Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (23)
Jan. 2nd, 2011 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air (23)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Inexplicit violence involving (talking) animals
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).
There’s a burst of snarls and barks from the pit below as the big gray hound ceases his circling and makes a rush at his opponent, a slimmer collie with patches of brown and white fur. Both dogs have scars on muzzles and flanks, their teeth sharpened to do the worst kind of damage in the fight. Elizar shouts with all the rest, some of his beer sloshing from the mug as he gestures. There’s betting going on all around the Poison Well, both money and betting slips changing hands with varying amounts of formality. Jacker’s bigger, but Elizar is favoring Proudfoot this time; the collie hasn’t lost a match since he was little more than a half-grown pup, still confined to the smaller weight classes. Since he’s moved up, he’s had a few draws, but never a defeat.
Proudfoot sidesteps the rush, his tail a hair too slow; Jacker catches it in his teeth and drags the collie back, grinning around the brush of fur as Proudfoot yelps in startled pain, before he twists and gets free, leaving Jacker with a mouthful of white fur. He bowls the hound over, teeth scraping along his withers and drawing blood to a chorus of shouts from the onlookers.
“Rip his throat out!” a drunken whore shouts, waving her mug of beer and succeeding in spilling most of it down herself and her client, who seems more interested in her breasts than in the fight.
Proudfoot’s laugh turns into a snarl as Jacker uses his greater weight to throw the collie off and halfway across the ring. For a moment it looks like Proudfoot isn’t going to get back up, and then he does, levering himself to his feet a little painfully, lips drawn back from his sharpened teeth in a snarl.
“Tired of playing in the big leagues?” Jacker taunts. “Go back to the puppies, pretty boy. Or the terriers, if chasing rats down holes is all you can handle.”
Proudfoot growls at him. “Go and pull a cart, you glorified carthorse,” he snaps, and the two dogs rush at each other, meeting in midair. The crowd roars approval, more money changing hands.
Elizar shouts with the rest of them. He has a superior vantage point, up in the balcony on the second floor of the Well, while most of the crowd is down below, pressed up against the wooden slats and netting that cuts the pit off from the audience. The balcony is only a hair less crowded than the ground floor, but it’s enough that Elizar’s afforded a seat instead of hanging onto the railing and that the servers can make their way through with trays of drinks, albeit with some difficulty. One of them whisks Elizar’s mostly empty mug away and replaces it, almost before he realizes he’s wanting. He drinks deep, spilling some when a hag jostles his elbow in her hurry to make it to the rail.
Gunderic Leadbeater drags the offender back immediately. “Apologize to the capo,” he rumbles, and the hag dips a slight curtsey, too distracted by the chorus of snarls from the pit to do more than murmur a brief, “My fault, capo.”
“Let her go,” Elizar says, most of his attention on Jacker and Proudfoot. Both dogs have blood on their flanks now, looking considerably worse for wear; Proudfoot’s limping slightly, but Jacker will tired more quickly if Proudfoot can hold out. Elizar hopes he can; he has ten crescents on Proudfoot and he’d hate to lose the money.
Gunderic lets the hag go with a grunt of distaste, leaning on the rail. She scampers off, reappearing a ways down the rail a moment later, watching the pit avidly.
“Ready to surrender?” Proudfoot says, his voice nearly drowned out by the hum of the crowd.
“Why? Are you getting tired?” Jacker replies, lips skinning back from his teeth. He crouches, the stump of his cropped tail twitching slightly.
There’s a burst of laughter and Proudfoot snarls, embittered by the insult. Elizar grins, leaning forward on the rail, and doesn’t see Symeon worming his way through the crowd until the hyena puts his paws up on the arm of his chair. “Capo,” he says anxiously.
Elizar turns his head towards him. “What is it?”
“Her Ladyship’s at the High King’s Arms,” Symeon mutters.
“Right now?”
“Just came down from the palace.”
“My, what exalted company we keep,” Elizar reflects, rising from his chair with only a slight wobble. He’s a little drunk, but only enough to be comfortable, not enough to hinder. He claps his hand to Gunderic’s shoulder. “Gund, collect my bets for me when this is all over, will you? That’s a good lad.”
“You’re leaving, boss?” the faun says, tearing his attention away from the pit with some difficulty.
“Just for a little while. Business.”
Gunderic looks dubious about what kind of business might be conducted outside the Poison Well at this hour, but it’s not his place to question, and he holds his tongue. “You want company?”
“Symeon will be more than adequate,” Elizar says, to the hyena’s obvious gratification. “I shouldn’t be gone long. Try not to burn the place down in my absence; it costs too much to repair and my money’s promised elsewhere.”
To the High King’s myriad eccentric errands; Elizar doesn’t see why the other members of the Table can’t help out here and there, but he’s damned if he’s going to go begging to Bencivenni Maresti or Onahoua Malukai for a few extra crescents, like he can’t afford his own expenses. Besides, he’s decided to look on these new chores as a test of his not inconsiderable connections and abilities, and it wouldn’t do to be seen as incompetent.
