Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Aaron was sitting outside the door to the king’s private audience chamber. He was trying to decide if he should be tucking his tail between his legs, because that was a thing dog-types did to show token remorse. The Lady was leaning against the wall opposite, watching him with one eyebrow raised.

They did not have to eavesdrop. The room’s occupants were not being quiet enough to make it a necessity.

“I ordered you—” spoke King Orin, long may he live.

“No, you didn’t,” Rose said.

“It was implied, Rose.”

“I did not care for the implications.” And if her little sniff or upraised chin were not such loud actions as to carry through a door, one could be sure they were implied. “Am I your sister or your prisoner?”

“I have sat the throne a month, Rose. You cannot openly defy me like this, not without forcing my response—”

“Those villagers did not know what you had implied. I can hardly force a response to orders not given. Particularly as you have not spoken to me since…”

Since their father’s funeral, likely.

The new king said something low, possibly conciliatory. The princess spoke over him.

“I know I can never be among your heirs. But I am a blood noble of age, a forfeit, and this is my right. These are my people, and I will help them. Even were I a fey, I could be useful in my chosen task. I don’t want to be trained for the throne, or in the leading of armies. I wish to join the Late Wake.”

Aaron’s tail was thumping the ground, so. Probably contrition was not the image he was projecting. The Lady’s lips quirked, just the smallest bit.

The both of them looked very serious and respectable by the time the doorknob had finished turning.

“Make her useful, too,” said a very tired king.

Triumph was a bit of a goading look, on the Princess Rose.

* * *

“I am so jealous,” said Crown Prince Connor, upon the occasion of his hearing the news, and during one of the short breaks from his increasingly demanding tutors. This break was known as lunch.

“I think my problems began with a trade,” said the fey-marked girl, very seriously.

Which startled her brother into a laugh. Possibly the first laugh they’d had on this particular subject in quite some time.

Connor took a bite of honey roll, and promptly began to cough. “Oh eww, what is this?”

* * *

It was the castle-standard recipe, using the usual measures of both honey and sugar.

“Are you ordering me to risk trouble with my employer, Your Highness?” asked John Baker, very mildly.

“When you look at it,” said the prince, “am I not your employer?”

The thirteen-year-old prince’s regal bearing was rather lost on the enclave boy, whose gaze kept flicking downward.

Aaron was still a wolf. He was a wolf on the kitchen floor, where many a generous soul had left scraps in their passing. His nose led him to a crack in the floor, wherein some spilt stew was badly in want of licking.

Rose was off getting fitted for her new Late Wake attire. It involved rather fewer dresses than her current wardrobe, and rather more sturdy materials. As she had been very vehement that he not be in the room for this process, he had been brought along by Connor to the kitchens, because Connor knew that John liked him and apparently hoped the property to be transitive.

“Who let him in here?” John asked. “He’s unsanitary.”

“No more than usual, I’d think,” said the prince, with hardly a glance down. Aaron continued licking the floor. “Can’t you just make them how you used to? I won’t tell.”

“I’m only doing my job, Your Highness,” said John, rather aggressively kneading dough. “We’re all just doing our jobs, aren’t we?”

Aaron wuffed and snuffed, and delicately pawed a desiccated carrot out from behind a table leg. It was exceptionally hard to chew, but food was food, especially free floor food.

Prince Connor went in for his final maneuver: he whistled a please, low and sweet, his accent just off enough to be endearing.

The enclave boy caved. “Fine, all right. But no sharing with your sister.”

“That,” said Connor, with the prompt loyalty of brothers everywhere, “will not be a problem.”

“And you’ve got to get the dead skin out of the kitchen.”

Aaron sat down with his paws tucked in neat and his head hung low, offering a tail wag as he chewed.

“Would you take that thing off already?” John snapped. “It’s a cloak, Aaron. Just unclasp it.”

And, well. With him saying it right in front of the crown prince like that, it would look a bit off if he didn’t even try. So Aaron brushed a paw against the unbroken fur of his chest, his claws doing nothing but carding the fur. But that wasn’t what was really there: under the cloak, his fingers touched a metal clasp. He unhooked it, and the wolf fell away around him, leaving him sitting on the floor.

The carrot was hard and withered and altogether unpleasant in his mouth. He swallowed it before he spoke, to be polite.

“I did miss opposable thumbs.” His voice was a strange thing in his ears, his tongue a disturbingly dexterous muscle. He licked at his short blunt teeth in his short blunt muzzle, and shivered a bit from the lack of fur. He refrained from wrapping his wolf-cloak tighter.“Thank you, John.”

“I will not be thanked for that.” He went to a shelf, and pulled down a little basket, which he slammed on the table with enough force to make the pastries inside jump. “Take those up with you, I know you’re going to see her.”

“Woof,” said Aaron, obligingly.

“I thought he was supposed to like you,” whispered Prince Connor, on their way out.

That had been before the enclave boy had known Aaron for a skin stealer.

* * *

Aaron arrived at the Lady’s door with a basket of sweets and the hands to hold them. He could even tuck them under an arm, and knock.

She opened the door, and looked at him, and smiled. “It’s good to see you, Markus. Come.”

Attached to her suite was the Late Wake’s cloak room; a neatly folded mausoleum. Aaron returned the black wolf’s pelt to its place near the other canines. The Lady stood some shelves over, stroking the white and black fur of a griffin.

“You have so much to learn. I have so much to teach you.” She tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “It’s been a long time since I’ve taken an apprentice. My apologies in advance for ruining things.”

Her smile was light, but her words carried a trace of genuine worry.

“You’ll do your best,” said Aaron. “So will I.”

She took the griffin’s pelt off the shelf, and held it out to him.

* * *

The Lady had to die. But first, she would teach him to fly.