Breakfast was a private affair, in the sense that everyone was privately pretending that all was well. Orin was pretending he hadn’t had to grip the back of his chair a moment, steading himself for the task of sitting down. The Lady was pretending that little conversation from last night had never happened. As was Aaron, less successfully. And the servants… The servants were pretending something, but Aaron didn’t know what, except that all the enclavers about the castle were the most polite and deferential that Aaron had ever seen. It didn’t suit them. None of this suited anyone. But the lords and ladies kept eating, and the enclavers kept serving, and there was the click of serving trays being set down and of silverware against plates, and the murmurings of polite conversation all about. Good morning, lovely weather, how excellent that the fields were sprouting and the dragon attacks ebbing; this would all be over soon.

No one asked the king whether he was looking forward to going home.

And the Lady smiled across the table at Aaron, as pleasant as ever.

Aaron ate a little faster. Disappeared a few more things into his pockets, just in case. His fingers brushed the smooth surface of the bezoar. Bezoars were only good for one poisoning, weren’t they? He’d brought significantly more than one poisoning’s worth of ingredients north with him. All safely stored in the Lady’s rooms, now. He’d seen her Death through the window this morning, down on the rocky beach below the castle’s cliff, holding her blue dress up as she hopped over rocks and waves and seals that never saw her. She’d stopped to speak once, to the Death of one of those small gray whales that seemed always to be smiling, the kind that could come right up near shore in the same waters people swam in. People not including Aaron; it was abundantly clear to him that he wasn’t an ocean creature. The Lady herself was in a dress of white—or possibly argent—and no closer to dying than she’d been last night.

Orin ate exactly his usual amount, and not a spoonful more. He remained sitting while the table was cleared. Happily for him, the dining hall in the Held Lands frequently doubled as a meeting hall. And so it could be written up as convenience rather than weakness that had him holding his morning court without the need to stand. Or walk. The nobles here were concerned with increased griffin sightings and, less subtly, with how many trade agreements they could get His Majesty to sign before the man was physically unable to do so.

Subtlety was a subject much on Aaron’s mind as he continued sitting a scant few spots down from the Lady, his leg jittering under the table.

“Have you plans this morning?” his sister asked him, voice low, as a negotiation which concerned neither of them continued. She asked it very casually. A bit too casually, but seeing a trap didn’t mean understanding its workings.

“I’m at His Majesty’s leisure,” Aaron hedged back, in his own whisper.

“Excellent,” she said, deliberately glancing about the meeting from which Orin would not soon escape. “Then you’ve time to begin your sword lessons.”

Ah, there it was.

“How generous,” Aaron replied. Followed immediately by, “No thank you.”

“No thanks necessary.”

“Actually,” whispered Rose, “I require his presence for a tour of this place.”

“I’m sure my brother can show you around in the afternoon,” Adelaide said.

“I’m quite sure I’ll need my cousin all day.”

“She’s absolutely right,” Aaron said, and stood. Rose hastily followed suit, her chair squeaking on the floor. The talks briefly halted, a great deal of important-seeming people turning to look at this interruption, but he’d never yet met a social nicety he couldn’t step over.

And so they escaped their respective siblings. Even if Aaron’s problem was being wanted too much, and hers was rather the opposite.

They began their tour outside. There wasn’t much to see, but Rose looked at it all like she was taking down notes in her mind. Apparently this hadn’t just been a pretense. She stared at the aging long houses set in their rows, each clearly constructed around the same time as the rest. And patched where they’d been damaged—mostly by fire—the woodwork turning each house into a calico whose history was in its spots.

“Why is it so quiet?” Rose asked.

“The adults are out in the fields.”

“Where are the children?”

“In the fort. Most live inside it, I believe.”

“Why don’t they all live in these? Or all in the fort, instead?”

“A security risk, I imagine,” he said, and she was smart enough not to ask to whom. She didn’t even glance at the guards on the wall, any more than was polite.

“Is their school in the fort, as well?” she asked.

“Not sure they have a school.”

They did, as it turned out, have a school. Rose insisted upon finding it. It was a one-room classroom built into the fort, currently occupied by a handful of young children and their teacher.

