“They’re calling themselves the Blood Commoners,” the Captain of the Guard groused, over drinks.

The Blood Commoners, like they were some kind of dramatic and self-sacrificing opposition against the blood nobles. The Raffertys always had been prone to thinking overly lofty thoughts of themselves. Behold, the height of their ambitions: stabbing a few more guards.

“We don’t know who they really are,” said the captain, who didn’t need to know. It wouldn’t change his approach to the situation.

“Have you considered,” Aaron said, “not sending your patrols past Second Down?”

“And give ground to them?”

“And focus on rebuilding our defenses,” Aaron said, “instead of stirring up a literal rat’s nest.”

“What use is making the Downs harder to get into from above, when they’re already killing us from below?”

This was a rhetorical question. The captain was just as aware of the implications of all this sabotage as Aaron. But sometimes, a man needed to vent, and who was Aaron to deny a person?

In fact, he topped the captain’s mug up again. Companionably.

“Speaking of defenses,” Aaron said. “Might be wise, if you have the folks working on those to swear on a kirin how much they aren’t dragons.”

The captain paused, drink in front of his mouth. Squinted. “You mean doppels.”

“I mean dragons,” Aaron said. “These Blood Commoners might be less inclined to stab your people, if they knew what was going on up here. And knew you could tell the difference between a threat and an enemy.”

“…I can’t take that initiative myself.”

“And if the prince supports you?”

The captain stared at him a moment more. Then he drank, and kept on drinking, until he could pretend he’d forgotten what he’d heard. Which wasn’t a no.

Aaron’s own mug sat in front of him, full as when they’d started. It was a stupid Face that let themselves drink with their betters.

* * *

“I don’t think I can order that,” Prince Connor said. “I don’t know that the council would listen. They’re already upset about my—my sympathies, after I delayed the rat hunt. If I tried to… what, make some kind of truce? With the doppels?”

“And if the Captain of the Guard supports you?” Aaron asked.

* * *

“You,” said Lieutenant Lochlann, “are not being subtle.”

“Does he need to be, when he has a point?” Rose said. “An animal doppel—particularly one that started life human—isn’t the same as a dragon. Even the most hardline nobles must agree that we should focus on the greater threat.”

“You know it’s not about that for him, Your Highness.”

“Does it have to be?” asked Rose, before Aaron could.

* * *

“Would being a dragon make you less of a king, or more of one?” Aaron asked, sitting on a chair like a respectful sort. His usual seat on the king’s bed was taken. “Population-wise, that is. Who are your people, Your Majesty?”

Orin rubbed his temples. “Aaron. Stop.”

“I’d wager this spat of guard-stabbing would clear right up,” Aaron said, “if it weren’t a crime to live. And doppels would have their uses as allies. Think of their potential as spies, if nothing else.”

If nothing else, the Late Wake would find their membership much increased. And their existing members able to visit home regularly. All their members.

“Whether you’re a dragon or not, you’re a king,” Aaron said. “Lead.”

“He has a point,” said Jeshinkra, when she’d said nothing else this conversation.

She was also sitting in Aaron’s regular spot. She smiled at him. He smiled back, equally sincere.

* * *

“I still can’t figure out how you’re doing it,” Jeshinkra said, in a moment His Majesty was out of the room. “If you’re something not strict human, if that’s how you can foretell attacks before there’s any sign…”

She trailed off, her tone all understanding, like she meant for his own mind to fill in something reassuring like I won’t tell your secrets.

It wasn’t her ability to keep secrets he doubted.

“You don’t think it’s Late Wake tricks?” Aaron asked, with perfectly vapid pleasantness.

“If it was, the others would do it.” She tilted her head. “Does it have something to do with why things die around you?”

Aaron tensed, then forced himself to relax. Jeshinkra raised an eyebrow.

Orin returned. They both smiled at the man, who looked suspiciously between the both of them.

Apparently they weren’t discussing their relative states of humanity in front of the king.

* * *

Rose paused, the notes for her next letter to Orin a scratchy mess next to the blank sheet on which she’d carefully compose her final message. By contrast, her letter to Connor was a mess of ink she’d barely let dry before shoving in its envelope. But letters weren’t the subject, here.

“She didn’t want me in the Late Wake… because I read too much?” the princess asked.

“Sounded more as if you were reading the wrong things,” Aaron said. “Or maybe the right things. Someone else said they should leave you to it, so that might have been approval. First and second editions were mentioned.”

She furrowed her brow, her quill drawing inky loops on the paper’s margin. “I think I know what they were talking about. I was trying to learn about the Letforget, to heal the old ways. All I could really find was this, though.”

