Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

When he was still sixteen, Aaron sat with his mending basket overlooking the Minnow’s lake, a rat next to him. Gwen and Clever Hands and the rat’s less agreeable brother were on the next ledge over, because he wasn’t fool enough to let his good sewing thread anywhere near their attempts at fishing. The last time Clev had found them unguarded, he’d wasted nearly two spools tying flies. Aaron hadn’t gone all the way to a fancy uptown market to filch greens and golds and baby blues for cave fishto appreciate. Most of them were blind.

“Your brother’s in an extra special mood today,” Aaron commented, because the rat doppel in question looked very much like he’d rather be using Clev as their bait. Which was entirely understandable, but he was shooting the same glares at Gwen, and there wasn’t anything she could have done to deserve them that he’d have caught her in doing.

“We just learned about doppel lifespans,” Pieran Rafferty said.

“What about them?”

“That they average. That between a rat and a human, forty will be lucky.”

“That’s a long time.”

Pieran paused to give him one of those looks, the kind that said he was missing a thing that uptowners found obvious. “To those who expected less, perhaps. But there’s two halves to a doppel, and the other might not feel so blessed.”

Gwen crowed her triumph as she pulled up her latest catch. He couldn’t tell the difference between one hand-sized fish and another from here, but from the way she was dangling its flip-flapping tail in Clev’s face, and from the way he was snapping his teeth back, Aaron assumed it was larger than Clev’s biggest. Ten more of those, and they might bring back something worthy of being called dinner.

“How did it happen, anyway?” Aaron asked. “If I may ask. That was a lot of you, to get doppeled at once.”

Pieran looked out on the dark water, with its slow ripples. “There was a rock slide. The family was camping in a cave, just south of the fox’s forest. We were to take the pass in the morning. A storm moved through overnight, and… it sounded like thunder, when it started. Some of the boulders were as tall as our horses. Too heavy to move. There were just these… coins of light through them, after the storm broke. We weren’t sure how much air they were letting in, so we doused the fires. Everything was dark, except for those little lights.”

Slashes of sunlight danced off the water, and speckled the ground around them. There was a crack in the plateau’s side higher up the wall behind them. That, plus the mirrors that fishers before them had hauled down here and angled just so, gave a golden cast to the usual darkness below Seventh Down.

“There was a rat colony nearby,” Pieran said. “You could hear them, skittering around in the dark, trying to get into the food. But it was the water that ran out first.”

A splash echoed in the lake, somewhere beyond the light’s reach. The wave reached them a moment later, bobbing all three fishing lines before breaking against the wall below. Clev pulled up his feet with a yelp, and fussed at his wet fur. Aaron shook a few drops from the shirt he was mending.

“Cormac doppeled first. He was already the smallest; I think he thought if he was just a little smaller, he could crawl through to the stream outside. Our aunt tried to kill him. She did kill him, she— I couldn’t stop her the first, but I wouldn’t let her do it twice. Neither of us could. And from there, well. Some of us left, through those little holes. We didn’t dig out the ones that stayed.”

“It’s a good thing the rats were there,” Aaron said, pulling a stitch through, “or you would have all died.”

Another one of those looks. “You have a uniquely practical perspective, Aaron,” he said, as if there were any other way to see it. Better to have the choice between dead anddoppeled than to just be dead.

On the next ledge over, Kieran’s line twitched.

“Pull it up, pull it up, pull it up,” Clev chanted.

“Slower, slower,” Gwen said.

“You want to know the worst of it?” Pieran said. “We went back to give them their rites proper. There was no rock slide. It wasn’t far from the forest, but we never thought… I remember prying at rocks until my—our hands bled. I remember it.” He flexed his hands, which bore no scars from such work.

“The fox?”

“Who else?” he asked, like it was a real question. One he’d thought on, more than just today. “The entrance was clear as when we’d entered. And there they were inside, like they could have just walked out.”

“They could have. You did.”

“We did,” Pieran agreed. “Is life really that simple, down here?”

If he thought that was simple, he was the one who’d come from a simple sort of place.

Kieran drew his catch in, with a deliberately moderate speed that seemed chosen to irritate his companions equally. Still, there was a self-satisfied smirk on his face when it hit the first sunbeam.

“Get the net,” he said, because a fish longer than his arm would do his line no favors, dangling in the air.

Clev and Gwen both looked at the fish, and groaned.

“What?” Kieran snapped, smirk gone.

“It’s too big,” Clev said.

“You can’t catch the Minnow’s fish,” Gwen chided. She helped him net it, then rather efficiently ignored his protests as she removed the hook. She let out a whistle as she tossed it back.

The fish twisted and thrashed in the air, up until the Minnow rose up to gulp it. Her teeth flashed in sunbeams woefully unprepared to show the whole of her.

“What,” Kieran said, as she slipped back down. The water rippled below.

“Well,” his brother agreed, his story quite interrupted. “That was… well. Are we up far enough?”

“Far enough?” Aaron repeated.

“So it can’t reach us,” Pieran was giving him another of those looks.

Aaron gave his own look right back. “She can climb.”

“Oh,” Pieran said, a little faintly. “Of course she can. Aaron. Did you invite us here to feed us to a cave monster?”

“Not today,” Aaron said, though he didn’t remember inviting the man’s brother at all.

“Aaron. Why did you invite us here?”

“I’ve heard you talking. That you don’t deserve to live your whole lives in hiding, or be killed for what you did. Is that what you really believe?”