“Oh yes, of course,” the man said. “The tuition is very reasonable. Much subsidized, you know; our lord provides scholarships for all who want to learn. Well, those whose families truly can’t afford it. Most would rather have their children working, though. We don’t get many that come for more than their basic letters. Just enough for most jobs, and then they’re pulled out. A shame; just a shame.”

“Did you ever teach a Johnathan Baker?” Aaron asked.

“Baker? No, I… Oh, yes. Yes, that’s the name he took for going south, wasn’t it? A good boy, that one. Always polite. Respectful. It’s a hard thing, you understand, teaching them anything when they’re so set on not learning, but teaching them respect is hardest of all, even though it gets them the furthest.” The teacher pushed his glasses a smidge higher up his nose. “But John, yes, he was such a good boy. A pleasure to have in class, and one of the few that could keep that brother of his in line.”

The man paused to assess whether his current pupils were in need of him. Said pupils did their best to appear studious, in front of their noble visitors. …A label that included Aaron, whether it fit him comfortably or not.

“Dim as a rock, though,” the teacher continued. “He’d stare at a book all day, even pretend to be flipping through, but he could never read a word of it. Such a good lad, never one to miss a lesson, but just… His brother figured it out. Reading, I mean; enough to handle an errands list. I tried to get him interested in more, but. Well, it’s not as if he’s the sort you could trust in a library. Would probably tear at the pages just for spite. But John was always… a very diligent young man. Very diligent. None of that sky-watching nonsense his brother gets up to. He just wanted to learn his craft; wouldn’t let his family hold him back from becoming a true citizen. It gives me hope that they really can learn.”

The man’s young pupils, presumably used to such encouraging words from their teacher, did not lift their heads from their studies.

“You couldn’t even teach him to read?” asked Rose, with exactly the level of personal affront that illiteracy was to her.

“Yes, well. We do what we can, with what we’re given. Not everyone is meant for scholarhood. Do you know him, then? He’s making something of himself?”

“He’s a baker,” Aaron said. “At the castle. In One King.”

“The castle,” the man repeated. “Goodness. I’ll have to tell the rest. I always tell them, I always say, hard work and a positive, respectful attitude will open doors. The castle. really? I should write him a letter. Congratulate him. Oh, but who would read it to him?”

“I’m sure he’ll find someone,” Aaron said. John would just take it to whatever scribe he’d been using all spring, no doubt. Which did raise the question of what scribe he trusted enough, with all these letters to and from his family. Perhaps discreet should join diligent in the boy’s list of adjectives.

When they resumed their tour, Rose had on her princess smile. The thin-lipped one that she used around all the people who greeted her warmly, and who would force iron shavings down her throat if they were allowed. For her own good, of course. So she could be as certain of what she was as they were.

The town wasn’t entirely lifeless, no matter how hard its designers had tried. The enclavers had taken the charcoal from their fires, and drawn on the walls of longhouse and town alike. Not in great planned murals or scripted works of art, like in the fort’s stone carvings, but whatever had come to mind. Someone—possibly a few someones, given the different styles to its shading—had drawn a fairly good rendition of the mountains, should the wall itself not have been there to block the view. On the side of one peak was a child’s stick-legged oval of a cat, drawn high enough that its creator had likely begged their way onto someone’s shoulders in the crafting of their masterpiece. There were no griffins, or reindeer. But there were cliffs, and forests, and sky.

The enclavers had been planting gardens, too; ones that were looking to the future. Little patches of flowers and herbs almost invariably hosted a sapling or three. Oak trees, for the most part. Trees that would grow tall and strong, providing branches to climb and shade to sit under. And acorns. Acorns were the sort of food that nobles wouldn’t bother with; the enclavers would be able to do what they wished with that crop, when it came.

Their tour ended with a cursory walk through the fort. And with the weaponsmith. Because a person should always know the local smith.

Rose stopped just inside the doorway, staring at the boy working in the back. “John?”

