Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

Chapter 87: Parallax

Stop dying, Rose commanded. This is an order, not a suggestion.

Its not as if I meant to, Aaron said.

Are you going to tell me, she said, that you werent doing something stupid, either time? Or any other time youve been in danger?

You cant going making a question that broad, said Aaron.

Being a messenger is meant to be dangerous, but not as dangerous as youre making it seem, Lochlann said, entirely failing to take the reasonable side in this argument. What are you doing out there?

Lieutenant Varghese, do I seem the sort of fellow who goes above his job description?

The good lieutenant stared at Aaron through the bars.

Aaron stared back, for awhile. But it didnt seem the sort of thing that was going to end, so. More importantly, do either of you know how to navigate by the stars?

That is not more important, said Rose, crossing her arms.

It would get me out faster, if this happens again, Aaron said. A statement which found no favor with either of his listeners.

Its not as if I mean to, he felt the need to reiterate.

And, Are either of you going to let me out?

They did not. Apparently theyd promised to let his sister have a go at him, too.

In the end, regarding navigation by the stars, Rose referred him to her brother.

* * *

The crown prince knew significantly more about celestial bodies than Aaron had signed up for. But he sat on a castle rooftop and listened, and tried to understand how theyd gotten on the subject of measuring the distance to the moon. Which was apparently a thing people could do, and had done, even though Aaron couldnt fathom how a body could measure a thing that hard to walk to.

Now close your other eye, Connor instructed. Hed his own thumb up in demonstration, held at arms length from his face. Aaron obligingly switched which eye hed had closed. His own thumb appeared to jump a bit to the side relative to the bell tower behind it.

And this tells you how far away the moon is?

Yes, Connor said.

Uh-huh, Aaron said, and Connor pushed his arm down.

That tells you how far away your thumb is. Because you know how far apart your eyes are, right? So you measure how much the shift is, and that tells you how far away your thumb was, once you do the math. Its the same for the moon. Except instead of your eyes, you have people stand really far apart and measure at the same time.

Aaron thought this over. Sounds like Letforget, he concluded.

It wasnt, Connor protested. Its not.Its science.

Still seems simpler to just go there, and measure along the way, Aaron said.

Connors mouth opened and closed, like that was a harder concept than the things hed been talking about doing to numbers.

There are flying things aplenty, Aaron said. Some of them talk. Why not just ask one of them to go check? If you can assume its safe to have two fellows out sciencing on the road at night, then I can assume some beastie or another would be willing to help. Send it with some twine, maybe, so you can double-check how far it went at the end. Thats an easier thing to measure.

Aaron, said Connor, after a long moment. How far away do you think the moon is?

Isnt that what youre trying to measure?

Connor sunk his head in his hands, and stayed like that awhile. I am going to make you read, he said, so many books.

Which sounded rather like a threat, and one Aaron would like to distract from. Hed enough self-assigned reading material as it was.

Why do you know all this? he asked.

...Rose and I used to talk about joining the Late Wake together. Traveling, not just our isle, but being the kind of scout that gets to see whats beyond. Maybe even finding where we came from. The Kingdom itself, even. The boy let his hands drop, with exactly the sort of half-smile that sort of aspiration deserved. Well. I wanted to find it. She wanted to Red Trident it; take it all back. Except without the losing part at the end.

Theres probably not anything there anymore, Aaron said. If it ever was a place.

Kingdom tales were kingdom tales for a reason, and it wasnt because they were all true.

But if there is, Connor said, his eyes back on the sky. They measured the moon, Aaron.

That night, Aaron learned how to tell north from the trailing stars of the kirins tail, and from there all the other directions. But that was rather incidental, by the time Connor had talked himself to sleep.

* * *

Aaron sat down on a stool near the bakers boy, and waited. Waited a bit more. Wished he had a few socks to darn, because waiting was quite a boring thing, actually, and a stool didnt make for much of a moral high ground.

Did you tell them to kill me? he asked.

At least that got John to pause. Only a moment; then he was back to moving trays out of the ovens. No. What happened?

Aaron grabbed a wooden spoon from another table, his stool wobbling under him. He stuck it under one of Johns fresh loaves and flipped it to the floor, where he knew hed be the only one willing to eat it.

Good, he said. Being dead would make it harder to carry more. Just so were clear.

What happened? John said, and wasnt even upset about the bread. Which made him sincere, or a sincere over-actor.

Ask your brother, Aaron said, and flipped off another loaf. Ill stop back in the morning. If thats enough time for you to find a scribe?

Plenty, said John, with a glare.

Aaron tucked his hands inside the sleeves of his much-abused coat, picked up his still-steaming loaves, and left.

* * *

There was a note tucked into a cranny behind the statue of mans god. Aaron took it, and left a few coins and a loaf of bread in its place.

When hed still been the castles errand boy, the Lady had used to add various concoctions to his shopping lists; things hed bought from the old raccoon, with Clever Hands as intermediary. The stoat doppel would be less than pleased to catch him down in Twokins now, Aaron supposed. And made his way rather quickly back to sunlit streets before reading.

Those things hed bought, the old raccoon wrote, would have been good for easing someone with the late kings symptoms. Some treated pain, some increased the appetite, some brought sound sleep or easier breathing or leveled the beating of a heart. They ranged from common to increasingly obscure. Each could be used as poison, as well, as all strong medicines could.

So. Probably the Lady hadnt been the cause for the kings illness. She already had so many outright poisons in her rooms, why would she send him to purchase more? Anything rare would only be easier to trace, should the truth come out. King Liam, may his soul not wander, had been wasting without her help. It was only that final nights responsibility that lay at her feet.

Some of the things shed sent him to buy could have been cures, if matched to the right illness. Had she actually tried to heal His Majesty? Or only kept him alive until his death served a use?

The Lady had a bezoar in her room. Just a little thing, but he didnt think their potency in negating poisons was much dependent on their size. It had been secured rather unsubtly to the underside of her table, in the seat she preferred when having guests. Subtly was not likely to be a priority should she come to need it. There wasnt much to tell the marble-sized thing from a particularly well-rounded river stone. Only that it was lighter when held. Which likely wasnt a thing she did often.

She also had a letter to the current king, written by the last. The late King Liam clearly hadnt known whether it would be Orin or Connor to succeed him, when all was settled.

It wasnt a pardon. A pardon was a piece of paper, easily lost or ignored or claimed as false. Aarons own pardon wasnt the paper it was written on, nor the words: it was the conversations with Orin and Connor and Rose that gave him hope theyd uphold it. The former king had not pardoned the Lady. Perhaps she hadnt asked to be. But Laim had sat, one evening or day, near his death or months before, and made to explain a thing that his children might not want explained.

A lingering death was never mans choice, hed written, in defense of why a dying man might choose the time of his end. The words were familiar, though Aaron couldnt place them. Hed a feeling he should.

* * *

The old woman in the forester villagethe one whod once presided over the birth of twins and given Aaron advice on how to enter a forest if he mustshe was dead, the next he passed through. Passed in her sleep, which was as good a way to go as any. Hed missed the vigil, but he stayed for the pyre.

Her Death wasnt there any longer. Presumably, neither was she. But it was a pretty enough flame, and it kept warm the living.

The bear twins cried all night long.

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