Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Orin caught Aaron’s eye as the public was ushered from the chamber. Aaron hesitated a moment. His seat was near to the back. It would not be too strange if he couldn’t see Orin’s look from here. Or if he misinterpreted it as an idle glance. Not too strange at all.

The new king watched him a moment more, then turned his gaze away. It was the utter lack of reproach—lack of any emotion at all, really—that sent Aaron’s shoulders slumping.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” he told John, and made his way down the rows of benches, cutting across the crowd as they queued to exit. At the bottom, he glanced once at the congested doorway out, then put his good hand on the stone rail and vaulted lightly to the chamber floor. His boots made a small sound as they settled on the marble and bone floor. His teeth made a louder one as he grit them together. Vaulting: not an action to be done with broken bones. Aaron noted this fact for future reference.

If Orin disapproved of his path, it did not show in his face. Very little was showing in his face. As Aaron’s feet touched down, His Majesty rose from his seat. The rest of the council hurried to rise with him.

Orin led the way to a side door in the chamber’s wall. It opened into a small room with chairs set in an informal circle. There was no grand table here, just little end tables placed here and there, and an open space in the center with a rug laid out, a map of Last of the Isles woven in its surface. His Majesty sat; his father’s advisors waited upon the gracious wave of his hand before picking out their own seats. With no particular discussion between them, they defaulted to much the same seating arrangement as they had in the chamber itself. Aaron took up a post by the open doorway, his back tucked up against a bookshelf. His presence was earning him glances from more than one of the council. Glances he could not answer, since he himself did not know why he was here.

“We aren’t to discuss things in the council chamber?” the court doctor asked.

The young king sat with back straight and his hands resting on the arms of his chair. “I have always hated that floor,” he said. “If anyone here is going to lie to me, you will find a way. If you are going to be honest, you will be honest. Let us skip the part where we pretend that those bones will change a man’s heart. My grandfather once told me that this room was where matters were discussed before our Fair neighbors sent their gift. I think we will try using it again.”

He stroked a hand over the arm of his chair. No one spoke as the king’s eyes wandered the room, almost absently. It was several moments before his gaze refocused again. He frowned towards the door.

“Is Mrs. White waiting for the whole crowd to leave? Surely discretion has its limits.” He seemed to address this to Aaron. Or at least, it was addressed to Aaron by default that Aaron stood in the direction the king was now looking.

“I don’t see her, Your Majesty,” he said simply. He had not seen her since the night of the late wake. She had stayed with him until dawn, when the banshees stopped their wailing. Then she had left, her tail tall behind her.

The king’s frown deepened.

The Lady cleared her throat. It was a small sound: barely audible, even in the nearly silent room. Orin turned his eyes on her.

“Your Majesty, when cats are loyal, it is only to their masters.” She paused a moment, then pressed the point home gently: “Hers is dead.”

The new king’s hands tightened over the arms of his chair. Joint by joint, he eased them back to their placid calm. “I see,” he said. “Thank you for your insight, Lady. If such is the case, then we may as well begin. Shut the door, Markus.”

Aaron did, if only because it gave him an excuse to briefly turn away from the council members’ gazes. Of them, it was only the Lady who showed no reaction to the name. Some seemed only curious. Aaron was rather well known around the castle by this time. For the king to be calling him something else… well, that was worthy of curiosity. It was the other looks that concerned him; the Iron Captain, the armored merchant, the master scribe. Those to whom that name had meaning in its own right. Theirs were the looks that could cut.

“The southern lords believe their duke innocent. All our evidence points to his guilt,” the new king summarized neatly. “Advise me.”

“He killed the king,” the black-robed scribe stated. “He’s confessed. There’s only one answer to that. You cannot start your reign with weakness.”

“To take the duke’s head would be to declare civil war,” the merchant replied. “Not even the lords who were present believe his guilt. The rest of the south would never accept it. They will think it is a plot against his life, and Your Majesty truly a dragon doppel hoarding the power of the throne. We need the southern troops if we’re to defend the whole of the coastline. Spring is here; we’ve a month at the outside before wings are sighted.”

