Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (22)
Dec. 25th, 2010 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air (22)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Inexplicit sexual references
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Author's Notes: Dust in the Air uses Warsverse backstory as a general rule of thumb. All chapters of Dust are posted on both LJ and DW. Dust in the Air does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
At the risk of sounding crude, Susan hasn’t had a willing woman in bed with her for a while. Well, they’ve since moved out of the bed and into the bath, but the principle still holds – Susan doesn’t bed women in England. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them, or that once you’ve gone naiad you can’t go back, it’s more that Susan isn’t quite sure of the social obligations in England, and hasn’t been bothered to learn them. There hadn’t been anyone in England she’d been tempted by, but Narnia – Narnia is another matter entirely.
Corycia steals a kiss from her, sliding a hand along her belly. Susan twines her fingers into Corycia’s thick black hair, deepening the kiss, and spreads her legs as far as she can manage in the narrow bathtub. The good thing about getting in the bath with a naiad is that the water’s always hot. At some point in time, Susan even got her hair washed, though some of the suds are still in it.
“Sweet Susan,” Corycia purrs, nuzzling Susan’s neck. “You’re not tired, are you? I know humans get tired more easily than we do –”
“That’s men,” Susan says, laughing softly, and gasps at her touch. “Oh –”
Her sigh of pleasure is cut short by a rap on the door.
“Just a minute,” Susan calls, and pushes Corycia away gently, getting a happy eyeful as Corycia leans back against the opposite end of the tub.
“Just like old times, hmm?” she says as Susan rises dripping from the tub, reaching for a robe. It’s Terebinthian silk, sliding against her damp skin like Corycia’s smooth hands. Susan does up the ivory buttons hastily, checks in the floor-length mirror that everything’s covered, and goes to get the door. She hears Corycia duck beneath the bathwater.
“Look on the bright side,” she tells Corycia over her shoulder, just before she opens the door, “at least it’s highly unlikely to be my brother this time.”
The bloke on the other side of the door is one of King Eian’s footmen, looking slightly anxious. He looks even more so when he sees that she’s only wearing a dressing gown.
“Yes?” Susan says, smiling at him, slow and warm. She mentally bids farewell to another pleasant tumble with Corycia.
“Er – His Majesty invites you to join him for breakfast in his private chambers on the hour.”
Susan peers past his shoulder at the tall grandfather clock standing in its niche at the end of the hall. It’s quarter after, now – Eian is cutting it a little close, but it’s hardly undoable.
“Very well,” she agrees. “Inform King Eian that I will be pleased to do so.”
“Shall I send a lady’s maid to help you dress?”
“I think I can manage on my own, thank you,” Susan says, and he bobs a bow.
“Is there anything else, milady?”
She shakes her head no, and he goes as she shuts the door, mentally cataloguing the gowns that she’s brought with her for something suitably impressive, though not intimidating. The golden brown, she thinks – the red is too bold, and the purple has a different kind of punch to it. The green would do, but she wore green, albeit a different green, yesterday. The gray is too warlike.
Corycia rises from the water with a splash, clothing herself in a stola pulled from thin air as she steps out of the tub. “Shall I help you dress?”
Susan slips out of the robe, reaching for a towel, and smiles at her as she dries off, wrapping her hair up in it when she’s done. “I was counting on it,” she says. “I was rather hoping you could do my hair, as well.”
“I can do something about that,” Corycia says, leaning against the dressing table as Susan rifles through her bags for the brown dress. “It’s a bit shorter than it used to be, isn’t it? And you’ve done something different with it.”
Susan pauses, touching the bottom of her hair. She’d gotten it trimmed just before all this had happened; her friend Annie is at hairdressing school, and does her friends for free, for the practice. It’s grown out since then, though, past her shoulders. She’s glad she never took the plunge and got the bob Annie had been begging her to get. The last year she’d been in Narnia, she’d had hair down nearly to her waist; she’d sawn it off back to her shoulders after Rabadash.
“Did you bring a crown?”
“No,” Susan says, pulling the gown out. She holds it to herself, checking for wrinkles in the mirror – Narnian gowns don’t wrinkle often, but it’s been known to happen. “Crowns are on the list of things we didn’t keep spares of in the Arn Abedin treasury, worse luck. I think they’re all in Cair Paravel, if Caspian didn’t dig them out and put them in a museum or some such. Our Cair Paravel, I mean. Not the city.”
Corycia nods, watching as Susan dresses. All her clothes were hers originally, but in the few days she had between arriving back at Arn Abedin and leaving again, she’d had them altered to fit the current fashions – they’re all still expressly from her own time, but there are hints of both periods. She’d had the sleeves belled and slashed, the neckline raised, a separate bodice added instead of the usual panel of embroidery, two layers of fabric added to the hem two indicate several more underskirts besides the chemise – Beka Confesor and Tirian’s cousin Leocadia had been very helpful there, and they’d found several sempstresses among the refugees. The idea isn’t to look like a relic out of the ancient past, but to look like someone who exists out of time entirely.
“No corset?” Corycia asks as Susan picks through her jewelry.
“I despise corsets. They hurt, they restrict movement, and they’re silly.” She inspects herself in the mirror, then sits so that Corycia can do her hair.
“Your fancy human clothes restrict movement,” Corycia says, brushing out the tangles.
“True, but even in Narnia we can’t go around naked all the time. Think of the cold.” She’d mostly spent a lot of time being grateful that current fashion hadn’t evolved into such gems as the Elizabethan ruff, or layers of immovable petticoats, or, Aslan forbid, the bustle – there are so many ways fashion can go wrong. Thankfully the current fashion isn’t particularly horrendous at all, though it certainly has its moments. So does any fashion, though.
“Lovely view, though.” She twists Susan’s hair up in artful loops, pinning some of them out of the way as she braids others. Susan checks the clock in the room, a little worried.
“A crown might seem presumptive, anyway,” Susan says.
“Why would you be presuming? You are the queen.” She does something complicated with Susan’s hair, a sudden pressure as she twists and pins and repins, then steps back. “What do you think?”
Susan glances in the mirror. “It’s lovely.” Her hair isn’t quite long enough to make a full braided crown, but Corycia has twisted it up in such a way that it hints at it, securing it by jeweled gold pins that slyly suggest a tiara. She touches them, the edges of the golden daffodils soft against her fingertips, and then holds still as Corycia puts her jewelry on, then her boots. She could do it herself, but the naiad moves too quickly for her.
She stands, looking at herself in the mirror. The fashion is for layers of full skirts, but Susan had discounted that; a few extra strips of complementary fabric in green and gold cut from dresses she can’t fit into anymore hint at it, but she still has the same mobility she’d have in a single skirt, cut so that she can ride astride rather than side-saddle. The fabric isn’t as heavy as the season should call for, layers of cloth-of-gold discarded for lined wool with gold embroidery. The slashing in the sleeves reveals the pale green of her chemise, light enough that on first inspection it looks like cream. Narnian fashion had been for a split skirt, current fashion for a heavy overgown; she’d gone for the split skirt, at the sides rather than the front, with the suggestion of cascading layers of underskirts beneath – though there’s really only one underskirt, with ruffles sewn on. The bodice is a lighter golden silk over boiled leather, nearly as flexible as her own skin but far more impenetrable. It laces up in the back, but the laces are hidden under the silk; the tiny golden buttons in the shape of daffodils on the front are purely decorative. Her boots are soft supple leather, dark brown, with gold embroidery – ash leaves and more daffodils, with the odd winking yellow diamond here and there. There’s a slight heel, only about an inch; she’s tall enough that she doesn’t really need it, but she likes the effect. Golden daffodils fall from her ears, each one studded with a yellow at the center, and a larger one nestles at her breast bone, the chain a barely noticeable wait around her neck. She pauses to adjust the signet ring on her right hand, the ruby a shocking gleam of red against all the gold and green, and then checks the daggers she has strapped tight against the insides of her forearms.
She twirls experimentally, her skirts whirling out around her, then sinks into a fighting stance. It’s not very likely that there will be an attack here – not so early after their arrival, anyway, the Calormenes will want to figure out what she’s up to first – but she has to be certain that everything’s properly in place, and as flexible as she’d expected. Satisfied by the results, she straightens back up, checking the clock. Ten minutes before the hour; she thinks she remembers where the king’s chambers are, although the palace has had enough new additions in the past sixteen hundred years that they may have been moved. The old castle only remains as the core of the palace.
She turns back to Corycia, perched on the edge of the dressing table so that her legs dangle over the side. Corycia grins up at her. “Earth colors,” she says.
“I look good in earth colors,” Susan says, leaning down to kiss her. “I have to go –”
“I know,” Corycia says. “I have to go and meet my sisters – what you said about the Calormenes, about them imprisoning my cousins – that has to be investigated and dealt with. It can’t be allowed to happen. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
Susan pauses, frowning. “Tash –”
“Calormen is Tash’s country, not Narnia. And even in Calormen, he shouldn’t be able to do that.” She tips her head to one side, thinking. “There aren’t any rivers that run through both Archenland and Calormen, so I can’t speak to any of the Calormene naiads. I’ll try and find my mother, to ask.” She slides off the table, making Susan step back, and kisses her on the cheek, quick. “I’ll see you later, I hope.”
“I hope so too,” Susan says, then glances at the clock, yelps in alarm, and makes a dash for the door. She slows herself before she runs into it – lucky for her, because there’s a bored-looking footman standing n the hall, waiting to take her to the king’s solar. She walks in just as the clock strikes the hour.
