Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

They arrived back at Salt’s Mane with a stunning lack of roadside excitement. Riding all day every day for days on end was, it turned out, rather boring when nothing was stalking you from the sky. Aaron was fine with the lack of imminent death. But it was a weird thing, having the horse under him do all the work, while he sat there getting sorer and sorer, and his sister kept trying to get to know him. As if he wanted to talk about the things that had made them so different.

“Why are you trying so hard?” he’d asked, at the walled town just past the forester’s lands, where she’d left her horse behind in favor of one less recognizable. The tianma was allowing itself to be won over with a thorough grooming by a specialized curry comb that polished up its scales rather than getting at the itches under its fur. The rest of the messenger horses looked on with a bit of derision in their possibly-kelpie-blooded gazes. Or maybe Aaron was just projecting.

He hadn’t thought she was going to answer, until she did.

“I have bad luck with little brothers. They get ambitious, and then they die.”

…Right. Because Markus wasn’t the first she’d gone through; there’d been the one doppeled by a dragon, before that. He wasn’t sure if she counted Michael as two deaths or one. Probably one, or she’d not have done the second herself.

“You’ll find that less of a problem with me,” he’d said.

She’d snorted, like her own sword wasn’t good enough cause to believe him. He’d huffed, and used that as excuse enough to leave her on her lonesome in the stables, which left him on his lonesome in their guest room. It was a slow thing, reading the overly fancy handwriting that nobles flourished all over the fronts of their letters, trying to pick out who was sending to whom. He didn’t lose all the letters coming from those Adelaide had told about his real self. But he certainly lost the ones from those who’d seemed too chatty for his health. Like the countess who’d come off a bit rude, and who’d taken it upon herself to make up the bulk of this stack. She hadn’t seemed the type to deliver her correspondence to the castle’s postmaster in person. Such a shame, that her entire bundle had been misplaced, somewhere between her hands and Aaron’s. Rather her own fault for abusing the royal messenger system for non-urgent matters, anyway.

He delivered the rest of his letters to the postmaster at Salt’s Mane, who sorted through them, and gave him back those headed further north. King Orin and his much reduced entourage had already departed, in the time it had taken him and Adelaide to return. They’d wasted no time. Or been made to waste no time.

There had been no eerily accurate dragon attacks, since His Majesty’s departure.

Rose received her own letter first with delight, and then with a growing flush. She was reaching blindly for ink and paper before she’d even gotten to the second page.

“That bad?” Aaron asked, knowing exactly how bad a letter from her twin could be, if Connor had put even half his fears to paper.

“He,” she spat, angry as a kicked kitten, “is giving me advice. On the diagnosis and treatment of saddle sores.”

“There are worse things,” Aaron said, as she began furiously penning her reply. “I’ll just pick that up on my way back, then?”

She hadn’t written a letter for him to take north to Orin. Maybe because her brother had not been gone very long, from where she was sitting; maybe because His Majesty hadn’t wanted her sitting out on the dragon front at all.

Aaron left the next morning, shoving a bread roll in his mouth to avoid a breakfast with his sister and the Lady. And promptly spitting it out, when he realized some cook had put cheese and bacon inside the thing. Who did that, to a poor innocent bread roll? At least he’d stuffed his pockets full of apples, too. He offered one to his Late Wake horse, by way of apology for leaving the flea-bitten gray here. And planning to do so again.

Seventh Down looked at the apple, its nostrils flaring. Then it snatched the bread, instead. The pooka-blooded horse did not seem to mind meat in its treats. Aaron noted this, for future reference, and also for the good of his fingers. More apples for him, at least.

He left the stables on another messenger horse. Checked the skies. Checked that he had his stag cloak about his shoulders, instead of anything so unfortunate as a blanket. Then he nudged his horse in the right direction, and set off on a road he’d never seen.

It was almost as good as flying, letting a horse have its head.

It was a faster thing, traveling without a dragon trailing him. The skies stayed clear, and he stayed on the coastal road without any early stopping. It was an oddly slower thing, too, without a sister trying to get him talking. Messenger horses were as keen on conversation as he was. They knew their route, and didn’t need much input from him on the matter. So he just… kept watch. For dragons, for those whale things coming too close to shore, for any of the seals laying on the beaches below the road to look at him with too-intelligent eyes. Selkies were one of the few creatures untouched by the Executioner’s hunts. Mostly because they’d all swum off, taking the regular seals with them, and not returned until after the man’s death. Humanity’s closest relatives wanted very little to do with the things their cousins got up to. He thought one or two might have raised a fin to him in passing; he raised a hand back, to err on the side of politeness, even if they’d just been turning over in the sun.

