It wasn’t as dark as it should be, even at the very edges of town, where the heights of the old stone walls blotted out the stars. Alleys that should be black as a rat tunnel were lit by lanterns hung off wagons. Merchants in their armor sat on driver’s benches, keeping watch over wooden boards of Court. Aaron nodded like a friendly fellow and kept a steady stride and didn’t much breathe until he heard the game pieces clicking down behind him. They’d all be gone as soon as the harvest fair ended—it never paid to chance an early snow in the passes—but until then, the streets of uptown were full of eyes.

He wasn’t the sort they liked here. But the night was still kind enough to hide the worst of him, and unfriendly eyes in uptown were altogether more civil than what he could expect down in Twokins. He was staying as far from the shelter stairs as he could. It wouldn’t take long for his killer to spread the good news, but there was no sense pushing his luck about it: he’d rather not be killed twice tonight. With any luck he’d look the part of a tired militiaman, new off his shift.

There was a line at the castle that already stretched more than a block long. Mostly it was made of sleeping people, those who’d come last night and never left. Aaron quietly tucked himself into a gap in the line towards the front, between one sleeper and another. The young woman in front of him stirred and knit her eyebrows. He met her gaze and shrugged. The man he’d cut in front of mumbled something in his sleep, hugging a spear closer to his chest. The girl hrmphed at him, but only tugged her cap down and closed her eyes again.

The sky lightened by slow degrees. Anyone who thought dawn started as pinks and reds and yellows had never been awake early enough to see true dawn. It wasn’t a color: it was a feeling to the air, a sudden shift from dark gray to light, a weightlessness to his shoulders like something had been lifted. The colors came after that, by long minutes.

He hadn’t been meant to see this dawn. He didn’t know quite how he felt about that. Cold? Yeah, cold. He tucked his legs a little more closely to his chest.

Cold wasn’t so bad.

The festival was waking up, along with the rest of the city. Shops opened their windows, armored merchants shouted to passersby as they set out their wares, and morning life filled the streets of uptown. The man he’d cut in front of woke up and looked at Aaron in bleary confusion. He met the man’s gaze with as much innocence as he could muster. The girl in front of him snorted and turned away. Morning brought with it a slew of new people, until he lost sight of the line around a bend. It would only grow until the gates opened for the day. All he could see of the castle right now were high stone walls and the royal tower rising still higher, dwarfing the watchtowers that ringed the city.

The castle’s hiring happened in tandem with the harvest festival, as it had for the last dozen-odd years. It was part of King Liam O’Shea’s play at equality: rather than accepting only the children of current servants to be servants, and the children of nobles to wait on nobles, anyone in the kingdom could turn up at his door and interview for a place. It was more than most duchies offered their common folk, and people risked the roads from every nook of Lastrign for a chance, no matter what they thought of the Wasting King himself. Down in Twokins, they typically spent the day toasting His Majesty’s health until they forgot if their words were ironic.

Aaron wondered what his friends were doing, then squashed that thought as completely as he could. They were drinking. He’d be found dead this morning at the edge of an uptown alley, the blood dry on his back; down in the caves, they’d have that news already. His wasn’t the sort of death that was meant to be kept quiet. Of course they’d be drinking. They would drink until they had the courage to go do something stupid. Then they’d do it, and he’d be in even shorter supply of friends.

He should peel off to the stairways later, find someone to carry a message down—

Except what good would it do anyone? They’d be drinking with or without him, getting themselves killed with or without him. That was just how things were now in Twokins. He had a chance for something different. He didn’t even know what, but different. Aaron might have been stabbed in an alley last night, but Markus was watching the sunrise.

The young woman next to him shivered and pulled her cloak more snugly about herself. She was a tall skinny thing with long legs and knobbly knees, like a sapling tree all folded up. She had a quiver of arrows and a rucksack on her back and was hugging a long oilskin-wrapped bow to her chest. Mousy brown hair peeked out from under her knit cap. She seemed near to his seventeen years, or perhaps a bit older.

“You’ll want to put that away, before the rat catch— Before the guards come around,” Aaron said.

The girl looked at him more than a little critically after that slip of tongue. “An’ where am I to put a bow, and who are you to care?”

“Not the bow. Your hat.” Aaron mimed pulling it off.

The girl blinked eyes as plainly brown as her cloak and did so, giving a little shake to free her short hair from the static of the yarn. “Why? Is it some fashion thing in One King?”

Aaron shifted a little where he sat. The cobbles were cold, and while cold was nice and alive and all that, his posterior was going numb. “Where are you from?”

“Why? If it’s a fashion thing, I’m putting it back on. I’m not carin’ what’s proper for a lady’s maid. I’m aimin’ fer scribe.” She paused a moment, her eyebrows furrowing, before saying that last bit over again: “Aiming for scribe.”

A smile quirked his lips. He dropped it when she scowled and gave a disarming little shrug. “Not a fashion thing, just a Onekin thing. They’ll be checking eyes and ears before they let you in. Best not to make them paranoid.”

The wind brought a strand of hair into her face. She blew it away. “You’ve that many problems with doppels? I’d heard, but it’s the capital. Just seems like the capital shouldn’t have the same problems as the rest of us, dunnit?” She tried that one over, too: “Don’t it. Doesn’t it.”

“The north has griffins and the south’s ever fair. Here we’ve doppels.” He shrugged. “The lower town’s made up of caves, and not all of them mapped. All Lastrign hasn’t enough militia left to clear them.”If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She eyed him for a long moment more before leaning her head back against the wall behind them. “Salt’s Mane,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“Salt’s Mane. Out west, on the ocean. It’s where I’m from, enit?” Which sent her off on a spiral of repeating under her breath: ain’t it, isn’t it, is-it-not.