Gunderic grunts assent and turns back to the pit to a roar of approval from the crowd. Elizar pauses to see what the fuss is all about, turning too quickly and overbalancing. He catches himself on the railing, peering down into the pit below. Jacker has Proudfoot on his back, teeth closed around the smaller dog’s neck; Proudfoot whines surrender and Jacker lets go, grinning as Proudfoot slinks away, his tail pressed between his legs.
“King of Summer!” Jacker howls, delighted with his own victory; Elizar clenches his fist on t he rail, remembering the expression on Peter’s face in the room beneath the High King’s Arms. “I dedicate this victory to you, who walks again in the woods of Narnia! May you and yours reign until the seas part and the stars fall down!”
The crowd roars approval, some of them adding drunken cheers for the High King and his family. Maybe startled by the noise, a raven takes flight from the rafters, winging his way out an open window.
Elizar turns away, shaking his head. “That’s ten crescents I’ve lost,” he says, and shoves his way through the crowd of people on the balcony, Symeon trailing in his wake. He makes it down the stairs with some difficulty, and has to use his elbows to get out of the tight press of the crowd on the first floor; someone’s in the pit shoveling sand over the splashes of blood, while the next opponents, Elizar’s sworn man – or leopard, rather – Sammi and some jaguar from one of the ships trapped in the harbor by Prince Bahadur’s decree, prepare to go in. Elizar’s already bet on Sammi, of course, but he’s feeling none too generous to his own people after Proudfoot’s failure. He snags a cup of something bright blue out of a faun’s hand and drains it before handing the cup back, ignoring the flabbergasted expression the faun sports. She bites off her protests when Symeon snarls, and Elizar leaves her behind, emerging from the Poison Well into the cold night air of the Black Pearl. He pulls his coat on hastily; it’s hot as Summerheart day inside, with the press of people.
“I’ve called a pedicab,” Symeon says, anxious.
There’s more than one ‘cab waiting on the street in front of the Well, some of them waiting for their drivers to return from the bar or the pit. The drivers that remain are huddled up inside their cloaks against the chill salt wind that’s coming in off the ocean, replacing the smell of rot and decay left from the flood with the clean scent of the sea. The lanterns on the cabs, lit against the night, exude a faint scent of whale oil. Symeon heads towards a pedicab near the end, manned by Elizar’s old friend Villi, pausing to look over his shoulder to make sure Elizar’s following.
Mayor wouldn’t have bothered to arrange a pedicab, Elizar thinks gloomily. Mayor would have told him to walk off the liquor he’d drunk, so he didn’t present himself to a lady of the Assembly of Lords a brilliant example of all the worst clichés surrounding the Pearl. Then he’d ask if Elizar had gotten too lazy to walk a few blocks, because if he kept trying, he’d be as fat as the capo del’sud, and finally cap that off with some snide remark about human weakness.
Mayor’s not here, though, and Symeon doesn’t have the balls to talk back to Elizar yet. He climbs into the pedicab, buttoning his coat up against the bite of the wind. Symeon scrambles up after him, sitting on the floor by his feet as Villi goes about his leisurely business of checking his traces against any kind of sudden damage.
“You pulled the damned thing here, didn’t you?” Elizar says dryly. “Can’t have changed that much in the past five minutes, can it?”
The centaur turns to look at him. “Three other drivers I know have had their harness cut in the last week, Basil while he was in the traces. Why some idiot would want to do that kind of sabotage, of all the bloody things –” He shakes his head, scowling.
The complaint penetrates Elizar’s alcohol-fogged brain. “Why didn’t anyone bring that to me?”
“You’d have to ask them,” Villi says. Apparently finding his harness in perfect working order, he sets off down the cobbled streets at a brisk trot. Elizar slumps against the hard back of the cab, pulling at a stray bit of stuffing protruding from the seat.
Aside from the bars and clubs – the Poison Well isn’t the only one on this block, just the biggest – the neighborhood is quiet. The theatre district, only a few blocks away, is still shut down in the wake of the flooding; even though it took a fair bit of damage, and had been in poor repair before the floods, Elizar suspects that the closure has less to do with that and more to do with the Calormenes’ general distaste for Narnian theatre, which has tended more and more towards the political in recent years. Elizar can’t say he blames them. He hopes they’ll relent before Winter’s End, though, or there may well be rioting in the streets. On the other hand, there may well be rioting in the streets anyway.
Villi clops to a stop on the side of the Black Pearl side of the neutral ground, and Symeon scrambles out, looking suspiciously at the pair of guardsmen leaning against the outer wall of the High King’s Arms. They don’t even look around at the disturbance, just pass the mug they’re sharing back and forth and continue on with their conversation.
Elizar swings out of the cab, catching himself on the side of it as he starts to stumble. Villi swings around to look at him, raising an eyebrow as Elizar gropes for his purse. “You want me to wait?”
“That’d be peachy,” Elizar says, flipping him a ha’crescent for the trouble.
“You also maybe want to go stick your head a barrel of water before you go and meet this broad you’re seeing?”
“What, and make her think I’m a drunk?” Elizar says comfortably, slaps Villi on the flank, and strides away, nodding to the guardsmen as he passes them.
