Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

The lieutenant’s name was Lochlann Varghese. He was not amused.

“Answer the question.”

“I’d rather not,” Aaron replied, in all honesty.

On the table between them sat a curve of antler. The man had taken no efforts to conceal it. He’d set it down on the wood, looked at Aaron long enough to be sure his prisoner knew what it meant, and then taken his chair. It creaked. Aaron could tell that annoyed the man.

“Do you have any knowledge of the murder last night?” the redcoat repeated.

The antler was just a small piece of a much larger whole. A white branch with three tines, no larger than a man’s hand, with saw marks at its end. It had a certain pearlescence, even in the rather poor light of the interrogation room. Kirin’s bone.

“Do you know how many murders happen on this plateau on any given night? More than the ones you care about, I can tell you that.” Aaron shifted in his own seat, trying to find a comfortable position. Preferably one where he wasn’t jamming his bound hands against the chair back. “I can’t be expected to keep track of them all.”

The man slid a piece of paper across the table. On it was a charcoal drawing of a dead boy’s face. Even Aaron felt a thrill of recognition in his spine when he saw it. Was that really what Markus looked like in the daylight? Or had a certain likeness crept in, from someone the scribe had met earlier that morning?

Aaron had leaned forward to look at it. Now he eased back, crossing his legs at the ankles. “That’s quite good. You should hire her.”

He didn’t know why he was so certain that Mabel had been the one to draw it. It could have been any of the other candidates, or even the master scribe himself.

She’d met his eyes before she’d pointed. Had she been hugging a parchment to her chest along with her bow, or was he adding that to the memory? Had she finished the sketch first, closer to snitching on him with every line put to paper, or had she drawn it only after she’d set the guards on him?

“Did you have any knowledge of this boy’s murder?” Lochlann asked again. “If you don’t give me a straight ‘no,’ I’ve no choice but to assume you did.”

Kirin were one of the greater beasts. They didn’t just have magic in their blood, like selkies and firebirds: they had so much in them that their presence changed people. They were the choosers of emperors, and they abided lies in their courts just as well as they did men.

Aaron couldn’t lie while that thing was in the room. He met the lieutenant’s gaze. “I didn’t see him until after he was already dead. I didn’t have any hand in it.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.” There was more to it than that, though, wasn’t there? “Maybe. Not who, but who paid the coin. The Raffertys. Probably.”

The man shifted, and his chair creaked under him. He cast an irate glance down at the thing, then turned his gaze on Aaron. “Is that some kind of rat gang?”

Some kind of rat gang. Only the new kings in Two Kings. But a rat was a rat to a rat catcher, wasn’t it? “Yes,” Aaron said, and he managed to keep the rest of what he felt out of his voice.

“Was he a doppelgänger, or was he human?”

Aaron shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t know him.”

The lieutenant narrowed his eyes. “There was a boy in the city who looked exactly like you, and you didn’t know him.” Not a question. Just a statement, spoken with a certain monotone incredulity. “Did you know his name, at the least?”

“I already said, didn’t I? I never knew he was alive until I found him dead.” This was true enough for the kirin’s bone, and true enough for Aaron. “He wasn’t exactly like me, either. Don’t pretend he was. Have you ever met a pair of doppels, with one taller than the other, and one all flush with food, and them both looking human still? The whole point of a doppel is it’s a copy.”

The lieutenant’s chair creaked again as he leaned forward. He put his elbows on the table and made more eye contact than Aaron was willing to return. “You’re trying to play innocent here, Aaron. But a man died last night and you didn’t report it. Why?”

Aaron’s laugh was short. He tried to swallow it, he really did, but it slipped right out.

“Can you see how suspicious this looks?” Lochlann pressed. “We’ve rules, we’ve warning bells, we’ve a militia for a reason. There’s not enough of us left to ignore a murder. This isn’t about where you live, or who you get your coin from; this is about our survival as a species. This island is our last stand: if humanity dies here, we’re dead everywhere. Those monsters on the continent win. You found a human dead. It could have been the start of an attack. Why didn’t you report it?”

Aaron could only grin. It wasn’t the happy sort. “Right. And how would that have gone, Lieutenant Varghese? ‘Hello, rat catchers, you see there’s this dead boy that looks like me, but I swear I’m not a doppel, please don’t toss me in a dungeon for questioning, and I’d like to skip the hanging as well—’ ”

The man’s gaze sharpened. “Do you? Swear you’re not a doppel?”

Aaron blinked. For once, that was an easy question. He didn’t even need to think of a way to talk around it. “Yes. I’m just…” Just human? Strictly human, like the militia swore? Where did seeing Deathsleave him? No man could do that, not outside of stories. Something had happened to him last night and he didn’t know what. “…Just. Not a doppel.”

