Six, six, Late Wake’s tricks.

The bells rang steadily, quickly picked up by others around the fort. It wasn’t the sort of signal that told people what to watch for. But it did tell them to not immediately shoot all things strange, which Aaron would soon be appreciating.

The Lady had already gone to change her cloak to something more appropriate for cliffside descents. Aaron turned his steps towards Rose and Lochlann.

Whatever rushed briefing they’d been part of seemed to be at an end, with those around them breaking up to run messages and supplies between the fort’s defenses.

“I can stay here and help you,” Aaron said, “Or I can do something your brother won’t like.”

“Will it help?” Rose asked.

“If I play it right.”

“Would it help if I were with you? Or Lochlann?”

“No, and definitely no,” he replied.

Neither of them replied to him, but both had the same sort of look in their eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Aaron,” the princess said, “we keep letting you out of our sight, and you keep coming back dead.”

“But I do come back.”

They continued to look at him.

“You’re going to do something stupid,” said Lochlann.

“We’re a day or more from getting reinforcements,” Aaron said. “The dragons are less than that, before they burn out enough ballista to come crawling through the windows. And I don’t know that I can keep you two alive, if I take you through the forest. So I need to keep people alive here instead.”

That wasn’t stupid, it was just what needed doing.

Lochlann shut his eyes briefly and let out a long breath, as if there were something inherently wrong in Aaron’s statement.

Rose asked, much more practically, “What are you going to do that will keep us alive?”

Aaron’s eyes flicked to all the nice militia members around them.

The princess and her lieutenant exchanged a look. Lochlann nodded to her, and turned back to Aaron. The man squared up his shoulders like he was presenting himself before his captain. “I’ll be coming with you.”

“Ha,” said Aaron.

Oh. Oh, he was serious.

“No,” said Aaron.

“Second Lieutenant Varghese,” said Rose, “I order you to accompany him. Aaron, I order you to let him accompany you.”

Now that just wasn’t fair.

“He’s going to try and stop me,” Aaron said.

“If you know that already,” said Lochlann, “please consider that your plans may be lacking.”

“They aren’t lacking. They’re just not…” He waved his hand. Here, there. At the king, and the nobles, and the militia scurrying about them, and all the nice strict-kept humans about. Still barely any enclavers. Which made sense, considering they’d likely reported to an armory that was still locked.

“Fit for polite company?” Lochlann offered, by way of ending that sentence. “Anything we’d approve of? Survivable? Aaron, you keep dying when you’re out of our sight.”

“You’re going to die in my sight, you try to follow,” Aaron said.

“You do understand,” said the man, “that doesn’t make it less important to follow you?”

Aaron didn’t, but he didn’t have time to argue. “How else am I to stop this?”

“You aren’t. You’re— You can trust us to help you, Aaron. You don’t need to leave us behind,” said the ratcatcher. Though it did feel odd, to think of Lochlann like that.

“Go with him,” Rose ordered her lieutenant again, then shifted at hard look to Aaron. “Take him with you. I know I’m not fast enough to keep up with you, but I expect you both to succeed without me. And not die. Either of you.”

“And who will be helping you not to die?” Aaron asked.

“I’m running supplies and messages, Aaron. We’re not working in teams to begin with. And if this plan of yours works, apparently there won’t be any dragons in the halls for me to worry about.”

“He’s still going to try to stop me.”

“I…” the man himself said, starting like he meant to say something like I will not, but he tempered it to: “I won’t if you’ve good reason for it.”

“I can’t be explaining it every step of the way,” Aaron said. “I don’t even know half the steps, I just know the next one, and the last, and we’re dealing with people so the rest are going to figure themselves out.”

Or they wouldn’t, but Aaron was still alive, so the method had been working well for a good eighteen years and he didn’t see a reason to doubt it now.

“Is this how you live?” Lochlann asked, with his dutifully doubtful stare.

Aaron glowered at the man. “I need your word you’ll let me take the lead, and you won’t interrupt things just because you don’t understand them. Or stab anyone who hasn’t stabbed you first.”

The man pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is how you live. Of course. What is this first step of yours, then?”

It wasn’t lost on Aaron that the lieutenant hadn’t agreed. Wasn’t lost on him, either, that he had no way of stopping Lochlann from following him, short of leading him off down a hall and hitting him over the head and hoping to judge it well enough to keep the man down without giving him brain damage, while also doing it in a tucked-away enough spot not to raise any false alarm bells, and really by that point it was easier just to bring him along.

“We’ve going to find the battlesmith,” Aaron said.

“And the last step?”

Was the sort of thing no good militia man would approve. Aaron started walking, instead. The lieutenant followed on his heels.

