A woman.

Young. Twenty five, twenty-six. Slim scrawny wiry fast. Dagger held loosely, certain, expertly between long fingers webbed with black skin.

She was moving towards the princess.

Water basin overturned. Water pitcher gone—thrown—missed—hit back wall. The princess had put a table between them; good girl. But it wouldn’t slow the woman down. The woman saw the guards; didn’t retreat. The princess’ scream was sharp loud full force; out of breath, gasping, ending. A tensing in the woman’s knife hand.

The assassin was dead before the princess had drawn another breath.

Push the girl out of the way. Better bruises from the floor than a blade in her neck. The woman was fast: an elbow to Aaron’s ribs, scrambling, hands and feet and knees and knives. Faster than he was. But her eyes focused beyond the fight: focused on him. Her mouth opened—

“Aar—”

His dagger sliding between her ribs. No blood until it was out again. A man in front of him—

“Whoa,” the lieutenant said, retreating a step in front of Aaron’s blade. “Whoa. Easy.”

Aaron’s eyes refocused. The princess was behind him, climbing shakily to her feet. The body was in front of him, newly fallen. Lieutenant Varghese and the other redcoats were just entering the room. That was all the more time the fight had taken. That was all the more that serious ones ever took.

“You must be kidding me,” the girl’s Death said, pushing off from the wall. Her eyes were on the assassin’s corpse. It was to herself she was speaking.

Aaron’s eyes flicked to her before he remembered he shouldn’t look. He shouldn’t see her. The lieutenant saw the movement, and his own gaze followed. For an instant, he held his sword more tensely. When he saw nothing, he relaxed only by slow degrees.

The princess’ Death was a near perfect imitation of the girl herself. They were the same age, same height, same everything down to the way their cloaks folded over them as they stood. There was a very tangible difference between them, however: the girl behind him was young. The girl in front of him was old. Older than Aaron dared guess, though it only showed in her eyes.

“And there’s an evening wasted,” the little Death said, nudging at the woman’s body with a prettily booted foot. “As if I didn’t have better things to do then wait on her.” She drew back her foot for another petty kick. It never landed.

“Do you mind?” The assassin’s Death appeared with no warning. She scowled until the princess’ Death took a step back, crossing her arms with a huff. The newcomer knelt next to the body, hand gentle as she brushed a strand of hair out of the dead woman’s face.

She’d always had trouble keeping it tidy between forms. A hundred hair ties, lost on cave floors.

Aaron dragged his gaze away from the body, back to the lieutenant giving orders to his men. One of them was to go back down the tower and rally the garrison; another was to raise the alarm on their own floor and inform the king. The remaining guards he set to securing the princess’ own quarters. He looked at Aaron, standing between himself and his princess with a dagger in his hand, but did not say a word. The man’s own sword was out and he did not put it away. Aaron approved.

“What happened?” the woman’s Death asked.

“Do I look like I know?” The princess’ Death folded her arms over her chest. “Ripples and ghosts and humanity’s exquisite penchant for screwing us all over, I would assume. Do you know what her next life was to be?”

“Have you told the court?”

“I have been here only marginally longer than you. What do you think?” The ageless girl let out a long sigh. “A tree; it would have lived a thousand and thirty-two years. Not thirteen. I can’t even catch my breath when things die at thirteen.”

“They need to know,” the assassin’s Death said, still crouched over her charge.

“A stunted little mountain pine, farther north than most other things can even survive. I wouldn’t have even seen another Death for a century.” She stared, rather pointedly, at her co-worker.

“I’m going.”

“Fine. Go.”

Aaron had been expecting more, somehow: some visible act of aiding the soul’s passing. He’d not gotten a good look at what the Deaths did, back during the fox’s attack; he’d been a bit busy. What he got instead was the assassin’s Death gesturing obscenely at the princess’. Then she was gone and on the floor was just a corpse, same as every other he’d met.

The princess’ Death lurked a moment more, arms still crossed and lips pressed into a thin line. She was staring at the princess. Aaron wondered, just a bit, whether the knife in his hand would do any good here.

“You’d be happier as a tree,” the Death said, to a girl who could not hear. Then she was gone, as well.

Aaron noticed that his own Death had pointedly remained out of sight back in the hall.

It wasn’t long until a bell started tolling from above their heads; the first alarm of the new year, quickly taken up by more distant towers. The redcoats who’d been poking for other rats around the princess’ rooms reported back soon after.

“All clear, Lieutenant.”

“Clear here, sir.”

Aaron and the lieutenant exchanged a look. Only then did Aaron begin to relax. He leaned down briefly. The princess gasped as he wiped off his blade on her carpet, and tucked it back under his sweater. Lochlann said nothing. He only sheathed his own sword, and patted down the body.

The lieutenant found her dagger. He turned it over in his hands, careful of the blade. One finger traced the gold braid through the hilt’s black wrapping. “You know what this means?”

Aaron gave a half-shoulder shrug, by way of reply.

The princess leaned against him, her eyes on the woman. “May her soul not wander,” she whispered over the body.

He shrugged her off before he’d quite realized what he was doing.

“If you’re attacked again, I’ll need that arm free.” He could see in her eyes that his explanation didn’t help.

“Am I going to be attacked again?” She tucked her hands into the folds of her cloak, drawing the fabric close. Her words were for him, but her eyes hadn’t left the body. The body of the woman who had tried to kill her, and who was now dampening the carpet of her bedroom with blood.

Gwen—

He needed to not think about that. It was all done and dead and what he needed to do right now was what kept him alive.

The door to the hall, the one they’d left open in their haste, was brimming with guards before he could think straight again.

“Is the room secure?” This was the first question out of the Captain of the Guard’s mouth.

“Yes, sir,” Lochlann answered.

“The princess?”

“Uninjured, sir. There was a—”

“I know,” the Captain said. And in the same breath: “They struck for the crown prince.”

Next to him, the princess stilled. She raised a hand and gripped, tightly, at his sweater, careful to leave his knife hand free.

“Is he…?” she began to ask.

“I dealt with it,” a voice said, and a stiff young man with rust red hair shouldered his way through the line of his protectors. The crown prince himself. The only blood on him was clearly not his own. “Thank you for the alarm, Lieutenant Varghese. It was timely.”

The princess broke from Aaron’s side, and ran to embrace her elder brother.

“Not my sword arm, Rose,” Orin chided. “If there’s another attack, I’ll need it free.”

Aaron didn’t want to like the royal family. He really didn’t.