Enclave weaponsmiths were legendary. Or so Aaron had been told by Mabel, at length, when he’d gotten her started on the topic over lunch the last he was in Salt’s Mane. Dragons had been coming to Last of the Isles long before proper humans had arrived, and the griffins had taken some historical offense to the poaching of the reindeer herds that kept their human herds docile and ready for doppeling. And the snatching of their chicks, which made plump enough snacks for growing dragons. Mobbing the lizards midair like their ancestors did was all well and good, but rather inefficient. And so they’d encouraged their humans to become experts in all things that could shoot a dragon clear from the sky. The finest ballistae up and down the coast were the results of this craftsmanship. And their crossbows, which were a scarce thing outside the Trust of Held Lands, because they were just as good against human armor as they were against dragonscale and the sorts of smiths that made them were also the sort to get themselves hanged during revolts.

Real shame, that. So much knowledge lost and wasted, just because even after years kept separated from their captors, some enclavers still thought they were griffins.

Which was to say: Aaron stepped foot in the smithy at Helland with a healthy respect already in place. He didn’t always make the best first impression, with smiths. And he’d a feeling any smith still allowed to practice weapons making was the sort that would be a bit smarter than he was.

The smithy was located inside Helland’s stone fort, of course. Couldn’t trust an enclaver to work unsupervised.

“My Lord,” the battlesmith greeted him. “How can I help you?”

And she bowed most respectfully and kept herself low, setting aside her hammer even as the metal bar in front of her glowed white with work interrupted, and in all ways acted as a woman whose predecessors had dangled the final drop for not being so obliging.

“Is that your son?” Aaron asked. And he nodded to John’s brother, who had not stopped his own work, excepting the time needed to scowl at Aaron’s entrance.

“...Yes, my Lord. I apologize, my Lord. He’s a good boy, just hasn’t grown out of his temper yet. If you’ll let me know what he did, I’ll see to his discipline, and mayhaps make you something for your trouble—”

“I’ve a letter from your other son,” Aaron interrupted, before the woman could get too far into that. “...You can stop with the bowing, if you’d like.”

“Ah,” said the woman, straightening. She had the same smith’s muscles as the son she’d kept north with her. Which had been Aaron’s clue as to where to look for her, given the staff’s continued ignorance. He could have asked one of the non-enclave staffers, but.

But that wasn’t how games of court were played, if one wished to field the fox’s pieces over the kirin’s.

“Did you get the last letter?” Aaron asked.

“I did,” she said, carefully.

“I think John’s mentioned me. I’m Aaron.”

“He has,” she allowed. The metal of the workpiece in front of her was cooling, the white darkening to red.

“Do you want to send a reply?”

“Through you?”

“If it pleases.”

“And who will you be passing it along to?”

“Just to John,” Aaron said. And then he tried a thing, and hoped he was remembering it right, from the only time John had slipped in its saying. “To Jahnalistrin, that is.”

Jahnalistrin’s brother took in a breath, rather sharply. His mother didn’t, in just as jagged a manner.

“Thank you for your offer,” she said, “but our Lord Protector has put certain rules in place for our own protection. I’ll send my reply through the usual carriers.”

“That’s fine,” Aaron said. “And I’ll keep bringing John’s straight to you. Assuming we’re neither of us telling about this?”

“I think you should leave,” she said, which wasn’t a no. The metal in front of her was black, with the barely-there red of warning heat, easily overlooked. Aaron left the letter on the worktable beside her anvil, and showed himself out.

* * *

The fort had been built by those it so generously guarded. Looking at all the decorations they’d tooled into the place, one could almost think they’d taken to the task with real heart. There was the royal dragon, chiseled into the blocks above that doorway, the fine details of its scales and teeth more true to the real thing than the O’Shea’s own flag.

There was the same dragon, mirrored on the opposite wall, just as vividly.

And there the kelpie of the salters, the kirin of the south, the leshy of the foresters, and more besides; a hundred beautifully worked beasties perched above entryways, wrapped about wall sconces, and cavorting about the borders of rooms, painstakingly mirrored by a hundred more.

“It’s a superstition of theirs,” one man informed Aaron over dinner, as they sat under the hanging flags of the scant few nobles present. There weren’t many who’d come north with the king, and fewer still who lived here. “A harmless one. Mirroring a creature helps ward it off, since two is more than one. It sees itself outnumbered and leaves for easier prey. Only works on the ones that can count, of course. You’ll notice the craftsmen only went up to two themselves.”