It was a very good sun. Aaron wondered how he’d gone so much of his life with barely seeing it, when it felt so nice on his back. Less nice on his skin. Perhaps he should enquire with Connor, on the diagnosis and treatment of sunburns.

As he went north, the little villages and pastures nearer Salt’s Mane grew less frequent. The Lord of Seasons’ forest crept from a far distant thing to a close companion, sometimes a mile or so back, sometimes near enough the road to stare into. The stones that marked its boundary were less well-kept here. Some sat weathered to the point of cracking. None were garlanded with the ropes the foresters wove each spring for them. They sat, in all their polite warning, with no respect paid back.

The land rose upward, the cliffside down to the beach ever steeper. There were mountains ahead. Were they part of the same chain that sheltered Onekin? He’d need to look at a map later. Maps had never seemed a practical thing in his life, before all this.

Fortifications dotted the coastal road, the same as they had when he’d traveled the opposite direction. The same as they distinctly did not, going inland. Ballistae were set into cliffs, where caves natural or carved provided shelter for their crews. Most had stables or rest points set above them, their entrances facing the road. Aaron discovered on the second day that they had meals for sharing with humble messengers, too. Who was he to refuse a free meal? All the militia members stationed inside wanted was a bit of gossip, and Aaron had ridden a longer route than most.

He avoided the ones where Deaths gathered. An animal death here and there was little issue; the militia crews had bows and boredom, and that was a combination that got little furry things dead. But when dragon Deaths stretched out in the sunshine of stable rooftops, when human deaths sat chatting with them as old friends? Those, he rode past quite quickly.

Probably they really were friends. Deaths couldn’t die, could they? So. They’d all been around each other, life after life, since life started. What was a little murder between those they waited on, when they’d gossip to catch up on? They must all be very good good friends by now. Or hate each other, rather transcendently.

There was one outpost that was particularly bad. Deaths everywhere, and mostly silent, in that patiently waiting way they had. Aaron was not one to go kicking at horses. But he made an exception for his current gelding, who couldn’t see quite the need for hurry that his rider had.

Adelaide was right. His first instinct was to run. Maybe he could have warned them. But on what evidence? And with all those Deaths to hear him speaking on things he shouldn’t know? They weren’t his people. Just… people, who didn’t know that today might be their last, same as Aaron hadn’t known last autumn. They might not even die. Or it might be tomorrow, or a week from now when they’d long dismissed him, his warning useless as a weather-reader selling the future for a copper.

It wasn’t long after that he caught up to the king’s humble caravan just outside his destination. Both their destinations. The walls of the Helland enclave were only a short ride ahead. The outpost where the Deaths had gathered, not much of a longer one behind.

Jeshinkra had ridden north with His Majesty, Aaron noted, as he nudged his horse past hers and up next to the king.

The sky above was free of any shapes changing their colors as they flew between clouds. And there weren’t any Deaths currently with the king’s party, so. His horse readily took to their new pace, its great breaths a thing he could feel though his legs.

“Afternoon,” Aaron said. “I’ve a letter from Connor for you.”

“Is it a thing to read on horseback?” Orin asked.

“A few too many pages for that, I think,” Aaron said. And glanced back behind them, to where Jeshinkra had reigned in her horse when he’d trotted up. Not much room for three to ride abreast, not with the wagon on the one side of them, and the cliff down to the coast on the other. She raised an eyebrow his way.

“Should we speak alone?” Orin asked, rather pointedly keeping his own gaze forward.

Ah. He thought Aaron was twitchy because of some politics thing. Maybe something he’d heard at Onekin, that there were too many ears for.

“It’s not that,” Aaron said. “There’s nothing much you don’t know, on that.”

The king turned him. And to his gelding, with the sweat tracks down its sides.

Those at the outpost weren’t Aaron’s people. But they were Orin’s, and Connor’s. And Rose’s.

“I just… had a bad feeling, down the road a ways. At that last outpost. Not really a thing I can describe.”

Orin gave him another look. Then he ordered their pace picked up, like a single bad feeling was a thing to take seriously, from a person he’d just learned had been a liar all this time. Aaron coaxed his own horse back to a greater speed, and tried not to think what a light sort of feeling it was, being believed.