The room is in one of the palace’s higher towers, at the top where light floods in through wide windows with glass panes set in them. It’s a handsome room, with comfortable chairs and low tables, one small bookshelf built in against the rounded wall. A fire burns in a hearth constructed out of dark granite and white marble, flanked by a pair of narrow stained glass windows that stretch from floor to ceiling. The remaining space on the wall is decorated with scenes out of Archenlander history – Col, the first king of Archenland, feuding with his father Frank V and brother Colin, and leading his followers out of Narnia; Evyn the Clever tricking the Mother of Mountains into giving up Anvard; Fair Olvin’s duel with the giant Pire and the giant’s transformation into the mountain; Gladis the Bold facing down the White Dragon of Arrowshead Peak; the unmasking of King Cor; Prince Corin Thunderfist’s boxing bout with the Lapsed Bear of Stormness; and a dozen more she doesn’t recognize, that must have happened after her time. The head of Aslan is carved in goldenwood above the hearth, and Susan closes her eyes, just for a bare breath, soothed by his presence.
She opens them again and looks at the people sitting in the chairs. One of them is King Eian, but the others are strangers, though she recognizes their faces from the feast. Another is a teenage boy who has Eian’s look about him, the slightly inbred look of the old Archenlander stock, with fair hair and blue eyes. There’s another fair man in silks, the sword loops on his belt empty, who looks at her with calculation in his green eyes. A knight of Archenland, surely. The fourth is a woman – human on first glance, but closer inspection reveals the tips of small horns jutting above her dark hair, and when she shifts in her seat, hooves click against the floor instead of shoes. Not a full faun, but with at least a hint of nonhuman blood. Narnian blood, maybe – though merely being nonhuman in Archenland means nothing; King Col had brought humans and nonhumans alike with him, though there has always been a far stronger human presence in Archenland than in Narnia. Her Narnia, anyway; it may be different now.
The king rises. “Queen Susan,” he says, smiling, and gives her the small bow of one monarch to another. Susan returns the courtesy.
He waves her to an empty seat. “Will you take tea? There’s chocolate as well, and coffee, if you prefer.”
“Chocolate, if it’s no great imposition,” Susan demurs.
The king nods. “Brynden, if you would the honors,” he says. The knight rises, pouring from a lidded silver pitcher into an empty cup. He brings it to Susan, and she receives it with cupped hands, smiling thanks as he returns to his seat.
She inhales the sweet scent of the hot chocolate, pleased. The cup is silver as well, a set to match the pitcher, with a hunting scene engraved around the edges. It warms with the liquid inside, comfortable against her palms.
Eian clears his throat. “Queen Susan, my eldest son and heir, Prince Gareth of Archenland.”
“Your majesty,” the prince murmurs, leaning over to kiss her hand. He eyes her with curiosity, and she places his age at fourteen or fifteen – just about Peter’s age when they’d first taken their thrones, though he’s a bit more awkward with it.
“And my advisors, Sir Brynden Waverley, Minister of the Treasury, and Lady Iolanthe of Stormness, Minister of Laws.”
“Stormness?” Susan asks, friendly. “The Narnian or the Archenlander side?”
“Both are Archenlander now, as of King Florian’s agreement with Queen Genefer some generations back,” Iolanthe says, and gives her a rather doubtful look.
“Ah,” Susan says. “The Narnian side. I mean no insult, my lady; it’s merely idle curiosity.” She sips at her chocolate, smiling all the while.
Iolanthe seems rather dubious regarding this statement, but she doesn’t reply, just cuts a scone open and butters it, her attention turned away from Susan.
King Eian sits back in his chair, holding his cup in his hand. “You made quite a stir in my court yesterday, Queen Susan,” he says.
“They needed a good stir,” Brynden Waverley grumbles. “Calormenes perched on our doorsteps, at our hearths, in our beds – ach, and if half the court heard the news coming out of Narnia that we heard, Ilderim Tarkaan wouldn’t sit nearly so easy in your hall. Mayhap this will rouse the old lizard out of his torpor.”
“To what end?” Iolanthe says, reasonable. “The Tisroc is preoccupied with Narnia now, and has been for the past five years. The last thing we need is for his attention to swing back to us and realize what a tempting target we make, sandwiched between the desert and his troops in Narnia. Perhaps he’d like something to occupy his time, while Narnia destroys itself from the inside. Perhaps Prince Bahadur grows bored waiting for King Tirian to die of old age. The tarkaan is no friend of mine, but I would rather have him here and torpid than in Tashbaan rallying an army to besiege Anvard.”
“I’d rather that he be dead and rotting in a shallow grave,” Brynden says. “Calormenes! The world would be a better place if we hanged the lot of them.”
“A sentiment you would be wise to keep inside this room, Brynden,” says the king. “Queen Susan: your presence honors us, though I must admit I expected someone –”
“Older?” she suggests, smiling.
He smiles back. “Younger, in truth. Although this manifestation is – most agreeable, to be sure.”
His son nods a little frantically, probably not aware he’s doing it, and Iolanthe stands on his foot, skirts falling back to reveal her cloven hooves. Prince Gareth jerks back in his seat, his expression aggrieved, and glares at her.
“It has its uses,” Susan murmurs. Let them think that they choose their forms; it will baffle them the more, and she thinks she prefers them baffled to thinking clearly. Flesh and blood tends to encourage the latter, legends the former.
“Indeed,” says King Eian, after a long pause. “I might have expected Lord Vespasian to come begging at my door again, or even my cousin Tirian, if he still lives, and to both of them I would have granted shelter. Even the Tisroc cannot deride the obligations due a kin-bond, after all. But even if Tirian himself came and bent the knee, asking for a thousand knights to send north, I could not grant him that wish. Archenland is a small land, Queen Susan. We do not have the troops to fight Narnia’s wars, not even if hers were our own. And you must understand how delicate our position is –”
He cuts right to the heart of the matter. Susan has to admit herself surprised; she’d expected them to dance around the subject a bit more, with idle denouncements of the Tisroc and a few more pleasantries. But perhaps Eian is hiding more behind his green eyes than she’d assumed when she first walked into his palace yesterday. Not a stupid one, surely, Vespasian of Glasswater had made that perfectly clear, but a simple one: a king who likes his son obedient, his women willing, and his country peaceful. A simple king might have drawn out the conversation longer, might even have made it public – all the better to get Susan out of his court and the Calormenes to turn their eyes back to Narnia. But his refusal is quick, sure, not preceded by a question – and private.
She smiles – her face is starting to get stiff with all this smiling – and sips at her chocolate. “Your majesty, you mistake me. Of course we have no wish to see Archenland come to harm for Narnia’s sake alone; have Archenland and Narnia not always been the greatest of friends, as well as kindred countries, once? I come merely as envoy from my brother the High King, who bears great love and affection for you, our royal cousin.”
“I have never heard it said that Peter the High King bore love and affection for any king of Archenland,” says Eian, mild, and Susan laughs.
“You know your history, your majesty. In our own time, my brother hated Archenlanders the way other men hate fleas and lice,” she says, and keeps on smiling, trying not to show that she’s holding her breath. She’d very much been hoping that Peter’s hatred of King Lune hadn’t been passed down through the history books.
For a moment the atmosphere in the room is tense, then the king laughs, a booming sound at odds with his small body. “Fleas and lice, is it? A great compliment from the High King of Narnia,” he says, and laughs some more. Brynden Waverley laughs too – a slight, nervous sound. The crown prince merely looks confused, while Iolanthe frowns, plucking at the knee of her skirts.
“Small and a constant irritation,” the king chuckles to himself. “Is that it, Queen Susan? At least I can’t accuse you of flattery! Nor your so-royal brother, I suppose.”
“Oh, Peter’s guilty of that, at least,” Susan tells him. “He could have sent our brother Edmund or our sister Lucy.” If you felt like having your battles won for you, she doesn’t say; sending Ed or Lu would have been indelicate for several reasons. Edmund is inclined to be sarcastic and insulting; Lucy merely insulting. And both of them had won battles on Narnian soil – against the Calormenes, once.
“Lucky me, then,” says the king. “I shall cherish your presence like an unexpected and well-wrapped Christmas gift – surprising, attractive, and full of mysteries.”
Prince Gareth rolls his eyes at the pun, but appears to agree; Iolanthe keeps frowning, dismembering another scone with her butter knife. Susan eyes the selection of breakfast treats as the conversation moves on, Brynden engaging the king in a question about the spring planting. She selects a scone studded with cranberries and sits back to eat it, listening and comparing what she hears to what Vespasian and Tirian had said back in Narnia. Neither of them had been privy to the inner workings of the Archenlander court, but Vespasian had been there, and Tirian listens to every rumor that went in and out of Narnia.
There had been a plague that swept through the Eastern Seaboard some six years back, before the Calormenes had invaded Narnia. The islands had barricaded themselves away from the merchant ships that bore the disease, while Narnia had largely been immune – the disease only infected humans, and more than half Narnia’s population was nonhuman – and Calormene, while hit hard initially and every time the epidemic swept through again, had the people to replace those lost. Archenland didn’t, and she was suffering for it. A number of small villages had been abandoned, others combining to consolidate into larger ones, but Archenland lacks a great city. The town outside of Anvard’s walls is not even a quarter the size of Cair Paravel and could probably fit quite nicely inside the Tisroc’s palace in Tashbaan, with room to spare if they’ve put on additions since last Susan was there. Peverell, Archenland’s only port, had lost almost seventy percent of its population, and was struggling even to put out enough fishing boats to feed the country, let alone export the way it might have before the plague. Archenland had been importing food since the plague first struck – from Narnia at first, then, after Narnia had fallen, from the eastern islands and from Calormen. They simply don’t have the people to man their farms, not to produce enough corn to feed the entire country.
