Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

“Do I know you?” John Baker rubbed at his newly released arm, his blue eyes darting between Aaron and the girl.

“Aaron,” he held out his hand. By the time he realized he’d said Aaron instead of Markus, the boy was already shaking it with cautious politeness and no Deaths had shown up to smite him. So it was okay? Probably? “And this is… ah…”

“Mabel Martinson,” the western girl offered, along with her own hand. “Like maple, except not.”

“John,” the blond was still looking between them and the boys Aaron had dragged him away from, like he was trying to decide which fire he’d rather roast in. “John Baker. Which isn’t my real name at all, but father warned me that I’d stand out too much if I kept going by Jahnalistrin, and Baker just sounds good, doesn’t it? Because I’m trying to get hired as the baker’s boy so—”

The boy seemed to realize he was babbling and clapped a hand over his mouth. Owlish blue eyes flicked between Aaron, Mabel, and the boys farther back in line.

“Go back to them if you want.” Aaron gave a shrug. “Just figured I’d give you a leg up in line, if you’d rather not talk bird for them.”

The boy lowered his hand. And his eyes. He tugged his white cloak straighter. “Well. I guess I don’t mind being farther up, if no one minds me cutting.”

The man behind them looked a bit like he did, but he grumped something under his breath and turned his eyes away. Good enough for Aaron. Good enough for John, too, it seemed. The boy stayed with them.

“You from the enclaves?” Mabel leaned down to stare at him—rather far down, for her. The boy’s gaze dropped farther. “Not meaning to pry, I’ve just never met an enclave man. They all as sparkly-white as you? My ma went up north once to bring down our new ballistae. Finest weapon smiths in Last o’ the Isles, she told me. Those ballistae are real beauties. Targeting like an eagle’s eyes. I can’t hardly stand to handle the old ones, you’re better off chuckin’ the spear yerself…”

As the aspiring scribe kept up her steady stream of praise, the enclave boy slowly stood up straighter, like a young hawk puffing its feathers. Aaron leaned back against the wall, satisfied.

“You man the walls, then?” John asked.

“Aye, my whole family. We’ve got a head for the targeting, captain says. A bit hard to bring on the road, though, so I’ve this little lady instead.” She gave an affectionate pat to her oilskin package. From the size, it was probably a long bow. “Yerself?”

“I can shoot a crossbow straight enough.”

“You got it on you?” The scribe continued her invasion of the boy’s personal space, one inch at a time. “I’ve heard of enclave bows. Can shoot through dragon scale, can’t they? Or is that just a tale?”

The boy colored slightly and took a step back from her exuberance. “I don’t have one of those. Sorry.”

“What do you have, then?”

“I—I’ve got my travel papers, but I haven’t registered with the militia in this city yet, so I haven’t been to the armory—”

The girl rocked back on her heels, rather like a willow in wind. “You were out and travelin’ unarmed? I don’t care if you’ve got armored merchants three deep in steel plate between you and the road, that’s just not safe. Not safe at all.” It was with a belated blink that she added, “What’re travel papers?”

“What about you, Aaron?” the boy asked, his voice cracking somewhere in the middle.

Aaron’s shoulders snapped straight as both their gazes fell on him. He didn’t blame the boy for diverting the westerner’s attention, but he wished it hadn’t been towards him. The militia wasn’t exactly his favorite topic, either, given that it was a rather mandatory thing, and given that he wasn’t a member. “Nothing special. Daggers, mostly.”

Mabel blew a strand of hair from her face. “Well of course daggers. But what’s yer training? You a tower ringer? You look like a tower ringer. No offense, but you’re scrawnier than me and that’s sayin’ all.”

“Look, the gate is opening,” John said it like the distraction it was, leaning out into the street to make the proclamation even more dramatic. Mabel stood up as tall as she could and looked over the crowd. Aaron caught the boy’s eyes and mouthed a silent thanks. He earned a quick grin by way of reply.

“Think we’ll see the king?” John asked.

“That’s what I was askin’.”

“I sincerely—”

A knobbly elbow shut him up. Aaron rubbed at his side and peered around her.

The royal standard snapped in the wind as the crown prince stepped out. Aaron turned up his collar, trying to ward off the chill brushing its way down his spine.

“If you say a single thing to him,” Markus’ Death hissed in his ear, “one single thing, you’ll be as dead as you should be.”

