Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Aaron slipped his feet out from under the covers. His toes curled into soft carpet. He pushed himself towards the edge of the bed. Took a steadying breath. Stood.

Fell to the floor, his legs an untidy heap under him.

Spring gave him about nine weeks to work with. Eight if he was playing it safe, ten if he was confident in his ability to sneak out a side gate the moment he saw Duke Sung’s banner flying on the road. Speaking of: he needed to learn what his daddy’s banner looked like. And where exactly Three Havens was. Given his startling resemblance to the lord’s son, he found it prudent to avoid that area of the island. So: he had eight weeks, give or take, to leave the capital. Returning to Twokins was never an option. It hadn’t been before, and it certainly wasn’t now.

He waited until the gray dimness had receded from his vision. Then, using arms and legs and the bed post, he pulled himself to his feet. Through sheer willpower, he stayed on them.

Eight weeks. He’d spent four weeks in bed, so he’d give himself twice that to recover. It balanced neatly. He was somewhere safe and warm, and his doctor was good enough for a king. Life didn’t come any easier than this; his only job was to get himself well again. Eight weeks would do just fine.

* * *

The first week.

The doctor glanced over his arm like a fishmonger examining his catch. The scuffs on his palm; the bruises on his elbow. No good, throw it back.

“I said a week, boy. If you must leave your bed, call someone to assist you.”

“Sorry,” Aaron said. The doctor looked at him. Aaron looked meekly back. The doctor gave him a little packet of medicine, then left. Aaron opened the flap, and sniffed; licked a fingertip, poked at the green powder inside, and brought it back to his mouth. Powdered mother’s vine and nightingale herb. For sleep and for pain, then. His aching muscles hardly counted as pain, and he’d slept long enough. Aaron tucked the medicine into his growing pocket pharmacy, and swung his legs out of bed. He fell. He got up again.

He made it to the window, unassisted, and rested his head against the cold pane of glass.

He slept. He ate. When next the doctor came, Aaron was sitting in a chair across the room, waiting for him.

* * *

The second week.

Socks. Coat. Sweater, pants, underthings. He kept his dagger with him, curling the braided belt around its plain leather sheath and setting it on the lip of the tub. He’d asked for the weapon back. It had been given to him. Nothing more had been said on the matter.

There were mirrors in the bathing room. Actual glass mirrors, big enough for a man to see his whole self at once. What Aaron saw was this: a boy with wide gray eyes and black hair clinging wetly to head and ears, grown long enough it tickled his neck. He slid his dagger out of its sheath. When he was done, water beads clung to the back of his bare neck, and he recognized the boy in the mirror again. Almost.

It wasn’t the Aaron he was used to seeing; it was a younger him, with ribs poking at his skin from the inside. He’d lost weight. Too much weight. Mrs. Summers had washed his clothes for him while he slept, carefully scrubbing the blood stain from the neck of his green sweater. She’d also methodically thrown out every stale roll, every dried out mushroom, and every carefully wrapped corner of cheese he’d managed to hoard in his pockets, even the hard to find ones. His pocket pantry was back to square one.

Fortunately, he lived in a place where food was only a deceptively short, excruciating, extremely long and precarious set of endless stairs away.

“You all right?” Mabel asked, her pen hanging uncertainly above its inkwell.

“You could have rung for a servant,” John put in. “You’re the king’s favorite errand boy just now. You can have food delivered to your room.”

Aaron did not answer immediately. First, there was the matter of getting his breath back. Then, the small trouble of lifting his head. But the wood grain felt so good against his forehead—so stable, so supportive—that he decided to skip that part.

“Right. But this way,” he panted, “I get food and I remember how to walk.”

Mrs. White leapt onto the table, and stretched her neck until the tips of her whiskers tickled against his ear. He’d pet her, just as soon as moving seemed worthwhile.

“I think you might want to save the one until after the other,” the baker’s boy dubiously replied.

“Should we be callin’ someone?” Mabel asked. It wasn’t him the scribe’s question was addressed to.

“I’ll be fine,” Aaron said into the table, as the cat licked his damp hair. “Just… taking a break. Don’t mind me.”

“We’re at least gettin’ you fed. Like my mom says: when a soldier’s too dumb for bed, you can at least get them fed,” the scribe decided, and was as good as her word.

Aaron picked pieces of meat from his elk stew as John narrated yet another letter.