She took out her ornate knife, with that fancy script she’d had custom-carved, and held it out to him like he should read it. Aaron knew enough of his letters now to realize he couldn’t. If it was a human language, it wasn’t one they used in the capital.

“What does it say?” he asked.

“ ‘The first spell,’ ” she said. “I think. The rest of the book was blank.”

“Huh,” said Aaron. “...Magic-blank? Like if you knew how, you could read it?”

“If I knew,” she pointed out, sheathing her little blade again, “then I would have read it. Did she say anything else?”

“Nothing about you,” Aaron said. “Though she was pleased enough that I’d been doing my homework. And she agrees with you, about the old castle’s sealing being when things started going wrong on the isle. And on the castle being haunted.”

He summarized the conversation as best he could. She mulled it over, her chin on her hand, her quill coming dangerously close to adding a black streak to her hair.

“Speaking of homework,” she said. “What story are you on? Aaron. You have been practicing your reading, haven’t you?”

He winced. A bit. “It’s not as if I can carry it on the road.”

“You’ve been carrying those population records.”

“It’s not as if I can carry two giant books on the road. And I have been reading them, every time I’m back at the castle. I’m on one about… a door? It’s a bit hard to understand.”

“Oh, that one,” she said. “I hate that one. It doesn’t make sense.”

Well. Good to know he wasn’t just misreading, then.

* * *

“Ugh, go back to the door one,” said Connor, who was tolerating Aaron’s attempts to read outloud. “The Mouse King is just depressing.”

“Does it have death in it?” Aaron asked.

The prince scrunched his face. Which was a yes, which meant Aaron had better read it, because according to the Lady there was something about ghosts in here for him to find.

* * *

“What book is that?” asked John, leaning over Aaron’s shoulder. Aaron would call it reading over his shoulder, if the boy could read. More like glaring at the griffin illuminated on the page. The artist had drawn it without its wings.

“Kingdom tales,” he answered.

“Looks old,” the boy said.

“It’s a second edition,” Aaron said. “Apparently.”

Though he rather doubted it was the sort of second edition the Late Wake took an interest in.

* * *

“Kingdom tales? The whole real book of kingdom tales? I love ‘em all,” said Mabel, whose accent had rather strengthened during her time back home. Or maybe she just felt comfortable not watching how she spoke, here. “Don’t you?”

“I haven’t finished it yet,” he said. “But some are a little…”

“The door one,” she said.

“The door one,” he agreed. “And maybe there’s a page missing, but there’s this one in the table of contents—”

“The Lost Kirin,” she said, nodding knowingly.

“...I thought it was The Last Kirin?”

“Scribe’s error in your copy, I’d wager,” she said. “Because that’s the joke: the story isn’t there. Lost, get it?”

“Huh,” Aaron said. And got treated to a history of scribe jokes that stemmed from Kingdom Between the Hills and Other True Tales and its audacious writer, who was known for such writing blasphemies as deliberately leaving pages blank.

“Even now, sometimes people will end on a sentence half-done, or doodle a little kirin on the back page,” she said. “It’s like a way of ending on luck. ‘Cause when you finish a thing, that’s like dying, en’t it? But if there’s something more, then you ain’t finished yet.”

“Huh,” said Aaron.

That night, he flipped to the back of his Late Wake homework. No incomplete sentence, and no kirin doodle. Population records were not a joking matter, it seemed.

* * *

The end of spring was approaching; the dragon attacks were lessening in frequency, as they did every year outside of the war. It seemed their scaly neighbors had no intention of pressing the fight yet. This spring had been more a testing of their defenses.

“Dragons have a longer timeframe than humans when it comes to planning,” Adelaide explained to him, as the war room shifted to planning how to best use this reprieve.

* * *

In a different sort of war room, Aaron sat at the Lady’s side as she took two of her agent’s reports. Two, when she’d sent out three.

They’d found the kirin. It was only an island away—the dragon’s isle—and had not been at all happy to be spied upon.

“It’s a young buck,” one said, “antlers barely branching, but he’s already learning to cloud step. Not perfectly, but…”

“We didn’t expect it,” said the other, softly.

Aaron wondered if they had something of that third scout, to add to Humanity’s pyre next year.

“A kirin without a herd implies a kirin who’s found their emperor,” said the Lady later, at a meeting of the Late Wake’s more senior members. Those of them human enough to enter Salt’s Mane, that was.

“The continent hasn’t let a rival stag rise in decades,” the woman with the blue-scaled dragon cloak said. “If this one’s broken from the empress’ council… We can use this.”

