Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

They met in the Lady’s apartments some hours later. She had acquired sketches of the assassins from the scribe master. Aaron looked down at them spread across the round table, and tried to figure out who had drawn each. There were two different styles to them. Curt, heavy strokes outlined the features of that pair, but a delicate curl, wispy at the edges, had been added to Gwen’s hair. It was almost like she’d just sat down for a portrait. Like she had stood again once it was done, and gone her way with that last wistful smile the artist had captured.

Aaron needed to have a talk with Mabel about her art, and the time and place for putting in unnecessary details. It was those very details he was focusing on, though. All the little pieces, so he wouldn’t see the whole.

“We killed three,” the Lady recounted, as she mixed their tea from porcelain containers kept tucked in between volumes on her bookshelf. Rose hip, dried apples, and Aednat’s cure. Apparently she hadn’t slept well either, if she was including the former queen’s favored pick-me-up. “At least one escaped that we know of. Mrs. White said, and I quote, ‘You didn’t get the tasty one.’ ”

Aaron could picture the little cat saying such a thing, with a flick of her tail before she walked off, or perhaps with her eyes half-lidded and her paws tucked, purring in someone’s lap. He couldn’t picture her voice, though. Did her lips move when she spoke, or were pusses like foxes and kirin, and a man simply heard the words?

“She followed the scents, then?” His hands tightened under the table. “Has she said anything on how they got in?”

“She’s a cat. The ability to speak makes her more so, not less,” the Late Wake’s leader answered, in perfect resignation. “And you? Do you know?”

“I haven’t been back to the Downs since I woke.”

She stopped to check on the pot hanging over the little fire in her hearth. A fleck of ash caught in her hair, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Who were they?”

Aaron closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked. “Chancellor, barn owl. Armaan. Silver bat. Gwendolyn. Same.”

No Clever Hands.

“They didn’t tell you how they planned to get in? They didn’t tell you the date?” The Lady brushed her hair over her shoulder as she stood, but the ash still clung.

“They were suspicious of me. They didn’t think I was Markus, but they hadn’t ruled out that I was someone different from the friend they’d known. They only talked with me about little things—who was at each other’s throats lately, how the new Faces were breaking in, which parts of Twokins would be safe for me to go. That sort of thing. They had no reason to step to less certain stones.”

They had no need. Aaron had been the one doing the telling. They’d needed a safe way in, and Aaron had found one. They hadn’t even known if it would work, not for sure—there had always been the risk that some alarm might sound, some old Letforget trigger that would kill them all before they even reached their targets. Getting the job done and getting out again had always been their problem.

Aaron had done his part. He’d gotten them in. And now three sketches were in front of him, because none of them had factored in simple betrayal, least of all him.

The pot bubbled, but didn’t yet boil. The Lady stared at a painting above her mantle. It was of a waterfall: just a small one, a little splash falling between two rocks in a stream. There was nothing to place the image in time or space. It was not an impressive painting. Childish, almost.

“And you’re sure it’s your father who hired them?”

…Was he supposed to be sure of that? Aaron’s mind scrambled to catch up. Had he ever said—?

Oh. During their first meeting, when he’d gone off the script Markus’ Death had been feeding him.

“The prince’s life is in danger. Orin’s. There will be an assassination attempt within the next few weeks.”

“Can I guess who paid the coin?”

“No doubt.”

“Is this why you came north?”

Maybe it was why Markus had come north. He’d never asked. Not that the boy’s Death would have answered.

“I’m not sure,” Aaron answered now. “But he’d get a regency out of it. More, if Connor were to have an accident in the next few years. Do you know of anyone else who stands to gain so much?”

“No.” The Lady played with the chain around her neck, absently running her thumb between keys and ring. “But I had an easier time believing it when I thought only Orin would be targeted. A quiet assassination, a tragedy that left the memory of our honorable prince unsullied—that I could see. It’s more how I would handle things than what I’d expect of your father, but I could understand it. Even Rose could make sense, though I didn’t think he believed her such a threat. But for Connor to be targeted as well…”

She didn’t know. She didn’t know that Connor hadn’t been targeted, that the youngest prince had been explicitly excluded from the Kindly Souls’ contract. It made sense for her to assume otherwise. There’d been at least four assassins she knew of, maybe more—if the alarm hadn’t sounded early, Orin wouldhave died. If Aaron hadn’t been there, Rose would have, too. Four assassins for two targets might seem overkill to the Lady; it was just as easy to imagine that the one who’d escaped had been after Connor, and simply never gotten a chance to act.

Clever Hands hadn’t been after Connor, though. They’d decided to work in teams of two for this, so Clev—

Would have been after the princess. Right.

Had he been there? Had he seen? Did he know how Gwen died?

