Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

There was a light on, around the door’s edges. Aaron considered jumping to another balcony. Considered, also, his aching ribs from a dragon head-bashing him into a wall, and the white line of pain from a sister stabbing him. He knocked. And again. And—

The door was opened by a woman, half-armored and fully armed, her spear leveled at him. It looked to be a very sharp spear.

“Dragons,” he panted, because information that re-directed thoughts of stabbing onto a different target should always come first. “Scaling the walls. I jumped from up there. Mind if I use your door?”

“And how do I know you ain’t one of ‘em,” she said, “with you out here jumping and scaling, too?”

“I’d have jimmied the lock on an unlit door, if I were,” he said. And turned his hands, which he’d been holding peaceably up, so she could see their recently burned backs. “And I’d be a pretty crap dragon, to get myself burned.”

She squinted at him, under the water that had turned him from a rat to a drowned rat. …Which wasn’t what she was seeing, and he needed to stop thinking it was. He tried to stand up a little straighter, smile a little less cheekily, as befitted his royal red coat with its golden dragon buttons and his noble’s haircut.

“You’re the Lady’s apprentice, ain’t you? The one that came in through the ballistae window.”

“You know what they say,” he said, flashing a smile. “Start as you mean to go on. May I?”

“In you get, kitten,” she said, lowering her spear and widening the door. Which revealed the other woman who’d been in the room with her, and the excellent bead she’d had on him with that crossbow of hers through the cozy arrow slit window in their bedroom. Judging by how well prepared they both were, he was going to assume he’d successfully raised the alarm when he’d made that dragon screech.

“Ma’am,” he said, in belated greeting. “Ma’ams. Well. I’ll just…”

And then he was pointing towards the door to the hallway, and very shortly thereafter running that way.

He poked his head back in, a moment later. “Nearest staircase?” he asked. “And why is everyone calling me kitten?”

“Late Wake’s sigil’s a cait sidhe, ain’t it?” spoke the woman with the crossbow, who’d set said weapon on the bed to help her partner with the last of her armor’s straps. “Stairs are that way, you soaked cat.”

Which was a little unkind, but seeing as she was pointing the way, he’d take it.

“Thanks,” he said, and pulled the door closed after him, before running the opposite direction. The nearest stairs were the nearest for Adelaide, too. And a veteran of the dragon front like her would know the plateau’s layout better than him. He ran until he found the second nearest stairs. Then up he raced, closer to his griffin cloak, which was a much quicker out than any other route he might take. He just had to move faster than any rumors his sister might be spreading. Aaron was fairly fast, when properly motivated.

He’d gone down four floors in getting to her room, so up he went the same. From there he relied on a lifetime of plateau living to pick his turns. Not every hall went as straight as he would like, or had a crossing where it would be convenient, but he was used to caves with even less organization than this.

The break room was empty when he reached it, the guards to their posts and the Lady and her cloak already gone. His was still hung on its peg, nearly done with its dripping.

“Lord Sung,” Captain Martinson called, as he dodged into the ballistae room and straight for its conveniently large exits. “The Lady wanted to remind you that those wings of yours will get waterlogged quick in this. A lot quicker than that puppy piss you flew in through. Get over ground and stay low, she said. She’s gone ahead to the gates.”

“Thanks.” He hesitated a moment, his foot on the sill, as if there was anything more to say. “Good shooting,” he finally added.

“Be easier if the beasties would fly,” the captain said. “Scare some up for us, Lord Kitten.”

He pulled his lips into a half-smile. Then he was leaning out, pulling the hood of his cloak on as he went, his wings already stretching.

The wind nearly slammed him into the wall. He twisted, bracing paws against stone and kicking off again, letting the storm do the work of shoving him upwards as he kept himself from crashing against the wall more than he flew. He went straight past a dragon, who was having a far less pleasant time working its way down against the wind, its wings firmly tucked against its body and talons dug into the stone as the storm tore at it. It was moving towards the ballistae slits, where the captain and her people were. It was a small one. Small enough to squeeze its way inside, maybe.

He could turn. Dive for it, the way griffins were built for, dive and claw and—

He could do a lot of things that wouldn’t much help him.

Aaron cleared the top of the plateau. The wind was still harsh, but he could stretch his wings fully without fear of bashing into the cliff. He managed not to clip the lighthouse, either, mostly thanks to its beacon. Which was a bit searing to his night sight, but he’d take that over a broken wing.

…Would a wing stay broken, if he took the cloak off and put it back on?

Thoughts for another time. The Lady’s warning was correct; it was getting harder to move the weight of his rain-sodden wings, and each beat gave him less lift than expected. Which was going to make running difficult.

