward manner he could manage.

“Speaking of written things. Your brother wrote something for me. Something I’d appreciate your signature on, as well. But it’s got the sort of story behind it that’s not meant for sharing around. Not now; maybe not ever. Can I trust you with a secret?”

That perked the boy up like no back-pat ever could. Thirteen was a good age for collecting other people’s secrets.

Aaron talked. Again. Connor listened, his chin still perched on his knees, as he learned how his father had really died. And what Aaron personally intended to do about it, with his brother’s blessing. Or without, but that didn’t seem a matter in need of pointing out, now that he was doing things all mostly-legal-like.

“I just,” the prince said. “I know Rose cares for her; when we were little, she liked to imagine that the Lady was distant because of propriety. To save us from the scandal of being associated with the Late Wake, not because… not because she’d choose to be. If she could choose. I think it was better for her, than thinking neither of our parents wanted to talk with her. But if the Lady really did kill our father, and now you’re going to kill her, and Orin is probably going to— And then it’ll be just me and Rose, and I don’t know what we’ll do then. Except have a lot of people telling us what we should do, because they’re going to look at a thirteen-year-old king on the throne, and they won’t see someone who’s already of age for the militia, they’ll see me as a child. And they’ll… they’ll expect me to make a ruling, in Orin’s case. And they’ve always seen Rose as a fey, they kept trying to make father put her to the test, and I won’t but what if they decide that me not wanting them to kill my brother and sister means I’m too young to be listened to, and they start forcing decisions on me, and…”

This time, Aaron did reach out to the boy. A touch to the back turned into a hug; Connor pressed his face into Aaron’s coat, and the spring wind would have let them say it was the cold that had him shaking, should anyone ask.

“Was it any more simple, where you used to live?” he asked.

“I don’t think it’s simpler anywhere,” Aaron said. “Just someone else’s problem, until it’s big enough to be yours.”

* * *

In the morning, he visited the castle’s postmaster, and collected a little satchel in need of searching once he got on the road. Such a shame, should any of the investigation committee’s letters to Salt’s Mane go awry. He added to it one letter from the kitchen, which did not go through proper channels, but which Jon could honestly say he’d given to a royal messenger. Three more came to him from the crown prince, who must have been up rather late indeed to answer his sibling’s letters on top of agonizing over the blessing of two babes he’d likely never meet. Aaron visited the blacksmith a final time, as well. Then he quite happily met his sister at the stables, where horses new to each of them waited.

“Is that a gorget?” she asked, staring the excellent new accessory secured about his neck.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” He smiled at her. It was a simple thing of steel, covered over in leather, to stop it shining. The blacksmith or one of his workers had tooled it with a kirin, in honor of his supposed house.

His sister eyed it quite skeptically. “Most beasts that can reach that high will just take off your head.”

He kept smiling at her, until she realized just what sort of animal this particular defense was for. And who was the last to try stabbing at him, in that general region.

“…Yes,” she said, instead of any of the things that had gone over her face. “Looks good.”

“I thought so.”

They turned their horses back towards the coast. It was an easier thing this time, riding through the gates of the city. He knew the way.

* * *

Connor’s simple letter bestowed a blessing of love even when the twins were sick of the sight of each other, of support against all others even when they fought. He put it more neatly, but not by much. The mother of the babes clutched it, after Aaron had sounded the words out for her. She welcomed him and Adelaide into her home for dinner.

There was a village shrine to Man’s God, tucked up by the border with the forest. Double-sided, when he peeked around its back. So there was no direction from which it would be deaf to their prayers, of course. Aaron spent a few minutes by it. The village elder he’d spoken with last time, the one whose Death was still hanging about with the patience of someone enjoying the sunshine, complimented his own humble prayer necklace before he left. He wore it over his gorget, just peeking from the unbuttoned top of his coat. It seemed a thing people should see, where he was going.