Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

They made it approximately half a block before the sight of them roused the citizen’s militia. Aaron was, as always, impressed at how quickly every human in sight could brandish a weapon. It was a bit like watching a street turn into a porcupine, except the porcupine wasn’t so much defending itself as pre-emptively slaughtering all threats. When folks from Twokins did as much, the king’s own council held meetings about the unwarranted murders; when these uptowners did it, it was their civic duty.

He sat down. Lolled his tongue and wagged his tail like a friendly fellow, the sort not in need of immediate maiming. Rose set her hand in his scruff and gripped the fur there, and generally seemed as if she already regretted leaving the castle, but most particularly regretted doing so with neither scarf nor hood to hide her.

It did not take long for the redcoats to arrive. That had rather been the point, coming this way; there was a guard station right here. Avoiding guards had never been an option. What he was trying to avoid was the palace guard. The game would be up rather early if Rose were recognized.

The redcoats hesitated at the sight of them, their eyes skimming over Rose before settling, rather more confidently, on him.

“You were supposed to come out with the bells, sir,” one said.

Aaron did not say anything, because he was a wolf.

The inside of the station was more cluttered than he’d pictured. Rather more boxes on top of desks than expected.

“Excuse the mess,” an officer said. “Just sorting through records. The murders, you know. Looking for patterns.”

Looking in more than just the recent cases, judging by the sheer volume. It seemed rather a lot of paperwork, for deaths. But then, he supposed they couldn’t just go around Twokins asking the right people about it. Aaron wasn’t even sure that he knew the right people, anymore. Which was… certainly a thought.

One of the officers pulled out a chair near them, before taking an entirely different one for themselves. Another set a bread roll on the edge of a desk, then casually walked away.

“I do not need an offering,”Rose said, crossing her arms. She did not take the chair. Aaron gamely snatched the bread and lay down on the floor to chew.

They were treating her, of course, like a little fey. One of the helpers, who liked their treats, and liked even more to be left alone. They worked at the corners of the world, doing their self-appointed tasks with remarkable efficiency, right up until the moment some human got too familiar about things. Until someone dared commit the grave sin of acknowledging them. Then off they went, leaving their tools and a great deal of unfinished work behind them. He wondered, a bit, what they thought she was here to help him with.

Another officer set a glass of milk over on a windowsill, and wandered off. With a sigh, Rose moved it down where he could lap at it.

If she had been younger yet than she was, perhaps the officers would have more doubt; a truly young child with such a mark could have been changeling or child. But such things tended to sort themselves quickly around strictly kept humans. Not many lived to Rose’s age who didn’t have more power to call on than a little girl ought, which really only left the one possibility, so far as those seeing the girl now knew.

All in all, he’d say that her not being recognized was going rather well. If King Orin truly wanted to keep her confined to the castle, he perhaps should have made sure she was well known outside the castle guard. If anything, she was less recognizable with her face uncovered like this—they saw her mark, and looked away before any other likeness could settle in.

The station’s captain joined them shortly. The man gave only the briefest of glances her way, as if simply passing his gaze over a part of the room like any other; then that gaze settled on him. Aaron continued to laze about on their floor, a half-empty milk glass tucked neatly between his forelegs.

“Can you verify your identity?” asked the captain, who was rather too smart to ask, Are you Aaron? and give the one he was questioning the exact name they needed.

“Woof,” said Aaron.

“…I thought as much. I don’t supposed the Lady sent you with any papers, or…”

“He’s Aaron,” Rose said, her arms still firmly crossed.

The captain’s eyes flicked to her; the briefest of reflexes. He did not thank her, because there were few things a helper fey liked less than to be thanked for doing their job. It was, as Aaron understood it, a bit like thanking a man for using a latrine properly. Baffling bordering on insulting, and why was anyone watching to begin with.

The man didn’t inquire after her name, of course. Still: he relaxed at Aaron’s name, and gave a little nod, that set the other guards more at their ease.

“Aaron’s who we were told to expect,” the captain confirmed, for their sake. “Wolf skin and all. I understand that you’re new to your role as a journeyman, but you were supposed to have the castle tower ring before you left. If you must wear a cloak around the city,” and the way he said must added a great deal of doubt to the word, “then please avoid causing a scene when you do.”

Aaron’s real escort arrived then, to the relief of everyone who’d rather not be involved in this.

“Thought they were ringing six when you were ready,” the woman said. She was also a redcoat, though the coat in question was rather less freshly pressed than the city guards’, and with more road dust on its fringes. Her rank bars marked her another captain.

“He’s new,” the station’s captain said.

“Inspiring,” the woman said, looking down at him. “Well, those teeth will be useful, at least. Come on; I hope you like walking.”

Then they were out into the city again, with distinctly less fanfare. They still got many a side-eye, but with a redcoat captain walking briskly ahead of them, the militia kept its claws in.

