Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

A knife to the heart would do it. From behind, maybe, as the Lady crossed town one dark night. There’d be a certain justice in that, for whatever the word was worth; killing her as she’d meant to kill him. But Aaron wasn’t sure he could catch her unawares, much less beat her in a fight. And both she and he left the castle so rarely that they’d both be remembered for it. Knifing her in the castle was a somewhat easier, though much poorer, idea.

Right, then. Stabbing went on the maybe list for now.

* * *

Aaron was still a wolf. He was beginning to see the advantages of the situation. For one thing, he wasn’t expected to speak at council meetings.

The black wolf watched the slow way His Majesty’s fingers tapped against the arm of his chair. There, Aaron thought, sat a man who also wanted to kill something.

The councilors were currently testing His Majesty’s patience. Most things tested His Majesty’s patience: the entirety of his reign had been marked by the same blank expression and lightly tapping fingers as today’s meeting. Though to be fair, the reign of King Orin O’Shea of Lastrign, first of his name, had begun only a month ago.

“A rat hunt,” the captain of the royal guard was insisting. “A rat hunt’s the only thing for it. Show them their own blood, and they’ll go running back down their—”

“Do we have enough men for a rat hunt?” Councilor Rafferty interrupted. He was the representative of Lastrign’s armored merchants and dressed to suit the part, even in such company as this. “The spring forces are already assembling; the militia is drained. The royal guard are still crippled from the Duke’s betrayal.”

“ ‘Crippled’ is hardly—” the captain protested.

“How many can we afford to take away from the royal detail? Especially in light of this—”

“Especially in light of this, we must act! It’s been too long since we’ve swept the cavern floors; that’s all this is. We need only—”

“You had your usual hunt in winter,” the armored merchant dismissed. That hunt was an event Aaron himself had apparently slept through, though its occurrence didn’t surprise him; the rat catchers always made a sweep of things in the winter, when the militia’s numbers were bolstered by the farmers and traders who sheltered in the city during the longest nights. It wasn’t a time for humans to be beyond the city’s walls. “If you will remember, I was against it then, and so I stand today. Have you stopped to consider that this is retaliation, in all its brutal simplicity?”

“If you are implying this is anyone’s fault but those little monsters—”

“We must consider what this will further aggravate—”

A patrolling militia member had gotten herself knifed in Third Down last night. She’d been in a busy market, with not a witness to be found. Funny that.

Aaron lay on the ground, and no one could read his face, because he was a wolf.

* * *

Poison might do the trick.

It still left the problem of blame: up here, a murder wasn’t a thing to take credit for, it was a thing to hide. He’d have to set someone up for the fall, if he didn’t want Lochlann side-eyeing him the moment a body turned up. He could picture the good lieutenant’s sigh already.

Also, best not to let Rose catch him killing her mother.

He’d need a scapegoat, if he was going to do this as a murder. Someone who already had a reason to hate the Lady. And he’d have to set up their alibi to be worse than his own, which was more of a hassle than a murder ought to be.

* * *

The militia woman’s death was the fifth such in the past month. Aaron didn’t know what message the Raffertys were trying to send: that they were done letting the militia hunt their people, or that they couldn’t keep their people under control. This kind of untargeted death wasn’t something the former king of the Downs would have stood for.

Orin’s reign had started in blood, thanks to the duke. No one blamed him for that. But this? This, they talked of in the streets. What good was a king who couldn’t even protect them from rats?

Yes, the new king very much needed to kill something. It was writ in his face, in that perfectly blank expression it had held since he had lit the pyre that sent his father’s soul on.

“Does anyone else have an opinion?” Orin said, interrupting the merchant and captain’s continued squabble.

Other opinions were had.

“Woof,” Aaron put in towards the end, and the king had to close his eyes while he took in a deep, deliberate breath. Aaron still had hopes of being demoted from this new honor of his. The coat His Majesty had given him over the winter had been a fine gift; the council seat, a bit much.