The nobles nearest laughed at this. Aaron let the topic move on, his own mirrored pendant offering an alternative explanation under his shirt.

The Lord Protector’s flag was a griffin disjointed, with bunches of arrows in each corner angled towards the chopped up beastie.

Nowhere had the enclave crafters carved griffins on their lord’s walls. Island griffins were kin to owls; things worked best for them, when they went unseen.

* * *

“Have you noticed the people here scrounging for mousefood?” asked Aaron, once he’d found a comfortable angle to lean back his chair. He hadn’t put his boots up on the king’s papers, or anything; he wasn’t tacky. He’d just claimed an unused corner to rest them on.

“We’re talking about you, Aaron,” Orin said, moving an inkwell farther from Aaron’s feet than it needed to go.

“You certainly are,” Aaron agreed. “Do you even know what mousefood is? See mice, they like to store up for the winter, in these little burrows. Nuts and seeds and such. Usually more than they’ll actually eat, though maybe that’s just because some of the mice get eaten during the winter themselves. But the point is—”

“You didn’t send word. I had to hear it in a letter from Lieutenant Lochlann, after half the people here had already gotten the news off the messenger who brought it.”

“The point is,” Aaron said, “come spring, a motivated fellow can find the burrows, and dig out the food. It’s rude to take more than half, though.”

“You didn’t turn around and come back. You went to Salt’s Mane, days away, instead of the hours it would have taken you to return here. Is my protection so worthless?”

Truth was, Aaron hadn’t thought to turn around. He’d been going to Salt’s Mane, going back to Rose and Lochlann and his sister. Not to Helland, where King Orin was a figurehead at a court keeping him out of the way. So no, Aaron did not particularly trust that Orin could keep someone safe if the other nobles here stopped pretending.

Good thing they weren’t talking about him, or they’d have to talk about that.

“I’m pretty sure mousefood is a thing only desperate people look for,” Aaron said. “In retrospect. Why are your people scrounging for it here, when they’re not in every other town?”

“Aaron,” Orin said.

“King Orin,” Aaron replied.

His Majesty closed his eyes, and took in a breath. Held it, like he was doing some kind of a count, before he looked at Aaron again.

“I’ve reviewed the accounts myself, Aaron. The lord here is not leaving them to starve; enclave land just doesn’t produce much. He ships in supplies each spring to make up the margins. But there is a range of willingness among the people here for doing work to earn their pay, and a limit to how much charity he can afford.”

“Seems like they’d have an even shorter growing window than in Onekin,” Aaron noted. “Has the Lord Protector tried letting them use the land for grazing, instead? Seems there should be some sort of animal that would do well this far north.”

Orin gave him a look. To be fair, Aaron wasn’t being subtle. But neither was the Lord Protector.

“I think you already know why we can’t allow that,” His Majesty said.

The Executioner didn’t break the enclaves until he broke their herds, his sister had said.

If they had their herds, they wouldn’t need the Lord Protector’s excellent stewardship. Nor this lovely town he’d gathered them in, and his charity when food ran short.

“I know why you don’t want to allow it,” Aaron said. “Can’t is another thing. There’s not a lot of things a proper king can’t do, Your Majesty. If you can’t, maybe that’s a thing you should work on. Seems to me that people who’d rather be doppels might support a king who supported them.”

“Get your feet off my desk,” His Majesty said.

Aaron did not. He considered this an illustrative example.

* * *

There were enclavers out in the fields, plowing with borrowed horses that hadn’t yet lost their winter coats. There’d been a chill overnight; they were plowing without meaning to plant, against ground whose frost fought back. But those too lazy to work wouldn’t be getting any handouts, so.

So.

Aaron gave himself a little tour.

To the east were cliffs and the sea below, the one wearing away at the other. To the west were the same mountains that reached all the way down the curved spine of Last o’ the Isles, sheltering Onekin on their way down to hilly obscurity in the Fair Fields of the south. They were at their tallest here, their peaks capped in snow and clouds that did a good job of hiding whether anything was flying up there. Griffins were cliff nesters, or so he’d heard,

North of town were the Held Lands; the forests and fields that belonged to the enclavers, but were too dangerous for them to go wandering about in all unsupervised. And so they were held in trust, for the day the enclavers could be trusted.