The battlesmith was outside the armory, along with a good number of enclavers, and her son at her side. So they had reported for weapons. Which rather implied that they hadn’t known that, when it came down to a real attack, their lord had meant to leave them undefended.

Most of the enclavers were young; the usual castle servants. Absent were their parents, who worked the fields and lived in the longhouses outside. That likely did not say anything promising for what was happening beyond the fort’s doors.

There were two guards on the armory door. One had already drawn her sword. The other seemed to realize just how things would go for the pair of them if this came to a fight, and was trying to talk the crowd down with promises that the key was on its way.

Whether she believed it herself was anyone’s guess. But she stopped at the sight of Aaron and Lochlann, her shoulders relaxing at the sight of two allies. Nominal allies.

“We’re here to relieve you,” Aaron said, earning his first side-eye from Lochlann, who stayed fortunately silent as this progressed. Aaron dangled the captain’s keys and never broke stride. The enclavers made way for them, recoiling from the brush of his griffin cloak exactly as they would from the reaching of a dead hand.

The guard eyed the key. Eyed him. She’d stopped relaxing.

Ah. So she did know how her captain felt about arming enclavers, then. Perhaps she shouldn’t have spent her time lying about it, then. That would certainly make it awkward for her to call him out as a liar, right in front of all these upset enclavers who’d only just settled down.

“We’re meant to guard here until things are settled,” she said.

“If he didn’t mean me to take over, why would I have his keys?”

There was a certain sort of person, smart and quick enough about being smart that they could spot traps plain as anything. Even when spotting the trap was what sprang it. Because now that she suspected, she was smart enough to realize she and her partner were here alone. It was unlikely that anyone past this hall—this lovely, deadend hall—knew what was happening. So her choices were to make a stand here, or play along and hope to leave this hall with enough life left in her to tell someone what was happening here.

She chose to play along. Very smart.

“As long as you’ve got things handled, here,” she said, making an admirable effort to not dart her eyes from them to the end of the hall.

“I’ve got it well in hand.” He smiled, and jangled the keys.

“Shouldn’t we—?” started her partner. But the very smart guard grabbed the other woman’s arm—not her sword arm—and led her away. Didn’t even run. Good on her, getting out alive.

He kept his smile, and turned to the battlesmith.

“Keys?” he offered. “I haven’t had a chance to test it, but I’m fairly certain one of these will open the cells keeping your rioters locked away, too.”

“What game are you playing at?” the smith asked. But she took the keys, all the same.

“The same as I’ve always been,” he said, and ignored the force of Lochlann’s disapproval behind him. “Now are you going to wait for those two to report to their captain, or are you going to get your people armed?”

The battlesmith was taller than him, by a fair bit. She made the point by leaning down. Straight into his face, like that was supposed to do more than make him want to instinctively headbutt her. He diplomatically refrained.

“Do you really expect me to start this fight here, now, because you gave me some keys?” she asked.

“You couldn’t stop your people from rioting over a reindeer,” Aaron said, low enough only those closest to them would hear. Namely: her son and Lochlann. He still wasn’t sure how much of a leader she was, but no one liked their power questioned publically. “Do you really expect to be able to stop them now? To be the one who holds the keys, and doesn’t use them?”

As metaphors went, he’d made this one rather literal. She scowled, but could hardly refute the point.

“You can’t force us to be stupid,” her son hissed.

“No one’s forcing you on that account,” Aaron said. And continued, before the boy could parse that: “Hand them back to some southerner if you want. But you’ve got as best a distraction as you’re like to ever get. It’s spring; aren’t you feeling like a change?”

“We’re not taking the fort for you,” the woman said. “Our people are outside; this thing is none of ours. I’ll not have my people dying to keep King Orin in power.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Aaron said. “Do what’s best for yours. That’ll be what’s best for mine, too.”

And if she had a different idea of who his really were, well. There’d be time to sort that misunderstanding later, if the griffins could gain their independence here.

Her scowl was a more deeply creased mirrored to her son’s. But she was letting him talk, and that was always where he started. He unclasped the griffin cloak and folded it over one arm. Then he handed that to her, as well. When next he spoke, it was to the crowd at large.

“I trust at least some of you know that I’ve been returning your people’s remains, as many and as often as I can. That’s the last that’s not on a skin stealer’s back.”

He took in a breath, and stopped using the king’s tongue.

“I’ve a proposal for you all,” he chirped, and kept chirping, as the enclavers fell rather rapidly silent. “Your people need you; don’t kill mine while you’re at it, and I’ll see them gone from these lands.”

“You can’t speak for your king,” the battlesmith said. She’d not changed languages with him, like the laws against it mattered now. He switched back, easy as he’d been raised to.

“Why,” Aaron said, “would you think I needed the king’s permission?”

At his back, Lochlann sighed.