That’s what Brynden’s talking to Eian about, the worry palpable in his voice as he mentions fields lying fallow, the worry that the formers won’t even have enough seed to sow all the fields they can plow.
“I suppose,” he says, rather doubtfully, “that we might open up the royal forests to hunting a few more days of the year – Aslan knows there are enough feral beasts roaming around to field half the Narnian Army.”
“What days do you suggest?” Eian asks, setting his cup aside as Brynden leans down to tug a calendar towards him, spreading it across a low coffee table. Gareth cranes his head to see; the boy has been listening as closely as Susan, though more obviously.
As they talk, Iolanthe puts her plate aside and rises from her chair, sidling over towards Susan. Susan looks up at her, resisting the urge to smile again. “My lady?”
“I heard,” Iolanthe says, soft, “that when you came south you traveled over Stormness Head.”
“Yes, with a few detours,” Susan says. There had been Calormene patrols aplenty on the road itself, and they’d gone over a small, rocky side road rather than the main pass to avoid the Tisroc’s men. “Do you have family there, still?”
“I hold lands there, yes. My brother rules them in my absence. He sent an interesting message to me, stories that the smallfolk told – that on Winter’s End day, who should come riding out of mist and shadow but the Queen of Spring herself, with lion banners of crimson and gold, and a crown of flowers in her hair.” She looks at Susan, and when Susan doesn’t answer, goes on, “Do you know what we say, those of us Narnians who no longer live in Narnia?”
“Next year in Cair Paravel,” Susan says, soft.
Iolanthe toys with her glass. “Next year in Cair Paravel,” she repeats. “Do you have any idea what that means to m –” She stutters on the word, corrects it to, “− my people? What your coming here has done?”
Susan just looks at her. She knows, of course. They all know. Narnia is a far larger, and far more scattered people than it had been once upon a time, when nearly all Narnians had dwelt within the borders. But things have changed since then.
“When did your family come to Archenland?” she says instead.
“Two hundred and fifty years ago,” Iolanthe says immediately. “Seven generations. My ancestors would not stomach Rilian the Disenchanted on the throne of Narnia, so instead they left. A creature of the northern witches, absent for nearly twenty years before he returned at the very instant of his father’s death – my ancestors bore the Telmarines, bore the White Witch before them, but they would not bear this, and so they left. Eian’s grandfather King Darrin gave mine a lordship and lands, later, in exchange for saving his life.”
“And would you return to Narnia, were the opportunity given?”
Iolanthe doesn’t have a chance to answer. The door to the solar swings open on a guardsman’s protests; Eian starts to rise, reaching for a sword that isn’t there, while Brynden grabs for a butter knife. Susan just turns, looking at Ilderim Tarkaan of Calormen standing in the open door.
“Your majesty,” he says, the honor cursory. “Having a council meeting without me? I suppose I can forgive the oversight this once –”
Brynden’s fist clenches on the butter knife, but he holds his tongue. Prince Gareth glares, mouth moving in a silent curse.
“A council meeting?” King Eian says, his voice calm. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I simply thought I’d have breakfast with my son and a few old friends, and invite our honored guest Queen Susan to share our table. Surely there’s nothing improper about that.”
Ilderim Tarkaan looks like he’d like to argue this point. He’s a tall man, dark-skinned and dark-haired, with hard black eyes and a pointed chin. Susan’s gaze drops to his waist, where he wears a sword belt, but no sword, and then she looks back up to meet his eyes, an utter calm spreading through her, like the warm breath of a lion against her back.
“Then you won’t mind if I join you,” he says, making a move towards one of the empty chairs.
“So eager for a good Archenlander breakfast, my lord?” says Iolanthe, in a voice like ice. “Or do you expect to find us conspiring against Calormen over hot chocolate and scones? If your worry is that the Queen of Spring has come to beg the King of Archenland for knights and archers to drive Prince Bahadur from Narnia, why, then you may rest easy; the Queen of Spring sees all, knows all, and she certainly knows that Archenland would never act in such a – disloyal – manner to our trusted ally the Tisroc.”
The tarkaan’s mouth works for a moment; Susan sees him adding, “may he live forever,” silently to the end of Iolanthe’s words. She sits back in her chair and smiles at him, the silkiest smile she has, the one that brought Rabadash and Caspian both begging at her feet. “I assure you, Ilderim Tarkaan,” she says, “Narnia has no need of Archenlander troops. My brother the High King fights his own battles – and,” she adds, running one finger around the rim of her cup, “he always wins.”
“I would not be so certain of that,” says the Calormene, and waits a beat, almost enough for insult, before adding, “your majesty.”
“You don’t have to listen to me,” Susan murmurs. “Calormen has her own histories, surely? I remember that you had such once, at least. The last time any member of my family closed with the Tisroc’s men –” She pauses, as if searching her memory. “Oh, yes. My younger brother Edmund and my sweet baby sister Lucy, and your Prince Rabadash. He became Tisroc, did he not? I wonder, my lord, if they still call him Rabadash the Ridiculous.”
“You dare –” says Ilderim, tight and furious, and takes a step forward.
“Oh, I wouldn’t try it,” says Brynden Waverley, grinning like a fool. “Threaten Queen Susan of Narnia, the Queen of Spring and the High King’s own blood? Aslan’s mane, I’d as lief be called a second Rabadash. And if history bore you out, it would be Aslan you’d be seeing.”
Susan hears a sweet purl of laughter, then a woman’s smooth voice saying in tones of delight, “And wasn’t Tash sore about that! From the way he swore and raved about it, you’d think he was the one who’d been turned into the ass, not Rabadash. Still, the nerve of Aslan, even in his own lands ¬−”
She shakes her head to clear the sound away, distracted. Her head hurts suddenly, a rhythmic beating just behind her eyeballs. She pinches her nose between two fingers to try and make it go away, shuddering.
“My lord Ilderim,” she hears King Eian say, like a radio signal going in and out of reception, “I welcome your counsel, but this is no council meeting, just a private breakfast among friends in mine own chambers. If you find nothing to object to here, I must ask you to leave. Of course you understand, I’m sure.”
There’s a long, pregnant pause. Susan shudders again, squeezing her eyes closed. The headache is starting to fade already, as suddenly as it began.
“Of course,” the tarkaan says at last. “I look forward to seeing you later in the day, your majesty.”
Susan opens her eyes in time to see him bow, a slight incline of his upper body, and then he turns on his heel and leaves, the door swinging behind him.
“I hate him!” Prince Gareth bursts out as soon as it clicks shut. “Father –”
Eian shakes his head, his cup clenched in his fist. Brynden drops the butter knife with a clatter. “Lion’s mane, his face when you brought up Rabadash, Queen Susan! The fools will remember that insult until the day the sky falls.” He laughs, the sound peeling through the room, and Susan remembers the voice she’d heard. And wasn’t Tash sore about that!
“I don’t see why it’s Narnia’s heroes who always return,” says the prince. “I would be glad to see Fair Olvin or Ram the Great come riding up the Winding Arrow to rid Archenland of these Calormene sandflies –”
“And I would be gladder yet to lack the occasion for such an intervention,” says his father, turning on him. “Archenland has never yet been in such dire straits as all that, Gareth, and Aslan willing, never shall be.”
Susan takes a breath, then a sip of her now-lukewarm chocolate. “I’m sorry for any trouble I’ve brought you, your majesty,” she says, looking up at the king, who’s still standing, his hand resting lightly on the back of his chair.
His smile is wan. “The trouble was here already, Queen Susan. The Calormenes have been lurking about my court since the plague came. I am more than three million crescents in debt to them,” he says with forced lightness, “and sooner or later they will expect me to pay that debt.”
“We may,” Susan says, “be able to help you with that.”
King Eian shakes his head. “To what end? I spoke the truth to you when I said that Archenland lacked the men to supply Narnia with an army. Perhaps I might send a hundred archers, a dozen knights, but no more – and before they had cleared Archenlander soil, the Tisroc’s own army would have left Tashbaan, marching straight to my doors. I do not enjoy having Calormenes on either side of me, but I would enjoy losing my kingdom far less even than that.”
“We don’t need your men,” Susan says, even though Peter would gladly accept a hundred trained archers and a dozen anointed knights – though perhaps less gladly, knowing they came from Archenland. “We need Archenland to our southern border far more than we need her troops in our armies.”
“I cannot act against the Calormenes,” says King Eian again. “Your presence here is an honor, but it must end without bearing fruit –”
“You haven’t even heard my proposal yet,” Susan interrupts, gentle.
The king looks at her, and she waits on his word.
“Queen Susan,” he says finally, “I am honored by your presence, and invite you to stay with us in Anvard for a few days yet before you return to Narnia. Your visit is fortuitous; we are holding a tournament in a week’s time, in honor of my son’s fifteenth nameday. I hope you may attend.”
“Gladly, your majesty,” Susan says. Peter had given her the time. They’d been hopeful that this would be over and done with quickly, but – it’s Archenland. She can’t think of a single time that Archenland’s done anything quickly in the name of Narnia. Even her presence here is a long shot.
But Susan has always been very good at making long shots.
The king smiles at her, an edge of relief showing on his face, and retakes his seat. “You must try the bacon, Queen Susan,” he says. “It’s very good.”
It’s mid-morning by the time the breakfast finally breaks up. Prince Gareth offers to show her back to her rooms, the very picture of Archenlander chivalry, and Susan is too bemused to decline. Standing, the top of the prince’s head comes only to about the level of her nose, and that’s when she’s in heels; if they stood toe to toe, she’d still come out taller. Archenland’s royal family seems to have lost a few inches since her own time.