Pieran held himself stiffer now, more on edge than even when he’d been telling his story. “What happened was an injustice that the current system does not account for. This was done to us; we didn’t choose—”

“And that,” Clever Hands interrupted, “is why the Duchess’ people keep chasing you lot away from their tunnels.”

“Why are there so many rats down here?” Kieran asked. “I would have taken most anything else, if I’d had a real choice. Something with wings, at least.”

Gwen seemed a bit pleased by this, but Clev only snorted.

“That’s also why they don’t like you. You’re so proud of those merchants you used to be, with none of that pride for what you are now, even though it saved your lives. But they’ve been rats longer than your people have been carting around corn.”

Kieran made a rather insulted sort of noise.

“Oh, sorry. Not just corn. Was it sheep fluff, too? Rocks?” Clever Hands took a deliberate moment to re-cast his line, after the Minnow’s disturbance. “You should ask after their histories—”

Another noise, this one of disbelief.

“Yes, their histories. I bet their stories would fill a few gaps for you in that version the militia tells. You’re right; there’s not many outsiders that would choose to be a rat. But they’ve plenty children of their own. And their own pride, as well.”

“It’s a good out for the Faces, too. The ones that need to get away from those that took them,” Aaron said, and shrugged under all their gazes. It wasn’t often Faces gave an honest opinion about such things while in company with doppels, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have them. Didn’t mean they didn’t talk, or have their own whispered stories. “They’ve always more pups than babes; always room for another few humans to join. The rats take care of their own.”

Kieran shook his head, and readied his own line for another cast.

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Pieran, diplomatically.

“You’re rats,” Aaron said. “But you’re not Twokins rats, and you clearly don’t want to be.”

“No. Hiding in caves and being proud of a history no one else knows is not precisely the life I envisioned.”

“So why are you settling for it?” Aaron asked, and let the silence after that question stretch.

On the next ledge over, Gwen reached over to give Kieran a jab before he could speak. It wasn’t him Aaron had brought here for a chat. Clev leaned back, twitching his line between idle fingers, his round ears slanted their way.

“The way I hear it,” Aaron said, “uptowners have got all these laws and such that they say everyone has to follow. And here you all are, a family that was rich and powerful and well known all over Last o’ the Isles. A family who’s still got family up there, and all those people that knew you before. Maybe people who’d agree you didn’t have any real choice in what happened. Wouldn’t be a bad thing, if we could get you ruled blameless. That’s what you uptowners would call a precedent, isn’t it? There’s many down here who could squirm through a loophole that size. It would be the kind of start we’ve been looking for. If you’ve only a decade or two left, don’t you want to make it count?”

Pieran had yet another look for him. It was a bit different than the others. “You’re worth more than how he treats you, Aaron.”

Which was not a real reply, and Aaron did not see how it was at all relevant. But before he could get them back on track, there came the rather distinct sound of something large working its way down the scree-floored tunnel behind them. That was another thing Aaron rather liked about this meeting spot, personable lake monsters aside; it was hard for anyone without wings to sneak up on them there. And there were fewer with wings than one might expect; bats didn’t usually care to doppel, and birds didn’t usually care to stay.

The golden-furred wolf was, unfortunately, exactly who Aaron had been expecting. At the bottom of the slope, and with the services of his nose no longer required for tracking, the man shook himself out and stood again on two legs.

“Sir,” Aaron said, standing to greet him.

Gwen had done so, as well. Clever Hands gave a few more tugs of his line before turning around.

The man’s gaze settled on the brothers first. “Rafferty, isn’t it? I’ve had a few complaints about your family.”

“About that,” Clev said, scratching an ear. “Figured we’d have a little chat with them, sir. Introduce them to the Minnow, like the friendly neighbors we are.”

“I knew that was a threat,” muttered Kieran. Which was more helpful than he knew.

“Aaron,” the man said, after a moment more. “A word.”

He left his mending behind. Gwen would bring it back for him, though whether she’d save his thread from Clev or help him pilfer it was an entirely different matter.

The man dropped an arm over his shoulders. His next words were whistled, in the tongue he’d once been born to. “I told you to stay away from them.”

“They have contacts,” Aaron trilled back, because while he’d not been born to the griffin’s tongue, he’d certainly been raised with it. “Outside of here. I thought—”

“Thought that anyone they know wouldn’t look down on us just as much as they do? Just living here doesn’t make them our people, Aaron. They don’t want to be ours.”

Aaron knew that. He did. But he knew how to work with people who looked down on him, too. “We need more on our side than those who already agree with us. We need people who can help change things, in the uptown—”

“Those contacts of theirs? They’d want to help them, not us. We’re strong enough to keep the guards at bay. The rat hunts don’t catch any of ours, now. You need to learn when good enough is good enough, Aaron; pushing for more will only risk what we’ve got.”

“You used to talk about more than this,” Aaron said. “You used to want more.”

The man’s hand squeezed his shoulder, in sharp reply.

Behind them, he caught a glimpse of Pieran with his brother, talking too low to hear.

The man was still talking too, but Aaron hardly understood the things he said, anymore.

* * *

Aaron didn’t have conflicted feelings towards wearing a wolf skin. Mostly, he thought, he understood how powerful the man had always felt. And how confined. A wolf wasn’t any real power down in a cave. He’d just been another dead man, even if he’d kept moving for a while.