Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Aaron had never been out of the city before, but he was there in the dream, in the forest below the cliffs. A shadow moved between the trees, two golden lights set within it. There was never mistaking them for anything other than eyes. Silver flashed below them: teeth, long and sharp. Far more teeth than any creature had a right to. Black fog formed and broke apart above it, swirled, parted, rejoined. Not fog but fur—tails. Four distinct tails. The fox was a black silhouette cut from the night.

“Do you understand?” it asked.

He wanted to take a step back. He couldn’t.

“Do you understand what you’re doing, child? What you’ve changed?”

Aaron was holding a blade. Not his; it felt wrong in his palm. It hung in the air, silver as the fox’s teeth. He couldn’t move his hand.

“Yes,” he said, but it wasn’t his voice.

Its mouth curled into a smile no true fox could make; it was too wide, too curved, too human.

“Liar,” it said. Then it began to laugh.

He slit its throat, and black shadow came tumbling out. It laughed. He raised the knife again—

He couldn’t move his hand. He couldn’t stop—

Aaron woke. Across the room sat a fog of shadows, set with two golden sparks.

“People don’t like the truth,” the four-tailed Death said. “The kirin have never understood that. You would do well to remember it.”

He couldn’t move.

“We have such high hopes for you, Aaron,” it said. “Don’t disappoint.”

He jolted awake, hitting the floor in a crouch, his dagger in his hand—

But there was nothing there except the usual gray shadows. Furniture, vases, paintings. The table he and Rose had moved, returned now to its proper place. The moon shone in through his window, pale and subdued. He flexed his fingers, took a deep breath; let it out again. He crawled back into bed, and listened to the sound of his heartbeat slowing.

His dreams came again. In them, the fox kept laughing until he cut out its tongue.

* * *

Aaron sat slumped on the bench, his chin in his hands.

“Didn’t sleep well?” John asked.

“Mfph,” he articulately replied. They were in the council chamber, in the second to last row. It was nearly time for the petition to be presented.

John sat next to him, with Mrs. White curled in his lap. Mabel had chosen a perch directly behind them, and her spindly knees kept knocking Aaron in the head whenever she got excited about something below. Not much he could do about it. The chamber was full, and there were no other seats to move to. When thirteen lords had something to say, the city needed no further excuse to take a holiday.

“Do you have time to help me with a letter today?” the blond boy turned in his seat to ask. “The best thing ever happened to me last night. I don’t think the duke’s men like northern food, their plates kept coming back half-eaten and the servers said the other half was going to make the dogs fat, and afterward the duke’s own valet was in the kitchen, and I got to help him make snacks for all their men. Well not really make, more like I helped him find where the larder was, and he let me taste test at the end when I said that maybe he’d used too much spice and I thought I was going to die for a bit with how much he’d put in, but still I helped to feed a whole party of blood nobles—”

“You think that’s news? Did you hear what happened last night, after all them fine folks were in their beds?” the scribe replied, leaning conspiratorially forward.

John’s eyes were bright and eager. “What?”

Whatever she was about to say, she had to put it on hold.

The king’s advisors came in as a group just before the clock struck the hour. Most of them. Mrs. White watched the floor through half-closed eyes, her tail tip curling lazily against John’s thigh, as if she were near to sleep. She laid her ears back briefly as the Lady sat on the cushioned chair. The king himself entered last. Though Prince Orin was at his side, His Majesty walked unaided. Aaron’s hands curled in his lap.

Don’t fall. He concentrated on the thought. Keep walking. Don’t fall.

King Liam made it to his seat without incident. The man’s Death took up a post by the doors, a patient distance from the proceedings. By then, the crowd had grown silent. “With respect” would be the kind way to put it. Though Aaron was well kept these days, he was still a cave rat. He could feel it: the tangible hum in the air, the weight of a crowd that expected to be entertained. His stomach clenched down on itself. Mrs. White’s ears flicked his way, and her tail tip curled. Aaron hated crowds. Nothing good ever came of them.

The doors opened again, and the herald announced the petitioning lords. They outnumbered those seated at the table. It was an effect made even stronger by the fact that they would remain standing during their petition. Duke Sung did not hesitate to place himself at their head, and the others formed up behind him, in a manner reminiscent more of troops than of courtiers.

Aaron had heard that the southern lords were old-fashioned, but he always pictured that as being… well, quaint. Old clothes, old manners, and old lords clinging to old ways.

Duke Sung was not old. The men and women who stood with him were not quaint. The old ways were what had driven the dragons from Last of the Isles, and pushed the griffins into the mountains of Craghon; it had killed the kirin and the unicorns, the cait sidhe and the pusses. It had dealt with the fey so fairly that even now they wept when the best among men died.

Humanity was too weak to afford mercy. That was the true old way.

The duke dropped to one knee in a petitioner’s bow, and his men dropped with him, not a heartbeat apart. One fist on the floor, one on the heart, gaze raised and steady.

His Majesty gave leave for them to stand. If there was any voice that was still whispering some side conversation on the benches, any mouse that dared to shuffle its paws along the marble floors, it stopped now.

“Your Majesty. My liege.”

Aaron did not expect the duke to pause. He did not seem to be the kind of man who would waver in his speech. Who would hesitate, after bringing nearly every lord south of Onekin marching on the capital. He studied the man for signs that it was a theatrical pause, but could find none. That either made him sincere, or a very good actor.

“Liam. You know what we ask.”

The Wasting King did not so much as blink. “Speak it.”

The duke drew himself up soldier-straight, his shoulders squared under that immaculate argent coat, one hand gripping his wrist behind his back. He spoke.

“Those you see before you stand today, in full view of the kingdom, on behalf of all men. We petition the immediate disinheritance of Orin O’Shea from the line of your successors, and his execution no later than the melting of the western passes.

“If it pleases Your Majesty,” the duke finished.