“…And my friend Aaron is probably a mule doppel, or some close cousin, because he’s down in the kitchen right now even though he’s barely been awake a full week.”

Aaron didn’t like this letter as much as the others.

“Of course, now that he’s feeling so much better, I’ll get a chance to ask him whether it was four assassins or five that he single-handedly held at bay.”

The castle at large didn’t know he’d saved the princess. The Lady had agreed that sharing that information would be quite a bit more trouble than it was worth when it came to dear Markus’ cover story.

This meant, of course, that everyone knew it. Specifically: everyone knew someone who knew it, in the way that sort of thing worked.

“Might have been six,” Aaron said. Holding up his head was hard; now that his stew was gone, he stopped trying. His arms were decent enough pillows. “Hard to remember. Everything just happened so fast.”

“You want more of that?” Mabel asked.

“I’ll get it.” The baker’s boy had taken his bowl before Aaron even had the chance to reply.

The scribe was doodling in the margins of John’s letter home. Little squiggly-lined sea serpents, no two alike. Aaron turned his head, and watched them form.

“Aaron.”

Her voice startled him out of a half-sleep where the serpents were swimming as much as they were being drawn. “Mmm?”

“I’ll say this once, and you’ll not make a big deal about it.” She dipped her pen in the well, and let the extra ink bead off on the pot’s rim. “I was wrong about you. Even after they let you out of the dungeon, I didn’t trust you. Thought you might be up to something, and don’t ask me what; I was just seein’ dragons in storm clouds. Anyone can see you’re a true king’s man. I’m sorry.”

John cheerfully slid a new bowl his way, and went back to his kneading. The smell of it made Aaron sick. Something had died to make it, and he didn’t even want it. Hadn’t asked for it at all.

“I think I’ve had enough,” he said. “Sorry, John.”

They wouldn’t let him go back to his room on his own, and neither baker nor scribe had the authority to take him up the royal tower. As John went to find the doctor, Aaron let his head drop back down into his arms.

When he woke, he was in his room, and he could not remember how he’d gotten back up here. Probably not under his own power, judging by how stern the young princess looked.

She didn’t sit on the bed with him anymore. That had been strictly while he was unconscious. Now that he was awake again, propriety had moved her to a nearby chair. There she sat, her ankles crossed, a white scarf shading her face, and a book bigger than her lap balanced on her knees.

“You’re awake,” she said.

He turned his head towards her, and gave the matter proper consideration. “Seems so,” he agreed, after some moments.

“You’re an idiot,” was her second declaration.

“My apologies.”

She closed her book, and looked at him.

“You’re trying to leave, aren’t you,” she said. It was not a question. “That’s why you’re being stubborn, and pushing yourself to get well so fast. Is it because your father is coming?”

“You could say that,” Aaron replied.

“Let me finish.” Her hands were crossed on top of the cover of her book, right over left. “Is it because your father is coming, or because you aren’t really Markus?”

Aaron waited. A bird flew above the window outside; he saw its shadow cross over the snow on the sill, but not the bird itself. Someone walked past in the hallway, their footsteps muffled by the closed door. Nothing changed inside of the room. The princess continued to wait on his answer, her posture straight as a little lady’s. Which was, after all, precisely what she was.

Aaron reached a hand behind his head. With an air of great deliberation, he dragged a pillow down over his face. And why not? There was no point in lying. She already knew the answer, or she wouldn’t have asked.

A moment later, he felt the bed sink down as another weight joined him. Slender fingers worked the pillow out of his grip, and lifted it. He moved his arm over his eyes, to compensate.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“I hoped the world would go away,” Aaron answered. “It didn’t.”

“Oh.” She settled back against the headboard next to him. “Aren’t you going to deny it?” she finally asked.

“Why?”

“Oh.” That time, she sounded disappointed. “It’s just that I could prove it. That you aren’t Markus. If you denied it.”

Aaron peeked out from under his arm. She had his pillow in her lap. With small strokes of her hands, she was trying to smooth its wrinkled cover. The lines always came back, the moment she had finished.

“Okay,” he said, “I deny it.”

“That’s not the same.”

“What? I’m denying it.”

“But you’re not denying it denying it; now I know you aren’t Markus. I was going to prove it.”

“How?” he asked.

He could see under her scarf from this angle. A little red spot was growing, high up on her right cheek. He suspected the same blush was growing under the wine stain on her left, though he couldn’t see.

