Aaron gave John the letter from his mother. John gave Aaron its reply, and honey rolls. It might not have been friendship, exactly, but it was at least a truce.

* * *

The investigation into Orin’s humanity continued, amidst the fighting. Aaron found himself in the odd position of personally visiting nearly every place where Orin’s old squadmates—his friends—had died. Reportedly died. And, of course, the place where his Majesty may or may not have been doppeled.

It was surprisingly pleasant. A ledge, part of a tumble of ledges that cascaded down a cliffside a few wingbeats off from the village His Majesty had been defending. It was wide enough for grass to grow, with the tall spikes of lupine standing among them. Bees fought the coastal breeze for a chance to land. The flowers would have been here last spring, as well, when Orin lay injured. Though Aaron imagined the dragon would have trampled a fair few. It was a wide enough ledge for a man to lay on, but a slim perch for a dragon hatchling.

One of the nobles—a southern one, watched closely by a northern one—found a greening copper coat button pressed in the dirt. There was no way of telling who it had come from, except that it wasn’t Orin’s; he’d still liked his dragon buttons back then. It got passed around their little group and into Aaron’s pockets. They found nothing else there, and learned nothing more of how the prince’s rescue had gone during their inquiries in town; none but Orin’s own team had been present. And given that they’d left the encounter with one dead and two gravely injuried, the crown prince among them, heroic bragging hadn’t been their inclination.

The second death had been in the healer’s ward at Salt’s Mane.

“She’d bled too much before we got the cautery heated,” the hedgewife who’d attended Orin’s injured squadmate said. “There’s no mystery in bleeding too much. You leave that boy alone; he didn’t wake up ‘til two days after her pyre, and we’ve watches all hours when someone’s knocking for death. We’d ‘ave seen if anyone tried anything. Now unless the lot of you are hurt more than in those heads of yours, I’ve work to attend.”

Aaron rather liked the hedgewives of Salt’s Mane.

The third to die got in a bar fight on the sixth level of Salt’s Mane. They counted up from the ground here, instead of down, which was a thing that got Aaron briefly lost as he went to collect reports from the others. The fight was the kind of stupid thing someone would do, if two of their friends were dead and a third still unconscious in a healer’s bed. Another of his teammates stopped the fight and got him out the door safe, but he waved the lot of them back to their drinks and went stumbling off to the guest barracks alone.

“Heard the shout from my room,” said one of the scarce witnesses. “You live between a bar and the barracks, shouting’s the least you hear. The ones that sing when they’re drunk, those are the best and the worst—”

“If you hear things so often,” Aaron asked, “why’d you come to check this one out?”

“Right. Seemed weird somehow, is all. Didn’t strike me why until later: shouters usually got someone shouting back. Whoever done him, they came quiet. What kind of man sets out to kill another?”

Murder was a taboo thing, in this plateau with too many empty rooms; unspeakably so. Another thing to turn Aaron around.

The shouting was done by the time the man had opened his door. And the third of Orin’s teammates was dead.

Two more were killed on an unmarked stretch of road, staged like they’d been robbed, as if robbery were a common thing so far from any large town. They were given a pyre by the nearest forester village, and identified later by the rough sketches a local teenager had taken—they’d no official scribe in such a small place, and hadn’t the time to send for one. Not with the bodies already set on by animals. Not without knowing how long they’d sat without any watchers at their wake, or what might have moved into them. They were identified by the sketches, and the simple fact they’d never made it home. Deaths four and five.

Jeshinkra would have been the sixth. Whether she was or not was a matter for debate, and one the investigation committee was not prioritizing, so long as she was kept track of. The lord up in Helland agreed to do so. Should she seem inclined to depart, Adelaide had agreed to take charge of her again. King Orin had neither been bothered with this small matter, nor consulted.

The seventh to die was a suicide, or so it seemed; odd for a suicide to send a letter, warning the last to run.

That letter had disappeared with the eighth down in Three Havens, and Markus’ father thought his son to be the one behind it. Which might have been why Aaron had not been invited to join any of the investigators headed south. Nor to carry their mail, as interesting as it would likely be.