The club’s recovered well from the disturbance of the past few weeks. There’s water damage on the floor and the lower parts of the walls, one corner roped off while it undergoes considerable repairs, but the flooding had covered up any damage from the fight, and the Calormenes had been too ashamed by their defeat to admit that they’d broken the sacred peace of the High King’s Arms. The floor’s not as crowded as the Poison Well tonight; the Arms doesn’t do the kind of in-house pit-fighting the Well offers. There’s an argument going on over by the billiards table, a wer-wolf shrieking in outrage while his partner, a Calormene man Elizar recognizes as one of Onahoua’s people, tries to calm him. One of the Arms’ bouncers is winding his way through the crowd, scowling mightily.
Elizar waves to let the barkeep know he’s here, looking around for the woman he’s meeting. He finally spots her in one of the booths on the far side of the bar, her back to the door. A fall of ruffled blue skirts protrudes from the side of the bench.
“Did she bring any guards?” Elizar mutters to Symeon.
The hyena nods to the front of the bar, where a hag is perched on a stool, brooding over a tall glass of sangria. Not exactly the kind of companion Elizar would have expected from a respectable Narnian noblewoman; some of the creatures that are traditionally associated with the White Witch have been able to reintegrate themselves into Narnian society without much difficulty, but many others are still marked out. Even in the Black Pearl, Elizar doesn’t see hags often, and he’s seen two in less than an hour. Some might call that an omen.
He wends his way across the floor to the booth, sliding into the seat across from the woman. She looks up at him, her gaze impassive, and moves her glass of sangria a fastidious inch away from him. “Elizar Confesor, I presume?” Her accent is so upper-crust that it makes his back teeth ache to listen to it. No wonder he hadn’t hated Peter on sight, Elizar realizes suddenly; he and his sister had both lacked the accent of the palace and the Garden District, the product of six hundred years’ pained Telmarine differentiation from the Narnian masses.
“You presume correctly.” Elizar sheds his coat, tossing it onto the bench beside him, and loosens his already rumpled cravat.
Lady Marcia Bracken looks at him with polite distaste. She’s a tall woman with a fashionable tumble of blonde curls pulled back from her face, with sapphire and silver drops in her ears. The very picture of a typical Narnian noblewoman, although she’s fair rather than dark. Nowhere near as beautiful as Queen Susan, and not conventionally pretty – her jaw is a little too strong for that, her lips not full enough – but handsome enough, in that made-up way nobles are.
“I see,” she says. “Well, this certainly makes an interesting change from being summoned to sit and smile at Prince Bahadur’s puppet Assembly. Dare I ask what it is you want from me? As pleasant as this diversion promises to be, I haven’t got all evening, Master Confesor.”
Elizar takes his cup of sangria as a barmaid brings it to him, slipping her a minim for her trouble, and turns back to Lady Marcia. “I’ll try and keep this quick, then, so you can hurry on back to – whatever I’m diverting you from.”
“Please do.”
“I understand Bahadur’s given you the contract for the new Temple of Tash on the nameless isle.”
“For my sins, yes,” she says, with another slight shudder of distaste. At his raised eyebrow, she goes on, “My late husband had the poor taste to be dying when Cair Paravel fell, thus depriving the Tisroc of the pleasure of confiscating his property as a traitor to Calormen. As a result, Prince Bahadur is more than happy to force me to spend my not-inconsiderable fortune on his pet projects.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” says Elizar, taking a sizable gulp of his sangria. Symeon’s sulked off to a suitable distance, tucking himself out of the way.
“I don’t expect someone like you to care, Master Confesor. If your interest was in my money, I’m sure I’d already have a crossbow pointed at my head.”
“I’m a little more subtle than that,” Elizar says, letting his gaze trail across her body, lingering on the curve of her breasts beneath the blue damask of her overgown.
Marcia Bracken seems unimpressed by the implied threat. “Dare I ask what it is you want from me? If it’s the pleasure of my body you’re hoping for, I fear you’ll be sadly disappointed.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Elizar says, drains his glass, and waves for another one. “I need to get onto the nameless isle.”
“How very nice for you. And I suppose you want my help with this little blasphemy of yours?”
“I sincerely doubt it’s still considered blasphemy if the King of Summer is with you,” says Elizar. He doesn’t care one way or another, to be honest; he lost his faith a long time ago, and even when he’d still had it, he’d been Old Narnian, like his father before him.
The words shake Lady Marcia, just for a moment, and then she recovers her calm, taking a sip of her sangria to hide her discomposure. The liquor dyes her lips red; Elizar pauses to admire the effect. Symeon was probably right, he acknowledges as the barmaid brings him his second glass of sangria. He’s a little drunk.
“I see,” she says eventually, her voice cool. “And what do I get in return? You do realize that this could be considered an act of high treason against the Tisroc and I’m sure you know the punishment for that. You wouldn’t be the one putting her neck out for the axe.”
“Actually I am, since I’ll be the one in the boat,” Elizar says. “Although I think your lineage is fancy enough that they give you a sword, if you ask for one. Or, well, you’re a woman. Maybe they hand you a cup of hemlock if you ask nicely.”