“Well, there are several ways. They all think you’re a very good actor, but how you’ve talked with me—no noble would say those things, even as an act. Or… or by making you read the title of my book, for instance.”

“I can’t read.”

“I know. I kept bringing more and more ludicrous volumes, but you never said anything. Even Orin said something, and he never pays attention to me.”

“ ‘Ludicrous’?”

“Silly,” she rephrased. “Crazy. Outrageous.”

It wasn’t the word that he hadn’t understood. He was just wondering exactly what was in that book of hers, sitting so innocently over on her chair. She’d taken care to shut it, he noted.

Her hands were playing with the lace edges of the pillow case. Tracing flowers and circles, feeling their stiff texture between her fingers. She said nothing further. However she had pictured this scene going, this was clearly not it.

She didn’t seem to know the worst of it, either. Didn’t seem to even suspect. No one quite knew how the assassins had gotten in that night—even so neglected, the Letforget should have been enough to keep a few scruffy doppelgängers from crawling under the castle doors.

How long before the fey-marked girl started questioning that for herself? The old ways didn’t seem to be common knowledge. Likely no one thought he knew about them. It was a piece of the puzzle that she held, and no one else.

Aaron swallowed. “I can be gone by the morning. If you would be kind enough to give me that long, Your Highness.”

Her hands stopped where they were. Outside, the same muffled boots that had gone past a minute ago were returning. A guard, making their patrol. She heard it, too; her fingers curled, just a hair more tightly.

He didn’t want to hurt her. But he didn’t want to die, either; and with his Death not in the room, he knew that something was going to give, and soon. He was going to survive this.

“Loyalty is an earned thing,” she said, her hands balled on the pillow. “You said that to me, back in the hayloft. Then you saved my life. So. You’ve earned mine, I mean.” It was one of the most inelegant, hesitant things he had ever heard her say. Aaron peeked out from under his arm again.

“What now?” he asked. “Do we… tell the rest of your family?”

He wouldn’t mind being Aaron again. Especially if the people who knew could protect him from certain Ladies who might be feeling betrayed.

“No. No,” she stared down at him, aghast. “That would be… That is, the way you killed that woman, you were so quick and she was so quick but you won, so, what I mean to say is: you’re not a very good person, are you?”

“Not really,” he agreed.

“And you do look like Markus. To fool the Lady, you must. Do you know why you do?”

“No,” it wasn’t something he’d had much time to think on, really. It wasn’t something he’d wanted to think on.

“So we wouldn’t want anyone thinking too hard about it, then,” she said.

“I’m no doppel,” he said.

“Of course not. A doppelgänger wouldn’t live as you do. You would have Markus’ memories, so you could have simply killed him and taken his place, at least until the corruption showed. You’ve clearly been living as some kind of villain, instead.”

“Thanks,” he said, and she blushed.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

He was fairly certain she meant it exactly that way. But what was there for him to say? It was the truth.

“The point is, they would wonder. They might even lock you away.”

“Again.”

“Again,” she agreed. “If they found proof you were a doppel—”

“I’m not.”

“Or—”

“Or glamoured by fey, or a cait sidhe on one of his nine turns, or a fox playing at illusions, or anything else. I’m only me.”

“—then they would have to execute you. And if they found proof that you were a murderer…”

She paused, as if expecting him to protest again. He did not.

“…Well, they’d have to execute you then, too. My father couldn’t just ignore evidence like that, not even for someone who saved his daughter.”

“So what do we do, then?” He was asking a thirteen-year-old this question. Asking it, and hoping that she had an answer. What was the hardest thing she’d ever dealt with in her life as a princess? How to find food for a night, before her brother started sneaking snacks to her?

“How long were you going to stay?” she asked.

“Six weeks more,” he said. “Maybe five.”

“Well,” she said, “then you need to learn to read. Markus can read.”

The bed sprang up as she slid off the edge. A moment later she was back, with her heavy book in tow.

“Is six weeks enough for that sort of thing?” he asked, dubiously squinting down at the minuscule black lines hand-inked on a page.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s really quite easy. I learned when I was three.”

“What book is this?” he asked.

She blushed, and this time he was sure he saw even her wine stain darken. “That’s not relevant, for your first lesson.”

Ludicrous, she’d called it. He wondered if ludicrous meant distinctly unladylike,as well.