Chapter Text
All the stories began with once upon a time.
Like so: Once upon a time, there was a young woman who loved books. This young woman met a beast, and in her love for him, became a beast herself. The end.
Or like so: Once upon a time, there was a lovely princess. This lovely princess grew into a beautiful queen. So beautiful was she that her cruelties went unnoticed, and her victims unheard. The end.
Well. How about this one:
Once upon a time, there was a boy and a dog. The boy loved the dog and the dog loved the boy, as dogs and boys often did. This boy and this dog died, and no one learned from it because everyone who knew them, forgot them. The end.
No one ever thought to ask Sergeant Reese why he served in the Royal Guard of the King Above Kings. There were certain things that didn’t bear questioning. One could certainly ask the sky why it was blue. The inquiry wouldn’t change that it was and would continue to be.
Sergeant Reese was a Royal Guardsman like the sky was blue; what else would he be?
He had been Sergeant Reese forever, or so it seemed to the Royal Guard. Once, he must have been Private Reese, must have been a child born to a Mr. and Mrs. Reese, but the wheel turned and here we came again to the same useless question.
Did it truly matter what colour the dawn broke? Or would the day’s labours be the same regardless?
There was a rumour passed through the ranks of the Royal Guard, from veteran to greenie. Reese meant giant. That was not the rumour.
The rumour went thusly: Sergeant Reese was a giant. As in, Once upon a time, there was a farm boy named Jack and a cow and a bean. He was a giant, tragically fallen to earth from his home in the firmament, and he had sworn his life to the King Above Kings in exchange for his freedom from the Isle of the Lost.
The rumour was a rumour, and so no one truly believed it. Yet in the heart of every story lay a spec of truth.
Listen. A story forgotten by all and told to none: Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Lionel born on a dairy farm. Sergeant Reese ate that farm boy’s flesh and ground his bones for bread. The end.
Sergeant Reese was a Good man. A fair man. The kind of man one wanted to serve under. The kind of man who was thanked as a load-bearing stepping stone in the path of another’s career when they were promoted.
He understood this. Understood his place, his subservience, his use as a paving stone beneath others’ boots. Understood that there was one relationship in the world: the one that existed between the pointed teeth of the attack dog and the soft flesh of the hand that held its leash.
Sergeant Reese was the teeth.
He’d served under many a captain, but right now the hand that held his leash belonged to Captain Adarla Baron, a woman nearly twenty years his junior with a hundred shades bluer blood. She was the kind of woman who made speeches that thanked men as her stepping stones. They made for a brilliant team and Captain Adarla Baron — who had never eaten a little noble girl alive — was making noises about bringing Sergeant Reese along when she was promoted.
She was not the first to make those noises. She would be promoted, and she would thank him, and then a new hand would hold his leash and she would forget him among the many other leashes that would be passed into her hands. He knew this. He accepted this. He didn’t have to like this.
Sergeant Reese would miss his Captain Adarla Baron like a lost tooth — she oiled the leashes in her hands diligently, plucked thorns from paws and burrs from pelts, brushed their coats with care — but he was the teeth, a tool to be wielded by hands born to greater bodies. He did not get to choose which hands those were.
Together, Captain Adarla Baron and Sergeant Reese led the finest unit of Royal Guardsmen in Thornbloom. The commanding hand and the submissive teeth.
A question Masters discussed amongst themselves: how did one gain the loyalty of a dog?
The answer: food.
Dogs were loyal to the Masters that fed them. Even if their Masters didn’t grant them kindness or mercy or anything so blue-blooded — why would they? Dogs were loyal for scraps. They loved with their stomach.
Listen. The Task: find whoever was killing the animals on your Master’s lands.
To Captain Adarla Baron and the dogs whose leashes she held, The Task was set. Sergeant Reese heard the order and thought: there used to be a boy named Lionel who had no Master. I killed him. I subsisted on his flesh. But that was irrelevant. That boy had a Master too, even if he wouldn’t admit it, and dogs who didn’t leave their Masters’ corpses eventually ran out of flesh to subsist on.
Sergeant Reese was a dog, a tool for nobler hands, a dog, a dog, a dog. Captain Adarla Baron was his Master and he loved her but the King Above Kings was Master above Masters. He paid him, clothed him, sheltered him, fed him. Fed him. To Him Sergeant Reese would always pay obeisance until his obeying killed him. Would always return until his returning killed him.