“My dear Master Confesor,” says Lady Marcia, “are you drunk?”
“No,” Elizar says, smiling at her. “I’m comfortable. Are you?”
“Comfortable or drunk? Far from both of those, I assure you, though I’m starting to wonder about the latter, given the things that are coming out of your mouth. Now, my question.”
“What mercenaries you nobles are,” says Elizar. “Don’t you have any patriotism at all?”
“I can’t see that you’re asking for any, just a highly dangerous favor in the name of the High King. You might as well ask in the name of Aslan.” From her tone, either plea is equally as unlikely.
“Why, will that help?”
She gives him a withering look. “What fools men are,” she says, starting to rise. “Now, if you’ve quite finished wasting my time –”
Elizar grabs her wrist, meaning to hold her in place until he gets his head straight enough to figure out a suitable bribe. Even before he can blink there’s a blackjack in her free hand, dropping down out of her sleeve as she starts to swing at him. He lets go hastily, and the blackjack just barely misses breaking his wrist.
“I like you,” he decides abruptly, reaching for his second sangria. Out of the corner of his room he sees Symeon settle back down, the line of his back tense with worry.
“How flattering,” drawls Marcia Bracken. “A drunken criminal likes me. Now there’s something I’ve always wanted.” She slips the blackjack back up her sleeve; even though he’s looking for it now, Elizar can’t see it. That, he has to admit, he didn’t see coming.
“Sit down, Lady Bracken,” he says. “Have a drink. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot –”
“You don’t say.” But she does sit down, holding herself very tense, and takes a quick sip of her sangria.
“You have something I want,” Elizar says. “There must be something you want. Everyone wants something.”
“Nothing you can give me, I’m sure.”
Elizar runs his tongue over his teeth, thinking. “You sit in the Assembly of Lords. When was the last time you were allowed to speak?”
Lady Marcia tenses further. “You know the answer to that very well. Calormenes don’t exactly hold with women having a place in government. Anything I wish to say in the Assembly goes through my representative. Not that the Assembly does anything but vote on what Prince Bahadur puts before us, of course, and not that we vote any way but the way he pleases.”
“It wasn’t true when there was a Narnian on the throne, instead of a Calormene. If King Tirian were to be restored –”
“Forgive me if I find this sweet dream highly unlikely,” says Lady Marcia. “Even if the rumors are true, and Tirian is massing an army in the Western Wild, he could never face the Calormenes in open combat. Bahadur would smash him in moments.”
“You and I both know that that’s not what the rumors are saying,” says Elizar. “Tirian couldn’t command troops if the High King’s army rose from the grave and formed up in ranks in front of him. I’m sure they know that in court even better than we in the Pearl do. But the High King himself, back from Aslan’s Country with his siblings –”
Lady Marcia closes her eyes for a moment, breathing in. “It’s impossible,” she says at last. “And even if it was true – I won’t risk my life and my fortune on a dream.”
Damn these stubborn nobles. Elizar drums his fingers on the table, irritated, and says, “Then there must be something more substantial you want. Money –”
“Despite the Tisroc’s insistence on my frittering it away on his pet projects, I am more than adequately equipped in that department.”
“Someone then. The Calormenes have half the nobility in prison –”
“Just under a quarter, actually,” she corrects, precise. “Surely you have the means to hire a boat yourself?”
“Calormene patrols in the harbor,” Elizar reminds her. “Because of the blockade. I’d rather not put any of my people at risk.”
“So you’d rather put me at risk. If you’re so desperate to get to the nameless isle, Master Confesor, getting arrested and assigned to the construction crews would certainly be easier.”
“I’d also like to get off again,” Elizar says. “Alive, by preference. Look, Lady Bracken, I’m not asking for much – I don’t want you to row the boat yourself, I just need to get onto that island. And even then you could tell Bahadur that it was all an accident. After all,” he adds, his mouth quirking, “you’re a woman. Surely a nice Calormene boy like him could never dream that a woman might seek to conspire against the Tisroc.”
She smiles, a thin, stiff little twitch of her lips. “Your point is taken, Master Confesor. Well, I certainly have civilians working on the nameless isle, as slave crews tend to lack skilled labor. I suppose something could be arranged. Though not without compensation, of course.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Elizar says dryly. “What do you want? Some relative in prison, some painting carried away to the palace –”
“Well, I certainly have no end of either of those,” Lady Marcia says, with a slight sigh. “I suppose the impossible is a bit much to ask, even for a man of your…talents. There’s a timber merchant from Terebinthia sitting in the harbor now, trying to find a suitable importer in Narnia. I would appreciate it if he chose my business rather than Lord Isambro’s.”
“I can do that,” Elizar says, feeling his shoulders relax slightly.
“If I don’t get that contract,” says Lady Marcia, rising, “you can swim to the nameless isle, for all I care.” She picks up her overcoat, smoothing down her skirts with her free hand. The hag from the bar hurries up to hold her overcoat from her as Lady Marcia slips into it, pulling the hood up over her bright curls. “Good night, Master Confesor.”