Orin had woken the day after the third’s death, though he hadn’t been particularly lucid. The late King Liam had made the trip to see him, despite his own failing health. Lord Sung had been there, as well, and Adelaide. Junior, that is. Adelaide Senior, the Lady, had apparently spent years being absent at exactly those times her husband might be looking for her.

It had been decided, for Orin’s health, to withhold the news of those first deaths from him. And the rest, well. The crown prince was their commander, not their friend; what family would bother him with the deaths of people he saw only once a year?

Aside from Jeshinkra’s. She’d been very clear that her sword be sent to him.

* * *

Aaron wondered what their Deaths would report, if he could talk to them. Not that he cared about the king’s doppeling status. Not in the same way these nobles did, in any case.

* * *

“They’re going to decide it’s safer to kill you,” Aaron said. “Allies that want you dead aren’t allies.”

“Thank you, Aaron, for that astute observation,” said the king, who didn’t seem to think he’d other options.

* * *

Aaron faithfully passed the investigators’ correspondence on. Those letters weren’t the thing that needed changing.

* * *

“There’s no point negotiating with a king who’s about to be a head shorter,” said the weaponsmith. “Even if I’d the power to,” she added, a bit late.

“So you would talk, if he were inclined to a longer life?”

She sighed. But she took the cloak bundle he’d brought all the same, and gave him a new letter besides.

John’s twin glowered as he slapped his own letter on a worktable. Aaron gave the kid a winning sort of smile.

He was doing quite well at this messenger business. It wasn’t much different from being a Face, now he’d found his stride.

* * *

He could do without the dragon attacks, though.

They were… escalating was the word for it, the one that got tossed around meetings his sister dragged him to when she could get her hand on the back of his coat, like he was some feral cat she was trying to domesticate into a proper little lordling. Little chance of that.

“What do you think?” an actual lord asked him.

Aaron would sink lower in his chair, but Adelaide had gotten up for a drink not long ago, and hip-checked him closer to the table on her way back. He didn’t have room for slumping. And that foot she’d lodged against his chair leg wasn’t letting him get any.

“Seems fine,” he said, of a plan that had sounded very plan-like.

“No bad feelings?” the man pressed.

“I don’t get them on demand,” Aaron said. And rather wished he’d kept his mouth shut, that time he’d seen the Deaths on the coastal road with the king.

And a few times after that.

It was the decent thing to do, and Aaron tried to be decent when it was no hair off his own pelt. It didn’t make him a magical attack detector. Especially not when he needed to see the place, see if Deaths were gathering there, to know if something was about to go poorly.

“If you can’t tell from here, maybe you could…”

“I’m a messenger, not a fighter. Do I look like a fellow you should put on your front lines?” Aaron asked, and tried not to be insulted when their appraising looks reflected the conclusion he’d hoped they’d come to.

“I’m getting you a sword,” Adelaide said, after one such meeting. “And teaching you to use it.”

“I’ve already got three knives,” he countered.

“They’re knives,” she said, like that was any kind of argument. “...Three? Who did you steal from this time?”

“They gave it to me, thank you much.”

“And you never gave it back, I take it.”

Aaron continued to work hard at evading his sister, and her increasing tendency to be sisterly.

The dragons still weren’t acting normal. They were attacking at the coast, still. But not as often as they should be, and in greater numbers than they should have, with aims that all these meetings couldn’t decide on. These weren’t strikes by one or two dragons, stirring up a quaint human nest until they found a body they fancied for doppeling. These were guerilla attacks: in and out, aimed at fear. The same dragons, not stealing a single human and flying them off to break, but coming back over and over, recognizable by their growing injuries.

They were coming back time and again, when it wasn’t in their individual interest to.

“It is not a ‘bad feeling’,” Aaron made sure to be clear on, “and it’s not family loyalty,” he added, and was supported by his sister’s snort off to his side. “But I’m with Adelaide. All these attacks seem a distraction.”

Which left the question of what they were distracting from.

There were more inland patrols when he traveled his route to the castle, now. More children gathered in village squares, put to work weaving nets for wings. He’d even delivered a message to the Raffertys—the legitimate uptown ones, the armored merchants—ordering more iron and steel up from the south.