The talk chased its own tail. Duke Sung had to die; to kill him would be a grave error. Orin’s gaze wandered from speaker to speaker around the circle, until in passing they fell on Aaron. The king’s lips tightened.

“Why are you still standing?” he demanded.

“Perhaps,” the Lady suggested, “he was waiting upon proper introduction.”

No. No, that was definitely not what Aaron had been waiting for, and he would rather not have all the council thinking that he was—

“Allow me to introduce Markus Sung, second forfeit of the duke, journeyman of the Late Wake. His true name is not to leave this room,” the new king stated. “Markus, meet everyone else. Now sit down.”

“May I ask why he has joined us, Your Majesty?” the merchant asked tightly.

Aaron recognized him, finally. Recognized him twice over. From a shadow in the night, who’d whispered things to the Iron Captain outside the council chamber doors. And from the resemblance he bore his nephews. Had borne. Back when they’d looked human.

Rafferty. Wherever Aaron went, he couldn’t escape those rats.

“Because he may have some insight into his father’s behavior,” Orin said, “And because I wish it known that I trust him.”

Aaron sat at the Lady’s right, by default that the seats on either side of her were the only ones left empty.

“I do not like this,” the king continued. “I have fought under the duke’s command. I trained under him, for years. What the duke has done is irrefutable, yet it does not make sense. Not to me, and not to the lords who pledge their allegiance to him. Why did he do it?”

“How many do you command, Your Majesty?” the Lady asked. For the first time that day, Aaron saw an expression flit over Orin’s face: confusion. “Your unit on the border. How many men?”

“Nine, myself included,” the king replied.

“Then it does make sense,” she spoke softly. “It makes terrible sense. The duke—my husband—is a man who would do anything to protect our Last Reign. He has cause to suspect you as a doppel; we do not know how much of his testimony is true, but the deaths or disappearances of those in your unit will be easy to verify. And even if you are not a doppel, even if it should come to light that he himself was the one to order their deaths in the setup of this farce, where might his thoughts have led him? Nine men. You have commanded nine men, in all your life. Your father—may his soul not wander—was dying, and you soon to be in charge of the whole of our kingdom. Think of it as he would: who is better to lead a kingdom, a young man who has led nine men and may well have the mind of our enemy, or the general who already commands the whole of our forces?”

She left her words to hang a moment before continuing. “Do not think it is civil war you risk; do not think so low of our family. My husband is one man. Leave it to my daughter to bring the southern lords back in line; she is tested, and they will follow her. You may not have Niall, but you will have Adelaide, and I, and Markus. You will have Declan Sung and his people, and Ji Yun Sung with hers. You will not have Niall, but you will have the Sungs. Three Havens stands behind you. It is a sickness, the way that my husband has come to think; you must cut it out, before it spreads.”

Her words hung in the air, changing the texture of the atmosphere, until one by one those in the council began to nod.

“Or you could just wait,” Aaron blurted. He stopped himself from flinching when all eyes turned to him, and focused on the buttons of the king’s new royal clothes: dragons. The same as those on Aaron’s own red coat. Someone really ought to tell the button makers that the new king hated their work.

“Why not just tell the truth? That you don’t think the duke’s actions make sense, and you need more time to look into things. So you can make certain you deal with the duke justly, and all that. Until then, you’re delaying your ruling. Won’t that keep the southern lords on their best behavior? You could appoint some of them to the investigation—a mixed team, to keep everyone honest. They’ll probably bicker enough that we’ll be well past spring by the time they’ve finished, and the rest of the southern lords can hardly complain if it’s their own men who find the duke guilty.”

The Lady’s face was a study in calm. The other councilors exchanged glances, as if woken from a spell.

“Markus,” the new king said, after a long pause, “you are hereby appointed to my council.”

This. This was why he should not talk to kings.