“Good night, Lady Bracken,” he says, frowning after her as she leaves. Symeon wanders back over, scrambling up into Lady Marcia’s abandoned seat.
“Will she do it?” he asks, sniffing at her abandoned glass.
“Sure,” Elizar says, draining the remainder of his sangria. “We get to go intimidate a foreign merchant. It’ll be fun.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all she asked for,” Elizar says. “Now it all depends on the colliers.”
“The colliers?” Symeon says, blinking, and Elizar shakes his head.
The guardsmen are gone when he and Symeon exit the High King’s Arms a few minutes later, but Villi’s still there, reading a newspaper by lantern light. He folds it up as Elizar climbs back in. “Back to the Well?”
Elizar considers this. “For the moment,” he agrees, and indicates the newspaper. “Anything interesting in that?”
“The usual shit. All the letter-writers are spooked since Cordylion got dragged off by the Callies, though I suppose they’ll start up again as soon as they forget about that.” He sighs, turning himself around in the street. “I wonder what happened to him?”
“Imprisoned or enslaved, probably,” Symeon says, scratching his ear.
“Or dead,” Elizar adds. All three are equally likely. Even the Calormenes can’t shut down the newspapers entirely, but they can make it damned hard for Narnia’s numerous and vocal editorial writers to publish their letters, and those they catch disappear, never to be heard of again.
“There’s something cheerful to think of,” Villi says finally. His hooves clop dully on the cobblestones, and Elizar closes his eyes as the cab bumps over them, jarring his head. Possibly that last sangria was a bad idea.
“You know how I try to be cheerful,” he says.
“Yeah, you’re a regular clown,” Villi rumbles, pausing at an intersection as another pedicab tears by, the satyr in the traces looking desperately out of breath. He draws to a stop before the Poison Well and Elizar swings out, tossing him a crescent for the trouble. Symeon follows him, muttering softly to himself.
The Well is hot and packed; Elizar can’t see the fighters when he enters, but at his nod Symeon worms forward through the crowd at thigh-level, his brush of a tail wagging furiously before he disappears entirely. Elizar sheds his coat, draping it over his arm as he tugs the collar of his shirt open. He snags a glass off a passing barmaid’s tray; she stifles her protests when she recognizes him, nodding to assure him she’ll add the price to his tab. He starts edging his way towards the stairs, hoping Gunderic’s saved his seat.
Symeon emerges from the crowd before he reaches the stairs, in advance of a mass clearing of a path as two fauns carry a minotaur out of the ring on a stretcher. Elizar cranes his neck to see who it is – Octar, who works at the warehouses down at the very edge of the Black Pearl. His opponent follows, looking suitably pleased with himself.
“Sammi won,” Symeon reports. “So did Gjergy. Gav lost. Tailspinner’s up next, after they clean up Octar’s missing teeth.” He looks at the drink in Elizar’s hand rather hopefully, then around at the crowd.
Not bad, Elizar thinks, nodding. “Who’s that who beat Octar?”
“Some Galman sailor off the docks,” Symeon shrugs. He presses suddenly against Elizar’s leg as somebody shoves past them, and Elizar almost spills his drink down his shirt.
“Hey –”
“Calormenes!”
Elizar’s hand falls to his sword hilt, or the place where his sword would be if he was wearing it, but there’s nothing there. He looks up at the speaker, a pigeon who’s just fluttered through an open window – he knows her, her name is Whitewing, she lives in the bell-tower above one of the small temples of Tash in the Pearl. She perches in the rafters, wings mantling as she shouts again. A few other people look up.
“The Calormenes are coming!” she yells, and Gunderic Leadbeater, on the balcony, takes up the call.
“The Callies are coming!”
Chaos.
Elizar shoves back against the nearest wall, someone knocking his mug from his hand as the general crowd makes a rush for the main door, like the idiots they are. He grabs for the thick ruff of fur around Symeon’s neck when it looks like the hyena is going to get swept away in the crowd, pulling Symeon with him. He doesn’t bother running – there’s nothing illegal going on in the Well tonight, and he’s the owner, he’s not exactly going to flee the premises and give the Callies an excuse to seize it in his absence. Besides, running for the front door is criminally stupid when the Calormenes are doubtless coming down the street; anyone who’s that dumb practically deserves to be arrested. He’s not sure what he’s more curious about: why the Calormenes are here, or why it’s the Calormenes and not the Provost’s Guard.
Elizar sees when they arrive, because the mob at the front door stops and stills, then shouts in protest as the Calormenes force a pathway through them. Some mad dwarf winds up to throw a punch at groin level and is promptly knocked aside by a particularly grim-faced Calormene, falling back into the ranks of the crowd and probably getting trampled on.
It’s not just any Calormene soldiers, but the palace guard, Elizar notes with some curiosity – the men who are supposed to answer directly to Prince Bahadur. They stop in even ranks in the hastily cleared center of the club, right next to the pit, and the captain looks around at the waiting crowd, every inch of his body radiating disdain.
“I have a warrant,” he announces coldly, his Narnian only slightly accented. Well, the warrant makes a fascinating change; usually the Callies just drag people off without explanation.