Anvard’s hallways are open and airy, a window at nearly every end spilling mountain sunlight in, illuminating the tapestries on the walls. Susan recognizes some of them – more stories out of Archenland’s past, which has always been a good bit more documented than Narnia. Not even stories remain of the days before the White Witch and the Long Winter – they had barely even existed in her time.
“May I ask you a question, your majesty?” the prince asks.
“You may ask, your highness, though I cannot guarantee an answer.”
Gareth takes a breath, then speaks quickly. “Are you truly here to help Archenland, the way you said in the banquet hall? The stories say that Narnia’s kings and queens never acted outside of Narnia before, when Aslan brought them back –”
“There are Narnians in Archenland as well,” Susan says, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder at the tapestry they’ve just passed – King Cor and Queen Aravis coming up the Winding Arrow, when they’d still just been a pair of Calormene runaways with stolen horses. “Archenland is – and always has been – ever important to Narnia.” She’s more curious about the implication in Gareth’s words. “Don’t you believe that your father can keep Archenland well in hand?”
“Archenland, yes.” He hesitates, his expression doubtful. “But my father – the Calormenes have been here six years, and each year our debt to them grows greater and greater. My father – Sir Brynden wasn’t always Minister of the Treasury. It used to be Lord Keve, and he started talking with the Seabrights about borrowing money from Terebinthia instead of Calormen, but then he died. They said he fell from his horse, but he never fell. He taught me how to ride.”
“You think the Calormenes killed him,” Susan says, soft.
Gareth nods unhappily. “And my mother died two years ago, from a wasting sickness, and last year Ilderim Tarkaan brought his daughter to stay with us. Oren – my father’s ward – says that I’ll find the girl in my bed before the year is out, and then I’ll have to marry her, or insult the Tisroc, and that’s just what Calormen wants – and my father doesn’t say anything to that. He does everything Ilderim Tarkaan says, ever since my mother died. Well, almost everything; he didn’t send Lord Vespasian to Tashbaan the way Ilderim wanted.”
He looks at the walls. “Did you know Ram the Great?”
“No,” Susan admits. “He was after my time.”
“Or Fair Olvin, or King Col, or Evyn the Clever, or – any of them? Did you know any of them?”
“I knew King Lune,” Susan says, “and Prince Corin –”
“Corin Thunderfist, King Cor’s brother,” Gareth says. “He boxed the Stormness Bear, and they say he boxed King Caspian of Telmar, the first one, to see which one got to take Narnia after the kings and queens – you − disappeared, but that can’t be true, because Caspian lived hundreds and hundreds of years later.”
Susan smiles. “He was a great one for boxing,” she says, reminiscent. “He was a ward of the court at Cair Paravel for several years. Peter never took any notice of him – my brother is a great one for not noticing things that he considers unimportant – until one night when we were all up late, drinking and telling tales, and Ed told Corin to get to bed, it was past his bedtime. Corin said that he’d do nothing of the sort, he was heir to the throne of Archenland and Ed was just a second king, and while Ed was spluttering over that, Corin ran up to Peter and offered to box him in exchange for getting to stay up late. Peter looked at him – oh, the way you might look at a fish that had just begun singing ‘Spanish Ladies,’ and said, ‘Why in the name of Aslan would I want to do that? I can already stay up as late as I like.’ Corin nearly had an apoplexy then and there; he can’t have been more than ten. This was before Cor came back, of course.”
Gareth grins at the anecdote. “Did the High King let him stay up?”
“No,” Susan says. “When Ed stopped sputtering, he picked Corin up and carried him to one of the carrels in the library, then told him that certainly, he could stay up, so long as he did something useful with his time, and make sure to write a full report of things he’d learned from the experience, since Ed would test him on it in the morning. Ed locked him in with a stack of books and a lamp. I told Ed he was lucky that Corin hadn’t burnt the palace down, come morning, but instead he hadn’t bothered reading anything, just fallen asleep on the floor.”
“My tutor used to do that!” Gareth says excitedly. “I used to fall asleep too.” He grins at her, happy and young, a child yet. “That’s funny – I never thought that about Corin Thunderfist. It was so long ago, it’s strange to think that he and King Cor and Queen Aravis and all the others were children once, like – like real people, you know?”
Like real people. “Yes,” Susan says, suddenly sober. “I know.”
They stop in front of the door to her rooms. “Thank you for the story,” Gareth says gallantly, kissing her hand. “I suppose I’ll see you this evening in Hall?”
“I look forward to it,” Susan says, and he leaves her there, her hand on the doorknob. She watches him go strolling happily down the hall, confident in the fresh knowledge that his heroes were human once upon a time.
She goes inside. She’d been given a small but comfortable suite of rooms – just a bedroom, a solar, and a neat lavatory tucked discreetly off to the side. The bedroom and the solar are really just one large room, the bed in a niche that can be cut off from the solar with a heavy curtain – this one is decorated with scenes from the legend of Gladis the Bold and the White Dragon. Susan had left it drawn; it’s pulled back now, and Jill Pole is perched on the window seat, a piece of paper abandoned by her feet. She looks up as Susan closes the door behind her, then scrambles up, holding the paper out to her.
“Someone brought this for you – one of the servants, someone from the town brought it to the castle and said it had to be given to you, and since you weren’t here they gave it to me –”
“Thanks,” Susan says, breaking the seal – no insignia, just a misshaped blob of candlewax. She reads through the letter quickly.
“Is it bad news?” Jill says, shifting from foot to foot. “From ho – from Narnia?”
“No,” Susan says. “We’ve been invited to tea at the butcher’s house tomorrow. He’s a Narnian.” She tucks the letter into her pocket, hurrying into her bedroom. Jill looks after her in surprise.
“Is something wrong?”
Susan touches her fingers to the cool ivory of her quiver, counting her arrows. Aslan’s mane, not again – nobody ever does this with Rhindon.
“I’m not sure,” she says, coming up with the correct number, and runs her hand along her horn, resisting the urge to shake it and see if anything falls out. Everything seems to be in the right place, but – “Jill, did you go through my things?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Susan admits, stepping back into the solar. She twitches the curtain closed again. “Was that open or closed when you came in?”
“Open. Why?”
“I left it closed,” Susan says. Corycia might have opened it, she supposed, but there’s no reason for her to do that. “And none of the maids came in to clean, the bathtub is still full –”
“Why is there water all over the floor?” Jill says doubtfully.
“I took a bath.”
“Standing up?”
Susan twitches an eyebrow at her, and decides to spare the poor thing the knowledge that the floor is probably wet because Susan had spent half the night shagging a naiad on every flat surface in the room, including the one she’s currently sitting on. She has the feeling that Jill wouldn’t take it well.
As if catching the gist of the thought, Jill stands up again, prowling restlessly around the room. “Do you think someone came in and searched it?”
“I don’t know,” Susan admits, going to count her jewelry, then check her bags. “Everything’s where I left it, but – I don’t know. I don’t know what they’d be looking for.”
“The Calormenes,” Jill says sourly. “I’ve been talking to people, and they’ve been here for years – that tarkaan says jump and the king says, ‘How high?’”
Susan frowns, moving one of her saddlebags and dropping into the chair – overstuffed and comfortable, with an embroidered pillow. She picks it up and looks at it. “I’ve just come from breakfast with the king,” she says. “The situation in Archenland is certainly very dire.”
“What do they have to complain about?” Jill asks. “They’re free! They’re just cowards –”
“No,” Susan says. “No, I don’t think they are.” She puts the pillow aside. “We’ll be here at least till next week. King Eian can’t send troops, but I think Archenland still has a thing or two to offer us yet.”
“Like what? Apologies?”
“There are a few other things,” Susan says, and smiles.
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Inexplicit sexual references
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Author's Notes: Dust in the Air uses Warsverse backstory as a general rule of thumb. All chapters of Dust are posted on both LJ and DW. Dust in the Air does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
At the risk of sounding crude, Susan hasn’t had a willing woman in bed with her for a while. Well, they’ve since moved out of the bed and into the bath, but the principle still holds – Susan doesn’t bed women in England. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them, or that once you’ve gone naiad you can’t go back, it’s more that Susan isn’t quite sure of the social obligations in England, and hasn’t been bothered to learn them. There hadn’t been anyone in England she’d been tempted by, but Narnia – Narnia is another matter entirely.
Corycia steals a kiss from her, sliding a hand along her belly. Susan twines her fingers into Corycia’s thick black hair, deepening the kiss, and spreads her legs as far as she can manage in the narrow bathtub. The good thing about getting in the bath with a naiad is that the water’s always hot. At some point in time, Susan even got her hair washed, though some of the suds are still in it.
“Sweet Susan,” Corycia purrs, nuzzling Susan’s neck. “You’re not tired, are you? I know humans get tired more easily than we do –”
“That’s men,” Susan says, laughing softly, and gasps at her touch. “Oh –”
Her sigh of pleasure is cut short by a rap on the door.
“Just a minute,” Susan calls, and pushes Corycia away gently, getting a happy eyeful as Corycia leans back against the opposite end of the tub.
“Just like old times, hmm?” she says as Susan rises dripping from the tub, reaching for a robe. It’s Terebinthian silk, sliding against her damp skin like Corycia’s smooth hands. Susan does up the ivory buttons hastily, checks in the floor-length mirror that everything’s covered, and goes to get the door. She hears Corycia duck beneath the bathwater.
