Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

The dragon did not fit on their balcony. Its forepaws did, and its barrel chest, but the rest of its length nearly dragged it off before a beat of its wings both knocked Aaron to the ground, and landed its hindquarters on the next balcony over. Its back arched over the distance between the two perches like a particularly poofed-up cat.

His sister had taken the gaffe to roll under it. She’d dropped her knife—literally dropped it, and Aaron stretched out a foot to drag it over, because one could never have too many of another person’s weapons—and drawn her sword, instead. Which she’d braced against the stonework where floor met railing, angling the blade up to pierce the beast’s scales with its own strength if it tried to crush her.

So aiming for the lungs wasn’t a personal thing, then. Good to know.

The only dragon Aaron had seen outside of pictures had been in a fever dream. Dream dragons, it seemed, were not good predictors of reality. This one was smaller, thankfully. Less reminiscent of a mountain, more of a particularly wiry longhouse. Its taloned paws seemed proportionately bigger, though. Its head, too, especially its eyes.

…Because it was a child. Of course it was a child; he’d known it was hatchlings that plagued their shores. But it was a different thing between knowing, and watching a dragon whose back legs had fallen off of their own balcony when it first landed liking a puppy misjudging a staircase, whose wings were still failing about as if it didn’t quite have the muscles to fight all this wind, who kept trying to back up to swipe at the woman under it, only to prick itself on Adelaide’s sword. Repeatedly. It snarled, and—did it even have all its teeth?

He was not going to explore the matter closer. It seemed entirely focused on his dear sister, who was busy proving that siblings made excellent distractions. Now if he could just get past it…

But it had coiled its neck down to snap under itself, which put its jaws squarely in front of the door. And its wings were still beating erratically, which made going over the balcony’s edge to jump to the next—the next without a dragon’s hindquarters already in residence, that was—a rather more precarious prospect than he’d prefer. It was only the one wing flailing, though. The other was too near the cliff to do more than twitch. So if he just…

Aaron tucked his sister’s knife under his belt, next to his own. Then he took a breath, timed things as best as he could, and rolled under the dragon’s belly and his sister’s extremely helpful sword.

“What are you doing?” Her snarl was impressive, even with the dragon to compare. Bit out of breath, though. And she couldn’t much move without compromising this rather precarious standoff, so.

“Climbing,” he said, and took in another breath. And let it out, because the gap between the dragon’s body and the wall was a thinner one than he was strictly comfortable with. He squeezed up and through, and only got crushed a little in its shifting, before he was out on the other side. Next to the pinned wing, and the balcony’s edge with the rest of its body arching over them, and the wall clear underneath for anyone who didn’t mind climbing a sheer cliff face. In a thunderstorm. With a dragon that might or might not incidentally knock him off with any of a dozen stray movements.

…Which was still preferable to staying next to his sister. Aaron set a foot on the balcony’s rail, and started to feel out his first handhold. The threats Adelaide directed his way were entirely sincere, as her kirin’s bone hilt could attest. Also fairly uncreative.

A glance to the side showed him the dragon’s hindquarters, awkwardly perched on the next balcony, its tail spilling over to lash through the rain. A glance down showed more balconies below, with stone to shield him from errant flailing and doors for jimmying, and—

Another lightning flash. And another dragon, scaling the wall further down; not headed towards them, thankfully. But that rather implied that this wasn’t a one-off attack.

No bells were ringing, no general alarm was sounding. Surely someone—

But this wasn’t the sort of weather that invited folks to their balconies, or let them see far through windows. And though Adelaide had gotten enough breath back to start shouting for aid, her yells wouldn’t go far through stone or over storm. The king’s caravan was still on the ground—Aaron could just see the tail end of it, around the edge of the plateau. But it would take quite a lot of staring up through torrential rains to spot dark-scaled dragons against dark stone on an equally dark night.

He’d once told the good lieutenant that he was human enough to fight, when the four tails had come knocking. He was human enough for this, as well. Unfortunately.

If his sister’s shouts weren’t enough, they just needed something louder.

Aaron put both feet back on the balcony’s ledge. It was a small step from there to dragonback. He’d had the idea of slashing at the membranes of its wing, the one mostly caught up against the wall. Wings were what to aim for on dragons, weren’t they? His newly acquired knife wouldn’t do much against its tough scales, and he had to get its squealing somehow. But apparently those scales were more sensitive than he’d thought, because the moment he stepped on its back was the moment its head jerked up. And around. And, well. Then he was running up its spine, even as it was staring at him with its jaws agape and a cough just starting in its throat. Which wasn’t a sound he’d ever heard in person, but enough of his ancestors had lived through it for Aaron’s mind to blank down to essentials. Fight. Flight. Stab it in the eye.