But more weapons didn’t make themselves overnight, and every person patrolling inland on the chance of an attack was one needed at the coast, where the dragons were hitting fast and hard.

* * *

Aaron had the distinct impression that they were targeting him, specifically.

“How sure are you the road’s clear, this time?” Aaron asked.

“The patrol just went through,” said Jessica, who appreciated neither him calling her Jeshinkra nor him asking this question each time he came through. It was her own fault for getting put in charge of the increased patrol schedule.

“Thanks for checking,” Aaron said. And followed the coastal road until the Held Lands were out of sight, whereupon he promptly sent his horse ahead, and went to touch wood.

The Lord of Seasons’ forest was a more welcoming place when he’d his deer skin on. Knowing the Spring Lord also helped. The great white reindeer liked it when Aaron showed him to more patches of medicine in its own woods; Aaron liked having an escort none would challenge.

The other reindeer agreed. Those that had survived Winter were finding their way to their new lord. More and more were gathered, each time Aaron came. The calves, in particular, like to charge in and out between the Spring Lord’s legs. Sometimes the white reindeer would gambol a few steps with them, before seeming to recall that a creature as large as it was more likely to trample its playmates.

Aaron stopped at a stream, and left a copper button.

A nixie like a dragonfly nymph grinned up at him from the water.

“I’m looking for something,” he said.

* * *

“I sent word,” Aaron protested.

“You sent a horse,” Rose said.

“It was one of the smarter ones,” said Aaron, who was getting well acquainted with the horses along this route.

The princess looked at him a long moment, then turned her glare to Lochlann.

“Aaron,” the lieutenant said, after a sigh rather similar to the weaponsmith’s. “A horse carrying a note that says ‘not dead’ is not the reassurance you seem to think.”

“You spelled ‘dead’ wrong,” Rose said, with great and personal affront.

“I’m pretty bad at dying,” Aaron joked, and got an extra hour in Salt’s Mane’s dungeon before his sister came again to clear him.

At least the gate guards had stopped trying to attack him. They just gave him an escort to the cells. Sloppy of them. If he were an inhuman thing, now would be a great time to take advantage.

* * *

King Orin ordered that Onekin’s old defenses be brought out of storage. This would have been an easier thing, if so many of them hadn’t been sabotaged. And a lot more recently than the last they’d been used. Vital pieces were missing, or smashed beyond quick repair; the stations to which they’d be anchored were cluttered with rubble, newly fallen.

“Damn rats,” said one redcoat.

The Captain of the Guard said nothing. Neither did Aaron. Destroying dragon defenses didn’t benefit their city’s rats. But then, all doppels were much the same to a ratcatcher.

Aaron sent another message to the old raccoon. And to the blacksmith, too.

Stop making things my problem, the raccoon sent back. The blacksmith had very little to say to him, which was about usual.

He thought to send to Clever Hands, too. But.

Connor’s council was now firmly agreed upon a rat hunt. They’d hoped to do it in summer, when the bulk of the city’s fighters had returned from the dragon front. Now they were talking of one sooner, using what militia they did have.

“What do you think?” Connor asked, up on a roof.

“I think we’ve bigger problems,” Aaron said. “And there are friends to be made, if you don’t make enemies of them, first.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you know about doppels?” Aaron asked. “What do you really know about doppels?”

Prince Connor delayed the rat hunt vote, pending correspondence with his brother the king.

Aaron fingered that letter a good long time on his next ride up to Helland. If he never handed it over, if he never had a reply to bring back… well. That would delay the vote by quite a bit, wouldn’t it?

Trust. It wasn’t a thing he liked to give, but it was as good a test as any.

“Aaron,” asked King Orin, not looking up from his most recent letter. “What have you been saying to my brother?”

“About the same I’m saying to you,” said Aaron. “Have you written that letter to Rose yet? Or do you want me speaking to her more than you do?”

* * *

Rose received her first letter pressed with His Majesty’s own seal. She was very pleased, and clearly trying not to be.