“Look on the bright side,” she tells Corycia over her shoulder, just before she opens the door, “at least it’s highly unlikely to be my brother this time.”
The bloke on the other side of the door is one of King Eian’s footmen, looking slightly anxious. He looks even more so when he sees that she’s only wearing a dressing gown.
“Yes?” Susan says, smiling at him, slow and warm. She mentally bids farewell to another pleasant tumble with Corycia.
“Er – His Majesty invites you to join him for breakfast in his private chambers on the hour.”
Susan peers past his shoulder at the tall grandfather clock standing in its niche at the end of the hall. It’s quarter after, now – Eian is cutting it a little close, but it’s hardly undoable.
“Very well,” she agrees. “Inform King Eian that I will be pleased to do so.”
“Shall I send a lady’s maid to help you dress?”
“I think I can manage on my own, thank you,” Susan says, and he bobs a bow.
“Is there anything else, milady?”
She shakes her head no, and he goes as she shuts the door, mentally cataloguing the gowns that she’s brought with her for something suitably impressive, though not intimidating. The golden brown, she thinks – the red is too bold, and the purple has a different kind of punch to it. The green would do, but she wore green, albeit a different green, yesterday. The gray is too warlike.
Corycia rises from the water with a splash, clothing herself in a stola pulled from thin air as she steps out of the tub. “Shall I help you dress?”
Susan slips out of the robe, reaching for a towel, and smiles at her as she dries off, wrapping her hair up in it when she’s done. “I was counting on it,” she says. “I was rather hoping you could do my hair, as well.”
“I can do something about that,” Corycia says, leaning against the dressing table as Susan rifles through her bags for the brown dress. “It’s a bit shorter than it used to be, isn’t it? And you’ve done something different with it.”
Susan pauses, touching the bottom of her hair. She’d gotten it trimmed just before all this had happened; her friend Annie is at hairdressing school, and does her friends for free, for the practice. It’s grown out since then, though, past her shoulders. She’s glad she never took the plunge and got the bob Annie had been begging her to get. The last year she’d been in Narnia, she’d had hair down nearly to her waist; she’d sawn it off back to her shoulders after Rabadash.
“Did you bring a crown?”
“No,” Susan says, pulling the gown out. She holds it to herself, checking for wrinkles in the mirror – Narnian gowns don’t wrinkle often, but it’s been known to happen. “Crowns are on the list of things we didn’t keep spares of in the Arn Abedin treasury, worse luck. I think they’re all in Cair Paravel, if Caspian didn’t dig them out and put them in a museum or some such. Our Cair Paravel, I mean. Not the city.”
Corycia nods, watching as Susan dresses. All her clothes were hers originally, but in the few days she had between arriving back at Arn Abedin and leaving again, she’d had them altered to fit the current fashions – they’re all still expressly from her own time, but there are hints of both periods. She’d had the sleeves belled and slashed, the neckline raised, a separate bodice added instead of the usual panel of embroidery, two layers of fabric added to the hem two indicate several more underskirts besides the chemise – Beka Confesor and Tirian’s cousin Leocadia had been very helpful there, and they’d found several sempstresses among the refugees. The idea isn’t to look like a relic out of the ancient past, but to look like someone who exists out of time entirely.
“No corset?” Corycia asks as Susan picks through her jewelry.
“I despise corsets. They hurt, they restrict movement, and they’re silly.” She inspects herself in the mirror, then sits so that Corycia can do her hair.
“Your fancy human clothes restrict movement,” Corycia says, brushing out the tangles.
“True, but even in Narnia we can’t go around naked all the time. Think of the cold.” She’d mostly spent a lot of time being grateful that current fashion hadn’t evolved into such gems as the Elizabethan ruff, or layers of immovable petticoats, or, Aslan forbid, the bustle – there are so many ways fashion can go wrong. Thankfully the current fashion isn’t particularly horrendous at all, though it certainly has its moments. So does any fashion, though.
“Lovely view, though.” She twists Susan’s hair up in artful loops, pinning some of them out of the way as she braids others. Susan checks the clock in the room, a little worried.
“A crown might seem presumptive, anyway,” Susan says.
“Why would you be presuming? You are the queen.” She does something complicated with Susan’s hair, a sudden pressure as she twists and pins and repins, then steps back. “What do you think?”
Susan glances in the mirror. “It’s lovely.” Her hair isn’t quite long enough to make a full braided crown, but Corycia has twisted it up in such a way that it hints at it, securing it by jeweled gold pins that slyly suggest a tiara. She touches them, the edges of the golden daffodils soft against her fingertips, and then holds still as Corycia puts her jewelry on, then her boots. She could do it herself, but the naiad moves too quickly for her.
She stands, looking at herself in the mirror. The fashion is for layers of full skirts, but Susan had discounted that; a few extra strips of complementary fabric in green and gold cut from dresses she can’t fit into anymore hint at it, but she still has the same mobility she’d have in a single skirt, cut so that she can ride astride rather than side-saddle. The fabric isn’t as heavy as the season should call for, layers of cloth-of-gold discarded for lined wool with gold embroidery. The slashing in the sleeves reveals the pale green of her chemise, light enough that on first inspection it looks like cream. Narnian fashion had been for a split skirt, current fashion for a heavy overgown; she’d gone for the split skirt, at the sides rather than the front, with the suggestion of cascading layers of underskirts beneath – though there’s really only one underskirt, with ruffles sewn on. The bodice is a lighter golden silk over boiled leather, nearly as flexible as her own skin but far more impenetrable. It laces up in the back, but the laces are hidden under the silk; the tiny golden buttons in the shape of daffodils on the front are purely decorative. Her boots are soft supple leather, dark brown, with gold embroidery – ash leaves and more daffodils, with the odd winking yellow diamond here and there. There’s a slight heel, only about an inch; she’s tall enough that she doesn’t really need it, but she likes the effect. Golden daffodils fall from her ears, each one studded with a yellow at the center, and a larger one nestles at her breast bone, the chain a barely noticeable wait around her neck. She pauses to adjust the signet ring on her right hand, the ruby a shocking gleam of red against all the gold and green, and then checks the daggers she has strapped tight against the insides of her forearms.
She twirls experimentally, her skirts whirling out around her, then sinks into a fighting stance. It’s not very likely that there will be an attack here – not so early after their arrival, anyway, the Calormenes will want to figure out what she’s up to first – but she has to be certain that everything’s properly in place, and as flexible as she’d expected. Satisfied by the results, she straightens back up, checking the clock. Ten minutes before the hour; she thinks she remembers where the king’s chambers are, although the palace has had enough new additions in the past sixteen hundred years that they may have been moved. The old castle only remains as the core of the palace.
She turns back to Corycia, perched on the edge of the dressing table so that her legs dangle over the side. Corycia grins up at her. “Earth colors,” she says.
“I look good in earth colors,” Susan says, leaning down to kiss her. “I have to go –”
“I know,” Corycia says. “I have to go and meet my sisters – what you said about the Calormenes, about them imprisoning my cousins – that has to be investigated and dealt with. It can’t be allowed to happen. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
Susan pauses, frowning. “Tash –”
“Calormen is Tash’s country, not Narnia. And even in Calormen, he shouldn’t be able to do that.” She tips her head to one side, thinking. “There aren’t any rivers that run through both Archenland and Calormen, so I can’t speak to any of the Calormene naiads. I’ll try and find my mother, to ask.” She slides off the table, making Susan step back, and kisses her on the cheek, quick. “I’ll see you later, I hope.”
“I hope so too,” Susan says, then glances at the clock, yelps in alarm, and makes a dash for the door. She slows herself before she runs into it – lucky for her, because there’s a bored-looking footman standing n the hall, waiting to take her to the king’s solar. She walks in just as the clock strikes the hour.
The room is in one of the palace’s higher towers, at the top where light floods in through wide windows with glass panes set in them. It’s a handsome room, with comfortable chairs and low tables, one small bookshelf built in against the rounded wall. A fire burns in a hearth constructed out of dark granite and white marble, flanked by a pair of narrow stained glass windows that stretch from floor to ceiling. The remaining space on the wall is decorated with scenes out of Archenlander history – Col, the first king of Archenland, feuding with his father Frank V and brother Colin, and leading his followers out of Narnia; Evyn the Clever tricking the Mother of Mountains into giving up Anvard; Fair Olvin’s duel with the giant Pire and the giant’s transformation into the mountain; Gladis the Bold facing down the White Dragon of Arrowshead Peak; the unmasking of King Cor; Prince Corin Thunderfist’s boxing bout with the Lapsed Bear of Stormness; and a dozen more she doesn’t recognize, that must have happened after her time. The head of Aslan is carved in goldenwood above the hearth, and Susan closes her eyes, just for a bare breath, soothed by his presence.
She opens them again and looks at the people sitting in the chairs. One of them is King Eian, but the others are strangers, though she recognizes their faces from the feast. Another is a teenage boy who has Eian’s look about him, the slightly inbred look of the old Archenlander stock, with fair hair and blue eyes. There’s another fair man in silks, the sword loops on his belt empty, who looks at her with calculation in his green eyes. A knight of Archenland, surely. The fourth is a woman – human on first glance, but closer inspection reveals the tips of small horns jutting above her dark hair, and when she shifts in her seat, hooves click against the floor instead of shoes. Not a full faun, but with at least a hint of nonhuman blood. Narnian blood, maybe – though merely being nonhuman in Archenland means nothing; King Col had brought humans and nonhumans alike with him, though there has always been a far stronger human presence in Archenland than in Narnia. Her Narnia, anyway; it may be different now.