“I’m Captain Liu,” she said, some blocks on. “The Lady said you’re stuck like that?”

“Woof,” Aaron said, rather pleased by his accent. He was sounding more and more like someone saying woof, rather than the noise itself. It added a nice air of I still can’t talk, yet people keep asking to the proceedings.

“...Well,” she said, “you’ll be as much use like that as like anything else.”

Captain Liu was not inclined to chatter. They traversed the rest of the city without another word said. Rose was equally silent, too busy staring at everything and everything else around them. Her hands twitched occasionally, as if to pull up a hood she did not have. Other times they curled into the fur on his back.

The captain detoured to a stable by the gates, picking up a gray-speckled mare that flared her nostrils at Aaron, and stamped a hoof rather loudly.

“Easy, there,” the captain said, stroking down the mare’s nose. “You’ve worked beside that cloak before.”

He gave her a wide berth as they went through the gates. And tilted his muzzle back, and back, looking for signs of the fox claws that had reached over this gate to scrape it open last fall. He saw none. He wondered how real any of that had been, and whether the question mattered.

Rose stopped on the road just outside. Aaron did, too.

“This is my first time out of the city,” she said.

It was Aaron’s, too.

There was something a little softer in the set of the captain’s shoulders, as she didn’t quite look back at the girl. “It’s a harder place to live, out here,” she said. “But prettier.”

“Yes,” Rose said, as they looked out over the plateau’s side, with no walls in their way.

What had been the fox’s forest lay directly in front of them, spreading west and south, reaching to the first foothills that marked the southern passes. To the north-east, hugging the plateau’s base, lay the city’s cropland. Flat by the cliff base nearest them, the farms worked their way up into the terraces that stepped down from the plateau’s more gently sloped eastern side. Green shoots gave the ground a soft sort of look. Healthy, inviting, new. Except for a spot just to the north of where they stood, on the land closest to the fox’s forest, may his soul not wander. The ground there lay dark, furrowed and waiting, the speck of a walled village at its heart. Aaron didn’t know if the crops there were dead, or had never been planted.

“There she is,” Captain Liu said, and mounted her gray-speckled horse. Who flicked her ears and shook her head as Aaron took a step closer. “Steady, girl. Not scared of some nobleman in a fur coat, are you? Bet you could carry two, and still outpace him.”

The captain was waiting, her eyes on the town where nothing yet grew, one hand held just slightly out.

Rose startled as the words sunk in. She looked down at him, as if for permission. Aaron gave her a nudge with his nose. She took the hand. The woman pulled her up behind, where she could keep pretending the fey-marked girl wasn’t there.

It was, as promised, quite the walk. Between the nip of the spring breeze and the sunlight running fingers through his fur, he decided he could come to like this. He was glad for the wolf’s calloused paws, as they worked their way down the steep switchback road. His own feet—his real ones—were abominably soft now, he knew. Months of smooth castle floors and boots Mrs. Summers insisted he wear had done for his own callouses.

At the base of the cliff, on the road to the town, things turned decidedly muddier. It squelched between his claw-tipped toes, sucked at his paws. As Aaron had no boots and no housekeeper to frown at him, he helped himself to a puddle hop or two. More water, he reasoned, could only help.

The captain snorted. So did her horse, with a decidedly different tone.

The town was, as he understood it, nothing remarkable. One of several that ringed the plateau, with its wooden walls high enough to deter most things that would come for men or their livestock in the night. Stone walls would be a surer thing, of course, but at the point where a town like this needed stone to protect it, they’d have been better evacuating to the city proper. The people who cramped up the Downs each winter lived here the rest of the year, in their actual homes. Aaron had liked the walk over well enough, but he couldn’t quite picture living somewhere like here. With all that sky above, and only the four cardinal directions to go; it would have been like living on a single level of Twokins, with no way to move up or down. This place outside the caverns was too spacious and too confined, too much room for running and not nearly enough places to hide, all at once.

He was no expert, but he didn’t think towns usually boarded over their arrow slits, or kept their gates closed even at the sun’s highest. His nose twitched with smells he had no experience to place, but he suspected that very few were human.

“What’s wrong with this place?” Rose asked him, frowning at the half-plowed fields. And at him, the moment after she recognized the problem in asking. “Lieutenant Varghese is right, you know. Wolves don’t grin.”

This did not stop Aaron.

Captain Liu huffed a sound that might have been laughter.

“Come on, then,” she said, as people above them called, and the gate creaked a horse-sized crack open. “Might as well brief you, in case that wolf brain of yours forgot more than how to take off a cloak.”

Aaron gave a little offended wuff, and Rose a little laugh into the woman’s back. They slipped into the town, past a weathered old gate with new scratches in its wood.