Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone - Chapter 21: The Wake for the Old Year

The library fey met him below a guard tower on the southwest corner of the castle. She was clutching her cloak closed when she stepped through the wall, but he could see flashes of a gold skirt under its edges. Far fancier than necessary, for where they were going. Aaron bowed over her hand and gave it a chaste kiss, like these court folks did with their ladies.

“Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded mutely, blushing furiously under her hood. “Mind if I use your walls as a cloakroom? I don’t think I’ll need this once we get down the stairs.”

“Let me,” she said, and held out her hands.

“I could—”

“It’s better if you don’t. Don’t ever try to enter the old ways without me.” Her arms were still outstretched, patiently waiting. He managed to hold on to his smile even as he handed his bundled up cloak over. He winced as she tossed it carelessly back through the stone, but she had her back to him at the time. When she turned around, he offered her his arm, and did not look back.

Their evening began.

The Wake for the Old Year was the longest night of the year. Humanity faced it by making it the brightest. Torches lit the streets of the upper town and bonfires lit its squares. Snowflakes swirled above the flames, melting away as they came too close. Foxes and kirin, kelpie and selkie, pooka and dragons and greenmen and fey all roamed the streets as men bought mockeries of their fears from street corner vendors. Each mask covered only half the face, and all left eyes and ears and hair exposed—very practical, very easy for the militia to make sure nothing else had come to play at humanity’s party.

Aaron bought a slip of black and gold leather with a fox’s slanted eyes and pointed ears. It was a popular style, given recent events, and Aaron appreciated the chance to blend in. The fey’s fingers trailed over the display, resting on a dragon before settling on a changeling’s rose-marked face. The flowers were the same shade as the wine stains on her skin. Under the shadows of her hood, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Aaron watched the great deliberation with which she made her choice and the iron in her spine as she tied it on without ever lowering her hood.

“I’ve decided,” he declared. “I’m going to make you laugh by the end of the night.”

She stared at him, startled. He’d said it out loud. He hadn’t meant to, but he didn’t regret it. He took her hand and led her, half-running, towards Shelter Stair. They left the rows of masks behind.

The narrow passage down to the lower town was packed with people pushing both up and down. She paused on the first step, forcing the crowd to squeeze around them as she reached a hand out to the long gouges scratched into the blackened walls. She rubbed her fingers together as if she expected them to come away sooty.

“It’s ancient,” Aaron said. “Well, that part is.”

The dragon fire was generations old. The signs of the fox’s visit were still fresh, if harder to spot. Just a patch of rust brown stained into the steps here, the nick of a blade against the wall there, with not enough time for either to weather.

She would have poked her head into every shop in First Down, if she wasn’t distracted by every other shop farther down the stone halls. He kept a hold of her hand and an eye out around them. It wasn’t like people didn’t know he was still alive; with as many shopping trips as Mrs. Summers sent him on, his scent had been all over the Downs. But it was one thing to come here alone and another to bring someone who didn’t know to keep her head low and her steps quick—

This time, the fey was the one to pull them into a run, leaving his thoughts behind. She stopped at the kitten crates to stare wide-eyed at the mewling fuzzballs within.

“The lady has a fine eye, I see. That gray one, his great-great-grandmother worked for Queen Aednat herself. She entrusted her last kits to my grandfather when the Executioner took the throne. We’ve been keeping them safe down here, where the king’s eye isn’t so strict. If a discerning young woman such as yourself were to purchase a genuine puss-in-boots, there’s no telling how far you could go—”

“Do you sell unicorns, too?” Aaron helpfully asked. “Without the horns so you can hide them better, I’ll bet.”

The merchant scowled, and the library fey nearly smiled, and the little gray kitten tumbled over one of its sisters and mewed.

“Besides,” the girl said as they left, “everyone knows Aednat’s puss was a ginger cat. They were the Red Trident, after all. Queen Aednat and Master Aeris and Captain Varghese.”

It felt weird, hearing the name “Varghese” and not having it be the good lieutenant. “The Iron Captain’s not a ginger,” Aaron pointed out.

“But her sword was red, wasn’t it?” The fey’s hood had slipped back, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were bright as she spied another stand down the hall and took off for it.

They had dinner on Second Down. Skewers of roast vegetables, spiced bean cakes, and slightly burnt caramel rolls that John Baker’s master would have thrown to the dogs, or maybe to Aaron. They tasted fine when the girl he was with was smiling. She stopped as soon as he noticed, but she started up again when he looked away. He paid for them both, feeling rather rich with his castle wages tucked across multiple pockets. All the better to avoid a pickpocket getting everything. He’d been down here earlier in the day to get a few things, and he remembered enough to steer them towards the best smells. And away from certain others.

