Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

The seventh week.

The king called a full meeting of his advisors. It was the first such meet since the autumn, and the first time the king had left his bed since the assassination attempt. He called Aaron for a private audience prior to its start.

Aaron had been in the council chamber often enough since coming to the castle, but his first impression held. White. White, and unexpectedly cold. Well, not cold exactly, but goosebumps never failed to break out over his arms when he helped sweep the place, and going to meet the king wasn’t helping. It felt like touching ice, but all up and down his bones.

The chamber was set up like an amphitheater. A long table of dark wood sat in the center on an open floor. Around it, stone benches rose to higher and higher levels against the walls, with enough seats for nearly four thousand. A full fifth of Onekin’s population. Today only the table at the center would be occupied, but on days when His Majesty’s court was in session, those seats tended to fill. Aaron had come to watch a trial once when he was younger. He remembered feeling the same then as he did now: like something was wrong with the very ground of the place. The effect was even stronger on the council floor itself, and he hesitated to step out onto its elaborate surface. It was marble, inset with white bone. The large skeletons forever raced each other in a frozen circle around the center of the room.

King Liam O’Shea sat at the head of the table. His back was straight; his crown sat in hair of fiery red. He was in his fifties; not an old king by any measure. His father had only passed away some sixteen years before. Cormack the Steadfast had worn the crown to his own deathbed. But that Liam was himself dying, of that there was no doubt. He sat with a heavy red cloak wrapped over his shoulders like a blanket. His hands, crossed on the table in front of him, were thin and white. There were shadows on his face that only the final sleep would cure. His eyes were a pale crystalline green, and his face composed.

His Death stood behind him, at solemn attention. He met Aaron’s eyes and gave a simple nod. Aaron returned the gesture, and promptly froze. But the Death had already known that Aaron could see his sort, or suspected enough to test it, and— And the king was watching him, one eyebrow lifting slowly. An expression mirrored by the man’s Death, who seemed in no hurry to tattle on Aaron to his own Deaths, or do anything much beside stand there. Aaron hastily amended his nod to a full bow, and was glad he didn’t have to choose which of them to aim it at.

“Rise, Lord Sung. Join me.”

Aaron stepped as lightly as he could across the floor, but still, each footfall came back to him as a quiet echo from the chamber’s walls, like ripples in a pond. On the chair to His Majesty’s left sat a pillow; he chose the chair to the right, instead.

“A wise decision,” His Majesty commented. “She can always tell when someone’s been using her chair. You’d be sure to hear of it later.”

Aaron nodded. He didn’t know who the king was talking about. But then, he didn’t need to. He just needed to speak as little as possible, and be dismissed before he said something unwise. A kirin’s bone floor. This could go very poorly.

“Have you ever been on a kirin hunt?” King Liam asked.

Aaron answered without thinking: “No, Your Majesty.” Belatedly, he hoped it was the same answer that Markus would have given. The other boy’s Death seemed to have given up on advising him; Aaron hadn’t seen the man since that first meeting with the Lady. Which had been a bigger sort of screw-up than simply nodding at a Death who’d nodded to him first. Probably.

The king leaned back in his chair, his eyes focused on something older than this moment. “No, you wouldn’t have. I suppose we’ve finally killed the last of those on the isle. They were still common enough when I was growing up; they’d form herds in the winter, like deer. They called it the kirin’s court. Your father invited me along one year.”

“It sounds… unsporting,” Aaron said, and immediately began to mentally kick himself. The king had not asked his opinion.

A smile quirked on Liam’s face. In it, he saw a certain resemblance to Rose. “You’re thinking of unicorn hunts. Kirin don’t lay their heads down in the laps of virgins and wait for the killing blow, Lord Sung; kirin fight. They are judges, and they find men wanting. I’m sure you know the saying.”

“ ‘No man may lie where a kirin stands,’ ” Aaron said, and the king nodded. “It must make for awkward council meetings.”

His Majesty laughed. “It keeps my advisors honest, to be sure.”

“Still, isn’t that worse? If you take away a man’s chance to lie in here, how do you know who to trust out there?” Again: no one had asked his opinion. Aaron belatedly shut his mouth, and resolved to keep it shut, unless asked a direct question.

