Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

They arrived at Salt’s Mane on the teeth of the storm, banking west of the plateau, out over the open ocean. The caravan was only a few miles behind them, but making it to shelter ahead of the truly drenching rain was a perk of being Late Wake. Staring at a cliffside bristling with arrow slits big enough for ballistae was not. Two bells had rung on their approach—two, two, wings in the blue—and it was taking a great deal of effort on the Lady’s part to convince the ringers of their harmlessness. The black spots on their white bodies, Aaron could not help but think, would make excellent targets for an ambitious marksman.

Their bell tower was an odd one, and not just because it was the only building to jut up above an otherwise grass-topped cliff; the salters’ homes had never crept out of the protection of their plateau in the way those in Onekin had. It didn’t just have a bell in it: it had a fire, amplified by some kind of glass, which Aaron’s owlish eyes in no way appreciated as the storm settled in darkly around them. Rose had called it a lighthouse. Those inside were shuttering the flame in a series of signals that the Lady responded to with dives and wing-flashes that, at great and very wings-thoroughly-sodden length, satisfied those within. The two bells were recanted, the new tolls swallowed up by the nearing thunder. Those inside rang it again, for good measure: six, six, Late Wake’s tricks.

The Lady dug foreclaws into the edge of the tower itself, and rolled into that shelter already a human. She waved at him from in front of the light. It was the cheerful wave, of a woman who was already drier than she had been, and knew for a fact he couldn’t copy her trick.

It wasn’t that he lacked grace in the air. He was perfectly used to accounting for elevation in his navigation, thank you. It was just that even after weeks of practice, his wings still felt extra. Arms and legs had always been enough to get him up and down in the caves, and a part of him still felt that four appendages were more than enough. Well, five; tails were acceptable, and largely minded themselves.

Aaron considered the roof of the lighthouse. Then he considered all the stairs between where the Lady stood and the actual plateau, and opted to land on the cliffside, instead. It took a bit of scrabbling—claws were not as dexterous as fingers and toes—but he got a good enough grip to lift a paw free and bat at the clasp of his cloak. And then he was a tiny human, clinging to a sheer rock face with a very far drop below, and if it wasn’t for all the wind and rain it would have felt like home. He clambered up to one of the oversized arrow slits, and hooked his elbows on the ledge just under the ballista’s iron arrowhead.

“Mind if I come in?” he asked, because the people inside had faces on like they’d appreciate a moment to process his appearance. Not many others coming in this way, then.

“Give ‘im some space, boys. Looks like we’ve got a Late Wake kitten on our hands.” One of the people inside stepped forward. A woman. Tall, broad in the shoulder, and grinning. Said grin was missing a tooth to the side, possibly from the same fight that had left a crick in her thick nose. “Need a hand?”

“Thanks,” Aaron said, who didn’t, but clasped his hand around her wrist anyway. She pulled him inside with very little regard for either his weight, the weight of his entirely soaked cloak, or his surprised yelp.

The woman caught his shoulder with one steading palm, and shook his hand with the other. “Lorell Martinson. Captain of the Guard. You got a name, Lord Kitten?”

“Aaron.” He returned the handshake, and tried to straighten himself up. And a little more. Nope. He was going to be at least two heads shorter than her, no matter how tall he stood. Were all salters this tall, or was that a family resemblance he saw? “Any relation to a Mabel Martinson?”

Her grin grew wider. It was two teeth she was missing, not one. “She eating right? That girl’s the daintiest flower to ever walk on two legs; don’t ask me where she gets it from. You’d think a scribe could send her mother a letter once in a while.”

The Lady chose that moment to enter. Captain Martinson released Aaron, and clasped wrists with her, rather heartily.

“Welcome back, Lady. Took yerself the scenic route this year? Not often the Havens beat you here.”

“Always a pleasure, Lieutenant Martinson. Or are those captain bars I spy?”

The captain winced. “Unfortunately. Captain got caught out in the first town skirmish. Just visitin’ friends; no sense to it. But don’t you be always-a-pleasuring me, Lady. Where’d you get yerself an apprentice? ‘Specially one as tiny as this. Not enough fish in the capital, that’s your problem. Fill ‘em up with fish and they’ll grow strong as sea serpents.”

“Did that work for your dainty daughter?” Aaron asked. And got a hand the size of a dinner plate assaulting his hair. Squirming did little to dissuade it, and the length of the captain’s arm proved greater than Aaron’s stride as he attempted to step away.

“Please unhand Journeyman Aaron.” The Lady’s carefully composed expression could have been hiding anything from irritation to amusement. Aaron hoped for the former, but suspected the latter. “He’s like a son to me.”

“Oh?” The woman blinked, and stared down at Aaron. He took this opportunity to free himself of her hand, and step to the Lady’s side. “Oh. Say no more. Though if you do, say it in front of the Captain of Archers. We’ve got ourselves a bet on just how genuine a street rat the king’s new councilor is.”

Lightning broke above the fort, with thunder a beat behind. Aaron tried closing his cloak tighter, but only succeeded in dripping more water on their floor.

Captain Martinson’s grin softened to a smile. “Come on, cats. Let’s get you dry.”

She didn’t take them to any waiting room or receiving chamber. She took them down the hall, to what was clearly the guards’ own breakroom. There was a fire in the hearth that warmed the whole room, and chairs with extra cushions, and people who’d clearly worked with the Lady before. Someone dropped a towel over his head, and someone else showed him where to hang his cloak, and the same fussing was happening to the Lady. It was a warmer welcome than he’d ever seen her recieve in Onekin. He even got a blanket, which he promptly tied around his shoulders in place of his drying cloak.

“You’re gonna get wrinkles, you keep thinkin’ that hard,” Captain Martinson said, leaning her arms over the back of his chair, once he’d moved one closer to the fire.

