Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

“Just what do you think you can do with that, boy?” It was more scorn than question. The duke’s sword rested easily in his hand. The hilt might be fancy, but the blade was simple steel and well polished. Niall Sung’s duchy sat on disputed borders, and blood nobles did not lead battles from the rear.

Aaron should have asked for guards to take with him. The prince could have spared two or three men; let the rat catchers earn their keep. But neither of them had thought of it in the moment.

He shifted his grip on the dagger.

“How did you know of the old ways?” the man asked. Slowly, never taking his eyes off of his son, he set his lantern on the ground and straightened again. Inwardly, Aaron kicked himself. If he was going to attack, he should have done so while the man still held that clumsy thing—it would have put him off balance, but he couldn’t have risked dropping it for fear of snuffing the flame.

“Rose showed them to me,” Aaron answered. “Trusting cousins seems to be a problem with the O’Shea line.”

He was Rose’s cousin. Noble blood; royal blood, even. He actually was. He—

Would do best to think about that later. For now, his father stood before him, and the man’s stance had not relaxed.

“Don’t mock me, Markus,” the duke said. Then, after a moment’s consideration: “I would prefer not to waste time on killing you, but the choice is yours.”

“The prince has taken his people down to the barracks. They’ll be routing yours out by now, I expect. Your lords will be next. You’re too late.”

The duke’s grip tightened. That was all the more warning Aaron got before the man charged.

He had to take the first strike on his own blade; there was no room and no time to dodge. He braced as well as he could, and met it. The shock ran through his fingers, into his arm and shoulder; he sidestepped to slip away before the man could overpower him.

The duke stepped into the motion, and kicked his legs out from under him.

Aaron rolled to the side, over his shoulder, coming up in a low crouch. He lashed out at the man’s side, and was met by steel.

“You’ve gotten better at this,” the duke said, which was not at all in keeping with how Aaron felt.

They both broke apart, each retreating a step. In a wider field, this is where they would have begun to circle each other, assessing, seeking an opening. Here? Here, there was nowhere much to go. There was ahead, and there was behind.

As much as he felt cramped, the duke had it worse. Swords were not made for confined quarters. They needed room to gain speed, to be properly swung; narrow walls and low ceilings cut a swordsman’s usual repertoire. In the duke’s mind, he had to know that. But a well-honed body is like an extension of the blade, and it does not always stop to think in the middle of battle.

The duke raised his blade, and brought it crashing downward with far too much force for a dagger to stop; it was the ceiling that blocked it for Aaron, showering them both in sparks as the stone snatched speed from the blow. Aaron dodged backwards, in small quick steps. When the blade came slicing down he was out of its reach, and ready to rush in for a slash. He landed a sliding, glancing cut along the duke’s forearm: first blood.

It nearly cost him his life.

The duke wheeled on his heel to send the blow glancing; then, relinquishing a hand from his own blade, he grabbed for Aaron’s wrist. Aaron was overextended, the blow not as solid as he’d counted on, and his body committed to the movement; the duke pulled him a farther step off-balance. The man raised his other hand, and brought the hilt of his sword crashing down on Aaron’s wrist.

The sound his arm made was one he’d be reliving in his nightmares; the kind where one is helpless to stop things, simply watching the same action play out over and over again.

He dropped his dagger.

“Give up, Mar—”

Aaron jerked his head upwards, smashing his skull into the bottom of the duke’s jaw and cutting off his words with the solid crack of teeth-on-teeth. He twisted his wrist free—sharp white HOT pain, jolting up from fingers to shoulder—and stumbled backwards. By accident more than intention, his foot caught on the lantern. He fell. It fell.

Darkness enfolded the corridor.

It wasn’t instinct that made him hold his breath, and scuttle quietly on bare feet and one hand to the opposite side of the passageway; experience would be the better word. No one ever wanted a fight in pitch black; no one strictly human, in any case. But between the two of them, Aaron was willing to bet that the darkness favored him more. He heard the scuff of boot, felt the wind of movement in front of his face. Then the sudden, sharp shriek of metal-on-metal and a bouncing clatter as the duke thrust at where Aaron had been, and hit the lantern instead.

Aaron swept his good hand over the ground. He found the cool, smooth blade of his dagger. Worked his fingers upwards, until they wrapped around the hilt. Then, taking in a steadying breath, he bolted. The duke’s sword sparked against the wall in his wake. Aaron ran quietly on bare feet. The duke’s boots were anything but as, cursing, he blindly pursued. Not for long: just a few steps, before he realized the stupidity in his actions. Too bad. Tucking himself against a wall and waiting to take a shot at the man’s back as he passed would have been quite agreeable with Aaron. Instead, he heard the duke settle into place; his boots scuffed the ground as he moved into a waiting stance, and again, some moments later, as he shifted. It was easy to picture: the man, his feet braced in a wide stance, his sword held ready in front of him.

And Aaron, his wrist—not broken not broken please don’t be broken—injured, cradled against his chest, his off-hand turning the grip of his dagger into an awkward, unfamiliar thing. He tried to imagine scenarios where this ended well for him. If he slipped along a wall and got behind the man’s guard—as if the man wasn’t paranoid against such tactics?

So this was his father; so this was the man who’d killed King Liam. Of what concern were either of those to Aaron? He’d gone seventeen years without a father. Seventeen without caring much about the king of the upper town, either. He had no reason to start now. They weren’t worth his life. He needed to get out of here: back out to Orin, so the prince could send rat catchers in to clear these tunnels. Let the duke deal with men in full armor, not a boy wearing his best hand-me-down clothes. Aaron fled. Quietly at first, so as not to lure the duke on, then more quickly as the distance between them grew.

The passageway seemed interminably long. He came at last to a flight of stairs, and went down. It was as he was reaching the next corridor below that the black around him turned to gray: the duke had re-lit his lantern.

Well, lovely. Good of the duke to carry matches; Aaron could rest easy knowing that his father was a well prepared man.

The footfalls behind him were significantly louder than his own, and significantly more sure of where they were stepping. The duke did not have to worry that there was a right angle to the path in front of his face that he was about to run into, or a flight of stairs whose air currents he wouldn’t recognize until a moment too late, or that the gray light around him—too little to see with, too much for comfort—was growing brighter.

He arrived at a fork in the path. One way led to a stair down, the other went straight. They were even with the grounds now; the stair should lead to the dungeons, the Downs, or both. The straight path, then, would soon be leading to the other exits: the kitchens, the barracks, and wherever else. Aaron picked the stair. There was no reason for the man to go down there. And besides, Aaron had no desire to run out one of the other exits, and find himself back in the main fight. Not without a moment to catch his breath, to think.

He was looking back over his shoulder when he hit the thing. Not that it would have mattered if he were facing forward. He could not see enough for it to have made a difference.

“Omph,” the thing said.

“No,” Aaron said. “No, no, no—”

“Aaron?” Rose asked, making no effort to lower her voice.