And where would he even go? Recent travels had left him well informed of how much about camping he did not know, and a lone traveler appearing at a town anywhere on the isle would be cause for suspicion, even before he added in potential wanted posters courtesy of a sister who definitely knew his face. Or Markus’. Same difference at this juncture, really. He could pose as a messenger, maybe—he already had papers from the investigation committee, signed and sealed and proper, granting him permission to the stables where messengers changed their mounts. Messengers traveled alone, often enough, trading the safety of a caravan for the speed of a single rider with a nigh infinite string of fresh horses on which to run.

But if he used those papers, each stable he went to would mark his passing. Which would be entirely counterproductive should his sister start a search for him.

He let himself coast the short distance down towards the plateau’s top. He landed, paws digging into grass cropped by whatever herds the city let graze up here. It was bristly and muddy all at once, and he flattened himself into a soggy crouch, because being tall in a lightning storm didn’t seem a particularly bright thing to be.

It was possible that running had not been the correct action. He should probably have just stabbed Adelaide; done it messy enough he could blame it on dragon claws. Not that he knew what dragon-inflicted injuries looked like, which would have complicated the matter. But he hadn’t wanted to kill her, and the opportunity to do so before she’d a chance to talk to others was past.

…What could she even tell people? That he wasn’t Markus, when he’d pretended to be. Which was true enough. Suspicious enough, too. And he’d spent the better part of a year now lying to just about everyone. But honestly, he’d been doing it really badly. They all knew him as Aaron. They just… thought that was the faker of his names. But it hadn’t been Markus who’d helped to catch the duke, or Markus who’d run his mouth and gotten put on the king’s council, or Markus who’d befriended Rose and Connor and maybe even Orin. He’d done some good. Things that could be spun in a good light, at least.

All he needed to do was trust that the king wouldn’t have him executed or imprisoned or questioned for all the rest. And that none of this would get back to the Lady, who had her own secrets to keep, and wouldn’t appreciate learning who held them.

…He should have just offed his sister. If he’d pushed the body over the rail, the fall would have made it nearly impossible to tell how she’d died, anyway.

Well. There was no use crying over blood not spilt.

He made his way to the plateau’s southern edge in half-glides and bounds, and peered the distance down to the gates. Because if he wasn’t planning to run, then he needed to get the king on his side. Getting the king on his side required the king to be alive. But blood nobles would be the last into the plateau’s safety, and the king last of all, and—

And that was a lot of dragons. It was impossible to count them as they flew in rain and dark, but this wasn’t an attack of two or three or four; there were at least ten down there. An entire remembrance of dragons, and who knew how many more scaling for balconies and ballistae slits then he’d already seen. And someone had put Rose on a netter team, it was easy to spot the smallest rider in their midst carrying an end of the weighted lines as her team of riders charged a downed dragon, the net tangling together its wing with its head as they wheeled clear of its tar.

She’d read books on exactly these maneuvers. She’d told him all about them on their way here. He wondered if she’d told the person who’d recruited her, as well, or just said I know how to do them, and left out her lack of applied knowledge. A dearth she was certainly fixing now, and fairly well, by what he could see.

She wasn’t riding her usual horse; she was on the Lady’s Shenanigans. The mare turned smoothly with the others in their group, perhaps handling her own steering a bit more independently than a horse usually would. They’d take care of each other.

The Lady herself was doing as griffins did best; he saw her plummeting down, snapping a dragon’s wing under the impact before laboriously climbing again, her wings as heavily weighted as his. A dragon pursued, its own leathery wings shedding the water as quickly as it came, but the Lady was clearly the more experienced flier. And aerial fighter, the dragon learned, as she proved that griffin claws could indeed pierce dragon scale. She’d probably been flying in her stolen wings longer than these dragons had been alive.

The entrance to the plateau was at its base, guarded from above by a thick rock overhang that blocked Aaron’s view of the gates themselves. Spikes of rusted iron were driven into the ground leading up to it, tall enough and set widely enough for a wagon to pass easily, but threatening to impale anything that dared dive from above. Rose’s team darted back amidst their safety, as those with scaled-piercing longbows closed ranks behind them. The king had traded his horse for a bow and stood at the forward most line, like the good blood noble he was.

The caravan was nearly to safety. The remnants were moving as fast as they could, but the gates of Salt’s Mane had been built only wide enough for a single wagon to enter at a time. Or, more to the point, a single dragon. Once they were through, the rest of the rear guard could retreat, and the blood nobles after them, and they’d all be locked up tight behind stone walls that claws and fire could not easily breach.