Elizar shoulders his way through the men in front of him to the front of the crowd and steps out into the empty floor. “For who and for what?”
The captain looks him up and down. “Elizar Confesor, I presume?”
“Yes.” He crosses his arms over his chest, watching out of the corner of his eyes as a few of his men prepare themselves to step forward as well, reaching for concealed weapons or makeshift clubs. “Who’s your warrant for?”
The captain takes the piece of paper out from inside his robe, unfolding it. “For the charge of conspiracy against the crown – Starla the Banshee, Jacker the Hound, Gjergy Lackwind the Satyr, Alkort Erosa, and Llorais the Selkie.”
“Conspiracy against the –” says Llorais, who’s never been all that smart.
Someone else, probably without any more brains but who’s at least hidden in the crowd, says, “What crown?” and laughs.
“The crown of Calormen,” says the Calormene captain, scowling. “In the name of the Tisroc, may he live forever, and Prince Bahadur, governor of Narnia –”
“Jail keeper of Narnia,” says the same idiot who’d spoken before, and there’s a murmur of laughter in the crowd. The Calormene soldiers shift nervously, hands falling to sword hilts or tightening on spear hafts. Elizar’s men in the crowd, and even those that aren’t directly associated with the Table, start to shift, preparing to fight back.
Elizar raises a hand to quiet the laughter, because all he needs is for this to go even more poorly. “Can I see your warrant, Captain?” he asks, holding out his hand
For a moment he thinks that the Calormene is going to refuse, then the man steps forward and hands him the paper. Elizar fights down his automatic urge to rip it in two and reads it instead. It’s hastily written, what looks like a form charge, with the names scribbled in and the Prince’s seal stamped on the bottom. No signature – that would be necessary by Narnian law, because anyone can stamp a seal, but the Calormenes aren’t so discriminating. He reads it over again, and then once more.
“Do you find everything in order, Master Confesor?” drawls the Calormene captain. “May I take my prisoners now?”
“Everything looks in order,” Elizar says, but he holds onto the paper as the Calormene reaches for it. They both grip it, staring into each other’s eyes. Just a man, Elizar knows: a man like any other, a man like him, who probably kissed his wife and parents goodbye when he left his home in Calormen to march north against Narnia.
The Calormene drags on the warrant and Elizar releases it, abrupt. “Take them,” he snaps, and his men start to spread out.
There’s a moment of panicked unrest, and Elizar holds up his hand again to keep back any violent action. “Don’t fight back,” he orders. “This is just a mistake. I’ll see it rectified.”
“I don’t make mistakes,” says the Calormene stubbornly.
“But they’re taking the barkeep!” someone protests, as Starla’s dragged around the side of the bar. There’s a ripple of uneasy laughter; even a few of the Calormenes grin, amused. The captain’s mouth quirks slightly.
“I assure you,” he says, with considerable dignity, “if this is indeed a mistake, I’ll make sure that it’s rectified as quickly as possible, with all apologies. My name is Amjad; you may ask for me.”
“Confessor, you can’t let this happen −” Gjergy protests as he’s cuffed and marched out by two Calormene guardsmen.
“I’ll do what I can,” Elizar says, raising his hands to calm him. “It’s just a mistake –”
“And the Callies are accepting of those?” someone says softly. Elizar doesn’t think the captain’s heard him, but a few of the guardsmen do, and they look around, tense. Everyone’s tense. If this comes to drawn blades, everyone in the bar will go to the slavers, and Elizar can’t let that happen. He won’t let that happen.
When all five Narnians named on the warrant have been collected and marched out into the street, Captain Amjad nods to Elizar. “My thanks for your aid, Master Confesor,” he says, and Elizar clenches his jaw.
“I don’t want a bloodbath any more than you do, Captain,” he says. “I think we all know that. And this is a mistake.”
“It will be looked into,” says the captain. He looks around at the crowd of silent Narnians, then says, “A good evening to you,” and follows his men out the door. It swings shut behind him, and Elizar curses.
“Fucking Callies –”
Gunderic Leadbeater and Sammi shove their way towards him. “Why did you –” Gunderic begins.
“I didn’t feel like seeing everyone in the club killed!” Elizar snaps at him. He grabs Gund’s collar, pulling the satyr down to eye level. “Was it true? You and Gjergy are thick as thieves – well, you are thieves – if he was up to anything, you’d know –”
“No!” Gund says in shock. “Capo, we’d never act without your permission –”
“What about Jacker and Llorais? Starla and Alkort?” Jacker and Alkort he only knows on sight, Starla in passing, while Llorais is one of his sworn people.
Gunderic shakes his head, and Sammi echoes the motion, his spotted tail lashing. “Capo,” the leopard says, slowly, “Jacker said –”
“What? Tell me?”