Aaron’s shoulders locked into a cold, straight line. He didn’t turn to look at the man. He remembered his own Death’s warning well enough, and he’d no intention of outing himself in a crowd this size. But showing noreaction was a bit hard when a man just suddenly appeared like that. Never mind that the man’s words needed some clarification.

“The prince?” It was possibly the stupidest set of sounds to ever come out of Aaron’s mouth.

“Ain’t it?” Mabel grinned, with a friendly elbow to his ribs. “Walkin’ tall, too. Let yer fancy capital doctors fuss all they want, our hedge mothers know how to get a man back on his feet. Trick is not to coddle them.”

The crown prince had almost died that spring, fighting on the dragon border. Was he like Aaron now? Could he see—?

“No, not the prince,” Markus’ Death said. “Say whatever you want to the prince, I don’t care. Or don’t, that would be even better. How about you don’t say anything? Not to the prince, either of them, and not to me. In fact, don’t open your mouth at all. Do we have an understanding? Nod.”

Aaron nodded.

Orin O’Shea was everything a blood noble should be. He stood tall, walked with confidence, and acknowledged the crowd with brief nods when they addressed him. His coat was as red as the royal standard, its buttons done up with dragons of gold.

Either of them, the Death had said. Which made the boy walking at the crown prince’s side Connor O’Shea. Aaron had never seen him before. Not unusual, given how little time Aaron spent in places royalty might go. The boy must be thirteen now. That was clear enough, given that they were walking straight for the militia’s table. John stretched himself out a bit too far into the street and earned a suspicious stare from one of the redcoats that encircled the royal brothers.

Once the small entourage was past, Aaron saw exactly who he was not to speak to. It wasn’t the crown prince that Markus’ Death was referring to. It was the figure that walked a few paces behind.

He bore the elder prince’s likeness, in everything except his clothing and his state of life. Orin’s Death trailed his charge, one hand held in front of his mouth to catch a yawn.

“Don’t act like you can see him.” Markus’ Death insisted into his ear. “Or hear him. Or—or smell him. Whatever it is you cave rats— Why hello, what a pleasure! It’s been far too long.”

“So this is the great Markus?” The prince’s Death walked through the crowd as if it weren’t even there, people stepping aside to make a path for him without looking at what they moved for. He leaned forward and, with impeccably bored expression, stared Aaron straight in the eyes.

Even with warnings from both his Deaths, it took all of Aaron’s will to keep his eyes from focusing, to pretend he was looking past the man to the real princes.

“Not impressed.” The new Death straightened back up. “What are you doing here?”

Markus’ Death spun his rings. “I could ask you the same. Yours has a few weeks left in him, doesn’t he?”

“A few weeks, a few minutes—what’s the difference? May as well be bored on this backwater than bored on the continent.” He wore the prince’s same thick braid, the red so dark it looked rusted. He pulled it over his shoulder, where his hands could worry at it as he turned dark green eyes back towards his charge. “You’re lucky to have had so many lives away from court. This has been… a pleasant vacation, I will admit. Twenty-two years is too short.”

“Is the continent truly so bad?”

“The continent is truly so dramatic. As if everything doesn’t have the same end.” In case there was any doubt of what that end may be, the man gestured to himself rather floridly.

Markus’ Death wrapped an arm around his compatriot’s shoulders, steering him farther away from Aaron. “I am centuriesbehind on my gossip. You simply must catch me up. How about we talk somewhere a bit less… mortal? There’s a charming spot down by Three Havens where the fey have been laying another trap for us. I’ll show you their spell work, if you’d like.”

A smile flickered over the other Death’s lips. “That could be briefly entertaining, I admit.”

From one step to the next, the two men disappeared.

Aaron wiped sweaty palms off on a dead boy’s pants.

“He’s so cute,” Mabel said. “Did we all look that small when it was our turn for swearin’ in?”

The fire-headed younger prince stood in front of the militia booth. His elder brother stood with him, looking healthy and strong and not about to die in a few weeks’ time. Not of natural causes, in any case. Assassination, then? Pity. The crown prince was fairly well liked, even considering his father.

Well. Apparently not liked by all.

John stared at the scene, his head tilted quizzically. “Where’s the king? Don’t fathers present in the south?”

“Where’s his sister, for that matter,” Mabel asked. “She’s not unfit, is she? I thought that were a rumor.”

The Iron Captain did not stand as the princes approached. In this, she outranked them. But her voice was strong and it carried. “And who do we have here?”