Which meant that if the dragons wanted to snatch away a few humans to coerce a doppeling, they’d best keep a good selection of prey outside. Which was what they were doing, with steady flyovers of fire-tar, dropped into the space they were wedging open between the caravan and its rear guard. The first line of archers had already been forced out from the cover of the iron spikes. Which included the king, which was unfortunate for Aaron’s prospects of explaining this situation to someone with enough power to protect him.

He was still unclear on whether a griffin could carry someone, but now might be the time to try. He picked an opening between the remembrance’s passes, and swooped down to land.

“Do not land behind archers,Markus,” King Orin belatedly ordered.

Aaron, with a longbow hastily aimed between his eyes, saw fit to nod carefully rather than screech a dispute—landing in front of archers had hardly seemed a better idea. His Majesty had already turned back towards the battle, apparently satisfied with the griffin at his back. Aaron nudged him, because he was trying to convey something here. He crouched low, his back inviting, as he sqworked at the king.

“Absolutely not,” said His Majesty. Because he was the king of all blood nobles, and a lack of self-preservation had been bred into them.

…Aaron was related to these people. He was on the ground, in the middle of a fight with dragons, with his lies about to choke him rather than making himself properly scarce. Twinned Gods, he was related to these people.

The remembrance had wheeled for another pass. His chance to take off again had similarly flown.

Here was the thing about fighting dragons: humanity had made excellent weapons for it. Ballistae to shoot them from a distance. Longbows with draw enough to punch through their scales, though that was still a bit like stabbing a bear with a knife. Bolas and nets and meteor hammers on their long lines to tangle wings and ground the beasties, lances and cavalry trained to put them down. But dragons didn’t come to their isle to fight: they came to take one human, and leave again. Which did not leave very much time for humans to employ any of those weapons.

Because a swooping dragon could simply stretch out its talons, and hook the person to one’s right, and be back in the sky in a blur of motion without ever touching down.

Aaron watched a screaming man be carried off, and found every hair and feather on his body trying to foof out despite the rain. And then one of the beasties was aiming those talons at him, one with long scratches down its face where the Lady’s claws had already found it, and he was rolling onto his back and presenting a solid wall of claws and teeth and shrieking against the angry dragon’s own before the thing flew on just as quickly, with new rakes of blood down its belly.

The remembrance had passed them over. Already they were banking for another pass, but it would be a moment before they arrived. Aaron blinked up, and it was Lochlann who was blinking down at him, and the man was riding Seventh Down. There was something not even surprised in the good lieutenant’s expression, as he looked down at Aaron rolling in mud, and sighed as if it hadn’t been a perfectly effective strategy. And anyway, it was hardly his fault that the Lady had imparted a grudge against griffins on that particular hatchling.

“Same number,” King Orin said, besides them. His eyes were on the sky, watching as the dragons wheeled back around.

The significance was lost on Aaron until after the next pass, which lost them another two people, and brought the brief return of the screaming man.

Dragons took one human, and left to try their hand at doppeling. These ones weren’t. The same dragons attacked them again, and again, and again. Staying together, even if they’d already plucked a human of their own. Landing next to those whose wings had been fouled, helping to snap through lines before the humans could turn those groundings into something more permanent.

Working together, in exactly the way that little children shouldn’t.

They were targeting the nobles. Snatching them from beside their bannerman, ignoring the more plentiful common archers for those who wore fancy house colors instead of more practical travel clothes.

They were very pointedly leaving Orin alone. Rose, as well, whose netter team was trying to keep their horses in order as the dragons dove again, and again, and again. Shenanigans pranced under her, her whinny more ecstatic than the situation really called for. Seventh Down leapt to snap at a passing wing, in a way horses really ought not have the muscles for. Lochlann held on extremely admirably.

The king drew back his bow, and fired. Again and again, his expression increasingly tight.

And then the dragon’s claws were as full as they were getting, some of the larger dragons carrying two humans—which was distinctly more than they could possibly use themselves—and they flew off a final time. They banked again, but broadly, headed inland.

The king lowered his bow, and ignored the looks of the people around him as firmly as he’d just been ignored by the dragons.

There was still work to do. The dragons had helped those of their kind that had only been tangled, but those whose wings had been broken or who’d taken one too many arrows still remained to be dealt with.

Aaron sqworked at Rose, who flashed him a smile as her team headed back out, now with Lochlann in their numbers. Aaron wondered how the lieutenant had lost her at the battle’s start, and how intentional it had been on the princess’ part. He couldn’t imagine the good lieutenant allowing her to be on the front lines like this. He couldn’t imagine the princess letting herself be shepherded into the plateau while every other blood noble took the field, either, and it was clear which of them had won at that argument.

The king stood next to Aaron. He didn’t try to issue orders, and no one looked to him for them. Not after that little display, and the rumors it had fed.

