Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Inside was a guardsman who made Mabel look like a toddling child. He sat in front of a small fireplace, his coat hung on the back of his chair, hunched over a knife and a piece of wood. Both looked like toys in his hands. He glanced up as they came in, hrrmed a greeting, and went back to his carving.

“Shillelagh, meet Aaron. He’s a fine young maybe-a-fey in need of a contraband search. Bit less awkward if you do it, I think.”

“Just a minute,” the big man said.

The woman waited patiently. Aaron waited at her side. When it became clear that it was a literal minute, he scooted a step closer to the fire. So far, the dungeons were… a lot like home. He didn’t know why that surprised him. The castle sat on the same plateau as the caverns. It only made sense that its basement would be carved out of the same bedrock. He’d just never stopped to think about it.

There was a wooden table in the middle of the room. Chereau hooked one of its chairs with her foot, dragged it over, and leaned her elbows on its back. “What are you making?”

The man finished a cut and blew on it, clearing the thin shaving curls. Only then did he answer. “Griffin.”

“Why are you making a griffin?”

“Woke up this morning. Felt like making a griffin.”

“Good a reason as any,” the woman companionably replied. “Do we have anything in the iron cells?”

“Nope.” He continued his carving, meticulously. Aaron leaned in a bit closer. The man was working on an outstretched wing, carving each feather separately. If there was a griffin in there, it was somewhere in the rest of the wood block.

When Aaron looked up, he found himself staring straight into the man’s eyes. The guard offered his carving up. “Want to see?”

“Well I would, but…” Aaron gave a shrug, twisting his spine to properly wiggle his bound hands at the man.

“Turn around.”

Aaron looked at the guardswoman. At her unconcerned shrug, he did. The big guard undid his bindings, with fingers thicker than the ropes themselves.

“There,” the man said, then set the wood block in his hands.

Aaron politely looked it over. “I like the feathers.”

“Right, then. Let’s have a look at you.” The guard tucked his knife away and rose to his feet. And kept rising, for longer than Aaron was comfortable with. By the end, the man was looking down at him a lot like normal men look down on mice. “You going to give us any trouble, Aaron?”

“No plans at the moment, sir,” Aaron said. An entire council of kirin could not have made him more sincere. He handed back the carving. The man set it gently on the fireplace mantel, then held out a palm big as a dinner plate.

“Coat off, then.”

Aaron shrugged the thing off and obediently handed it over, trying not to wince as the guard treated it a bit like a dishrag while he made sure there was nothing sewn in its seams. He found the pocket pantry, fishing out bread ends and bits of cheese and a few dried mushrooms and seeds. He set them on the mantel with the wood block. Aaron rubbed his arms, trying to keep some warmth in them as he watched weeks of scrounging get routed out. It didn’t look like much, lined up like that, but there’d been a comfort in having it.

“These?” the man asked, holding up a few carefully folded packets of parchment.

“Just some herbs.”

“Drugs?” Chereau asked.

“Medicine,” Aaron countered.

“You sick?”

Aaron shook his head, watching miserably as the packets joined the line up next to the griffin carving. If worst had come to worst, he could have sold those for some decent money. Proper medicine was rare in Twokins. It wasn’t as if they had light enough to grow their own gardens. If he’d known they’d get taken from him he wouldn’t have nicked them from the old raccoon to begin with.

The big man finished extracting the shreds of Aaron’s life, and then carefully set the coat on the chair behind him. “Shirt.”

Aaron cast a glance at Chereau, who waved a lazy hand over her chair top. “Nothing I haven’t seen, little fey. Unless you’re hiding something real special. And before you ask, I’m not turning around. Modesty gets guards clubbed in the head.”

“That what happened to you?”

“Oh, very funny, little fey.”

He flashed a grin, which made him feel better for also flushing red. A bit. The shirt came off, followed by pants and a bit more than he was comfortable with. They found all the spots he’d sewn in money, too.

The big man gave him back his clothing, minus everything of value or use. “You’ll get it back when you’re free.”

“The parts that don’t molder, anyway,” Chereau added. “Come on, let’s pick out a room for you.”

“One minute,” the man knelt down and opened the lid on a wooden chest, tucked in the corner behind his chair. Inside was a stack of blankets. He set one in Aaron’s hands. Then, after a moment of furrowed brows, added another on top.

“Thank you, sir.” These two weren’t bad, for rat catchers.

He amended that opinion when Chereau gave him a friendly shove through the next set of doors. She paused only to pick up a lantern from the room, then followed him in. “Come on, we’ll put you towards the end. Shillelagh sleeps in the guard room ofttimes, and he snores fit to mourn with banshees.”

There was no light save hers. He didn’t get the impression they used this part of the jail often. It was doppels that went in the king’s dungeon, not fey. Not this far north. The cells here had iron bars plenty wide for a doppel to slip through in their animal skin. Well, unless they were something unwieldy, like a wolf. But the plateau’s infestation weren’t called rats for no reason. These cells were made for a different sort. Their walls, floors, ceilings—all had an inlay of iron, to complement their bars.

“That should be far enough.” She took out her keys and jangled open a cell door, about half way down the row. “In you go.”

One last shove sent him stumbling. In he went indeed, with the door locked behind him.

That night he dreamed of shadowed figures standing watch around a corpse. A wake, as they waited for the soul to pass from the body. He couldn’t see their faces.

“I could have saved them,” the corpse said, its gray eyes open and unseeing, facing up towards the night sky.

Again and again, Aaron tried to close the dead boy’s eyes. But Markus kept staring, the lids unmoving under Aaron’s fingers, until he wondered if his hands were there at all.

One of the figures turned towards him. She clutched her hood, darkness hiding her face.

“Are you awake?” she asked.

When he turned his head to reply, she fled, disappearing into the wall itself.

Aaron blinked and found himself staring at the stone wall of the dungeon, past the bars of his cell. Light from the guard room filtered in weakly through the window on its door.

“Yes,” he answered, to the dark.