Helland was no ancient cliffside fort or castle keep. It was just a regular enough town, cut off from the last edges of the forest and the encroaching tundra by a plain enough wall. Wooden, with its stake tops sharp. The guards let them in readily enough once Orin’s herald had done his thing. And then His Majesty asked for their captain, and the two talked, and they soon had a militia party gathering to send out. With new horses, and the usual weapons for snarling up wings, and a few very heavy crossbows of a sort Aaron had never seen before. Though he did remember, back when they all first met, Mabel mentioning that enclave bows could pierce dragon scales.

And Jon, who had not been allowed to carry one south. Or any weapon, until he’d checked himself in with the militia at the capital.

The party that rode out had every hair color but blonde, and every skin tone but snow. Not exactly what Aaron had pictured, for his first sight of enclavers in their own home. These ones weren’t any close cousins of the baker’s boy.

Jeshinkra rode out with the party, holding her sword up in salute to her king. Orin flushed, and lifted a hand back, which was a thing Aaron ignored. His Majesty was very much his father’s son, when it came to such subtleties. At least Jeshinkra was technically divorced.

There was only one stone building in town: a rather solid looking fort, squat to the ground by the coastal cliffside in a way that probably meant it continued a few floors down into the stone. Humanity did like its burrows. It was there that the king turned the rest of his party, as the guard captain led. The rest of the town was not nearly so solid. Wooden longhouses, rather similar in their construction, stood in tight rows. There weren’t many other sorts of buildings about. Or people. At least, not many that didn’t find somewhere else to be well in advance of their party riding past. Those Aaron did see were a much closer match for Jon.

Inside the fort, His Majesty’s party was quickly taken off to get situated in their rooms, and meet the nobles who oversaw relations between the enclavers and the rest of Lastrign. Aaron took himself off down a side hall. To look for the postmaster, if any asked.

The servants here were good matches for Jon, as well. Aaron, dressed as fine as any noble himself, didn’t try to get a conversation out of them. He just asked if anyone knew where to find the mother of one Jon Baker, employed in the castle at One King, because he’d a letter to deliver.

“Seems odd to me,” a servant working in the kitchen said, tucking a strand of blonde hair back behind her hair before turning her knife back to the meat on her cutting board, “that someone working in a kitchen could afford to send his mail along so fast like some noble.”

“I thought Jon sent his letters through the caravans,” said another servant, as he swept.

There was a fair bit along those lines. None of which was to say they didn’t know the woman, but they certainly weren’t sending a stranger dressed in the king’s own red her way.

“I hear you’re looking for my mother,” another voice said, as Aaron was showing himself down yet another hall. Under its first floor of cut stones, the fort gave way to mostly natural caves, with their sharper edges hacked smooth and a few passageways carved in to connect things that nature hadn’t been inclined to connect before. Some were still under active construction. This wasn’t a place as old as Salt’s Mane or Twokins; this was a place being newly built. In the style of its southern cousins, though it would be decades of hard work before it matched them in scope.

Aaron had very little doubt as to who’d be doing that work, and who’d be benefiting.

The boy who’d approached him was… Well. Jon Baker. If Jon Baker had a look on his face like his last seven meals had all been sour, and arms more fitting a smith’s apprentice. Or someone who wrestled bears on the regular.

For all that Jon wrote home regularly and with great enthusiasm, he’d never much spoken of home. But something in Aaron felt like he should have known that the boy was a twin. Should have been worth trusting, to even know the boy had a brother. Or a doppel. But this seemed the sort of town where they’d notice a twin suddenly appearing.

He’d taken too long in replying. The boy’s face tightened further. Then he…

Well. He tried to make himself look less like a lemon given life. And bowed, to boot.

“My apologies, sir,” he said. “I had heard that a royal messenger was looking for a member of my family.”

“You are,” Aaron said, looking at the worst attempt he’d ever seen someone make at humbling themselves, “really not good at playing possum, are you?”

“...Apologies if I’ve offended you. Sir,” the boy grit out. And kept himself bowed, probably so Aaron wouldn’t take offense to whatever look was on his face. Did the nobles living in this fort take offense often?

“I’ve got a letter,” Aaron said. “And I assume you’ve got a mother, for me to give it to.”

“I could deliver it for you,” the boy said. “Sir.”

He could. But Jon hadn’t mentioned his twin, and coming from the enclaves, where twins were a sign of their gods’ own favor, that was probably saying something.

“Is there a problem here?” asked a guard, who’d started far down this particular hall, but had decided to make this her problem.

“No,” Aaron said, and did not tag on his own sir,

as much as he felt the need. He wasn’t a rat, here. “Just delivering some mail.”

