Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

“Why would she? Why would Markus?” His Majesty demanded.

Adelaide was conspicuously not asking the same.

King Orin could no longer be contained to his chair. He paced, and Aaron eyed the newly undefended griffin cloak—casually, the same way he’d eye any other out when people more important than him were starting to shout—and his sister very pointedly narrowed her eyes and continued standing exactly where she was, which was distinctly in his path towards it. His Majesty kept speaking.

“This investigation alone is enough to leave your family as regents over mine, when I— They didn’t need to kill my father. Much less yours.”

“Can it be tied to her?” Adelaide finally asked. “King Liam’s death. Can it be tied to my mother?”

“It was the medicine she brought him, I think,” Aaron said. “The guard who saw her bring it that night is dead, but. Well. It seemed to me like her medicines were a nightly thing. Others should know.”

“And for how long,” asked His Majesty, “were they poison?”

Aaron shrugged. “Seemed a thing that Markus would already know. I haven’t lived this long by asking questions like that.”

Adelaide let her hand drop back to her side. Her face, underneath where it had been, was carefully neutral. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Majesty. I have much to think about.”

“No,” the king said. “I will not excuse you. Be seated, Lord Sung. Why would your brother do this? Why would your mother?”

“I need to think,” she replied without true answer, and certainly without sitting down.

“What part did you play in this?” His Majesty’s hand twitched towards his sword, but he didn’t touch it. It was not his guards outside the door.

“None,” Adelaide said. “I did not know.”

“And yet,” Orin said, “you have with you a woman your father told me was dead. He told my entire court and half the city that she was dead, in the same trial he told them I was a dragon’s doppel. And you dare accuse your brother of being the one to eat the tongue.”

“Jessica came to us after my father’s party had already left. Apparently the other man who’d come south had sent her word, that he’d found safety. As he disappeared soon after, he was unable to rescind that opinion prior to her arrival. She had faked her death. We found it prudent to keep faking, and so she joined my guards.”

“And so you knowingly allowed false evidence to be presented against your crown prince. Your king, now.”

“Are you my king,” she asked, “or are you a dragon’s doppel, Your Majesty?”

Neither of them was touching their blades. Very deliberately so, from the stiffness in each of their sword arms. Neither of them was paying much attention to Aaron, either. He sat on his little corner table, and did not breathe more deeply than was necessary nor otherwise move, and idly wondered if bleeding was a thing ghosts did.

“I’ve answered no before,” Orin said, “over more than that paltry piece.”

“And can you say it again, now?”

King Orin’s eyes flicked to the kirin’s bone hilt. Aaron had been right; it did make a person look guilty. “I am not a doppel, so far as I am aware. But I cannot be so sure as I would like. What does Jessie say?”

“She avoids conclusive statements in my presence,” Adelaide said. And added, after a meaningful pause: “But she came to me, not to you.”

It was the king who allowed the silence to stretch, this time. “Why did you come to Salt’s Mane so early, Lord Sung?”

“Because I cannot be sure either, Your Majesty. I trust we both want what is best for humanity.”

They stared at each other in the way people did, when not wanting a fight was the least important part in whether one would happen. Aaron let his legs swing again. Just a little bit, barely a twitch, but it was enough to get both their eyes snapping over. Trained fighters and reflexes and all that.

“How does him maybe being a doppel make him not human?” Aaron asked, because it was something he’d always wanted to ask one of these strict-kept humans. “If he doesn’t shift much, it could be years until his mind goes all dragony. Won’t affect his heirs any, either. And a dragon king stands a chance at being longer lived than the last few O’Sheas.” Because the last O’Shea to die peaceful had been Queen Aednat of the Red Trident, and there’d been four crowns since whose reigns totaled together hadn’t lasted so long as hers, nor done so much. The Trident had left the isle.

“Is that really how rats feel?” King Orin the Likely Short-Lived asked. “That there’s no difference between them and real people?”