His Master was kind, though He didn’t have to be. When they failed The Task, He merely sighed, smoothed a noble-soft hand down their flanks, and forgave them. Forgiveness was not owed to teeth or dogs, and Sergeant Reese was appropriately grateful.
A good deal of the Royal Guard resented Steward Lumiere for bringing in an outsider to do their jobs. This was their territory, they snarled to each other like wolves nipping at their packmates’ necks. This was their territory — their Master’s territory — theirs to patrol; who was this Steward to bring in another hound?
Sergeant Reese didn’t snarl or nip, didn’t agitate among his Master’s dogs. Sergeant Reese, who was rumoured to be a giant, sat back and thought.
There was only one kind of relationship in the world: that of hands and teeth. All were dogs, cherished or scorned. Steward Lumiere was high in their Master’s esteem, but a dog bound nonetheless.
He thought: there was a saying. It was so old he didn’t know from whence it came, only that it had come.
The saying was this: loyal as a dog.
No matter how a dog was hurt by its Master, it would always come back. The Master could kick it every day, feed it a scrap after every blow, and the dog would love its Master’s feet. The Master could throw it in a river or off a cliff or — off a bridge into a roaring river — and so long as it lived, it would swim or climb back to its Master’s arms so He could do it all over again.
The Royal Guard returned to their Master who soothed their anxieties. They were His, after all. They belonged to the King Above Kings, Master above all Masters. Belonged, where this hound did not. All would be well in time. In time, He said, and fed them fresh venison.
Sergeant Reese ate that venison and remembered a story from long ago.
Once upon a time, there was a farm boy named Lionel. Lionel had a dog. She was a wild-born forest bitch. A ragged thing of skin and bones with knobbly knees and too-big paws, though her puppy years were left far behind. Lionel brushed the burrs from her coat and fed her meat limned with fat. Her fur was black and her eyes were yellow and Lionel named her Sun-Eyed.
Sergeant Reese had forgotten how that story ended, if he ever knew.
Once upon a time, in a castle called Thornbloom, there lived a prince made of mother-of-pearl and gold with sapphires in his veins and eyes. This prince had no dog, for all dogs in his father’s lands belonged to Him. One day, a new hound appeared on his father’s lands, one not fed by Him. The prince went to that hound, brushed her coat, fed her, and called her his own. She was his, not his father’s, and she loved him.
Sergeant Reese knew how this story ended. He looked away from it.
When the killing night came, Lionel crept towards the farmhouse from the woods—
The thing about tragedies: they repeated.
Once upon a time, there was a farm boy named Lionel and a big black dog named Sun-Eyed. Sun-Eyed and Lionel died and no one remembered to mourn them. The end.
When the killing night came, Captain Adarla Baron’s unit, the finest in their Master’s lands, was assigned the route that wound deepest into the woods.
Between one moment and the next, a beast detached itself from the night and descended upon the knot of Guardsmen. There were flashing claws and an almighty roar and a thing that looked horrifically like a bear. Sergeant Reese dove to the side, taking Officer Blake with him, only barely avoiding being trampled by the beast. Not all his Master’s dogs were so lucky.
The beast’s breath smelled like stomach acid and rot and he thought: the surname Reese derived from the Old High Avarian word risi*.*
Sergeant Reese knew a woman named Risi: Risi Reese. Giant Giant. This woman married a man from the Summerlands who swore he once saw a necromancer kill and revive a direwolf. A little farm boy named Lionel once listened to his Aunt Risi’s story and laughed.
There was blood on Officer Alexandre’s dead face and Officer Harrington’s living guts in the snow, and Sergeant Reese wasn’t laughing.
The hired hound was too late to help, but she tried anyway. She pushed the loose ropes of Officer Harrington back inside his body and kept them there. Officer Harrington cried out and tried to writhe away, but she bore down and held. It was kind of her, in the way that it was always kind for a dog to lick another’s wounds: it wouldn’t do anything but hurt.
Captain Adarla Baron fell beside them with bandages, grim-faced. They weren’t enough, but they were something, and Sergeant Reese was oddly touched. Here was a woman who was still a girl — because she hadn’t had to kill the girl yet, though tonight might be her killing night too — whose blood was bluer than any of her guards, on her knees in red dog’s blood.