The Lord of Seasons’ forest was on the southern edge of Helland’s territory, marked by the usual stone border and the sudden change from tamed ground to trees. It looked pleasant enough, from this side; all growing things and birdsong, with nothing to tell outsiders that the Winter Lord was in there raging against spring. Given where he was, his brain kept trying to turn the birdsong into words. But words didn’t turn themselves to sentences, and griffins weren’t any more native to that particular forest than humans were.

There were tall mounds of dried mud built up near the forest’s edge, with the smell of smoke about them, and a heat rather pleasant in the chilly afternoon. Crouching next to one was a face more familiar than it should be, reaching into the broken front to pull something out.

“So that’s how it’s made,” Aaron said, watching John’s brother pull charcoal from what was, apparently, a sort of kiln. He got a side-long glare for his trouble, as the other boy scraped the blackened wood out with a rake. “It’s not wood from the Lord of Seasons’ forest.”

“Of course it’s not,” said the other boy. “It’s from ours. But they don’t like for us to work there long, so we’ve got to drag it all down here.”

He had a basket with him, a large woven one with straps for carrying; he tipped it on its side, and started shoving the cooled coals in.

“Why’s a smith’s apprentice making charcoal?” Aaron asked.

“Forges use charcoal.”

“And it seems an easier thing for anyone to make, than whatever you’d be putting your time towards if you were in the forge now,” Aaron said.

The boy didn’t answer him. Just kept pushing in coals, until the basket was full enough he had to tilt it upright and start dropping in double-handfuls instead. Aaron would have helped, but he liked his red coat being clean more than he liked John’s brother.

“You’re really going to keep carrying his letters?” said brother asked, when he was nearly done.

“And any you and others might care to send.”

“Awfully generous of you. Your king know about this?”

Orin wasn’t his king, but that seemed a lengthy explanation this conversation didn’t need, and this kid hadn’t earned. “I don’t tell Orin much, actually.”

“So you just visit him in his private chambers, and don’t talk much?” the boy smirked, like he was a clever sort.

Aaron did not. With enough silence, filled only with the cheerful nonsense words of the forest birds, the other boy dropped back into his scowl. Which changed, after a moment, to a different look. A rather calculating one.

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“You want me to trust you?” He picked up the basket, shouldering it on by its straps. “Come with me.”

Which neatly shifted the burden of trusting first over to Aaron. But that was what he’d started, when he came barging up here with the king’s party, trying to convince them he wasn’t the king’s man. He followed.

The mud kilns were near as tall as a man, and set up in a cluster. A cluster that, from certain angles, cut them off from view of the fields and town wall. It didn’t look to be an intentional thing until one was inside of it, and following a kid as suspicious as one’s self towards the stone markers of the forest’s boundary.

John’s brother stepped past them, and didn’t touch wood. Aaron stopped just outside.

“Come on,” the boy said.

So Aaron knocked lightly on the first tree inside, and did. And watched very carefully where he was stepping, which the boy was also doing, though not with quite the same deadly caution as Aaron. The forest felt… strange. Lighter, somehow, than the last Aaron had been in it. And no leshy had appeared to welcome them, which meant either that they’d met some unknown criteria for its acceptance—

—Or those border stones had been fakes. Unlike the real ones, which Aaron could now see through even denser trees up ahead. Unless those were also fakes, which would make an excellent double-bluff against any pursuers fool enough to test the authenticity of the first. In either case, it was clever, and old. And not a thing outsiders were meant to see. Which implied certain expectations, for his ability to leave here again.

Aaron reached for his dagger first, before realizing the boy wouldn’t have been expecting to take him down alone, which made running the better choice. A second’s delay did not put time on his side.

“You could do that,” a woman’s voice said, as Aaron’s hand touched his hood. “If you’d like to die without a voice.”

…The stag would have had better instincts, when it came to looking up. Aaron needed to get used to not having a cave ceiling above him. He’d work on that, as soon as he was done working on this.

“So is talking a thing we’re going to do?” he asked, of the woman who was making her way down a tree. Which would have made this a good time to run, if there weren’t two shapes higher up, all fluffed with white feathers and watching with gold eyes. Griffins. Young ones; they’d have to be, to still fit up in a tree well enough to hide. He knew how big the adults could get; he’d worn one of their skins.