“Obviously there is,” Aaron said, looking him in the eye. “We’re not out to kill the lot of you on sight.”

“No,” His Majesty replied. “Just the occasional targeted assassination.”

“Paid for by coin from outside,” Aaron said.

“And how would you know that?” Orin asked. “If you truly left before any deals were brokered?”

“Who in Twokins would pay to change a thing that doesn’t change? It doesn’t matter to us whose royal name is writ on the hunt orders, not when the ratters keep coming through on the regular.” Aaron shrugged, still holding his gaze. “A doppel prince, though. That could matter.”

Adelaide laughed, her hand coming up to cover her face again. “I had wondered how you’d passed as Markus. But you’re just as ambitious as he is, aren’t you? Down to the treason, apparently.”

His sister drew herself up. Looked to the king, long as he might reign. “Three Havens will not contest Prince Connor’s ascension. Please don’t get any ideas from your trusted councilors, Your Majesty, if you wish that process to proceed smoothly. If I may be excused?”

“You may,” Orin allowed, as one who wanted to remain in the room with her precisely as much as she wished to remain with him.

Adelaide Sung cut a perfectly cordial bow, to a man whose execution she was already planning. Then she turned to Aaron.

“I won’t tell my mother. And she’ll not hear of you from my people, either. My guard is unfortunately practiced in protecting half-brothers from her wrath.”

“Are there more of us?” Aaron asked.

“Yesterday, I would have said no. Today… Your Majesty, if I may beg a final favor?” Final was of possibly morbid definition, here. “I wish to speak with my father, before the committee proceeds with his fate. Apparently,” she said, mouth twisting, “I need a list of his lovers. I’ll not allow any more of my siblings to be misplaced.”

“Granted,” King Orin said. “May any others you find be less…”

Feral? Regicidal? His Majesty politely declined to finish that thought. Regardless, Adelaide’s lips twitched with the barest of smiles, even if it didn’t reach so far as her eyes. As the only representative of these potential siblings, Aaron glowered at them both.

Then his sister… hesitated, for a moment, like she was going to approach him. She didn’t, which was significantly better for his heart rate than the alternative.

“Get that seen to,” she told him, with a nod at the side he was still putting pressure on. “They’ve good hedge wives here.”

It was no apology, and it didn’t pretend to be.

She left. His Majesty sat back down in his chair. Through the arrowslit windows, Aaron could see a hint of moon through the thinning clouds.

“Get what seen to?” Orin asked, after long enough that Adelaide and her guards should be gone from the doorway, if they intended to go. And if they didn’t, well. His Majesty wasn’t shouting anymore, and Aaron had learned how hard it was for sound to carry in this place.

“My sister is adept at aiming for the lungs,” Aaron replied. “Maybe the heart. It didn’t go in far enough to be sure.”

“Noted,” His Majesty said. And rubbed at one temple. Besides him, the griffin cloak was still dripping slowly. Aaron counted seven drops before the king spoke again. “You were a Face. A stolen child. Why do you still support doppelgängers?”

“Why are you sitting here, waiting to be put to death?” Aaron countered. Which might not have seemed like an answer, but they’d both been raised a certain way, and it had put them here now.

“It’s my duty,” Orin said.

“Duty won’t outlive you, Your Majesty. Maybe think on whether you can do more alive. For all your people.”

Aaron wasn’t ambitious. He just wished other people were more so, sometimes.

“Those ones aren’t mine,” the king said.

No. But they were still Aaron’s.

Eleven drops, and Aaron was wondering if he should beg his own leave to find one of those hedge wives, when Orin spoke again.

“Why did you come to the castle to begin with?”

“Someone I thought might be a friend thought it was a good idea,” Aaron said. “He might have just been trying to get me killed, though.”

“Nice friend.”

“It’s what he does.” Aaron shrugged, because there was no resenting the very nature of a thing. “What will you do with the Lady?”

