Aaron sat in his own rooms, with a book and a lamp, and the waxing moon outside his arrow slit window, with the shadows of griffins passing over it. The fort had given up sounding bells for them even before the king’s party had arrived. They circled, silent and taunting and impossible for men to stop, as Aaron flipped pages. To the back, with its kirin doodle in the margin. Then to the start again, to the very title page, with its script so fancy he had to pick the letters out one by one and write each on a side paper to keep them straight as he worked out the next. Kingdom Between the Hills and Other True Tales. His finger traced down, to the smaller lines below the title.

Transcribed by Two Rivers

This Second Edition in the hand of Riona O’Shea

Still farther, to little curling letters that seemed to shift their lines as his lamp light flickered, so ornate he’d not have even been able to begin to untangle them when he’d first been handed this book.

There is… he worked out. So, so slowly.

“There is a Kingdom Between the Hills,” a voice said, joining him at the table. “Where Death fears to tread.”

Aaron didn’t know if there was more to it than that, or whether the capitals all fell where the voice had seemed to put them. But there were more important things than working it out.

“Ah,” he said, looking up at his own Death. “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” the figure returned, lips briefly quirking.

“I’d ask if this were a business call,” Aaron said, “but I’m starting to think that’s not a thing a person should know unless they can change it.”

Which he could. He very clearly could: he’d spent all spring using the presence of Deaths to change what was to come, all along the front. Even if some of those Deaths were petty enough to put saved souls back in their place afterwards, he had changed things.

His Death was wearing the argent coat of their last meeting; silver with a red lining, the colors of the Sungs. Of Aaron’s family. It was quite the incentive to stay in his own red-and-gold O’Shea cloak. For the rest of his life, if need be. And avoid handshakes from the man. Just to be safe.

“There’s quite a lot of your sort about the fort lately,” Aaron said.

“There’s quite a lot to see,” his Death said.

“Is Markus’ Death about?”

“He’s overseeing a birth, at present. He is quite inclined to fretting.”

“...Markus’ birth?”

“No,” the Death said. “Seeing as you remain Markus. This is the birth of Aaron’s next life, though the fuel for it has changed.”

“...What happened to Markus’ next life?”

The man watched him. The lamp on the table between them flickered above its wick, reflected back a dozen times by its mirrored casing, casting a bright sort of light over half the room and a pleasant enough glow at the edges.

“That is the question,” the man said, at great length.

He left it at that. Aaron found his leg to be bouncing, under the table; he stilled it.

“So. You’re… here for a chat?”

The man didn’t seem inclined to answering fool questions. He’d best to remember that. So. A less fool one, then. Not about whether he was to die tonight—dying was a thing he’d been meant for once or twice already, and he’d no intention of picking up the hobby. A more relevant one.

“Can I die?”

“Yes,” his Death said.

Clear enough. “So I’m not a ghost, then.”

The man tilted his head, just the slightest. “You assume ghosts can’t die.”

Aaron opened his mouth; closed it again, before Can’t they? could come out.

“Can Deaths?” he asked, instead.

The man smiled. A true smile, broad and bright and entirely too pleased to be reassuring. This did not, Aaron noted, answer the question.

“You know,” Aaron said, “I could have sworn you told me, at the start of all this, to not let on to the other Deaths that I could see them. I can’t help but notice, though, that a great many of them already seem to know.”

The Death of the four-tails, who’d visited him in a dream once, or something like it. The late King’s Death, who’d always had a nod for him in greeting. The Lady’s Death. Even the white-spotted mouse’s Death, which felt like too insignificant a creature to be in on whatever his own Death was plotting. Though Aaron was hardly an expert on which Deaths—or deaths—were significant. He’d have thought his own death would have changed little, but here they were.

If he could be important, even just by messing things up in his wake, then perhaps a mouse could be, too.

“A secret is a great deal more interesting when shared with friends,” his Death replied.

“A great deal less secure, as well,” Aaron said.

“There’s no real hiding this. Only… delaying when the knowledge spreads.”

“You’re how the continent knows things, aren’t you,” Aaron said. A thing he’d already suspected, but here was a source to confirm it. “Closed conversations, that somehow the nine-tails learns of. Some Death is listening, and they talk to a cat or cat sidhe, and it gets back to the empress.”

“Not me, or mine,” the Death said. “But yes.”

“Why?” Aaron asked. “Why does the continent even care about humans anymore? There are barely any of us left, and we’ve run as far as we’re able, and—and even our Deaths are out to snitch on us? Why?”

“I believe your teacher gave you this lesson already: humanity’s strength is in its breaking.”

Yes. Yes, the Lady had mentioned that, back when she’d first put a griffin cloak about his shoulders. How lovely to know that his Death had been there to listen; how reassuring, that Aaron hadn’t seen him.

Outside, a griffin screeched, then another, until the whole flock was alive with words too distant for Aaron to understand.

“So the continent is afraid we’ll break their power? Take a nibble of land out of their empire?”

“Why do you think it is,” his Death said, “that only human corpses need burning?”

Because otherwise they’d get infested. But that was why they needed burning; not why only humans needed it.

“Given the current topic,” Aaron said, “I’d wager we broke something.”

“Death,” said his Death. “Humanity broke death, and birthed ghosts.”

The continent, the Lady had said, did not like ghost stories.

“Think on it,” his Death said, as another shadow crossed over the moon outside.

“Think hard,” he said, as the first bell rang. Then another.

Two, two, wings in the blue.

And Aaron could no longer see the man, though that hardly meant that he was gone.

The griffins were shrieking, scattering. There were dragons in the sky.