Aaron returned to the enclaves for a third time, with a smile and a new letter and a griffin cloak upon his shoulders, which earned him quite the range of reactions. Mostly the sort that would get him killed long before he got lured into a dark forest, should he keep wearing the thing. Interesting to see which enclavers looked twice upon seeing him, like they’d already expected him to be dead.

“I’ll thank you not to incite a revolt,” King Orin said, and ordered him to take it off. Which gave Aaron quite the lovely reason to never be seen in it again, despite the king’s entire party knowing he had it, and despite its clear usefulness in the field.

Aaron obligingly took it off, and helped himself to the king’s wardrobe. He pulled out a coat as red as his own. Or as as red as his had been, before his various detours.

“Must you really…?” His Majesty started. And stopped. And turned back to his correspondence, with the air of one ignoring a misbehaving child, so as not to give it the attention it craves.

“Is that Rose’s letter?” Aaron asked, putting the first coat back and holding up another.

“Perhaps,” Orin said. Which, given the entirely blank paper under his quill, was true enough.

Aaron put back that coat, and plucked another. The king was taller than himself, and broader, but not by as much as Aaron had always thought. Amazing what eating like a noble and not trying to make himself small would do for a fellow’s clothing size.

“Not up to your usual standards?” asked His Majesty, when Aaron had put that one back as well.

“They don’t have dragon buttons.”

“I believe I’ve told you my dislike of those.”

Aaron almost asked why, before he realized quite suddenly why a man currently exiled by his own people pending a probably death sentence might not like having dragons displayed on his clothes. He didn’t say they suit you, either, because he didn’t actually want to see what it would take to spur the man to violence. It was odd enough that he hadn’t yet gotten hit for any of his troubles.

“Is it all right if I keep wearing them?” he asked, instead. Those buttons were about all his poor coat had going for it, right now.

Orin eyed it. Eyed the dirt scuffs Aaron had not had time to wash out, the tears he’d put off patching. The place where two of its buttons should be, and the glinting ones that remained. Aaron had polished the dirt off of them. It had seemed a thing to do, during his hours riding.

“I’m still king, Aaron. I can commission a new coat for you.”

“I can fix this one,” he said. “You gave it to me.”

“...At least have it laundered,” said the king. “And get rid of that griffin cloak. I’m entirely serious about the revolt.”

“As His Majesty orders,” said Aaron. And so, within the hour, he’d obligingly bundled the griffin cloak up, wrapped it inside a significantly less offensive bedsheet, and taken himself to the blacksmith’s. He was received as warmly as an iron in a quenching bucket.

“Letter from your son,” he said. And smiled at her other son, who was staring at Aaron like he’d seen a ghost. “And a package from me,” he added, dropping the bundle on her workbench.

The smith set down her tools, cautiously. She lifted a corner of the bedsheet, then dropped it again, entirely too practiced at not reacting.

“What do you mean by this?” she asked.

“I was reminded,” he said, “that not every sort of people do funeral rites the same. And it wouldn’t mean much in the trying without someone who actually cares.”

“And you don’t,” she said.

“I never knew them.” Aaron gave a one-shouldered shrug. “But there are those I do, whose interests I would speak to, if someone would be kind enough to hear me out. Without the casual murder attempts, if you please.”

“ ‘Casual?’ ” echoed John’s twin, his voice cracking, even as his mother shot a look his way. A failed murder wasn’t a thing to speak of in polite company.

They still thought he was polite company. Aaron bared his teeth, in that way humans generally mistook for a smile. He wondered if griffins did, too.

“Didn’t stick, did it?” he said. “But while we’re on the subject: I’d like my daggers back. I assume you know who’s been sharpening them. And my armor, too.”

“Is that… is that all you’ve got to say?” John’s twin asked.

“Right,” Aaron said, turning his gaze back to the boy’s mother. “Almost forgot. Do you work in gold? I’m in need of new buttons.”

“…Buttons,” the battlesmith said, like this was the most incomprehensible thing to yet come out of his mouth

“Dragon buttons,” he specified, “If you please.”

Whether pleased or not, she agreed.

* * *

Aaron touched wood before he headed back south. Not because he was planning on taking the forest route again—he was quite certain there were more things to kill him in there than he’d yet seen, and hopefully the extra patrols on the coastal road meant there were fewer things fitting that description there—but to be friendly. To say hello, to something that might have been a friend, for a day or so. Or might have just been using him to not get eaten, but he was not unfamiliar to that angle of friendship. So he stopped at the forest’s edge just outside the enclave’s still open gates, kept his feet firmly on the proper side of the stones, and reached just a hand in to the nearest tree. Gave it three soft taps.

He was not expecting the forest to knock back, as it were.

“Hold your fire,” he heard bellowed, loud enough from the walls behind him that he was sure someone had already loosed when they shouldn’t have. He didn’t see the arrow, if there even was one. He just saw… white. A lot of white, dappled now with black like the bark of a birch tree.

“Well,” said Aaron, looking up. And up. “You’ve grown.”

The Lord of Spring lowered its head. A not insignificant portion of the canopy appeared to descend with it, leaves shiny in their newness rustling from its antlers.

The great white reindeer nudged Aaron’s hand. Which was still raised, because a fellow could be forgiven for forgetting to put it down while frozen. The Spring Lord’s snout was covered in fine soft fur. Its breath, puffed gently from nostrils the size of a kaibyou’s kittens, came out warm as a spring breeze. Aaron hesitated a moment. Then gave that snout three soft pats, in echo of his greeting to the forest itself.

The reindeer snorted. It lifted its head again, and turned, and disappeared back into its woods in a way something that big and startlingly white really oughtn’t be able to.

Aaron lowered his hand.

Behind him were the walls of the Held Lands’ cramped town. And just to the side of that were the fields, whose workers had gotten quite a good view of the new Lord of Seasons.

Reindeer, he recalled, from a thing his sister had said while scowling at pelts in a forester village, were a symbol shared by foresters and enclavers alike. The herds had been their independence; their life; their power. White reindeer, in particular, were said to be even more special than the rest. Aaron was no expert in the stories behind them. But he didn’t need to be, when the forest itself had just flaunted its own symbol.

Spring. The season when new life returned to places cowed by winter’s harshness.

Aaron looked at the people in the fields, who were looking back. Those of them that hadn’t hit their knees and bowed their heads at the Lord of Seasons’ appearance.

He wasn’t trying to incite a revolt. But he wasn’t particularly invested in stopping one, either.

* * *

On Aaron’s fourth visit to the enclaves, the blacksmith had a letter for him to carry back to John. And two royal dragons, done in gold. He sewed them back on his coat himself.

His armor simply appeared in his sitting room while he was catnapping in the bedchamber. As did his daggers. Threat and apology, all in one.