The discussion came to a blissfully indecisive end when all was said. It was perhaps not how the late king would have left things, but Orin either did not notice or could not bring himself to care about the dissatisfaction that hung in the room. Even from such parties as the merchant Rafferty, who had effectively gotten what he’d wanted; yet it had not been with the authority he desired.

And wasn’t that interesting, that Councilor Rafferty opposed a rat hunt. He had good reasons for it, of course. Perfectly logical, entirely reasonable reasons. But it didn’t seem like a thing he could get away with, if any of these uptowners paid more attention to who was now ruling in their basement.

“We will station an officer there, and a dedicated guard patrol,” King Orin ruled. “A more thorough response will have to wait until after the spring.”

The dragons were coming, after all.

* * *

Murder would be troublesome. An accident, simply unfortunate.

A fall down the right set of stairs, for instance. Aaron had grown up in a place with many a tumbling hazard. No one had to know he’d done it. No one need be blamed at all.

Murder was about making a statement. Those people killing guards in the Downs, they were saying something, whether it was with their new Kings’ permission or not. Aaron didn’t need justice or vengeance or vindication: Aaron needed the Lady dead, so she couldn’t kill him again.

* * *

“It’s the southern lords that worry me,” the captain said. “Having so many of their men marching north, so soon after we took their duke into custody? It doesn’t sit well.”

“We need those troops if we’re to patrol the whole border,” the king said.

“Most of the troublemakers will be on the investigation committee,” the Lady said. “And the committee will, of course, be guests of the castle.”

They held the duke for the lords’ good behavior, and the lords for their troops’, she tastefully avoided saying.

“I don’t like what that’s going to do to our command structure,” the merchant said.

“I don’t like that they’ll be sitting here above the Duke’s cell while most of our guards are miles away,” the captain said.

“The militia deaths would make a fine reason to keep more of our reserves in the city,” the Lady suggested. “Perhaps add a few more dedicated patrols to that plan for the Downs, Your Majesty?”

Aaron cracked his jaws, and yawned. Wolf yawns were intensely satisfying.

“I’ll consider it,” the king said. “Will the Late Wake be able to manage the investigation on top of your regular duties?”

“If you’re worried about our effectiveness in the field, I’m more concerned with how having the southerners second-guessing every leaf that falls will slow us down. I’ve my own people to lead while we’re out there, and my own replacement is a bit far from trained.”

There were suddenly more than a few eyes on Aaron. He closed his jaws.

“We should have a dedicated messenger between the Late Wake and the castle,” Orin said. “The less hands evidence passes through, the less accusations they’ll throw. It will need to be someone both we and the southerners can agree upon—”

* * *

It would, of course, be a true tragedy if the Lady were to die in the field. There were so very many ways for it to happen. More enemies than expected, or craftier than anticipated; information gone a bit sideways of the truth, or received too late—

* * *

Aaron barked. And sat up with his chest out and paws squared, doing his best to look like a respectable sort of canine. The sort one should entrust confidential messages to.

“He is the duke’s son,” the merchant said, raising an eyebrow. “And you trust him, Your Majesty.”

The elder Rafferty, Aaron noticed, did not say that he trusted Aaron.

The Lady looked thoughtful. “I can spare him, on a limited basis. Working the messenger trails will make him better known to the troops; the Late Wake could use more of that sort of trust.”

Aaron barked again, to show how willing he was to learn all the ins and outs of how their troops relayed information.

They started talking tactical locations then, and initial troop placements, as he lay back down. Each town mentioned was further than the last from where Aaron had ever been. But then, he’d never left the plateau, so.

* * *

He could just leave. Let the Lady and her lies be someone else’s problem. Disappear, somewhere else, somewhere outside the city walls that he couldn’t yet even imagine.

But this was his home now. These were the people he cared about. Leaving hadn’t been an option for a long time; not since a talk in a snowy courtyard, when a princess had asked him to stay.