The boy straightened himself up. “Connor O’Shea, sir. I, ah, I give myself,” he glanced down briefly. “Give myself freely to humanity’s militia, to defend this, our Last Reign. I will stand besides my, ah, my brothers and sisters, with shield, sword, and blood, and…”

Mabel grinned. “The little cheat, he’s got it writ on his hand.”

He did, and she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. A ripple of laughter went through those waiting in the street. Especially the other thirteen-year-olds waiting their turn. The young prince flashed a grin over his shoulder, then kept muddling his way through with shoulders proudly squared. The crown prince was doing his utmost to stare straight ahead with enough dignity in his rigid spine for the both of them.

“…So I swear,” the boy finished, to a mix of scattered applause, laughter, and the occasional frown from the sort of folks with too much serious in them to ever be pleased by anything.

“Well. That was all the words in the right order, I suppose.” The Captain stared at the boy long enough to get him hunching those shoulders of his, then shifted her gaze. “And who speaks for this young man?”

“I do,” the crown prince spoke. “Orin O’Shea, captain in His Majesty’s guards, by the grace of the citizen’s militia.”

“You swear on your blood he is human, and strictly kept?”

“I do.”

“Then, Connor O’Shea, be welcome in man’s militia. I assign you to the royal guard.” Most children weren’t assigned their places until after the winter’s training. But then, most children weren’t princes.

That should have been that. Connor should have signed his name to humanity’s rolls and let the next child take his place in line. But he didn’t step forward to the table. Instead, words kept tumbling from his mouth. “My sister. Rose. She wants to join, too—”

Orin set a hand on his shoulder and pursed his lips. A little whistle of birdsong cut the air, so quick it could easily be missed by anyone without the ears to hear it. Not here, it said.

John caught his breath.

Prince Connor stiffened under the touch, but stopped talking. He signed the paper like a good boy and the entourage swept him and his brother back into the castle. But he cast a glance over his shoulder as he went, towards the Iron Captain, and there was no mistaking the pleading note there. The old woman met his eyes, but her own expression was unreadable.

With the princes gone, the line opened up to the rest of the city. Mothers stood with daughters and fathers with sons as their own children tripped their way through the militia’s oath.

“He speaks our language,” John’s breath came out in a rush. “The crown prince of Last Reign, and he speaks our language.”

Or at least enough of it to use as code, in a city where most didn’t know a word. Aaron didn’t have the heart to spoil the boy’s mood by saying as much.

“So is the princess unfit? It’s all sorts of stories, out west. Cripple, daft, changeling…” Mabel trailed off, looking to Aaron for an answer.

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “They’re all the same rumors here. Probably she’s just simple, and they’re waiting to see if she can follow orders in a fight. Not like everyone can be captain-smart, anyway.”

“Did you hear him, the prince was speaking my language!”

Aaron raised an eyebrow at the blond boy. “You all right, there?”

“I need to find a scribe, I need to write home right now, you have no idea what this will mean. A blood noble, an O’Shea, taking the trouble to learn—” His next words came out more as an excited whistling twitter than anything else, too fast for Aaron to understand. The boy clapped a hand over his mouth and dropped his gaze as some redcoats over at the militia’s table frowned his way.

“I’m a scribe. Least, I’m tryin’ to be,” Mabel unwisely mentioned.

The morning wore on. They could hear the fair getting started over in the city proper. Pipes and drums and laughter drifted down the streets, and the shifting wind carried the scents of bread and stew and sweeter things to his nose. Aaron sat back down once the excitement with the princes was over. The gates had opened for the interviews, but the line was moving slowly, and he’d not slept since… well, awhile. The smells made his stomach stir, but he wasn’t feeling shaky, so he let it be. He’d dip into his pocket pantry when he needed to, not because he was just a little hungry.

Mabel had unrolled her oilskin package. The longbow was in there, just as he’d suspected, but so was a whole array of rolled parchments and brushes and tightly wrapped ink pots. Some of the pages were full already. Aaron was no expert on written things, but the lines looked straight enough to him. The ones that wiggled off into feathery flares still looked confident, so he guessed that was just how they were supposed to be. He set his arms on his knees and his chin on top and drifted in and out of sleep as John dictated an extremely detailed letter home.

It was the alarm bell that woke him. The brass rang clear in the air: a single strike.

One, one, death has come.

Well. That was Markus found, then.