The king rises. “Queen Susan,” he says, smiling, and gives her the small bow of one monarch to another. Susan returns the courtesy.
He waves her to an empty seat. “Will you take tea? There’s chocolate as well, and coffee, if you prefer.”
“Chocolate, if it’s no great imposition,” Susan demurs.
The king nods. “Brynden, if you would the honors,” he says. The knight rises, pouring from a lidded silver pitcher into an empty cup. He brings it to Susan, and she receives it with cupped hands, smiling thanks as he returns to his seat.
She inhales the sweet scent of the hot chocolate, pleased. The cup is silver as well, a set to match the pitcher, with a hunting scene engraved around the edges. It warms with the liquid inside, comfortable against her palms.
Eian clears his throat. “Queen Susan, my eldest son and heir, Prince Gareth of Archenland.”
“Your majesty,” the prince murmurs, leaning over to kiss her hand. He eyes her with curiosity, and she places his age at fourteen or fifteen – just about Peter’s age when they’d first taken their thrones, though he’s a bit more awkward with it.
“And my advisors, Sir Brynden Waverley, Minister of the Treasury, and Lady Iolanthe of Stormness, Minister of Laws.”
“Stormness?” Susan asks, friendly. “The Narnian or the Archenlander side?”
“Both are Archenlander now, as of King Florian’s agreement with Queen Genefer some generations back,” Iolanthe says, and gives her a rather doubtful look.
“Ah,” Susan says. “The Narnian side. I mean no insult, my lady; it’s merely idle curiosity.” She sips at her chocolate, smiling all the while.
Iolanthe seems rather dubious regarding this statement, but she doesn’t reply, just cuts a scone open and butters it, her attention turned away from Susan.
King Eian sits back in his chair, holding his cup in his hand. “You made quite a stir in my court yesterday, Queen Susan,” he says.
“They needed a good stir,” Brynden Waverley grumbles. “Calormenes perched on our doorsteps, at our hearths, in our beds – ach, and if half the court heard the news coming out of Narnia that we heard, Ilderim Tarkaan wouldn’t sit nearly so easy in your hall. Mayhap this will rouse the old lizard out of his torpor.”
“To what end?” Iolanthe says, reasonable. “The Tisroc is preoccupied with Narnia now, and has been for the past five years. The last thing we need is for his attention to swing back to us and realize what a tempting target we make, sandwiched between the desert and his troops in Narnia. Perhaps he’d like something to occupy his time, while Narnia destroys itself from the inside. Perhaps Prince Bahadur grows bored waiting for King Tirian to die of old age. The tarkaan is no friend of mine, but I would rather have him here and torpid than in Tashbaan rallying an army to besiege Anvard.”
“I’d rather that he be dead and rotting in a shallow grave,” Brynden says. “Calormenes! The world would be a better place if we hanged the lot of them.”
“A sentiment you would be wise to keep inside this room, Brynden,” says the king. “Queen Susan: your presence honors us, though I must admit I expected someone –”
“Older?” she suggests, smiling.
He smiles back. “Younger, in truth. Although this manifestation is – most agreeable, to be sure.”
His son nods a little frantically, probably not aware he’s doing it, and Iolanthe stands on his foot, skirts falling back to reveal her cloven hooves. Prince Gareth jerks back in his seat, his expression aggrieved, and glares at her.
“It has its uses,” Susan murmurs. Let them think that they choose their forms; it will baffle them the more, and she thinks she prefers them baffled to thinking clearly. Flesh and blood tends to encourage the latter, legends the former.
“Indeed,” says King Eian, after a long pause. “I might have expected Lord Vespasian to come begging at my door again, or even my cousin Tirian, if he still lives, and to both of them I would have granted shelter. Even the Tisroc cannot deride the obligations due a kin-bond, after all. But even if Tirian himself came and bent the knee, asking for a thousand knights to send north, I could not grant him that wish. Archenland is a small land, Queen Susan. We do not have the troops to fight Narnia’s wars, not even if hers were our own. And you must understand how delicate our position is –”
He cuts right to the heart of the matter. Susan has to admit herself surprised; she’d expected them to dance around the subject a bit more, with idle denouncements of the Tisroc and a few more pleasantries. But perhaps Eian is hiding more behind his green eyes than she’d assumed when she first walked into his palace yesterday. Not a stupid one, surely, Vespasian of Glasswater had made that perfectly clear, but a simple one: a king who likes his son obedient, his women willing, and his country peaceful. A simple king might have drawn out the conversation longer, might even have made it public – all the better to get Susan out of his court and the Calormenes to turn their eyes back to Narnia. But his refusal is quick, sure, not preceded by a question – and private.
She smiles – her face is starting to get stiff with all this smiling – and sips at her chocolate. “Your majesty, you mistake me. Of course we have no wish to see Archenland come to harm for Narnia’s sake alone; have Archenland and Narnia not always been the greatest of friends, as well as kindred countries, once? I come merely as envoy from my brother the High King, who bears great love and affection for you, our royal cousin.”
“I have never heard it said that Peter the High King bore love and affection for any king of Archenland,” says Eian, mild, and Susan laughs.
“You know your history, your majesty. In our own time, my brother hated Archenlanders the way other men hate fleas and lice,” she says, and keeps on smiling, trying not to show that she’s holding her breath. She’d very much been hoping that Peter’s hatred of King Lune hadn’t been passed down through the history books.
For a moment the atmosphere in the room is tense, then the king laughs, a booming sound at odds with his small body. “Fleas and lice, is it? A great compliment from the High King of Narnia,” he says, and laughs some more. Brynden Waverley laughs too – a slight, nervous sound. The crown prince merely looks confused, while Iolanthe frowns, plucking at the knee of her skirts.
“Small and a constant irritation,” the king chuckles to himself. “Is that it, Queen Susan? At least I can’t accuse you of flattery! Nor your so-royal brother, I suppose.”
“Oh, Peter’s guilty of that, at least,” Susan tells him. “He could have sent our brother Edmund or our sister Lucy.” If you felt like having your battles won for you, she doesn’t say; sending Ed or Lu would have been indelicate for several reasons. Edmund is inclined to be sarcastic and insulting; Lucy merely insulting. And both of them had won battles on Narnian soil – against the Calormenes, once.
“Lucky me, then,” says the king. “I shall cherish your presence like an unexpected and well-wrapped Christmas gift – surprising, attractive, and full of mysteries.”
Prince Gareth rolls his eyes at the pun, but appears to agree; Iolanthe keeps frowning, dismembering another scone with her butter knife. Susan eyes the selection of breakfast treats as the conversation moves on, Brynden engaging the king in a question about the spring planting. She selects a scone studded with cranberries and sits back to eat it, listening and comparing what she hears to what Vespasian and Tirian had said back in Narnia. Neither of them had been privy to the inner workings of the Archenlander court, but Vespasian had been there, and Tirian listens to every rumor that went in and out of Narnia.
There had been a plague that swept through the Eastern Seaboard some six years back, before the Calormenes had invaded Narnia. The islands had barricaded themselves away from the merchant ships that bore the disease, while Narnia had largely been immune – the disease only infected humans, and more than half Narnia’s population was nonhuman – and Calormene, while hit hard initially and every time the epidemic swept through again, had the people to replace those lost. Archenland didn’t, and she was suffering for it. A number of small villages had been abandoned, others combining to consolidate into larger ones, but Archenland lacks a great city. The town outside of Anvard’s walls is not even a quarter the size of Cair Paravel and could probably fit quite nicely inside the Tisroc’s palace in Tashbaan, with room to spare if they’ve put on additions since last Susan was there. Peverell, Archenland’s only port, had lost almost seventy percent of its population, and was struggling even to put out enough fishing boats to feed the country, let alone export the way it might have before the plague. Archenland had been importing food since the plague first struck – from Narnia at first, then, after Narnia had fallen, from the eastern islands and from Calormen. They simply don’t have the people to man their farms, not to produce enough corn to feed the entire country.
That’s what Brynden’s talking to Eian about, the worry palpable in his voice as he mentions fields lying fallow, the worry that the formers won’t even have enough seed to sow all the fields they can plow.
“I suppose,” he says, rather doubtfully, “that we might open up the royal forests to hunting a few more days of the year – Aslan knows there are enough feral beasts roaming around to field half the Narnian Army.”
“What days do you suggest?” Eian asks, setting his cup aside as Brynden leans down to tug a calendar towards him, spreading it across a low coffee table. Gareth cranes his head to see; the boy has been listening as closely as Susan, though more obviously.
As they talk, Iolanthe puts her plate aside and rises from her chair, sidling over towards Susan. Susan looks up at her, resisting the urge to smile again. “My lady?”
“I heard,” Iolanthe says, soft, “that when you came south you traveled over Stormness Head.”
“Yes, with a few detours,” Susan says. There had been Calormene patrols aplenty on the road itself, and they’d gone over a small, rocky side road rather than the main pass to avoid the Tisroc’s men. “Do you have family there, still?”
“I hold lands there, yes. My brother rules them in my absence. He sent an interesting message to me, stories that the smallfolk told – that on Winter’s End day, who should come riding out of mist and shadow but the Queen of Spring herself, with lion banners of crimson and gold, and a crown of flowers in her hair.” She looks at Susan, and when Susan doesn’t answer, goes on, “Do you know what we say, those of us Narnians who no longer live in Narnia?”
“Next year in Cair Paravel,” Susan says, soft.
Iolanthe toys with her glass. “Next year in Cair Paravel,” she repeats. “Do you have any idea what that means to m –” She stutters on the word, corrects it to, “− my people? What your coming here has done?”
