Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

The stairs up the royal tower wound round and round. The tower itself was large enough to contain entire rooms on its inside, and it did—the officers’ quarters. A persistent cold draft swept down it, drawn in through the arrow blinds. Heavy iron gates were mounted on the walls, ready to be swung shut and locked should the way up need barring. Or the way down. Aaron had picked up some kind of splinter when he’d hit the ground back outside. It throbbed in his hand, red and too hot in the fold of his palm, just below his thumb. It hurt more than it should; hurt until his stomach coiled into a knot.

The fey-marked princess walked ahead, her back straight. The good lieutenant walked next to her, cautioning her at every uneven set of stone, at every place where generations of feet had worn the stair so smooth as to pose a slipping hazard to unwary feet. The princess tugged her hood more firmly in place and very determinedly ignored him.

Aaron walked in the center of the group, surrounded above and behind by the rest of the guardsmen. They hadn’t laid hands on him again, but there were no gentle cautions being whispered into his ears.

Death was walking behind them.

Aaron didn’t know how he knew, just as he didn’t know how he recognized Death in the first place. It was just the sound of another set of boots behind them. Soft leather soles with an easy tread. He didn’t know whose Death it was: his, or Markus’. He didn’t know if it made a difference.

The royal family’s wing was on the highest level of the main keep. A statement to the world: on an island where most enemies came from above, the king placed himself and his family between the sky and those he defended. That was how it was with the blood nobles. Or at least, how it had been. He supposed the Wasting King still honored some pretense of the old customs, if he’d kept his rooms up here. Aaron wouldn’t have batted an eye if the man had moved straight down into his own dungeons on the same day he’d broken their pact with the dragons.

Then again, perhaps it was for practical reasons that His Majesty had stayed. With the garrison below and no stairs leading to their floor save the one that wound past every redcoat living in the palace… well. If one wasn’t looking towards the sky for enemies, then higher might just be better.

Aaron had lost count of the number of times the stairs had spun them in circles by the time they stopped. The lieutenant opened a door no different from all the others they had passed. The tower itself continued on as it rose towards its peak above the rooftop, but it was clear that both the guardsmen and the princess knew this particular nondescript wooden frame to be the right one. The lieutenant held it open for the girl. With not even a glance of acknowledgment, she stepped through.

On the other side was a world that would have dazzled Aaron a few weeks ago. But he’d become familiar with the extravagance of the noble quarters he helped clean, and he liked to think he had more important things on his mind right now.

Unsurprisingly, the overall theme was royal red. Not the ginger-snap red of the fey’s—of Princess Rose’s hair, or the rust of Orin’s, but a deeper red, more the color of welling blood. The golden dragon rampant hung on banners between portraits of kings and queens long dead. Aednat of the Red Trident and Rillan the Executioner, Chae-Won the Regent Queen and Cormac the Steadfast, all leading up to their own King Liam the Wasting. The paintings and tapestries of humanity’s greatest victories were colorful and proud, and not a one of them more recent than Aednat’s time. A griffin’s skull stood on a marble block, big as a cat. The scales of a dragon made up a suit of armor that stood silent watch. Scrolls writ in the rolling lines of the Letforget lay behind glass, their cases lined with salt and iron, drawing his gaze with their beauty until he almost felt he understood them.

Aaron snapped his eyes away. He wanted to stop walking, just for long enough to dig the splinter out of his hand. Just a little pause between this and whatever came next.

Death came through the stairway door last. A guardsman closed it behind, as if he’d been waiting for the man. It was Aaron’s own Death, and a part of him was relieved to see that, much as he’d rather not see either of them at all. The man did not say anything, did not nod silent encouragement or soften his face in reassurance; he only met Aaron’s gaze, and nothing more. The throbbing of the splinter subsided. Aaron turned his face back around and continued down the hall.

The princess herself did not want him dead. Of this, he was reasonably confident. But he’d taken her from the castle, and bought her liquor, and shown her a play that the redcoats had men flogged for watching. Never mind the hayloft manhandling and his ever-so-kind words regarding His Majesty’s health.

The girl herself might take no offense to these things, but he doubted that her father, or either of her brothers, would much appreciate them. It was no wonder his Death followed so quietly. Really, Aaron had said quite enough for the both of them.

Never mind the rest.

He shouldn’t have come inside, should have just run. Disappeared down a rat hole so deep they’d never smoke him out. He should have done as any reasonable castle denizen would have done, if they thought a questionable magical creature was living under His Majesty’s nose: he should have called the royal guards and had them deal with the library fey

. And what had she been doing, hiding in daddy’s walls? Was that how the royal brats threw their tantrums? Did she make a habit of sneaking into shadowy corners at all hours of the night and letting strange men say idiotic things to her without even the decency to tell them off?

There was no use to the thoughts now. Now he was in a hallway on the royals’ floor, surrounded by guardsmen. He could not kill them without raising an alarm. Could not get back down those stairs, unless no alarm had been raised. For now, that meant one thing: he had to wait. As patient as his own Death, he had to wait.