“That smells amazing,” the little fey was not particularly subtle in her demands. The stall she was trying to tug him towards had the same vegetable skewers as they’d already had, but with slices of meat tucked between.

Aaron shifted his weight back, anchoring them both on the far side of the passageway. “What kind of meat would you say that is?”

“Chicken?” she guessed.

“Bit bigger, I think.”

“Pork?”

“More lean.”

It took her a moment to get it. When she did, she stopped tugging, and he nearly fell over. “It’s not human. It’s not.”

“Not strictly human,” Aaron agreed, crudely borrowing the militia’s word for it. “But look at that seller—frayed patches on her elbows, stall made from someone else’s scrap wood. How’s she affording cuts of meat that fine to go with her rat stew? Seems to me some of her rats were a bigger breed than she thought to catch, and she’s brought herself up to Second Down where it might be some folks don’t know what she’s cooking.”

The fey swallowed thickly. Her nostrils still twitched—knowing didn’t make it smell any less good. That was an honest fact, and it was the one that always sickened Aaron the most.

“Are they all…?”

“Some of them are fine, I’m sure. Can you tell which?”

She shook her head, staring at the food stalls with wiser eyes. “Can I at least have ale?”

Aaron snorted and bought them both a mug. She made a face when she drank hers, but downed it all the same.

On Third Down they joined a ring of dancers. The bonfire was too smokey for the cavern it was in, and the soot stung their eyes, and red curls escaped from her headscarf. She said she’d never danced before, but approached it with a studiousness that had the people around her grinning as they showed her the steps. She danced a line of sevens, left and right, and high stepped as the woman teaching her clapped the beat.

Afterward they leaned over a stone rail and stared into the dark, at the pale gray heart of the plateau.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, and it was. The old castle rose from the depths. Its base sat in the underground river, splitting the waterfall and tossing white mist into the air so that its supporting columns glittered. Bridges with thin artful rails arched over empty air, connecting the structure to levels of Twokins deeper than most dared go. It looked like the cocoon of some great insect, anchored to the sides of the caves, waiting to hatch. The castle the O’Sheas had sealed.

“I can open it. I know I can.” She leaned so far forward he was afraid she might fall.

“Maybe it’s meant to stay closed.”

“But if I can open it, shouldn’t I?”

It was terrifying listening to her, because he could very nearly believe the things she said. Maybe she could do it. He’d met few people in his life that had the same focus to their eyes and something in him admired the look. Wanted them to succeed.

For all the good that had done him.

He coaxed her away from the rail and bought cider for their next drinks. She seemed to like the taste better.

There was another dance on Fourth. The sort made for watching, not joining. A figure in white and another in gold passed slow circles around each other, their actors holding feathered fans high, casting the shadows of wings on the walls. Men with crossed arms and nervous eyes stood in the hall outside, ready to sound the alarm if any rat catchers came too near.

An old woman had a blanket laid on the ground in front of her, selling little amulets. Aaron bought the sword and shield of Man’s God, embossed on front and back in perfect mirror, taking on a different meaning for those with the eyes to see it. The Twinned Gods might be banned from humanity’s cities, but real deities didn’t need men’s permission. He slipped the necklace under his shirt and sat next to the little fey to watch the dancers spin.

“Is that a doppelgänger?” she whispered to him, low, like it was a secret. He followed her gaze to a couple across the fire. The woman sat in a man’s lap, comfortable with his arms around her and his chin in her hair. She’d wrapped a scarf around her head, but a gray ear had slipped free from its top. This wasn’t the sort of gathering that minded that kind of thing.

“She’s a mouse,” Aaron said.

The woman whispered something to her man, and he laughed.

“But he’s not?” The fey frowned. “How can he care for her?”

“People can care for just about anyone who’s worth caring for.”

“Even a fey?” she asked, watching them.

“Even a fey. So long as she smiles now and then.” Aaron put a hand on her head, and thoroughly mussed up her hair. She laughed. She glared at him, sure, but even so she laughed as she ducked away, trying to escape.

They didn’t go any lower. It wasn’t safe for either of them.