* * *

“The flocking patterns are fairly typical,” the Lady said, indicating locations on the woven map on the room’s floor. Her foot tapped on Salt’s Mane, where Last of the Isles lay closest to the dragon’s island. “A few are further north than usual, but not in appreciable numbers. There’s no particular signs of them noticing our scouts yet, either.”

“And their mother?” the king asked. Which was… an interesting question. Aaron perked his ears.

“Still hibernating on her mountaintop. No sign of new broods this year, either. These are her old clutches we’re dealing with yet.”

He remembered a dragon on a mountaintop, from a dream he’d once had. It hadn’t felt like the imagined sort of dream.

Was there really only the one adult to worry about? For the first time at a council meeting, he wanted to ask questions. Where the rest of her kind were, why they didn’t just kill her, how long had it been since she was last awake. It was just as well he couldn’t, given that Markus likely already knew those answers.

* * *

He could just tell someone the truth. That she’d murdered the late king; slipped poison in with his medicine and left him to die on the duke.

It would be his word against hers, though, and that wasn’t an investigation that would favor him, given that Markus had played a role in setting it all up.

Aaron might be able to dodge that blame with more of the truth, but where would that leave him? He’d been raised by the Kindly Souls, the same as had tried to assassinate the royal family.

The same as he’d let into the castle, knowing full well what they intended.

No. The truth wasn’t for him.

* * *

“Your majesty,” the castle doctor said, “it is a point that bears raising again.”

“No,” King Orin said, “it is not. This is my first year as king, I am no invalid; a blood noble must lead from the front. Our people demand it. I demand it.”

“You’ve only the one heir, Your Majesty. Perhaps you should instead focus on, ahem, increasing that number.”

“We are not having this discussion,” His Majesty said, “until after the spring.”

“Is that your royal command?”

The young king flushed. It was a particularly murderous flush.

“Apologies, Your Majesty. I overstep,” the doctor said, unapologetically. The amusement in the council chamber at large was as badly hidden as his own.

“How are Prince Connor's lessons progressing?” asked the Lady, who was capable of pity, in limited doses.

“They progress,” the king said, rubbing a temple. “I believe he is of a similar mind with this council.”

“He’ll be relieved when he’s an uncle, will he?” asked the merchant, quite innocently.

The king rubbed both his temples.

“And the princess?” the captain of the guard asked. “She has been… more visible, of late.”

“She wishes to take a more active role,” Orin said.

“But not as your…”

“No,” the king said.

“Good,” the captain said. “Good.”

No, the fey-marked princess would not be one of his heirs. But she wanted a bit more in life than to be caged in the castle.

Aaron picked up the letter he’d been laying on and, holding it delicately between his teeth, sat himself in front of the king.

To His Majesty and His Esteemed Council, it said, in the professionally elaborate handwriting of a thirteen-year-old with ample free time and a point to prove. Aaron was immensely proud that he could read it, under all the fancy curlicues she’d worked in.

“No,” the king said.

If Orin thought his sister was taking no as an answer anymore, perhaps he should have another talk with the man she’d knifed. Once a child got a taste of stabbing the adults in their life, there was very little one could do to keep them contained, in Aaron’s experience.

The king stared at him. Aaron stared back, with a wag of his tail. Did wolves wag their tails? Regardless.

“Thank you for your council,” King Orin spoke to the room at large. “You are dismissed.”

Aaron stayed sitting, letter in mouth, as the other councilors left. The Lady was the last, besides him.

“Can’t you set him to something useful?” the king asked of her.

“I may have an idea,” she said.

Aaron dropped Rose’s letter in His Majesty’s lap, then allowed himself to be led from the room. She scratched behind his ear as they walked out, which was, he reluctantly admitted, a more compelling argument against killing her than it ought to be.

“How’s the cloak treating you, Aaron?”

* * *

Right then, so: poisoning or accident, at home or afield. He’d work on those.