She would be promoted after this killing night, and she would forget Sergeant Reese, and a new captain would be assigned to the unit. A new captain who did not keep leather polish in their pocket and a brush in their belt. This was what it meant to be a dog owned by the Master of Masters: to miss good Masters like a healthy tooth ripped bloody and beloved from your gums.
“Run,” The hound ordered. Sergeant Reese and Cassandra Desert-Walker were the same yellowed teeth but in that moment, she was the hand that held.
Tell a dog to run and it just might. But it always came back.
Once upon a time, there was a farm boy named Lionel born to a man named Reese. The man named Reese told Lionel to — Run — and he did. The man named Reese told Lionel to stay away, and he did not.
There was an end to this story. Sergeant Reese didn’t know it.
Sergeant Reese, flanks heaving, gasped out the tale to kindly old Mrs. Potts — who cared for her Master’s dogs — and Colonel Chip — who held the leashes of the Royal Guard dogs in his Master’s stead. Colonel Chip began barking orders and Sergeant Reese remembered the hound needed fire.
He grabbed a torch — Run — and ran again.
Guards spilled onto their Master’s lawns with teeth bared and claws out, growls dripping from their throats. A pack of them followed Sergeant Reese’s finger to Captain Adarla Baron and the dogs whose leashes she held for their Master.
An owl circled up from the trees and dove back down with a screech like a sword being pulled from its sheath. He ran for it.
Once upon a time, there was an old bitch named Sun-Eyed who loved a farm boy named Lionel. Lionel tried to make Sun-Eyed run away, and she did not. He chased her, threw stones, kicked her, dropped her off a bridge into a roaring river. Always, she returned. She was a Good dog; she loved her Master.
Sun-Eyed died at the end of that story. Died because she didn’t listen to her Master. Lionel didn’t learn from this. Sergeant Reese did.
Run.
He obeyed orders.
The hound broke the treeline missing her headscarf and most of her claws. He angled towards her as she curved towards him, and he thought it just might be enough. His lungs burned but he gathered enough breath to shout even as the creature that killed Officer Alexandre and Officer Harrington emerged with the hound’s broken claws dug into its back.
“Huntress!”
The hound grabbed desperately for the torch and missed. He winced as her hand closed around the burning tip— and lurched back as she took the fire clean from it.
There was a rumour that Sergeant Reese was a giant who willingly placed his leash in the hand of the King Above Kings in exchange for freedom from the Isle of the Lost. There was good reason for this rumour. Sergeant Reese’s Master, who was the Master above all Masters, had one rule he held above all others: no magic.
The hound spun, taking the fire with her, and kept her body between him and the beast.
Once upon a time, there was a farm boy named Lionel and a father named Reese and a dog named Sun-Eyed. Reese was a mean snake of a man as like to strike teeth-first as he was to choke his prey. He struck Lionel because he was Lionel’s Master. One time, Reese’s fist didn’t land on Lionel. This was because—
The hound’s dark hair shone and her eyes flashed in the light of the fire and she stood between Sergeant Reese and a beast from hell.
Once upon a time, Sun-Eyed’s dark coat shone and her yellow eyes flashed, and she stood between a farm boy named Lionel and his mean snake of a father named Reese.
The fire bloomed between the hound’s arms outstretched. The beast swiped through her wall of fire as easy as air and struck her down. As she fell, she spat words in a language that shook the world. The flames stuck to the beast’s retreating arm, racing up its patchy fur like so many matchsticks.
The prince’s first and only hound fell to her knees, bleeding from deep gashes across her face and chest, eyes like gold coins fixed on the dying dead thing until it was no more than ash and fragments of bone.
Sergeant Reese caught the hound as she collapsed backwards, dying or dead.
Once upon a time, Sun-Eyed caught the hand of a father named Reese in her mouth before it could land on her cherished Master named Lionel and bit down with all her dogged loyalty and fat-fed love. She left Reese’s hand a jagged hole of meat trailing ribbons of skin. She came away with thin red blood coating her muzzle and a shard of Reese’s bone lodged between her teeth.
Once upon a time, a father named Reese felt a killing rage of which dogs knew nothing—
Once upon a time, a Master named Lionel tried to save a dog named Sun-Eyed—
Once upon a time, a father named Reese killed a dog named Sun-Eyed and told a boy named Lionel to—
Run.