When they climbed back up the stairs, the bonfires in the upper town were burning low, and the last parade of the evening was winding through the streets below the castle. The king sat above the gates with his redcoats and his family, watching it with a glass of something dark in his hand. The Vargheses were in attendance: the good lieutenant was frowning down on the world at large as his grandmother laughed about something. He’d had a mask, but taken it off: Aaron could see it clenched in his hand, but couldn’t tell what it had been. The Iron Captain had pushed her red cat’s face back into her white hair. The princes were at their father’s side, the younger wearing a dragon of gold, the elder of crimson. The Lady stood some few paces away from them all, her arms crossed as she leaned on the parapet. Her mask was white, with elegant silver antlers sweeping back above her golden hair. A kirin. His Majesty wore no mask at all.

Aaron tugged the fey’s hand off towards the festival stands, but she refused to be led. Her face was tilted up to the figures above.

“He looks so old.”

“Come on. There are cracks in the lower town where you can see out onto the forest. The fox’s people have their own shows, if you know where to look. Sheppard’s Stair is the quickest way down.”

“Thank you, Aaron.”

He didn’t understand at first. Not until she slipped her fingers from his and started to leave him. He caught her arm.

“You can’t go. It’s hours yet until sunrise. Live through the night, live through the year, yes?”

She gently reclaimed her arm and took her mask off. It was the first he’d seen her fully. She was fey marked beyond a doubt: the wine stain flowed out from her hairline, spilling over cheek and around the curve of her jaw, disappearing under the fabric of her dress. She was lucky she’d been raised fey and not left as a changeling in some crib; human parents would have been apt to leave her in the forest, or fed her iron rust until her nature revealed itself. Fey-marked children rarely grew so old as she.

“I need to go home.”

“To the castle?” he asked, and she nodded. He reached for her arm again, but his hand fell short. “Why?”

She fidgeted with her mask, wrapping it up in its own strings. “I’ve let my family worry.”

When she moved to step out of the alley, he stepped in front of her.

“We’ve been having fun, haven’t we? Let me show you just one more thing. It won’t take long. Please.”

She wavered. He could see it in her stance, in the way she ran her hands over her arms and looked back at the city instead of the castle.

“Aaron, there’s something I—”

Before she could finish, there came a clatter from the castle gates; a group of guards were running out to ruin someone’s night. Aaron pushed her nearer to the wall, tucking them both out of the way so that the guardsmen could pass.

They didn’t.

“Are you all right?” one of them asked. “Where have you been?” asked another. Aaron stood in their midst, bewildered, not sure how to answer.

And then another thing, repeated by more and more lips as he stood mute:

“Your Highness.”

“Your Highness, are you all right?”

“Your Highness, where have you been?”

“Your Highness, did he hurt you?”

A hand gripped his forearm, roughly pulling him one direction while gentler hands tugged the fey girl in another. He saw Lochlann among them and didn’t understand why the lieutenant didn’t recognize him; he’d forgotten the fox mask, still tied over his face. He tried to take a step back towards the fey and found himself on the ground, his ears ringing.

The street was cold. The cobblestones scraped at his palms, and made him remember every bone in his shoulder and arm. The hilt of his dagger ground into his ribs. Another guard was reaching for him.

Aaron might have done something stupid then, but a voice cut through the air. An extremely imperative voice.

“Stop,” the little fey ordered. The guardsman stopped reaching for him. Aaron froze in a half-crouch, his hand hovering. He only needed to get a head start. The crowd was still thick enough, the stairs close enough. He wouldn’t be visiting their dungeon a second time.

“Stop,” the girl repeated. She continued, her chin up, addressing the guards. “I am neither injured nor in danger. This man had nothing to do with my disappearance and everything to do with my return, and you will unhand him.”

The guards relaxed by small degrees. Aaron remained tensed; remained, also, on the ground, though he got his feet settled more properly under himself. It was an easier position to start a sprint from. Harder for them to grab at him.

“I’ve orders to bring you home, Your Highness.” Lochlann said, speaking more as if to a frightened rabbit than the girl Aaron knew.

Not that he knew her at all.

“That is where I intend to go, Second Lieutenant. I will thank you to escort me to my father.” She tugged her hood back in place. “I want this man brought to my sitting room. He is to wait for me there.”

“As you wish, Your Highness,” the lieutenant agreed, keeping his skepticism well restrained, at least while they were on this side of the castle gates.

Slowly Aaron stood, easing his hand away from his side. He slid the fox mask back into his hair and met the good lieutenant’s startled gaze.

“As you wish, Your Highness,” he parroted the guard’s words, never looking at the princess.