The guard’s brow drew down. “Has it been through the postmaster?”

“I’m a royal messenger, sir,” Aaron said, drawing himself up haughty enough to match the clothes he wore, and his long hair, and the company he’d rode in with. “Do you think I don’t know my job?”

“It’s not that,” the woman backtracked. “But you’re new here, and this one is trouble. More so than the usual.”

Aaron handed off the letter, rather pointedly. And kept looking down his nose until the guard excused herself back down out of earshot.

The boy was watching him, his head cocked like a bird. Or like his brother.

“The next one goes direct to your mother’s hands,” Aaron said, keeping his voice low. “Just as it came direct from your brother’s.”

The boy didn’t react to that bit of information. Which pegged him as better at playing a role than Aaron had initially thought.

* * *

It was a much simpler thing, asking for directions to the king’s new quarters. And inviting himself inside, where he delivered Orin’s own share of the letters. It was a simple arrangement: just a single room, well furnished but small, with a sofa pretending to divide the space into a parlor and a bedchamber. Aaron bypassed it to sit on the man’s bed, which left His Majesty choosing between bafflement and a glare. Aaron wasn’t pretending to be any kind of regal anymore, not when he was alone with those who already knew; best for Orin to get used to that. Best for Aaron to figure out what sort of things would trigger the man, as well.

His Majesty seemed too speechless to yell at him. So. Aaron dragged a pillow over, and started to fluff it.

“Have you noticed how many servants are children?”

“...The count tries to employ locals,” Orin said, eyeing the pillow. “There aren’t many opportunities, up here.”

“Why isn’t it their parents he’s employing?”

“Likely because most of them fought in the last revolt. And because children left unattended by a strict-kept human are in the habit of being carried off by griffins. Generally with parental permission.”

“Right,” Aaron said. He dragged down another pillow, because it took two to make a proper pile for leaning. “Why did you learn their language? I’ve heard you speak it, a bit.”

The king had started sorting his letters, as if ignoring Aaron would make this annoyance go away. He was nearly a decade older than Rose and Connor, and a stiffer sort of person than his siblings; it was possible that having someone invade his room and flop over on his bed wasn’t a problem he’d any experience dealing with.

“I don’t know much of it,” Orin said. “But a king should be able to speak with his people. And understand our enemies.”

Aaron hadn’t heard any of that speaking, since he’d gotten here. Not a single whistled note that hadn’t come from a real bird perched on the town’s wooden wall.

“Are they allowed to speak it?”

“It wasn’t even made for human tongues,” Orin said. “Or vocal chords.”

“Right,” Aaron said.

His Majesty looked at him again. “Ideally, children should be raised by their parents, speaking the language of their parents. But that has a habit of failing when the parents want to overthrow humanity’s reign on the isle.”

“Would that be a bad thing?”

Orin closed his eyes and let out a long, controlled breath. “Yes, Aaron. It would be.”

“Why?”

“Because this is Last Reign, Aaron. Because we’d die.”

“Would we?”

The king just stared at him. Like maybe the answer was so obvious he couldn’t even say it. Or there was no other answer he’d could think of to give.

“Right,” Aaron said again, because he was fairly certain it annoyed the man. But Orin just went back to ignoring him, even when he put a boot up on the man’s bed. Aaron missed Lochlann.

The militia party returned near to nightfall in greater numbers than they’d set out. Some were riding double, as they held on to those not steady enough to ride a horse alone.

It hadn’t been young dragons that had attacked them. Not the kind that came from the sky, in any case: the older kind, already doppeled, who should have had no business being back on Last of the Isles. Ones that had dressed themselves up like proper militia members, and come in through the outpost’s front door just as Aaron had at so many stops, pretending to be seeking a meal and company on their way to their own station.

It would have been days before anyone realized the outpost had changed hands. Maybe no one would have, if enough of the original staffers had themselves been made to doppel. It wouldn’t have been hard to explain a few deaths off as part of some attack. It wouldn’t have even been a lie.

The dragons had fled when reinforcements arrived. They hadn’t been interested in a fight with witnesses about.

“How did you know?” asked Jessica, who was called Jessie by the king, whose name in her home village was Jeshinkra.

“How’d you know to fake your death?” Aaron asked her, right back.

She gave him a hard look, like it had been him that had started asking questions he shouldn’t. Neither of them answered. That was the thing about those sorts of secrets: if they weren’t out yet, they were still fit to kill over.