“Can we?” asked the Lady. Her chin was resting on her hand. Put a quill between her fingers, and it would be exactly the pose of thought favored by her youngest daughter.

“If they weren’t opposed to us, I’d say we join them in opposing the continent,” said the blue-cloaked woman.

“That is a slight problem,” the Lady agreed. “So. Kill it or suborn it?

“Kill it,” Aaron said.

The Lady snorted a laugh, and let the discussion continue, largely without her own input.

* * *

“Interesting you’d back me on a truce with the doppels,” Aaron said, as they walked the castle hall.

“Interesting you’d back His Majesty, even if he’s a doppel,” Jeshinkra said.

“Very,” he agreed, looking at her.

“He was my prince,” she said. “Now he’s my king. What less could I do?”

“…Are you following me?” Aaron asked.

“Are you following me?” she returned.

And so they arrived at the smithy, together.

The weaponsmith looked up. Saw them both in her door. “Ah,” she said, instead of something more polite, like What a pleasure to see you.

“Just checking on my commission,” Jeshinkra said.

“Same,” said Aaron.

“You don’t have one,” the smith said, pointing at Aaron. Her finger shifted. “Yours, I’ve the plans for.”

Aaron came with to see, because neither of them told him not to.

Jeshinkra was commissioning a sword. A rather fancy one, too. And it was, per her conversation with the smith, for Orin.

“Why dragons?” Aaron asked, peering at the diagram of the sword’s crossguard. “He hates them. On buttons, at least.”

“He never did before,” said Jeshinkra, her finger tracing the design. “It’s the symbol of his family. His symbol.”

“Don’t tell me you need more buttons,” said the smith.

Aaron gestured down the length of his coat: all buttons accounted for. “I was rather hoping for a crossbow, actually.”

“Better than a regular bow for you, I suppose,” she said, eyeing his arms. “What style?”

“Thanks,” he said, to the first. And: “I’ve heard excellent things about enclave bows.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Those are restricted. I would need my lord’s permission to give you one.”

Reasonable, given that a thing that shot through dragonhide would go so much easier through a human’s armor. Couldn’t let an enclave smith use her own discretion on who she gave them to.

“I’ve the king’s,” Aaron said, handing her the sealed order. And, in case she didn’t respect orders from those about to be a head shorter: “And the prince’s. And the princess’.”

He added two more orders to the stack in her hands. Notably missing was her lord’s. Aaron could have gotten it, easy enough, but that would require respecting the man. Far more pleasant to go straight over his head.

The smith’s lips quirked, before she got her own petty pleasure under control. “I’ll need to track down the armorer and his keys. Come back tomorrow morning, and you’ll have your pick.”

“Much obliged,” Aaron said.

“Why do you need a dragon crossbow?” Jeshinkra asked, when they were once more in the hall. “Doesn’t seem a thing you can keep under your cloak.”

“Why does the king need a new sword?” Aaron asked. “He seems attached enough to yours.”

Because she’d sent her sword to Orin when she’d faked her death.

“Taking yours back?” Aaron asked.

“He deserves better,” she said. “That sword—it was a joke. Just one of the practice swords we’d use in sparring. It didn’t even have an edge, at first. Duke Sung was always scolding him for mistreating it, leaving it out after training. And I got sick of putting it away for him, so. I stole it.”

“Reasonable,” said Aaron.

She snorted. “It drove him crazy, not being able to find it, and the Duke had him running the stupidest errands until he did. The blacksmith was happy enough to sharpen it up for me; took him four days to realize it was on my hip. Told him he could have it back when I left it lying about like he always did, or when I was dead; whichever came first. ”

It was a good question, which had come first.

“Anyway,” she said, “he treated his weapons right after that, even the practice ones. But the only worth that thing has is in its memories. My king should have more than sentiment at his side.”

* * *

Aaron waited in the church to Man’s God, a wrapped crossbow on the pew beside him.

“You ain’t needed to meet in person before,” said the little Face, after she’d skulked through the door. “I can’t be guaranteeing times I can show up. You ain’t my master.”

“This goes to the blacksmith,” he said, instead of anything hollow like I know, or Do you need help getting away, or Amnesty might be a real thing, if you talk to the right folks.

“What do I get?” she asked.

He removed a fair bit of hard cheese and soft bread and a wrapped tart from his pocket pantry. She shoved the tart in her mouth, and squirreled the rest away in her own coat. Took his coins, next. The crossbow, last.

“She’s expecting it,” Aaron told her. Because it was true, but mostly to make the girl think twice before fencing the thing.

* * *

Rose’s letter to Orin, Aaron knew from scribbled rough drafts, talked about her squad, and the princess’ first medal, and her lack of desire for any more. Medals, she had determined, were primarily for those who did stupid things and survived. Or didn’t.