Susan just looks at her. She knows, of course. They all know. Narnia is a far larger, and far more scattered people than it had been once upon a time, when nearly all Narnians had dwelt within the borders. But things have changed since then.
“When did your family come to Archenland?” she says instead.
“Two hundred and fifty years ago,” Iolanthe says immediately. “Seven generations. My ancestors would not stomach Rilian the Disenchanted on the throne of Narnia, so instead they left. A creature of the northern witches, absent for nearly twenty years before he returned at the very instant of his father’s death – my ancestors bore the Telmarines, bore the White Witch before them, but they would not bear this, and so they left. Eian’s grandfather King Darrin gave mine a lordship and lands, later, in exchange for saving his life.”
“And would you return to Narnia, were the opportunity given?”
Iolanthe doesn’t have a chance to answer. The door to the solar swings open on a guardsman’s protests; Eian starts to rise, reaching for a sword that isn’t there, while Brynden grabs for a butter knife. Susan just turns, looking at Ilderim Tarkaan of Calormen standing in the open door.
“Your majesty,” he says, the honor cursory. “Having a council meeting without me? I suppose I can forgive the oversight this once –”
Brynden’s fist clenches on the butter knife, but he holds his tongue. Prince Gareth glares, mouth moving in a silent curse.
“A council meeting?” King Eian says, his voice calm. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I simply thought I’d have breakfast with my son and a few old friends, and invite our honored guest Queen Susan to share our table. Surely there’s nothing improper about that.”
Ilderim Tarkaan looks like he’d like to argue this point. He’s a tall man, dark-skinned and dark-haired, with hard black eyes and a pointed chin. Susan’s gaze drops to his waist, where he wears a sword belt, but no sword, and then she looks back up to meet his eyes, an utter calm spreading through her, like the warm breath of a lion against her back.
“Then you won’t mind if I join you,” he says, making a move towards one of the empty chairs.
“So eager for a good Archenlander breakfast, my lord?” says Iolanthe, in a voice like ice. “Or do you expect to find us conspiring against Calormen over hot chocolate and scones? If your worry is that the Queen of Spring has come to beg the King of Archenland for knights and archers to drive Prince Bahadur from Narnia, why, then you may rest easy; the Queen of Spring sees all, knows all, and she certainly knows that Archenland would never act in such a – disloyal – manner to our trusted ally the Tisroc.”
The tarkaan’s mouth works for a moment; Susan sees him adding, “may he live forever,” silently to the end of Iolanthe’s words. She sits back in her chair and smiles at him, the silkiest smile she has, the one that brought Rabadash and Caspian both begging at her feet. “I assure you, Ilderim Tarkaan,” she says, “Narnia has no need of Archenlander troops. My brother the High King fights his own battles – and,” she adds, running one finger around the rim of her cup, “he always wins.”
“I would not be so certain of that,” says the Calormene, and waits a beat, almost enough for insult, before adding, “your majesty.”
“You don’t have to listen to me,” Susan murmurs. “Calormen has her own histories, surely? I remember that you had such once, at least. The last time any member of my family closed with the Tisroc’s men –” She pauses, as if searching her memory. “Oh, yes. My younger brother Edmund and my sweet baby sister Lucy, and your Prince Rabadash. He became Tisroc, did he not? I wonder, my lord, if they still call him Rabadash the Ridiculous.”
“You dare –” says Ilderim, tight and furious, and takes a step forward.
“Oh, I wouldn’t try it,” says Brynden Waverley, grinning like a fool. “Threaten Queen Susan of Narnia, the Queen of Spring and the High King’s own blood? Aslan’s mane, I’d as lief be called a second Rabadash. And if history bore you out, it would be Aslan you’d be seeing.”
Susan hears a sweet purl of laughter, then a woman’s smooth voice saying in tones of delight, “And wasn’t Tash sore about that! From the way he swore and raved about it, you’d think he was the one who’d been turned into the ass, not Rabadash. Still, the nerve of Aslan, even in his own lands ¬−”
She shakes her head to clear the sound away, distracted. Her head hurts suddenly, a rhythmic beating just behind her eyeballs. She pinches her nose between two fingers to try and make it go away, shuddering.
“My lord Ilderim,” she hears King Eian say, like a radio signal going in and out of reception, “I welcome your counsel, but this is no council meeting, just a private breakfast among friends in mine own chambers. If you find nothing to object to here, I must ask you to leave. Of course you understand, I’m sure.”
There’s a long, pregnant pause. Susan shudders again, squeezing her eyes closed. The headache is starting to fade already, as suddenly as it began.
“Of course,” the tarkaan says at last. “I look forward to seeing you later in the day, your majesty.”
Susan opens her eyes in time to see him bow, a slight incline of his upper body, and then he turns on his heel and leaves, the door swinging behind him.
“I hate him!” Prince Gareth bursts out as soon as it clicks shut. “Father –”
Eian shakes his head, his cup clenched in his fist. Brynden drops the butter knife with a clatter. “Lion’s mane, his face when you brought up Rabadash, Queen Susan! The fools will remember that insult until the day the sky falls.” He laughs, the sound peeling through the room, and Susan remembers the voice she’d heard. And wasn’t Tash sore about that!
“I don’t see why it’s Narnia’s heroes who always return,” says the prince. “I would be glad to see Fair Olvin or Ram the Great come riding up the Winding Arrow to rid Archenland of these Calormene sandflies –”
“And I would be gladder yet to lack the occasion for such an intervention,” says his father, turning on him. “Archenland has never yet been in such dire straits as all that, Gareth, and Aslan willing, never shall be.”
Susan takes a breath, then a sip of her now-lukewarm chocolate. “I’m sorry for any trouble I’ve brought you, your majesty,” she says, looking up at the king, who’s still standing, his hand resting lightly on the back of his chair.
His smile is wan. “The trouble was here already, Queen Susan. The Calormenes have been lurking about my court since the plague came. I am more than three million crescents in debt to them,” he says with forced lightness, “and sooner or later they will expect me to pay that debt.”
“We may,” Susan says, “be able to help you with that.”
King Eian shakes his head. “To what end? I spoke the truth to you when I said that Archenland lacked the men to supply Narnia with an army. Perhaps I might send a hundred archers, a dozen knights, but no more – and before they had cleared Archenlander soil, the Tisroc’s own army would have left Tashbaan, marching straight to my doors. I do not enjoy having Calormenes on either side of me, but I would enjoy losing my kingdom far less even than that.”
“We don’t need your men,” Susan says, even though Peter would gladly accept a hundred trained archers and a dozen anointed knights – though perhaps less gladly, knowing they came from Archenland. “We need Archenland to our southern border far more than we need her troops in our armies.”
“I cannot act against the Calormenes,” says King Eian again. “Your presence here is an honor, but it must end without bearing fruit –”
“You haven’t even heard my proposal yet,” Susan interrupts, gentle.
The king looks at her, and she waits on his word.
“Queen Susan,” he says finally, “I am honored by your presence, and invite you to stay with us in Anvard for a few days yet before you return to Narnia. Your visit is fortuitous; we are holding a tournament in a week’s time, in honor of my son’s fifteenth nameday. I hope you may attend.”
“Gladly, your majesty,” Susan says. Peter had given her the time. They’d been hopeful that this would be over and done with quickly, but – it’s Archenland. She can’t think of a single time that Archenland’s done anything quickly in the name of Narnia. Even her presence here is a long shot.
But Susan has always been very good at making long shots.
The king smiles at her, an edge of relief showing on his face, and retakes his seat. “You must try the bacon, Queen Susan,” he says. “It’s very good.”
It’s mid-morning by the time the breakfast finally breaks up. Prince Gareth offers to show her back to her rooms, the very picture of Archenlander chivalry, and Susan is too bemused to decline. Standing, the top of the prince’s head comes only to about the level of her nose, and that’s when she’s in heels; if they stood toe to toe, she’d still come out taller. Archenland’s royal family seems to have lost a few inches since her own time.
Anvard’s hallways are open and airy, a window at nearly every end spilling mountain sunlight in, illuminating the tapestries on the walls. Susan recognizes some of them – more stories out of Archenland’s past, which has always been a good bit more documented than Narnia. Not even stories remain of the days before the White Witch and the Long Winter – they had barely even existed in her time.
“May I ask you a question, your majesty?” the prince asks.
“You may ask, your highness, though I cannot guarantee an answer.”
Gareth takes a breath, then speaks quickly. “Are you truly here to help Archenland, the way you said in the banquet hall? The stories say that Narnia’s kings and queens never acted outside of Narnia before, when Aslan brought them back –”
“There are Narnians in Archenland as well,” Susan says, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder at the tapestry they’ve just passed – King Cor and Queen Aravis coming up the Winding Arrow, when they’d still just been a pair of Calormene runaways with stolen horses. “Archenland is – and always has been – ever important to Narnia.” She’s more curious about the implication in Gareth’s words. “Don’t you believe that your father can keep Archenland well in hand?”
“Archenland, yes.” He hesitates, his expression doubtful. “But my father – the Calormenes have been here six years, and each year our debt to them grows greater and greater. My father – Sir Brynden wasn’t always Minister of the Treasury. It used to be Lord Keve, and he started talking with the Seabrights about borrowing money from Terebinthia instead of Calormen, but then he died. They said he fell from his horse, but he never fell. He taught me how to ride.”
“You think the Calormenes killed him,” Susan says, soft.