A hand settled on his shoulder. It was light, hesitant; when he looked at it, when he traced it back up to the Lady, she almost took it away. But she seemed to steel herself, and gave a squeeze she probably thought was comforting.

“None of this is your fault,” she said. “The king knows that. As do I. You’re doing more than most apprentices of the Late Wake could. More than most would dare to. Because of you, everyone is still alive.”

She was entirely and exactly wrong. But he took the gesture as it was meant, and smiled, because he knew how to smile at his cue.

“It won’t be much longer,” she said. “Stay out of the Downs—there’s no need to keep risking yourself like this. When spring comes, we’ll start your journeyman’s training. I’ll teach you to fly—everything looks so small from the sky.”

She gave a final squeeze, and let him be. The water was ready. She put in the tea leaves to steep, and let there be silence between them. It was a comfortable silence. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, but it was.

Chancellor and Armaan and Gwen stared up at him, as the Lady poured their drinks.

He needed to leave. If Clev knew what he’d done, then he was a dead man in Twokins. If anyone in the castle learned who he really was, he was dead here, too.

If Rose knew he’d let the assassins in, if she realized she’d opened the door for them herself—

He took his cup and drank. The Lady had slipped in some anchor root, as well. It helped settle his stomach. She sat in her chair sideways, after dragging up another to perch her feet on. She blew over her own tea. That’s about when Aaron realized he’d burned his tongue.

Right.

Setting his cup down, now.

“Is he telling the truth?” Aaron asked. “The duke. Has the prince been doppeled?”

“There’s no way to tell for certain,” she said, her cup clasped in both hands. “Not unless he shifts, or lives long enough to start showing changes, or cares to be skinned. Or a dragon with his face turns up, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t it worry you?” A rat doppel might bite, or a bat sleep through the winter. But a dragon’s nature was something else entirely. Territorial, jealous, wrathful. Possessive. Not even Twokins would welcome the prince, if his mind festered in that way.

“I’ll let it worry me tomorrow, or the next day. Tonight we’ve enough worries.” She sipped her tea. Aednat’s Cure and anchor root, curing headaches and settling stomachs and making sleepless nights fade away. “Sometimes I wish you hadn’t sent me that letter, Markus. But it’s as you said: when there’s everything to lose, we must risk all. A lingering death was never man’s choice.”

He sipped his tea discreetly, burned tongue or no, and did not comment on letters his better half had sent.

Her eyes were back on the no-name painting. “I still feel as if we’re missing something. The Niall Sung I knew would come before the council and ask for justice, certainly; he would not hire assassins to kill children.”

“Touching.”

Aaron froze at the sound of that voice. They both did. It came from behind the room’s door. A door that was opening, as they watched. Not even the Lady seemed to know what to do.

“Do continue, my lady. I had no idea you still thought so highly of me.” The duke’s expression was utterly composed as he shut the door behind himself, civil as can be. The tilt of his dark eyebrows went so far as to suggest that they were the ones in the wrong, not he: after all, who had caught whom gossiping behind noble backs?

“Listening long, my lord?” the Lady asked, and winter gained a day with the ice in her voice. She stood, setting her tea cup on the table with a very distinct click.

The duke stepped farther into the room. He clasped his hands at his back, and regarded the waterfall painting. His expression was perfectly composed; there was nothing to be read, and nothing worth reading writ in its lines.

“Your door was unlocked. In Three Havens, one would never be so careless. An unguarded door is an invitation to unwelcome guests.”

His eyes settled on her necklace, and the ring and keys that her hand had frozen around.

She slipped them back into the neck of her dress, and met his gaze steadily. “Not everyone wishes to live in Three Havens.”

“No. Not everyone does.” There was silence in the room; the silence of heartbeats too fast, and breaths carefully slow. Of small snaps and pops from the fireplace, and a waterfall forever caught mid-fall. The duke removed his eyes from the painting, and turned around. “Are we really going to hold this discussion in front of him?”

Him. That would be the man’s rather pointed reference to his son, who his eyes summarily dismissed, in the same manner men dismissed dogs skulking in alleys. Aaron felt his spine stiffen on the dead boy’s behalf.

“Markus. Leave.”

“Stay,” the Lady countered. “I don’t know what discussion you allude to, my lord.”

“Perhaps you would, if you read your correspondence. A reply would be too much, of course.”

“It is a great pity, but my hearth was lacking kindling. You couldn’t stand for a woman to be cold at night, could you my lord?”

“Is His Majesty so poor he could not provide a single stick?”

The Lady smiled. It was a bright thing, like sun glare off ice. “Get out.”

The duke did not leave. “Convenient, for your fox to die the night my party arrived in the city. It’s all the common folk have a head for: the enemy who died, rather than the enemy in line for the throne.”