Aaron sat nice and quiet and kept a straight face as the girl from the dragon border wrestled her accent under control. He was a gentleman like that.

“Are you local, then?” she finally asked. “Course you are, stupid question.”

“Hey, I could be up from the Fair border itself,” Aaron protested. “Two Havens, maybe. Three Havens? However many havens.”

She had a very particular snort for that. “Came all the way up through the southern passes without any shoes, have you?”

Aaron tucked his toes self-consciously, regretting the boots he’d left behind on the dead boy’s feet. They might have given him blisters, but they’d have been warmer than bare feet on cold stone. The caves always had the same sort of chill to them; they didn’t get frost. “Could be I sold them to the Gentry.”

“Aye, and what bargain did they strike for that? Asked for corn to eat and they gave you corns on yer feet?”

“M’lady, I don’t know what rumors you’ve been listening to about the state of my soles, but I do not have—”

“Ssh.” She just about bowled him over with a lanky elbow as she clambered to her feet.

The gates were opening. The line rippled with movement as people hurried to stand, each taking the cue from those in front of them. It was the sort of stupid thing that crowds did, pigeons or people. Aaron was much slower to climb to his own feet and he was just as happy to have a girl fully a head taller than he was standing between him and those coming out.

“Think we’ll see the king?” she asked.

“I sincerely doubt that.”

It was the crack of dawn. This wasn’t the interviews starting; it would be an hour or more for those. This would be the militia.

She leaned back against the wall, her shoulders slumped in disappointment. “Guess there’s the draft everywhere, ain’t there? Doesn’t even look any fancier here.”

The public weapons ranges were set right outside the castle gates where the royal guard could oversee training. Right now, the redcoats were doing nothing fancier than setting up a few tables and checking that the practice weapons were in order. Aaron kept the tall girl between himself and the guards.

“That the Iron Captain?” she asked.

Aaron followed her rudely pointing finger to a head of cropped gray hair over dark skin and eyes that were too sharp both for the woman’s age and for his liking. The militia’s leader quickly delegated her scowling to the younger officers and set herself to surveying the crowd over a cup of tea.

“That’s her,” Aaron confirmed, keeping the girl between himself and the old rat terrier. There was enough strangeness packed in this street that he wasn’t much out of place, but he didn’t trust the castle’s promises of amnesty for those like him. He’d never have come here if his Death hadn’t told him to.

A handful of early families with children of age milled on the other side of the street, jockeying to be first in a line that didn’t yet exist. A few younger siblings, dragged along for lack of a sitter, had claimed the center of the road for a rope skipping game. The rope’s turners chanted the beat.

One, one, death has come

Two, two, wings in the blue

“It true she made a unicorn so mad that it stabbed her?” The girl squinted slightly, as if a trick of the light would make the old woman seem more disagreeable. Not that the militia’s gnarled leader needed help.

“That’s the story.” Aaron put up his collar and tucked himself in next to the wall.

Three, three, shadow in the tree

Four, four, fox at the door

“ ‘Fox’?” The girl asked, cocking her head. “It’s ‘who’s at the door,’ enit?”

Aaron might not have noticed the blond boy farther back in line, except that he asked much the same question at the same time: “Isn’t your fox sworn to the king? Why would he have his own bell?”

A local man replied to the pair of them. “Well, he might attack. Just ‘cause he’s got his own whole forest doesn’t mean he don’t want more. What’s a fox, anyway, except lies wrapped up in fur?”

Five, five, friends arrive

Six, six, Late Wake’s tricks

“Oh, me? John Baker,” the blond boy introduced himself, to whoever had asked. He looked fourteen at the oldest, and not a tall sort of fourteen. His clothes were white as his skin. Now that the sun had risen, he stood out against the darker tones of the city like snow on mud.

“ ‘John,’ ” one of the older boys near him repeated. “That’s a good One King name. I expected a few more syllables in there.”

The boy didn’t seem to notice the chuckles around him. “Well my real name’s a bit longer, but everyone said if I was heading south, I’d better use something easy, and John sort of sounds like my name, the beginning part anyway, so—”

“Is this real griffin?” Another boy asked, plucking at the white-and-black fur that lined the boy’s cloak.

He tugged the fabric free and took a small step back. “Um. No? It’s just snow leopard. Griffins have bigger spots, and it’s really a bad idea to skin them, they take offense to—”

“Say something for us,” a third boy asked, closing the circle around the blond. “In bird. I’ve always wanted to hear one of you sing.”

“Hold my place?” Aaron whispered to the girl, before raising his voice. “John! John Baker, what a surprise.”

The boy blinked at him with eyes as blue as winter skies. Aaron strode over and hooked an arm around the boy’s elbow, smiling at the leader of the hecklers. “You don’t mind me borrowing John, do you?”

“And if I do?” He was a tall fellow. Almost as tall as the scribe girl, and a lot more of that was muscle. He had the look of someone applying for blacksmith.

Aaron let his smile widen. He kept his shoulders loose and his bare feet set shoulder’s width apart, casual as can be. “I’m sure you don’t.”

The larger boy looked at Aaron’s twice-sewn clothes, then back at his own friends. Aaron smiled just a hair wider and the older boy took a step back, spitting on the ground.

“Go get netted, rat.”

“A pleasure speaking with you,” Aaron dragged his prize with him, back up the line, past the skipping children.

When all the bells have rung

Seven tolls means we’ve won

A boy missed his jump and ended up tangled in rope on the ground, as the children around him broke out into giggles. The adults with them continued to ignore what had just been happening, though Aaron could swear he felt the Iron Captain’s eyes on his back as she sipped at her tea.