“Do people like the Late Wake, here?” he asked, leaning to look back at her without getting an elbow anywhere to his person. The resemblance to her daughter continued to grow.

“If they don’t like your kind in One King,” she said, “it’s because you’re doing your job too well, over here. I’d not wish more attacks on anyone. But enemies teach us who our allies are, fast as anything else.”

The break room was big. The faces he saw were a mix of almost too old, and almost too young, with very few in-between. There weren’t enough of them to fill the space. There hadn’t been back in the ballista room, either: they’d had things all set up to look like the place was manned from the outside, but inside, there’d been only a skeleton crew to gawk as he’d entered.

Salt’s Mane was at the shortest crossing from the dragon’s isle. They’d been the front of this war, for seventeen years.

The four tails had asked King Liam a question, once: Did you give the dragons warning before you broke your pact with them, or did you let the blood of their children speak for you? What had the late king said, to make the Morgan Duchy agree to the pact’s breaking? Had he consulted them at all, or just let the blood of their people do his talking?

His sister had gotten here a week before King Orin. What sort of talking had happened in that absence, he wondered.

He didn’t have to wonder for long. A servant came in, and then Captain Martinson was coming over.

“Yer sister’s invited you to her rooms,” she said. And added with a sort of caught-in-the-middle wince, as the Lady readied herself to stand as well: “Just him.”

“I see,” the Lady said, sitting back down. She smiled at Aaron. It was a small, lop-sided thing. “Tell her I’ll be along later, if the hour is not too unbearable, nor the company.”

“Right,” said Aaron, who everyone was assuming would accept.

He had to meet her sometime. He’d been hoping to do so in a crowded room with plenty of distractions from a private conversation, but. Getting things over with had a certain appeal, as well.

The servant led the way, down a few levels to the plateau’s middle floors and towards its eastern side, opposite the ocean and their landing. The place seemed familiar and not, all at once. The way the stone had been carved, the doors set, the general darkness of the passageways around them, broken only by the light around doorframes and the lamp the servant carried: those were like home. But the stone was the wrong shade, and each floor had the same feel to it—it wasn’t like the Downs, where each staircase down led further from the uptown, and closer to the heart of Twokins. The stonework didn’t get rougher, the caves didn’t grow more natural. The Downs had been built around the old castle: the carving of the stone around it had been incidental, and far newer, not done in earnest until after the O’Sheas had sealed the place. Salt’s Mane had been this from the beginning, and had kept being it, and still was. It felt comfortable, well-lived in. Tamed.

It felt empty, the lit doors gathered in pockets, with long stretches of darkened rooms between which they’d once had people enough to fill.

The servant stopped by a door. Knocked, and announced him, and politely ducked away before his sister had done more than respond.

“Coming,” she said, and her voice wasn’t anything special, wasn’t anything he’d have recognized out of context. When she opened the door, he found her to be as short as he was. Gray-eyed and black-haired, with the same southern-leaning features as their father. There was something of the Lady in her cheekbones, or maybe her mouth, but he’d not have seen it if he’d not have known.

“Markus,” she said, and he couldn’t read her.

“Adelaide,” he said, and figured that any nerves he showed would just sell the act.

She stepped aside, and that was definitely the Lady’s quirked eyebrow she was giving him. He entered.

The rooms she’d been given weren’t overly large, but they were certainly spacious enough for one person. They had one of those balconies he’d seen during the approach, as well; the door out to them was wood with thick iron lacing. Decorative, yet practical; it would take more force to break through it than most things could bring to bear. Things that could then fit through the doorway, in any case. He went to stand by it, because hovering by the hall door felt too much like signaling his readiness to run away. But he did like the idea of being near an exit. Besides, it had a little window he could pretend to be looking out, even if all he could see was sheeting rain and the occasional sky-searing flash of lightning.

“Markus,” she said again. Then closed her eyes, and took a breath, and let it out again. She was wearing a coat like their father’s; white outside, with a red inner layer. A sword like the duke’s, too, with its hilt hewn from some creature’s body. Where Duke Sung’s had the natural spiral of a unicorn’s horn, hers had a curve to it, and carved-down nubs where there had once been branching antlers. Kirin’s bone, the chill under his own flesh confirmed. A knife hung on the opposite side of her belt. It wasn’t quite the Lady’s dagger and rapier, but it was close.

She only had one arm. Her right ended just above where the elbow should be, her clothing tailored to cover the stump as gracefully as such a thing could be covered. He felt like that was something he should have known, that his older sister only had one arm.

“Markus,” she said, for the third time. “I am going to yell at you. Rather a lot. But first, I would like to hug you.”

“That’s fair,” Aaron said, more to the first part than the second. And then he was getting hugged. Which wasn’t a thing that people just did to him, outside of a select few, but he did enjoy it. He hugged back, his two hands gripping at the back of her coat, as her one hand did to his, much more tightly.

“You had better have a good reason for all this,” she said, tucking her chin over his shoulder. “And it had better include an equally good reason for not telling me.”

“I really couldn’t have,” Aaron said, which was an absolutely true statement, one that her kirin’s antler hilt could not dispute. Since he hadn’t met her until now, he couldn’t have told her a thing. He tried resting his chin on her head, because that seemed the natural thing to do, but they were too close in height for it to be comfortable. He settled for mirroring her, his chin on her shoulder as well.

Her breath hitched. She shifted a bit, her hand dropping from the back of his coat even as the stub of her other arm kept holding him close.

“Markus,” she said. “You’ve grown shorter.”

…Ah.

“Who are you?” she asked into his ear. It was a mild enough question, made pointed by the knife she pressed into his side. Right below his ribs, at a neat angle to acquaint itself with his lungs.

Competence, Aaron realized, was a terrible trait in a sibling.