Aaron took in a breath. When he let it out, the pain from the splinter was all but gone. His arms hung loose at his sides. His back was straight and his stride easy.

He would just have to wait. The rest would be settled soon enough, and there wasn’t a thing to tie him to it. Acting the part of the housekeeper’s baffled errand boy was a safer bet than running. He really hadn’t known who the princess was, or intended her harm; he could answer that much on kirin’s bone.

The princess’ sitting room was off the main hall, in its own little suite of apartments. She took a quick step forward, making sure she opened the door for herself before the lieutenant could do it for her.

“You will remain here,” she commanded the guards. A little girl, telling a dozen armed men what to do. “You,” she looked at Aaron, “come inside.”

“Princess—” Lochlann began to protest. A protest to which Aaron quite agreed. He was in enough trouble without stepping foot in the princess’ rooms.

But the Princess Rose disagreed with the both of them. “I wish to speak with him in some modicum of privacy, Second Lieutenant Varghese. I will leave the door open. Do you object?”

That made things a little better, but if Aaron intended the girl harm, it would still mean that the guards would not be able to react until it was too late. The lieutenant knew it. Aaron knew it only too well.

“As you wish, Your Highness,” Lieutenant Varghese agreed, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “Aaron. Your dagger.”

A prudent precaution. Not one he was eager to comply with, but it wasn’t worth the trouble to refuse. He’d be getting it confiscated sooner or later.

Rose’s glare stopped him. “Is not every man of Last Reign entrusted with a weapon for the defense of himself and his brothers? It is the militia’s founding rule. No king nor queen nor crown can order a man to go defenseless.”

“Your Highness—” the lieutenant started.

“Or are you accusing my guest of some crime?”

Lochlann let out a slow, measured breath. “My apologies, Your Highness.”

A look passed between the lieutenant and Aaron; one of threats, the other of hasty reassurances. Hurting the girl with his own hands was the only way Aaron could get into more trouble this evening.

As promised, the princess left the door open. But she took his hand and guided him inside of the spacious sitting room until they were out of easy hearing of the guards. Her green eyes were worried as she faced him.

“I was going to tell you,” she said. “Right before the guards came. I was going to tell you. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Aaron tugged his hand free, with a glance back towards the door. He couldn’t tell if the scowl on the lieutenant’s face was for the fact he’d been touching the girl, or for the look on her face when he pulled away.

She tugged her hood a little lower and squared her shoulders. “I will take full responsibility, of course. You did not know who I was, and I did not enlighten you.”

“Hey.” He reached towards the girl’s hand again. He didn’t quite make it—Lochlann’s stare was like a physical force—but he got almost halfway there before he ended up shoving his hand in his pocket, instead. “If a fey’s worth caring for, I suppose even a princess could be. So long as she doesn’t get me hanged.”

The girl snorted. But there was a flush on her cheeks, so he’d call that bargain fair. Her gaze darted to the men in the doorway, then back to him.

“You should wait here. On the couch,” she said. “You have said and done impolitic things, but I will protect you.”

She said it like she believed it. Her eyes were steady and her gaze clear as she asked him to believe it, too. Aaron swallowed thickly and nodded like a man who did.

That was rather the problem: her eyes were steady and her gaze clear as the look in his own Death’s eyes. The man had not bothered to follow them into the room. He simply watched from the doorway, as if knowing that events would be settled with or without him. Neither he nor Aaron need interfere.

“I’ll wait,” he agreed, the words almost catching in his throat.

She took his statement for confidence and fairly glowed under his trust. Aaron sat on the couch. It was a situation which Second Lieutenant Varghese seemed to find an improvement, as the couch was quite close to the entry door. The princess herself was to briefly retire to her inner rooms to remove cave dust from her royal person before meeting with her father. She stated her intentions more prettily, of course, but she was fooling no one. Aaron watched her go, his hands clenched in his lap. After a moment, he slid the fox mask out of his hair, and placed it on the little table in front of him.

There looked to be a mirror inside her door, set on the opposite wall. A princess’ mirror would be perfect, of course: no bends or distortions. It would show every patch of dirt on her cloak in sharp detail, as if an entirely separate person was standing across the room.

The princess reached out her arm to shut the door.

The girl who mirrored her did not.

Aaron closed his eyes and let out a breath.

He could care for a princess. Even one who was too serious for her age. But if he did, he would hang.

Rose’s Death was waiting in the room. He’d invited her in when he’d let the Kindly Souls into the old ways; doppelgängers wrapped up inside a cloak the princess had thrown herself.

Rose wasn’t supposed to be in the castle for this. She was supposed to be in Twokins, laughing and learning to dance, safe with him until the city bells tolled the deaths.

She wasn’t supposed to be the princess.

The door clicked closed. Then he was running, the movement so sudden that it didn’t leave him any more time to think. Lieutenant Varghese shouted; started to give chase. Something crashed against the wall inside. Aaron turned the knob, throwing his shoulder against the wood to force it open faster. Something in the frame splintered.

The girl’s Death leaned against the opposite wall, her arms crossed, her expression bored.

Princess Rose was screaming. A proper reaction to an assassin, that.