It bellowed.

Aaron hoped that was loud enough, because if any tower bells were ringing, he couldn’t tell them from the ringing in his own ears. He stumbled as it bucked. Grabbed on to the nub of a horn above its eye, and latched his other arm and a leg over the back of its neck, because behindits jaws seemed the place to be. Not in the long term. But in the extremely short, trying-not-to-die term.

It thrashed. Bucked. Hitting its head back against the wall, which was not at all pleasant for his ribcage, but also seemed to daze it a moment. And apparently gave Adelaide the space she needed to get out of her defensive crouching, since there was very suddenly a sword coming up through the underside of its leather wing. Aaron felt its next roar more than heard it, its scales vibrating under his hands.

It reared back from her, its paws now on the ledge of the balcony. Which put Aaron rather unfortunately over open air as it coiled its neck away, aiming. It coughed, jerking under him, and his sister turned to the side in a manner he found extremely brazen as the tar of its fire barely missed her. It struck the far edge of the balcony behind her, burning even in the rain. Burning worse for the rain. It mixed as well as a child tossing water on a grease fire. It exploded outward, a sudden cloud of steam that scattered still-burning tar over stonework, his sister’s back, the dragon’s impervious face, and the far from impervious hands Aaron was still clinging on by. He hissed between his teeth. Didn’t let go, because falling however many hundred feet was in no way preferable to a few pockmarked burns. He hadn’t gotten enough on him to burn through skin; certainly not enough to burn down to the bone. Probably.

The dragon started coughing again, deep in its chest, bringing up the tar that the scraping of its snarled lips against its teeth would ignite. Dragon scales and teeth were fine substitutes for flint and steel, and much more consistent in their sparking.

Aaron did not want to be up here anymore. But it remained preferable to being down there.

His sister had crouched down, her sword tucked under her stub arm as she came back up with the blanket he’d dropped. He couldn’t imagine why she’d taken the time to do that instead of getting out the way, until the dragon opened its mouth to hurl fire again—

And she stepped forward, and jammed a blanket-wad between its jaws. The tar lodged in its throat, and it started coughing for a much different reason. It stretched its neck long, back over the balcony, pawing at its mouth and wheezing. Which was when Aaron slid back to solid ground, and when his sister slashed its other eye.

The dragon reared backwards again, and over the balcony’s edge. It tried to catch itself with frantic wingbeats. But the storm winds caught it, and the cut his sister had left through its membrane gaped bloody and wide at the motion. It fell with a screech. And then it kept falling, its one working wing sending it in a spiral towards the ground.

Aaron and his sister both stood leaning slightly over the edge, both panting, both beginning to watch each other more than the dragon. Already they had so much in common.

“I’m not really a dragon expert,” he said, “but that didn’t seem normal.”

Because if dragons regularly used the cover of storms to climb walls—really, if climbing walls was a thing they did at all—then there should be more of a watch for that. And weapons equipped to deal with it. The ballistae he’d seen had been for targets in the sky; impossible to re-aim for something at such a sharp angle.

“No, it’s not,” Adelaide agreed, her voice rather more muffled than the last he’d heard it. And farther away than it actually was. She eyed him, her grip shifting on her sword hilt. “You would have left me to fight alone.”

“It’s not like I stabbed you,” Aaron said, with casual pointedness. Happily, dragon-induced adrenaline rushes were as good at delaying the inevitable pain as sister-induced ones. He waggled his new knife at her; tsk-tsk. “I would like you to note how polite I’ve been. My best behavior, sister. You, meanwhile. You owe Captain Martinson a blanket.”

Adelaide Sung, acting Duchess of Three Havens, Commander of the Spring Forces, did not much know how to respond to that, though it was clear from her half-open mouth that she dearly wanted to. Aaron, meanwhile, was trying not to be too conspicuous about eyeing the distance to the next balcony over. Not comfortably leapable, not in this weather. Which meant a running start, which meant—

That when her head turned towards the sound of people shouting—maybe far off down the hall, maybe just on the other side of her door, he was not an expert on acoustics at the moment—when her head turned, he took the opportunity to run past her unarmed side. She took the opportunity to try clotheslining him with her stump, but she was slow about it. And then he was up over the edge of the balcony’s far side, and catching the ledge of the next one over, and swinging down to drop to the one below that.

His sister was every bit as uncreative in her cursing as she’d been in her threats.