“His brother,” Aaron corrected. A boy whose name Aaron still didn’t know, and at this point that annoyed the boy more than it did Aaron, which was a petty enough return on that murder attempt. “And his mother.”

Whose name he also didn’t know. Because he’d heard her called Halley, but that was hardly her real one, any more than John was Jahnalistrin’s. She’d never bothered introducing herself to Aaron, and he didn’t care to ask for the lie.

“I didn’t know John had a twin,” Rose said.

“Apparently he doesn’t talk about me much,” the boy said, in exactly the kind of tone that would make one suspect him capable of tearing pages out of books, and other such spiteful acts.

“Strange place for a messenger to be,” said the smith, in a way that really said, you’d best not be violating mail laws in front of a witness. She either didn’t recognize her princess, didn’t care, or didn’t care to recognize Rose as her princess. “Can I help you?”

“There’s new damage on some of the long houses,” Aaron said. “Newer than my last visit.”

“The Spring Lord is a white reindeer,” she said. “A white reindeer that showed itself before us. Some got overly excited about that.”

…By which she likely meant there’d been a riot. It was a good thing Orin had more pressing matters, or he might be aggrieved with Aaron just now.

“We’ve more griffin sightings these days, too,” the smith said, ever so conversationally. “Some of the lords have started talking about building another wall. One around the fields.”

“Exciting,” Aaron said. At least any rioting hadn’t been entirely his fault.

“But griffins can fly,” said Rose. And then: “Oh.”

The walls in this town weren’t built to keep things out. But it had been kind of her to think so.

“I could speak with my brother,” the princess offered.

John’s twin scoffed. “Like that would do anything.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“And very helpful, your family has always been.”

Aaron edged a bit farther from the two of them as their spat continued. The weaponsmith joined him. He slipped her John’s latest letter under the workbench; she accepted it.

“They’ve made arrests,” the smith said, her voice soft under the nearby squabbling. “Anything you can do about that?”

“Are they to be executed?” Aaron asked.

“I gather that executions are considered tasteless, with your king’s situation. I give it until your lot leave.”

“Noted,” Aaron said.

Hours later, the princess was still not over her verbal defeat.

“And then he said, ‘The Held Lands are grateful for your aid.’”

Lochlann had as much to say to this as Aaron did. Or as Rose had, in the moment. Now she was pacing her room, as if it had been the floor to offend her.

“I want to learn their language,” she said.

“They don’t speak it, either,” the lieutenant said. “It’s illegal.”

One of those was certainly true.

“Why?” she asked.

“The griffins are not our allies, Your Highness.”

“They’re not griffins; they’re our people.”

One of those, as well.

“And isn’t that a further reason to learn their language?” she continued. “I want to… to understand them, to show I respect them, to be taken seriously.”

“Speaking the language won’t stop them from clubbing you while your back is turned,” Aaron put in.

This was taken as hypothetical by the princess. The good lieutenant leveled a look upon him, but Aaron didn’t elaborate.

That night, King Orin took his second dose. He tried to bar his sister from attending once more, but she’d a day of frustrations in need of venting. And so she watched him put the cup to his own lips, and drink. And if she left the room shaking with more anger than when she’d entered, well. Sometimes that was what getting your wish was like.

Aaron waited in the hallway again. Without the Lady or her Death, this time. He sat in the window seat, and stroked down the back of the calico cat, who was staring out the window with a body tensed for pouncing and the occasional string of murderous chirps coming from her mouth.

There were griffins out there, white shadows under the moonlight, circling far outside of the range of the ballistae. Circling the castle. Aaron watched, and pet a cat who didn’t know how small she was compared to those overgrown birds.

Some of their Deaths flew with them. The little calico could see them; she made just as many aborted lunges towards them as she did their wards. The kaibyou had been able to see Deaths, as well. Were griffins cat enough to see who flocked with them?

His Majesty emerged from his rooms with the second letter for Connor. Aaron stepped forward to take it.

“...Did you forget something?” Orin asked.

Aaron stopped looking over the man’s shoulder. “Just checking,” he said, and didn’t elaborate.

No Deaths were near His Majesty tonight. Only Jeshinkra, guarding his door.