Rose had told her older brother about the first squadmate she’d lost.

Connor’s letter, Aaron knew from late night worries on rooftops, held very little of actual substance. The longer Connor sat making rulings with the councilors that should be Orin’s, the less he had to say.

“Is it selfish of me to want them here?” Orin asked, sitting at his desk, both letters at hand. He was taking his own notes to the side; things to reply to, thoughts he’d had. It wasn’t a habit shared by Connor, who simply wrote whatever came to mind. But Orin did share it with another sibling. “Particularly Rose. I was never very kind to Rose.”

“Being selfish is pretty human, I’d think,” said Aaron.

Orin turned enough to glower at that phrasing, but would not be swayed from the topic. “It just… seems a cruel thing, to try and grow close to her now.”

Now, when he was set on letting himself be executed.

“Crueler than denying her the chance?” Aaron asked.

Rose’s letter was rich in details, in emotion, in thoughts he wasn’t even sure she’d shared with her teammates. Her first friends.

She’d sat at her own writing table, and run it past him: how much detail she would need, how open she would have to be, to properly instill guilt in her stupid brother.

If Orin was going to insist on putting the desires of others before himself, then she would demand a portion of those feelings for their own family. Perhaps it would make a difference.

Orin invited his siblings north.

* * *

The investigation committee issued a private opinion ahead of its formal verdict.

In light of the dragons’ unusually tactical behavior this season, it was clear they had doppeled at least one person with significant field experience last spring; given the deaths of His Majesty’s squad, and the suspicions raised by their circumstances, it was likely that they had been targeted specifically; and so, while the committee hesitated to draw connections between these two circumstances ahead of a true trial, they respectfully urged King Orin to hold the good of Last Reign in his thoughts as he contemplated the near future, and his place in it.

It would behoove the king to conclusively prove himself not a dragon, before the committee—again, most respectfully—must seek to show otherwise.

* * *

“They won’t let me go,” Connor said, staring at his invitation north.

“I’ll pack,” said Rose, with hers.

King Orin wrote a reply to the committee, duly thanking them for their council. And another, to the Lady. He requested his own poisoning.

“We could fake it,” Aaron told him.

“I would know,” Orin said.

The committee agreed to Adelaide as a witness, and the Lady to administer. She knew her poisons, after all.

* * *

It had taken all spring, but Aaron thought he might be John’s friend again. And that John might be his. The enclave boy smiled now, sometimes, when Aaron came into the kitchen. Had fresh bread waiting, with an extra loaf or two no one would miss, and a turned back for the moment they disappeared.

John would be headed north soon, too. Though not until after this business was done.

“No enclaver wants to be there when a southern king dies,” the blond boy said. “I’m just one of the few that has a choice.”

He’d go after spring was over, and the caravans running again. See his family, for the first time in a year.

“That kingdom tales book, is it easy to read?” the blonde boy asked.

“Easiest Rose could find me,” Aaron said.

“Could you leave it with me, while you’re out of the castle? Reading seems a useful skill to have.”

“You have someone that will help you?” Aaron asked. “Otherwise, we can wait until Mabel gets back. Or I could help, with the very basics. If you’d like.”

The boy smiled. “You’re a good friend, Aaron. A good friend who’ll be gone weeks. You realize you’ll be moving at caravan speed the next you come back, right? I’m going to be so bored. Can’t you leave me with a list of letters, and I can practice looking for them? And it’s got pictures, too. Pretty ones.”

Aaron snorted, but. “It’s not mine to lend. Sorry.”

“It’ll leave the castle no sooner than I do,” the boy swore, most loftily. “And it’ll save you from having to drag it up and down those stairs everytime you want to read in the kitchens. Servant’s quarters are less of a hike.”

Aaron could recognize a dove’s feather when it fell before him. “I’ll write that letter list for you,” he said. “And I’ll ask Rose about the book. Mayhaps she’ll let you take it to read on the caravan home.”

Johnathan Baker—Jahnalistrin of the Held Lands—beamed. “That would be perfect.”

* * *

Aaron left the last of the griffin cloaks with the battlesmith. The last, besides the one on the Lady’s own back.

As for Orin: he delivered to him one final letter, written long before this spring. The king read what his father had written, with an expression too calm to be anything but a mask.

“Do you still want her dead?” Aaron asked. To clarify.

“Do you?” Orin returned. “She would allow a doppel on the throne.”

That gave them both their answers, if rather different ones. And it didn’t solve Aaron’s true problem with her continued state of living: namely, that it endangered his.

Didn’t it?