“Convenient he was murdered the night before you spoke your facts over kirin’s bone,” the Lady countered.

“By tomorrow, no one will believe a word that was said in that room,” the man continued. “The petition will be thrown out, and in a few months or a year, a dragon will be king.”

“So what will you do, Niall? Stand here and convince an empty room? There are no ears to hear you, in here.”

“Liam was right,” he said, using the king’s name as casual as could be, “I do what is best for the kingdom.”

“Liam wasright. You do what you think best. As do I. As does your king. Who will lead, if Liam and his children die? The Last Reign belongs to the O’Shea line.”

“You still believe in stories.”

“I believe in people. There’s been an O’Shea on the throne for nearly eight hundred years. You think humanity would survive long if that trust breaks? The south would follow a Sung, but would the enclaves? Would the salt’s men? The foresters? The capital? Sit the One King’s throne, and it will splinter under you.”

The silence of cracking ice spread between them.

Aaron must have moved, or breathed too loud, because the duke’s gaze snapped to him.

“You have something to add, Markus?”

He’d been holding his tea cup in front of him, like some kind of defense. He set it down, with a click much quieter than the woman’s had made. “Only what the Lady has already asked. You should leave.”

Aaron had seen the duke from the castle walls. At that height, seated astride his horse and watching over his men, he’d seemed unreachable and strong. When Aaron had shadowed him through the halls, he seemed as lofty as men in power always took themselves to be, but not unkind; at least, not unkind to everyone not spying on him from doorways. In the council chamber, there had been flaws in that facade: the duke’s hesitation to speak, the way he could not meet Orin’s gaze. He stood here now, and this was all Aaron could think:

He recognized the man. He’d followed him yesterday as if bewitched, and this was why. He recognized him. Hair and eyes. The way he set his feet on the floor and squared his shoulders. He recognized the man, because the man had the same features, the same dignity, as Aaron’s own Death.

And Aaron realized something he should have seen from the beginning: his Death looked like him. An older him, to be sure, but him.

The duke had Aaron’s chin, nose, cheekbones, brow; had the same way of holding his shoulders stiff to keep them from shaking with fear or anger. The man looked like him. Far too much for coincidence to explain. Aaron did not like where those thoughts led; he’d been avoiding his resemblance to the man’s real son too long to welcome them now.

Aaron stood. He squared his shoulders, uncomfortably aware of how similar his stance was to the duke’s. Even their feet rested in mirror images of each other. A low flush rose to his cheeks.

“The Lady asked you to go, sir. Please respect her wishes.”

“Markus,” the duke said. This time, his voice carried a warning.

“Duke Sung,” Aaron replied.

The duke’s face was flushed red now as well: and the color made the resemblance between them even harder to miss. His voice was quiet as he spoke: “Know your place, Markus. Your lark in the capital ends now. Go to my quarters. Once I’ve discussed matters with the Lady, we willdiscuss your loyalties, and whether you will be returning to Three Havens as my son or my bastard.”

“You will not threaten me,” Aaron spoke, his voice low. “I saved the princess, and nearly died because of it. I was given the royal red to wear by the crown prince. I remain here at the request of His Majesty himself. I owe no allegiance to you.”

“Go to my quarters and wait, Markus, or you are no son of mine,” Sung said.

“I see we have an understanding, then.” Aaron’s hands fisted, with the same fury he saw in the duke’s eyes. “Now. You have entered the Lady’s apartments uninvited: I suggest you leave. The royal guard may be hesitant to lay hands on someone so mighty as yourself, but don’t think I’d have the same respect.”

“You would not dare,” the duke said.

Aaron shrugged his shoulders, and continued to meet the duke’s gaze. Gray on gray. The same color that Markus’ had been. It was a rare color in the capital. He’d never met anyone else with gray eyes, until he’d seen a dead boy in an alleyway. There was an ache growing behind his temples that not even Aednat’s cure could hold at bay.

The duke seemed to find something in that gaze that settled matters for him.

“So be it,” he said. “I see that you are in fine company, my lady. We will speak another time. Perhaps you will even see fit to respond, the next I send a request for your presence.”

Neither of them spoke again until well after the man was gone. Aaron stayed where he was: still standing, still looking at the place the duke had been, though now it was only the waterfall painting on which his eyes fell. There was a title plate set in its frame, but he couldn’t read it; his mind refused to turn the lines into letters just now.

It was the Lady that broke the silence.

“I wish you were my son. I truly do.” There was a sadness to her smile that he could not place. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said.

Tonight, then. Tonight, whatever was meant by that; whatever may come.

For now, for this afternoon: Aaron took his leave. There were questions he needed to know the answers to, and there was only one person he trusted to give them.