“He said all that about the King of Summer being in Narnia. And Gjergy was talking about it when we came in, a couple of hours ago. I don’t know about the others, but Starla made some crack about it to some dwarf, I don’t know his name –”
Elizar lets go of Gunderic and the satyr staggers back, rubbing at his neck. “Someone’s informing,” he says slowly. “Some stupid son of a bitch is running to the Callies with every little meaningless whisper –”
And Bahadur’s paranoid. He has to know that the levees breaking up and down the river districts were no accident, not all at once, not right after a prison breakout. What’s still a mad rumor in Cair Paravel about the High King of Narnia and his siblings returning to Narnia and gathering an army to them is reality to them – he’s already lost men in the west. He has to know that something’s brewing in Narnia, something utterly inimical to him, and he’s doing everything he can to stomp it down in its tracks, before it grows out of his control. Even if it means chasing down harmless rumors in the Black Pearl.
Elizar can’t say that he gives a damn what Prince Bahadur does, save when it reflects down on the Pearl or Land’s End. But it’s his people being snatched up this time, and someone’s informing, some spineless traitor –
“Find them,” he snarls. The alcohol of the earlier evening has burned off in a wave of cold anger. “Find out whoever the fuck told on my people, and then bring him to me.”
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 violence involving (talking) animals
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).
There’s a burst of snarls and barks from the pit below as the big gray hound ceases his circling and makes a rush at his opponent, a slimmer collie with patches of brown and white fur. Both dogs have scars on muzzles and flanks, their teeth sharpened to do the worst kind of damage in the fight. Elizar shouts with all the rest, some of his beer sloshing from the mug as he gestures. There’s betting going on all around the Poison Well, both money and betting slips changing hands with varying amounts of formality. Jacker’s bigger, but Elizar is favoring Proudfoot this time; the collie hasn’t lost a match since he was little more than a half-grown pup, still confined to the smaller weight classes. Since he’s moved up, he’s had a few draws, but never a defeat.
Proudfoot sidesteps the rush, his tail a hair too slow; Jacker catches it in his teeth and drags the collie back, grinning around the brush of fur as Proudfoot yelps in startled pain, before he twists and gets free, leaving Jacker with a mouthful of white fur. He bowls the hound over, teeth scraping along his withers and drawing blood to a chorus of shouts from the onlookers.
“Rip his throat out!” a drunken whore shouts, waving her mug of beer and succeeding in spilling most of it down herself and her client, who seems more interested in her breasts than in the fight.
Proudfoot’s laugh turns into a snarl as Jacker uses his greater weight to throw the collie off and halfway across the ring. For a moment it looks like Proudfoot isn’t going to get back up, and then he does, levering himself to his feet a little painfully, lips drawn back from his sharpened teeth in a snarl.
“Tired of playing in the big leagues?” Jacker taunts. “Go back to the puppies, pretty boy. Or the terriers, if chasing rats down holes is all you can handle.”
Proudfoot growls at him. “Go and pull a cart, you glorified carthorse,” he snaps, and the two dogs rush at each other, meeting in midair. The crowd roars approval, more money changing hands.
Elizar shouts with the rest of them. He has a superior vantage point, up in the balcony on the second floor of the Well, while most of the crowd is down below, pressed up against the wooden slats and netting that cuts the pit off from the audience. The balcony is only a hair less crowded than the ground floor, but it’s enough that Elizar’s afforded a seat instead of hanging onto the railing and that the servers can make their way through with trays of drinks, albeit with some difficulty. One of them whisks Elizar’s mostly empty mug away and replaces it, almost before he realizes he’s wanting. He drinks deep, spilling some when a hag jostles his elbow in her hurry to make it to the rail.
Gunderic Leadbeater drags the offender back immediately. “Apologize to the capo,” he rumbles, and the hag dips a slight curtsey, too distracted by the chorus of snarls from the pit to do more than murmur a brief, “My fault, capo.”
“Let her go,” Elizar says, most of his attention on Jacker and Proudfoot. Both dogs have blood on their flanks now, looking considerably worse for wear; Proudfoot’s limping slightly, but Jacker will tired more quickly if Proudfoot can hold out. Elizar hopes he can; he has ten crescents on Proudfoot and he’d hate to lose the money.
Gunderic lets the hag go with a grunt of distaste, leaning on the rail. She scampers off, reappearing a ways down the rail a moment later, watching the pit avidly.
“Ready to surrender?” Proudfoot says, his voice nearly drowned out by the hum of the crowd.
“Why? Are you getting tired?” Jacker replies, lips skinning back from his teeth. He crouches, the stump of his cropped tail twitching slightly.
There’s a burst of laughter and Proudfoot snarls, embittered by the insult. Elizar grins, leaning forward on the rail, and doesn’t see Symeon worming his way through the crowd until the hyena puts his paws up on the arm of his chair. “Capo,” he says anxiously.
Elizar turns his head towards him. “What is it?”
“Her Ladyship’s at the High King’s Arms,” Symeon mutters.
“Right now?”
“Just came down from the palace.”
“My, what exalted company we keep,” Elizar reflects, rising from his chair with only a slight wobble. He’s a little drunk, but only enough to be comfortable, not enough to hinder. He claps his hand to Gunderic’s shoulder. “Gund, collect my bets for me when this is all over, will you? That’s a good lad.”
“You’re leaving, boss?” the faun says, tearing his attention away from the pit with some difficulty.