Sergeant Reese carried the blood and bone body of Cassandra Desert-Walker into his Master’s castle with a foreign urgency. He laid her where he was commanded and stepped back to allow them to try to save the life of the prince’s first hound.
Sergeant Reese didn’t know the pain of losing your grasp on the only leash you held — he had never been anything so soft as a hand, only the hard teeth — but once upon a time there had been a boy named Lionel who did.
Sergeant Reese killed and ate that boy, but eating something didn’t destroy it; only took it into you. Within Sergeant Reese lived and died a farm boy named Lionel with empty hands.
If the hound lived, she would be killed or imprisoned. There was one law Sergeant Reese’s Master held above all other laws, and he was Master above all other Masters.
No magic.
Once upon a time, there was a prince made of mother-of-pearl and gold and sapphire, who met a hound who had never eaten from his father’s hand. The prince loved the hound and the hound loved the prince, as hounds and princes often did. This was their undoing, and no one learned from this because everyone who knew them, forgot them.
The end.
Dying, the prince’s hound was just the same as Sergeant Reese and Lionel and Sun-Eyed. She bled mud-thick red dog’s blood with a shard of the beast’s claw wedged between her ribs. Officer Alexandre was dead and Officer Harrington was dead and the King Above Kings could sustain such a loss, with dozens upon dozens of dogs lounging at His feet.
Sergeant Reese was the gaping maw, the clacking teeth. Once upon a time, there had been a boy who was the soft and loving hand.
Sergeant Reese looked at the hound’s slick white breastbone and wet red teeth and thought: there was a saying: loyal as a dog. This was a bad thing. There was a reason this kind of loyalty was a bad thing.
Once upon a time, a man named Reese killed a dog named Sun-Eyed who had a shard of his bone lodged between her teeth. Her Master, a farm boy named Lionel, remembered. Lionel remembered, and Lionel mourned, and Lionel died. Sergeant Reese ate him and forgot him. The end.
A little-known fact dogs guarded like a well-gnawed bone: their loyalty could be stolen. They returned to the Masters who fed them. If a new Master fed them more, fed them better, He could run away with their loyalty; they didn’t know any better.
Dogs loved with their stomachs.
Once upon a time, there was a dog and a Master and a hound. The dog knew it would die for the Master in the big log cabin. One day, a hound died for the dog on its Master’s lawn and fed the dog with her corpse. The dog guarded this corpse and gnawed at these bones until it starved, steps from its old Master’s house. It didn’t know any better. The end.
When the killing night came, Lionel stole from the woods and crept towards the farmhouse. He had a knife in his hand, and the knife was above the chest of the father named Reese—
He had a knife in his hand, and the knife was at his own throat—
Lionel stabbed—slashed—
The father named Reese died, and the boy named Lionel died, and the man named Sergeant Reese ate Lionel, flesh and bones and all.
Once upon a time, on a killing night, a man named Sergeant Reese who was once upon a time a boy named Lionel went out to collect weapons. He gathered them with the same quiet care he once saved for pulling thorns from Sun-Eyed’s paws. Daggers, knives, one sword from a pile of ash and bone. A knife from a tree. A sword and grey headscarf from a clearing empty of all, save the corpse of an owl who bled—
Salty and thick and red like a dog.
The end.
Sergeant Reese piled the claws that belonged to the prince’s only hound on the chest at the foot of the bed she lived in. The prince didn’t look up. Why would he? Sergeant Reese was only a dog, and the prince wasn’t his Master.
Something Sergeant Reese had forgotten: the name Lionel meant lion. Meant be brave. Meant take a stand.
And—
The damnedest thing: dogs weren’t supposed to be loyal to each other.
Listen Captain, said the Colonel who trusted his captains’ grips on the leashes he had entrusted to them. A task for your dogs.
Listen Sergeant, said the Captain who knew a hound had stolen the loyalty of her dog. A task.
A task, thought the Sergeant who loved his Captain and knew she would be taken from him come morning. A task: how to survive when you are the biting teeth and all your teeth have been pulled from you.
Listen. A task: guard the mother-of-pearl prince and his dark-haired hound.
Loyal as a dog, Lionel thought, and stood guard outside the sun-eyed Desert-Walker’s room, far and away from the office of the colonel who promoted captains and pulled them from Sergeant Reese’s gums.