“Did you know, Aaron,” His Majesty said, letting his head fall back against the well-cushioned chair for the first time this entire meeting. Which was the least formal Aaron had ever seen him, or perhaps the most tired. “That the last time a king ordered the death of the Late Wake’s leader, he was found murdered in his own bed?”

That would be the Executioner, who’d killed Aeris of the Red Trident. Had the tabby tied up in a sack and drowned, as was traditional for cat sidhe. Less so for puss-in-boots. Aaron was unclear on how cool Queen Aednat’s pyre had been before her son had turned her army inward.

“Mostly in his bed,” His Majesty mused. “The royal nursemaids enjoyed detailing how many pieces he was in. It was meant to be an instructive tale, I believe.”

“So you’ll let her get away with it?” Aaron asked.

“The only evidence I have is your word. The word of someone who has been lying to my entire court. And how will it look, if an accused doppel begins putting his own councilors up on charges of treason—begins with the one most capable of finding him out?”

It wouldn’t be much of a beginning, if Orin only intended to try the one. But Aaron could see his fellow councilors not waiting to see if their turn was next.

“I would like to see the end of the spring season,” the king said. “Until this hatching of dragons is dealt with. I would not see my brother crowned and shipped to his first front with my blood still fresh on his hands. And I would like my father’s killer dead before I am. Wouldn’t you?”

Which was a question that had implications, now that the man knew Aaron had been raised by the Kindly Souls.

“What do I get out of it?” Aaron asked. Because he had been raised by them.

“A full pardon, for all crimes committed while you were a Face.”

Aaron gave him exactly the look that deserved. “Faces already have amnesty, if any of your laws mean what they say. Make it a pardon up to and including her death, and we’ll talk.”

“And what have you been doing in my castle that requires a pardon?” His Majesty asked.

“I want Connor’s signature on it, too,” Aaron said, because he was neither the sort of idiot that would answer that question nor the type to trust the signature of a man who was measuring his life in weeks. Not that a piece of paper was more protection than any of them pretended it was, but he could at least get the king’s heir in on the pretense.

“Fine,” Orin conceded, after a moment’s glaring. “But you can’t just stab her in a hallway and wave our names around. You played at being a noble for half a year, Lord Sung. Find a way that doesn’t get either of us executed sooner. I trust you can be so subtle.”

“I want it written tonight,” Aaron said. “And if you could pen some report that I simply must carry to the investigation committee, I would be pleased to acquire Prince Connor’s signature on your behalf, while I’m there.”

“I’ll write to them of Jessie,” the king said. He was rubbing both his temples, now. “And the Lady’s death?”

“Already working on it,” Aaron said, with a flash of teeth. The best contracts, he’d been taught, were the ones a person would do for free.

His Majesty huffed a laugh. “You really were a rat.”

Aaron sat a little straighter. “Does that mean I’m no longer fit for your council?”

“Would you advise me to remove you?” the king asked.

“Yes.”

“Then no.”

Kings were awful. But he’d known that already.

“Go get yourself seen to,” Orin said.

Aaron took the dismissal for what it was. Slid from his table, and collected his cloak, slowly enough to allow for any protest. Orin did not.

“Can I tell Rose and Lochlann?” Aaron asked, at the door. “And Connor, too. About me, I mean.”

Two of them had already known him well enough to see who he really was. That was one more than Markus could claim.

“…Are you asking me because you’ve already told them?” asked His Majesty, in a fit of perception.

“I was told once,” Aaron said, “that people don’t like the truth. That seems a question you might not like the answer to, Your Majesty.”

“Be at my side in the morning. There will be a war meeting, after all this. And I’ll have an urgent report for you to deliver. Among other papers.”

Aaron gave a little bow. Not quite as fancy as a proper lordling’s, but His Majesty knew now, and there was no going back on that.

The morning brought more than a meeting. It brought them twenty-odd nobles and officers, snatched the previous day, healthy and alive. This was not a cause for celebration.