The king was looking at him. A piercing look that Aaron could not read. “I hear that you are teaching my daughter to fight. Does her appearance not concern you? Even my closest advisors caution that she may be less than human.”

A statement, not a question: Aaron stoically kept his mouth closed, right up until the king’s Death shot him a hard stare. He was a bit past ignoring the man.

“I don’t believe anyone should lay their head down and wait for the killing blow, Your Majesty,” he answered. “She’s a friend of mine. That’s all I need to know.”

“Good,” Liam replied, with concentrated force behind the word. “When I am dead, you are to continue training her. This is a direct order from your king; let none countermand it. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he replied. And that was the flaw in a kirin’s honesty: Aaron only had to speak truth to the question asked. Yes, the king was clear. No, Aaron would not be around to continue his daughter’s training. Every extra day he spent in the castle was as good as consulting an executioner on the best way to tie his noose.

“Good,” the king repeated, and he leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. “Thank you for saving my daughter’s life. That is what I brought you here to say.”

For a moment they stayed like that. The king wrapped in his cloak, his eyes shut, his breathing steady. Aaron on the edge of his seat, a slow ache building in his back from sitting so straight.

It was the man’s Death who brought the scene to a close. The figure reached out a hand, and laid it on the king’s thin shoulder. Liam rallied.

“Thank you, Lord Sung. You are dismissed. Please send my advisors in.”

Aaron nodded, and rose. His hand was on the council chamber’s door when His Majesty spoke again.

“Lord Sung. I really must ask—what happened to your face?”

Aaron flushed red. The darker shade really brought out the black and purple of his eye. “I believe I made a friend, Your Majesty.”

The king’s laughter followed him out. The hallway had been empty when he came: now a small handful stood outside, talking quietly amongst themselves. The crown prince, the Captain of the Guard, the Iron Captain. The Lady, of course. He recognized Mabel’s austere scribe master in his black robes, and the court doctor had a disapproving glower for Aaron when their eyes met. There was only one man he didn’t recognize, but the armor he wore even in the castle placed him easily enough as a member of the merchant’s guild. He looked familiar somehow, though Aaron couldn’t quite place him. In all, they numbered seven. There would be empty seats at His Majesty’s table. He did not know if that was because the council was small, or because some of its members were outside of the castle walls at present.

They looked up as he opened the door, startled by the laughter coming from within.

“His Majesty bids you enter,” Aaron said, with dignity far surpassing his blush. He stepped to the side, and held the door open for them. The prince was the last. As Orin passed him, Aaron spoke softly: “Thank you. For the coat.”

The prince frowned at him. “I see that anonymity was too much to ask for.”

“It was a bit obvious,” Aaron pointed out.

“Well, I am glad that you like it.” Orin looked at him a moment more, then turned his face to the council chambers. “I, personally, found it atrocious. I told them not to use those buttons.” With no further ado, the prince went inside.

He was just shutting the door when he heard the prince speak again, from the inside. “Is Mrs. White not here yet?”

It was at that point that the white cat came sliding around a corner of the hall far too fast, her claws scrabbling for purchase on the smooth floor. Seeing him watching, she froze. Sat. Licked calmly at her shoulder for a beat, stretched luxuriantly, and stood again. She proceeded to cross the space between them and twine, with the stateliest of airs, through his legs and into the council chamber where she leapt, lightly, onto the chair at the king’s left. The one with the pillow on its seat. The crown prince sat across from her, in the chair Aaron had occupied.

“Let’s begin, then,” the king said. “Duke Sung will be here by month’s end, and his party with him. We must be ready. Spring is too near for us to allow division within our ranks.”

The Lady nodded once, in fierce agreement. “He would never have tried this during the war. This petition of his is just a front to raise support for renewing the dragons’ pact—”

The white cat spoke most eloquently of all. With a slow curl of her tail tip, she stared at the door. At him. Her pupils slowly dilated, her ears folding down.

Aaron eased the doors shut, and stood blinking in the hallway.

A puss in boots. So there was at least one still alive, then.