Probably not a point in his favor, here.

“It’s not really necessary, no,” said the woman, who could have been the weaponsmith’s twin. She dropped the last few feet to the ground, and looked like she had to consciously stop herself from landing on four legs.

An adult griffin wouldn’t fit very well in that tree, would she. Aaron didn’t see any lighter hair or feathers or the creeping iris of an owl’s eye overtaking the human whites, but if the woman hadn’t been switching her form, she could put off those changes for years. Or she could be the woman’s actual sister, as much as John’s brother was his. Which was a statement that could go either way.

“So,” Aaron said. “Are you the smith’s twin, or…?”

“Twins do run in our line, yes,” she said, with a twitch of lips. Another statement that could go either way.

“Lucky, that,” he said.

“An interesting sentiment, for a southerner,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if she meant south like Three Havens, where Markus was from, or south like anyone who wasn’t an enclaver.

There was a bit of squawk-squabbling from above them, and then the younger griffins joined them on the ground. One had less dark barring than the other, though they both were light enough to be male, and with enough gray tufts sticking out to still be half-counted as chicks. The darker and more quarrelsome of the two stalked over behind John’s twin, and bumped him in the back. The lighter tucked himself behind the woman—a place the overlarge chick distinctly did not fit—and peered out at Aaron with its own unblinking gaze.

“Well,” the woman said. “Now that we’ve the pleasantries aside. You’ve been playing some sort of game with my nephew down south. What were you trying to achieve?”

“His friendship, mostly,” Aaron said.

“And the part that isn’t ‘mostly’?”

“Your friendship,” Aaron said, eyeing woman and griffins both. “Mostly.”

“And what does the Late Wake care for us, beyond a source for skins that can fly?”

“I’m not particularly acting on Late Wake business,” Aaron said.

“I don’t particularly believe you,” the woman said.

“You’re not going to get anything from him quick, the way he talks,” John’s twin whistled, in a tongue Aaron clearly wasn’t meant to know. He was but an ignorant southerner, after all. “And I’ve got to be back before I’m missed. Were there any other messages?”

“None that won’t hold. Send my sister my love.”

The word for love she used was a play off preening, which would have been endearing if Aaron had been in a position to appreciate such. She turned her attention back to him.

“Point is,” she said, in the usual human tongue, “I don’t appreciate you trying to catch my nephew out, and I’d rather you stopped.”

“Done,” Aaron said. “No more letters, on my life.”

She snorted.

Worth a try.

“You’ve a sense of humor,” she said. “I could like you.”

She did, too, more’s the pity.

He could probably get her, if he moved fast enough. Or John’s twin, whose name he really should have gotten by now, but the time for asking politely was over.

He didn’t know if his knives were long enough to do much damage past a griffin’s feathers. A stag’s horns might be. If he didn’t just bolt as a stag, like he had with the dragons. He didn’t think running blindly from creatures that hunted deer would end well.

“Any of you have a preference on how I die?” Aaron asked.

“Slow is fine, skin stealer,” John’s twin, who was certainly not Aaron’s favorite of the pair, said. “But I’ve got to be going, so we’ll make it quick.”

“About that,” Aaron said. “Can we all agree that a human stomping about in the Lord of Seasons’ forest is generally a death sentence? I’d not mind seeing what’s in there, before I die.”

“Curiosity killed the cat sidhe?” the woman said, quirking a brow.

Aaron flashed his own grin. “That would be the plan, if it suits. Slow death, and you can swear on kirin’s bone you last saw me alive and wandering into the woods of my own will, like the silly little southerner I am.”

“They don’t go in for questioning much, up here. Hangings are quicker.”

“Ah,” Aaron said.

“Yes. Ah.” She stared at him. “You’re trying to trick us. And you’re not being very subtle about it, either.”

“Dying’s not a hobby I plan on taking up,” Aaron said. “I’m trying to give myself a chance.”

“And why should we allow you one?”

He shrugged. “Ever seen a cornered rat fight? I won’t, you let me choose this. And what are the chances I’ll make it out again? It’s almost as good as killing me, with none of the biting risk.”

“Not as good as having a body we can check ourselves,” she said. “And I thought you were a cat, not a rat.”