Varghese had been relaxing. Aaron hadn’t even noticed, until all that tension came back to the man’s face in an instant. “You’re not a doppel. I’ll grant that. Are you human?”

Aaron couldn’t stop his gaze from flicking to the kirin antler. When he looked back up, he found Lochlann’s eyes waiting for him. He shrugged, helplessly.

“I didn’t kill him, I’m not a doppel, and I’m not about to start trouble. I just… needed a job. Isn’t that good enough?”

No, it really wasn’t. They both knew it.

A knock sounded on the door of the interrogation room. Another guard poked her head in. “Varghese? They want you up in the royal apartments. Prince Orin’s own command.”

The man stood and tugged his jacket straight, never letting go of Aaron’s eyes. “Thank you, Officer Chereau. Put this one in an iron cell until I return, please.”

“Begging your esteemed pardon, but we don’t have any iron cells with doppel precautions.”

“None will be necessary.” The man tugged his jacket straight and nodded to Aaron, almost cordially. “We’ll continue this later.”

“I look forward to it.” The kirin’s bone wouldn’t let him leave it at that, and both of them knew it. The lieutenant stood waiting as the words twisted their way out. “As much as I look forward to a good mugging.”

The lieutenant gave a little snort. He pocketed the bone and rolled the charcoal drawing of Markus into a tube for carrying. “Oh, and Officer Chereau? I am a lieutenant now. Please remember my title.”

The woman hooked an arm under Aaron’s shoulder and jerked him out of his chair. He liked to think the action wasn’t directed at him, per se. “Yes sir, Second Lieutenant Varghese, sir. Please accept my apologies, sir.”

Lochlann didn’t say anything back. By the time Aaron had been unnecessarily shoved out the door, the man was already walking away. The redcoat went one way down the corridor—namely, to where the stairs led back up. Aaron and the guardswoman went the other.

“So you’re a changeling, then?” The woman asked conversationally, as she gave him another half-hearted shove on the back. “Where’s your fey mark?”

“Not a changeling, either. Just…” He could say human now, with the kirin’s bone gone. But what was the point? “…Just a harmless not-a-changeling.”

Her snort was almost friendly. And as long as he walked fast enough to keep ahead of her ridiculously long strides, her shoves were more like friendly reminders than attempts to bruise him. She was only about as tall as he was, but she made up for it with a certain vigor. A bit like a medium-sized boulder rolling down a cliff, really: not the most impressive, but nothing he liked being hit by. Her hair was the usual Onekin red, and her face blotched by large freckles. She was thirty, going on forty, and not yet a lieutenant herself.

“Is it just me, or is the good lieutenant a bit young for his position? What is he, twenty? Twenty-one?” Aaron asked.

Officer Chereau laughed. It wasn’t a kind sort of laugh. “The good lieutenant. I like that.”

“I mean, not to say he’s unqualified, the prince is around the same and already a captain, but the prince is an O’Shea.”

“If you’re meaning to say our good lieutenant bought his way into the position, then you’re betting fair.” She grabbed his arm and jerked him down a side hall. “Your guest suite is this way, fey.”

If he were truly fey, she could do with being a bit more polite. The Good Neighbors weren’t like dragons or griffins: a person couldn’t tell how dangerous one was just in the looking. But that wasn’t where he wanted this conversation to go. So he didn’t say a thing as he was manhandled, and let the topic hang in the air.

Sure enough, she had a bit more to say. “You know the Iron Captain?”

“Yes, ma’am. I saw her this morning. I’m sorry, is ‘ma’am’ right? I know a lieutenant you call by their title, but I don’t know with officers.”

She grimaced at the reminder. “It’s the same. Just ‘officer.’ Or ‘sir.’ Go with sir.”

“Yes, sir. So he’s the Iron Captain’s pet?”

“He’s the Iron Captain’s grandson.”

“Ah,” Aaron said, which rather summed it up. “So he’s been a lieutenant since he was, what, twelve?”

When she slapped him on the back that time, it was just part of her laughter. It was still enough to send him stumbling a step. “I like you, fey. What name do you go by?”

“Aaron, sir.”

“I haven’t met many fey. Just the—” She caught herself. Changed whatever it was she’d been saying. “Just the one. You’re a much better sport.”

“So what’s the castle policy on fey? Hypothetically. Not to say that I am.” But maybe he should encourage that thought, if the nobles liked them better than simple rats.

“Well that depends on what sort you are, doesn’t it?” They’d come to another door. A wooden one, and unlocked. The guard knocked twice. “Hope you’re decent,” she called, and let them in.