The protection of the king might be rather temporary. But that had been a fact already, and until Orin was formally denounced by the investigation committee, it was better than no protection at all. Aaron was used to his safety coming with caveats.

He unclasped his cloak. Hissed as the rain stung at his burn-pocked hands. Turned to the king, whose attention he already had.

“You should see those tended to, Markus,” Orin said. “We’ve enough people to finish this. Particularly with the Lady helping.”

“Aaron,” Aaron corrected.

Orin just looked at him, apparently too tired for whatever conversation he thought they were having. “Our caravan was quite profuse in its rumors, Markus. Everyone already knows who you are.”

“Aaron,” he corrected, again. “And they really don’t. Can we talk, after this? And before my sister gets her hands on me. She knows a thing that you should, and I’m rather hoping you’ll take it better than she did.”

Or at the least, that he could steer their conversation to a room with large enough windows for him to have an out, if Orin didn’t.

“If it’s your sister that—” His Majesty started. But Aaron could follow a thought as easily as the next person, and a gaze, too; he looked where the king’s was aimed, and then there was a hand wrapped around his arm as Orin reflexively grabbed him, because apparently Aaron had just tried to bolt.

The caravan had finished entering the plateau. Which left the entrance clear for the literal cavalry, with lances and horse-drawn ballistae to finish the grounded dragons off. Hardly sporting, but his sister was at the head of the column, and staring right at him, and he didn’t much get the impression that she cared.

“I want to say it can’t be that terrible,” the king said, “but clearly it is. If you mean to explain yourself, stay.”

And then he let go of Aaron’s arm. Which was… an interesting choice, seeing as it gave Aaron a choice.

His sister issued her commands. The ballistae crews swung wide through the field of rusted iron spikes, avoiding the patches where dragon tar still burned. She did not take her eyes off of him, and she kept an honor guard with her. When they approached, her bannerwoman rode at her side while the others moved to circle.

“She’s about as subtle as always,” Orin muttered, presumably to a sympathetic ear. Markus probably would have known her well enough to understand the sentiment. Aaron certainly did.

His sister’s horse had scales, and it looked like the fastest thing he’d ever seen, and he wished Seventh Down hadn’t absconded with the good lieutenant because Aaron was fairly certain his flea-bitten mare would have tried biting the regal air right off this thing. He wanted to, and he wasn’t even a horse.

“Your Majesty,” she greeted. Then, to Aaron: “Will you come with me willingly?”

She would know better than to pick a room with escape routes.

“No thank you,” Aaron replied.

“Can this wait, Lord Sung?” Orin asked. “My councilor has requested an audience.”

“Your councilor is an imposter,” she said, and Aaron was glad it was only her people and the king still around to hear. “He claimed to be my brother. He isn’t.”

“You should really talk to our father about that,” said Aaron, eyeing the guards now behind him. Some of them looked rather angrier than others. Had they known Markus? Worked with him as unhesitatingly as they did his sister?

Would they have noticed the switch, if Adelaide hadn’t told them? Because frankly, Aaron had been starting to worry for the dead boy.

“Markus,” King Orin said, as behind them a dragon roared, and a griffin shrieked. “Explain yourself.”

“Aaron,” he corrected, a third time and rather final time. “And I’d like you to consider the fact that you’d been about to torture and kill me the last time I got close to outing myself, so when I woke up and everyone had already decided who I was, continuing that conversation wasn’t the first thing on my mind.”

That had been back in the winter, after the assassination attempts on Rose and Orin. The assassination attempts Aaron had aided as much as he’d foiled, so he’d rather leave that topic in the past.

The griffin shrieked again. Aaron did not turn to see what the Lady was up to, and no one else did, either. It didn’t sound good.

“I’m taking him into custody,” Adelaide said. “With your permission, Your Majesty. I think we can both agree this is a conversation best held when he’s not ready to fly.”

She was pointedly staring at his cloak. What a hilarious sister he had.

“We could do that,” Aaron said. “Or I could go help your mother. Sounds like she could use it.”

He gave a little your choice shrug, as the screeching continued behind them.

“Are you close enough for that kirin’s bone to work on him?” Orin asked, and Adelaide nodded, her eyes narrowed. “Good. Markus—Aaron. Are you the same person who has been with us all winter?”

“Yes,” Aaron answered.

“He might also be the one who ate the tongue,” Adelaide pointed out.

“Which would mean he’s been with us near as long,” Orin said. “Go help your mentor, then return here.”

An order from the king. An order that would put him out of the circle of guards. And once he was out, it would be rather hard to get him back. Again Orin was giving him a choice. If the man wasn’t careful, Aaron would start to think him sympathetic to those with narrowing options.

Aaron flew. Towards the Lady’s fight, as promised, if not quite with the intentions implied.