Gareth nods unhappily. “And my mother died two years ago, from a wasting sickness, and last year Ilderim Tarkaan brought his daughter to stay with us. Oren – my father’s ward – says that I’ll find the girl in my bed before the year is out, and then I’ll have to marry her, or insult the Tisroc, and that’s just what Calormen wants – and my father doesn’t say anything to that. He does everything Ilderim Tarkaan says, ever since my mother died. Well, almost everything; he didn’t send Lord Vespasian to Tashbaan the way Ilderim wanted.”
He looks at the walls. “Did you know Ram the Great?”
“No,” Susan admits. “He was after my time.”
“Or Fair Olvin, or King Col, or Evyn the Clever, or – any of them? Did you know any of them?”
“I knew King Lune,” Susan says, “and Prince Corin –”
“Corin Thunderfist, King Cor’s brother,” Gareth says. “He boxed the Stormness Bear, and they say he boxed King Caspian of Telmar, the first one, to see which one got to take Narnia after the kings and queens – you − disappeared, but that can’t be true, because Caspian lived hundreds and hundreds of years later.”
Susan smiles. “He was a great one for boxing,” she says, reminiscent. “He was a ward of the court at Cair Paravel for several years. Peter never took any notice of him – my brother is a great one for not noticing things that he considers unimportant – until one night when we were all up late, drinking and telling tales, and Ed told Corin to get to bed, it was past his bedtime. Corin said that he’d do nothing of the sort, he was heir to the throne of Archenland and Ed was just a second king, and while Ed was spluttering over that, Corin ran up to Peter and offered to box him in exchange for getting to stay up late. Peter looked at him – oh, the way you might look at a fish that had just begun singing ‘Spanish Ladies,’ and said, ‘Why in the name of Aslan would I want to do that? I can already stay up as late as I like.’ Corin nearly had an apoplexy then and there; he can’t have been more than ten. This was before Cor came back, of course.”
Gareth grins at the anecdote. “Did the High King let him stay up?”
“No,” Susan says. “When Ed stopped sputtering, he picked Corin up and carried him to one of the carrels in the library, then told him that certainly, he could stay up, so long as he did something useful with his time, and make sure to write a full report of things he’d learned from the experience, since Ed would test him on it in the morning. Ed locked him in with a stack of books and a lamp. I told Ed he was lucky that Corin hadn’t burnt the palace down, come morning, but instead he hadn’t bothered reading anything, just fallen asleep on the floor.”
“My tutor used to do that!” Gareth says excitedly. “I used to fall asleep too.” He grins at her, happy and young, a child yet. “That’s funny – I never thought that about Corin Thunderfist. It was so long ago, it’s strange to think that he and King Cor and Queen Aravis and all the others were children once, like – like real people, you know?”
Like real people. “Yes,” Susan says, suddenly sober. “I know.”
They stop in front of the door to her rooms. “Thank you for the story,” Gareth says gallantly, kissing her hand. “I suppose I’ll see you this evening in Hall?”
“I look forward to it,” Susan says, and he leaves her there, her hand on the doorknob. She watches him go strolling happily down the hall, confident in the fresh knowledge that his heroes were human once upon a time.
She goes inside. She’d been given a small but comfortable suite of rooms – just a bedroom, a solar, and a neat lavatory tucked discreetly off to the side. The bedroom and the solar are really just one large room, the bed in a niche that can be cut off from the solar with a heavy curtain – this one is decorated with scenes from the legend of Gladis the Bold and the White Dragon. Susan had left it drawn; it’s pulled back now, and Jill Pole is perched on the window seat, a piece of paper abandoned by her feet. She looks up as Susan closes the door behind her, then scrambles up, holding the paper out to her.
“Someone brought this for you – one of the servants, someone from the town brought it to the castle and said it had to be given to you, and since you weren’t here they gave it to me –”
“Thanks,” Susan says, breaking the seal – no insignia, just a misshaped blob of candlewax. She reads through the letter quickly.
“Is it bad news?” Jill says, shifting from foot to foot. “From ho – from Narnia?”
“No,” Susan says. “We’ve been invited to tea at the butcher’s house tomorrow. He’s a Narnian.” She tucks the letter into her pocket, hurrying into her bedroom. Jill looks after her in surprise.
“Is something wrong?”
Susan touches her fingers to the cool ivory of her quiver, counting her arrows. Aslan’s mane, not again – nobody ever does this with Rhindon.
“I’m not sure,” she says, coming up with the correct number, and runs her hand along her horn, resisting the urge to shake it and see if anything falls out. Everything seems to be in the right place, but – “Jill, did you go through my things?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Susan admits, stepping back into the solar. She twitches the curtain closed again. “Was that open or closed when you came in?”
“Open. Why?”
“I left it closed,” Susan says. Corycia might have opened it, she supposed, but there’s no reason for her to do that. “And none of the maids came in to clean, the bathtub is still full –”
“Why is there water all over the floor?” Jill says doubtfully.
“I took a bath.”
“Standing up?”
Susan twitches an eyebrow at her, and decides to spare the poor thing the knowledge that the floor is probably wet because Susan had spent half the night shagging a naiad on every flat surface in the room, including the one she’s currently sitting on. She has the feeling that Jill wouldn’t take it well.
As if catching the gist of the thought, Jill stands up again, prowling restlessly around the room. “Do you think someone came in and searched it?”
“I don’t know,” Susan admits, going to count her jewelry, then check her bags. “Everything’s where I left it, but – I don’t know. I don’t know what they’d be looking for.”
“The Calormenes,” Jill says sourly. “I’ve been talking to people, and they’ve been here for years – that tarkaan says jump and the king says, ‘How high?’”
Susan frowns, moving one of her saddlebags and dropping into the chair – overstuffed and comfortable, with an embroidered pillow. She picks it up and looks at it. “I’ve just come from breakfast with the king,” she says. “The situation in Archenland is certainly very dire.”
“What do they have to complain about?” Jill asks. “They’re free! They’re just cowards –”
“No,” Susan says. “No, I don’t think they are.” She puts the pillow aside. “We’ll be here at least till next week. King Eian can’t send troops, but I think Archenland still has a thing or two to offer us yet.”
“Like what? Apologies?”
“There are a few other things,” Susan says, and smiles.
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-26 02:37 am (UTC)Having Corycia here has been very good for Susan, in so many ways. I loved the conversation about human clothes (corsets = evil!) as well how Narnian/Archenland fashion has changed over the centuries. There's a whole "Make Do and Mend" vibe with having the old clothes altered enough to look a little more modern and yet still be comfortable and strong should she need to fight or ride.
Brynden and Gareth are such interesting characters. I love the former's very blunt assessment of Archenland's situation and the latter, while young, seems to see certain things much clearer than his father. Iolanthe is a Narnian at heart, even if she's a member of Eian's court. Perhaps with Susan sitting before her, she can truly hope that Spring will come again for Narnia.
Ah, Rabadash is still a very sore point for the Calormenes! Nearly two millennia later and no one can quite forget the whole, Ridiculous encounter. But I am curious about the voice that Susan hears... who is it?
I love the little anecdotes sprinkled in the story as well... Peter's well-known dislike of Archenland's kings as well as the bit about Corin, Edmund (second king! poor dear!), and trying to get Peter to box him.
Poor Jill. Almost calling Narnia "home" but it's not, not really, for her. And surely something is amiss in Susan's room... but what? And I really, really am curious about what Peter is willing to offer Eian in exchange for some help.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 03:55 am (UTC)I had way too much fun writing about fashion. Way, way too much -- and I really wish I was more artistic, so I could draw it. (Oh, Isis Mussenden, I want your brain.) *cough*
The voice that Susan hears is a character that we've heard about, but that we haven't met yet...I think. I reserve the right to change it at any point in time. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-26 05:20 am (UTC)I may have to go back and read the whole fic so I remember what actually happened, sometime when I haven't already spent the whole day reading Yuletide. There was a moment when I said, "Wait, Susan wasn't in Last Battle at all," and I still don't remember how you changed that, so obviously I'll have to look again!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 10:28 pm (UTC)It got changed by me not addressing it at all -- I don't think it's ever mentioned in the fic itself where the various Pevensies were when they were summoned to Narnia, and the transition from England to Narnia doesn't appear. (They were all in different places: Lucy was on the train with Jill and Eustace, Edmund and Peter were on the platform, and Susan was doing the dishes in her flat.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-26 05:47 am (UTC)(Do I not have my Susan icon uploaded to DW? Unacceptable! Here, have Peter instead.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-26 06:42 am (UTC)Are you entirely sure the Winding Arrow River doesn't run in both Archenland and Calormen? It's unclear from my recollection. But the thought of Calormene Naiads is ... interesting. It's never been clear from canon how many of the really magical creatures (like Naiads & Dryads etc) lived outside Narnia, if any.
Anyway, yay, update!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 10:33 pm (UTC)Archenland has a few tricks up her sleeve (as well as being the site of a major battle I have been planning since the very beginning that will be the climax of this section), so...we'll see. :)
I was checking three different versions of maps of Narnia (the Bynes map, which is the one I grew up with, the Walden map, and another one I don't have an artist for), and it looks like the Winding Arrow doesn't go through the desert at all, but runs down from the mountains to the sea. My general idea of the various nonhumans in the Narnia world is that they certainly exist outside of Narnia, but it's only in Narnia that they outnumber the humans, or at least live alongside humans in the same mixed society.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 04:53 pm (UTC)Definitely a good thing Peter didn't send Lucy. Oo. I'd feel for the Tarkaan.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 10:35 pm (UTC)I am possibly a little too excited about the politics right now. Things! They are happening! Am resisting the urge to ignore the rest of the characters and just write about Susan and Jill in Archenland.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 11:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-27 11:18 pm (UTC)