“How lovely,” she said, “that you didn’t die bringing it to me.”

Aaron snorted, and settled down to read on the couch next to her. He still had his homework to get through, after all. At least it had the decency to be mostly numbers, even if they were a bigger sort than one needed for supply runs. They still made for easier reading than words.

Mostly.

“Why are you scowling?” Rose asked, glancing over.

“All these numbers were going up, from the first year they started writing things down, for a hundred odd years after. Then they started going down. Fast.”

“What year did it start?” she asked, leaning over his ever-engaging tome of population records.

Aaron traced the columns up, two pages back from where he’d been. “Here. Might be that it started sooner, though. Connor said something about relative and absolute growth rates, when I was reading with him.” Which had apparently been a way of saying that things could get smaller while still getting bigger, which sounded like another way to measure the moon.

Rose made a face at that. And another, when she traced her own finger over the years. Back, just a little further.

“This is when they sealed the old castle.”

“Why?” Aaron asked. Because he’d been inside the castle they’d replaced it with; the one that rose up above the city like a taunt, the one whose defenses had been sabotaged before they’d even been needed again. And he’d seen the castle in the Downs, that could still kill person with a touch.

“I don’t know,” Rose said, sounding even more troubled than he felt.

It wasn’t a thing that should concern him. The answer was already clear enough: the castle in the downs was Letforget. In every one of its seamless stones, in every gracefully arched bridge that led to it, in the very way it hung above the underground river, too heavy to be supported by the thin columns below. Letforget was Letforget.

“I don’t know,” Rose repeated. “But I found a book once, that said it was haunted.”

* * *

And, not long later:

“Aaron,” she said, staring down at her letter, “What have you been saying to my brother?”

It wasn’t Connor’s letter she was reading.

“I’ve been trying to talk him out of letting his people kill him,” he said. “Unless you’d rather I didn’t?”

“He’s not letting anyone, they just…”

“Are going to kill him for a thing he didn’t choose,” Aaron said.

Rose, with her fey-marked face, took a moment to glare at him. “I am capable of drawing the parallels myself, thank you. The question is what we will do about it. Which does not include smirking, please stop that.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

There was a reason she was his favorite O’Shea.

* * *

“This is the only place the trend reverses,” Connor said, hiding down in the kitchens with him. They’d a wet towel on the bench between them, for use in cleaning their hands before turning a page. Aaron doubted the Lady would appreciate the tattletale prints of John’s latest strawberry sweets getting all over her book, copy though it might be. He knew enough from Mabel to know that copies didn’t make themselves, and scribes could and would preemptively yell at a fellow at the mere thought of damage to one.

The prince had marked two pages between the fingers of his non-strawberried hand, and was flipping back and forth between them with a frown. “In 708, there’s a spike to the total nearly as big as the whole population of One King, when we’d seen a decrease near as big over the years before. What, did they misplace all those people?”

John dropped another tray next to them, with much less regard for Late Wake property. “I don’t know about the rest, but eighty years ago was when the enclaves were formed. Seems like an O’Shea should know that. Your Highness.”

Connor looked down at the tray, then up at the boy, then down at the tray again. It was the safer place. “Didn’t the enclaves come to us for protection from the griffins?”

“We came to the Executioner,” the blond boy restated. “For protection. My apologies, Your Highness, I recall that now. It’s quite the same as I was taught.”

“Where are you going?” Prince Connor asked, as the enclaver wiped his hands, and took off his apron.

“I beg leave, Your Highness. I need to get more wood for the ovens.”

He didn’t come back. Connor looked mournfully at the newest tray of pastries but did not eat. Aaron waited until his highness’ back was turned, then bundled the whole lot up for the road. They were the kind the Lady favored.

* * *

If One King found itself in possession of excess militia, then it was better put to work in restoring their defenses than hunting pests, King Orin wrote. Or so Prince Connor relayed to his council.

Aaron, meanwhile, searched the Lady’s closet for more griffin cloaks, and pocketed her bezoar. In its place he left a perfectly round river stone, hand-picked by a nixie. Then he set off. He’d a meeting to attend, after all, and he’d been told to not be late.