“I suspect you’re thinking me a lot of things that I’m not. Like an enemy.”

Her next words were not for him, as they switched back to the griffins’ language. “What do you think?”

“He thinks he’s going to live, if we send him in there,” said John’s twin, with the subtle screechy edge of surliness, and Aaron was glad he hadn’t told anyone past a very limited circle that he’d already been in the forest, and very much lived. Which wasn’t a guarantee that he could do so again, but it was better than trying to fight or run from this.

“I could pounce him,” offered the griffin behind him. “I’ve been practicing my pounces. He won’t live long laying here with a broken spine, but my heart could still say he last saw him alive, if that kirin’s bone comes into play.”

The other one chirped something back, but Aaron couldn’t catch it. Not didn’t—couldn’t. Its accent was a different thing, higher and rawer somehow, missing the sort of sounds that griffins could make in common with humans. He was fairly certain there were a few notes in there pitched too high for him to properly hear. Was this what they talked like before they’d doppeled? Before they’d been human enough to understand human limitations?

It was, Aaron realized, the birdsong he’d been hearing earlier. This chick had been allowed to come dangerously close to town so it could sing out messages that a casual listener wouldn’t understand; the other had been allowed because it was likely the boy’s doppel, and that meant a closer thing for griffins than it did in the Downs. The woman was likely along to supervise, lest they get themselves into the sort of trouble two chicks so near to strict-kept humans might.

And there stood John’s twin, who’d been ordered by the militia not to spend overlong up in the enclavers’ own forests, and had used that restriction to build his charcoal kilns down here on the fake border where he could pass those messages along. Or sneak off for a quick meeting, now and then.

Why would a smith’s apprentice be wasting time firing charcoal, indeed.

The only word Aaron really caught the smaller griffin saying was heart, which was the same word as mind, which was half of the Twinned God’s name in their language, and the word for the human half of a doppeled pair. The same word the surlier griffin chick had used for John’s twin. As the other half of that word pairing meant wings, they were terms specific to griffin doppels.

Back when he was teaching the tongue to Aaron, the man had only taught him those words once. It had been a memorable sort of lesson.

“What do we call the rest?” Aaron had asked. Because a word for griffin doppels was rather useless, where he’d been growing up.

“By what they are. I’m a wolf,” the man said. And repeated it in the griffin’s tongue: Wolf, which had the lilt for injured-sick to it, sharp enough to mean crippled-born wrong, which was as good as calling himself weak prey that would be grateful for the killing.

Aaron had not been stupid enough to ever call the man that.

The griffins had finished their discussion. In his favor, bafflingly enough. Apparently the chick with the accent held some sway.

“Leave your weapons, and any food or water you’ve on you,” the woman said. “And that skin.”

“You’re trying to get me to take from the forest,” Aaron said.

“We’re trying to get you killed,” she amiably confirmed.

“Thanks,” Aaron whistled, in a single flat note lacking any of the tonal embellishments that indicated actual gratitude.

The surly griffin puffed its feathers, and opened its beak. The woman tilted her head as she looked at him, too far to the side and too long not even pretending to be a human gesture. The chick with the least human accent chuffed a laugh.

“You just keep getting more suspicious, don’t you?” said the woman. “Going to tell us where you learned that?”

“Maybe next time,” Aaron chirped, with all the lilting notes of good cheer.

He shed his daggers, his own and the one he’d swiped off his sister during their first fight together. Then she frisked him for more, like that couldn’t possibly be all, which was a thing that continued to be insulting. She belatedly appended his leather chestplate and lovely new gorget to the list of items for confiscation, with no apologies. Didn’t take his coat, though she did make a very particular face when she pulled the bread heels from it. The two chicks briefly squabbled over the jerky that followed; he was pleased when the one who was apparently on his side took it and flew, using the surly one’s head as a launching point as it got itself into the lower branches of a tree. It tossed back its snack, and half-spread its wings in a gloat.

She took the stag’s cloak, of course. Which left Aaron rather cold, which was another thing he’d need to deal with, if he wanted to survive this.

“In you go, then,” she said, indicating he should turn and walk, with a flippant twirl of her wrist.

So he turned. And she hit him on the skull with the hilt of his own dagger, and let John’s twin have the honors of shoving him past the true line of stones. Aaron hit his head against a tree on his way in, so. At least he touched wood before he blacked out.