“Just for a little while. Business.”
Gunderic looks dubious about what kind of business might be conducted outside the Poison Well at this hour, but it’s not his place to question, and he holds his tongue. “You want company?”
“Symeon will be more than adequate,” Elizar says, to the hyena’s obvious gratification. “I shouldn’t be gone long. Try not to burn the place down in my absence; it costs too much to repair and my money’s promised elsewhere.”
To the High King’s myriad eccentric errands; Elizar doesn’t see why the other members of the Table can’t help out here and there, but he’s damned if he’s going to go begging to Bencivenni Maresti or Onahoua Malukai for a few extra crescents, like he can’t afford his own expenses. Besides, he’s decided to look on these new chores as a test of his not inconsiderable connections and abilities, and it wouldn’t do to be seen as incompetent.
Gunderic grunts assent and turns back to the pit to a roar of approval from the crowd. Elizar pauses to see what the fuss is all about, turning too quickly and overbalancing. He catches himself on the railing, peering down into the pit below. Jacker has Proudfoot on his back, teeth closed around the smaller dog’s neck; Proudfoot whines surrender and Jacker lets go, grinning as Proudfoot slinks away, his tail pressed between his legs.
“King of Summer!” Jacker howls, delighted with his own victory; Elizar clenches his fist on t he rail, remembering the expression on Peter’s face in the room beneath the High King’s Arms. “I dedicate this victory to you, who walks again in the woods of Narnia! May you and yours reign until the seas part and the stars fall down!”
The crowd roars approval, some of them adding drunken cheers for the High King and his family. Maybe startled by the noise, a raven takes flight from the rafters, winging his way out an open window.
Elizar turns away, shaking his head. “That’s ten crescents I’ve lost,” he says, and shoves his way through the crowd of people on the balcony, Symeon trailing in his wake. He makes it down the stairs with some difficulty, and has to use his elbows to get out of the tight press of the crowd on the first floor; someone’s in the pit shoveling sand over the splashes of blood, while the next opponents, Elizar’s sworn man – or leopard, rather – Sammi and some jaguar from one of the ships trapped in the harbor by Prince Bahadur’s decree, prepare to go in. Elizar’s already bet on Sammi, of course, but he’s feeling none too generous to his own people after Proudfoot’s failure. He snags a cup of something bright blue out of a faun’s hand and drains it before handing the cup back, ignoring the flabbergasted expression the faun sports. She bites off her protests when Symeon snarls, and Elizar leaves her behind, emerging from the Poison Well into the cold night air of the Black Pearl. He pulls his coat on hastily; it’s hot as Summerheart day inside, with the press of people.
“I’ve called a pedicab,” Symeon says, anxious.
There’s more than one ‘cab waiting on the street in front of the Well, some of them waiting for their drivers to return from the bar or the pit. The drivers that remain are huddled up inside their cloaks against the chill salt wind that’s coming in off the ocean, replacing the smell of rot and decay left from the flood with the clean scent of the sea. The lanterns on the cabs, lit against the night, exude a faint scent of whale oil. Symeon heads towards a pedicab near the end, manned by Elizar’s old friend Villi, pausing to look over his shoulder to make sure Elizar’s following.
Mayor wouldn’t have bothered to arrange a pedicab, Elizar thinks gloomily. Mayor would have told him to walk off the liquor he’d drunk, so he didn’t present himself to a lady of the Assembly of Lords a brilliant example of all the worst clichés surrounding the Pearl. Then he’d ask if Elizar had gotten too lazy to walk a few blocks, because if he kept trying, he’d be as fat as the capo del’sud, and finally cap that off with some snide remark about human weakness.
Mayor’s not here, though, and Symeon doesn’t have the balls to talk back to Elizar yet. He climbs into the pedicab, buttoning his coat up against the bite of the wind. Symeon scrambles up after him, sitting on the floor by his feet as Villi goes about his leisurely business of checking his traces against any kind of sudden damage.
“You pulled the damned thing here, didn’t you?” Elizar says dryly. “Can’t have changed that much in the past five minutes, can it?”
The centaur turns to look at him. “Three other drivers I know have had their harness cut in the last week, Basil while he was in the traces. Why some idiot would want to do that kind of sabotage, of all the bloody things –” He shakes his head, scowling.
The complaint penetrates Elizar’s alcohol-fogged brain. “Why didn’t anyone bring that to me?”
“You’d have to ask them,” Villi says. Apparently finding his harness in perfect working order, he sets off down the cobbled streets at a brisk trot. Elizar slumps against the hard back of the cab, pulling at a stray bit of stuffing protruding from the seat.
Aside from the bars and clubs – the Poison Well isn’t the only one on this block, just the biggest – the neighborhood is quiet. The theatre district, only a few blocks away, is still shut down in the wake of the flooding; even though it took a fair bit of damage, and had been in poor repair before the floods, Elizar suspects that the closure has less to do with that and more to do with the Calormenes’ general distaste for Narnian theatre, which has tended more and more towards the political in recent years. Elizar can’t say he blames them. He hopes they’ll relent before Winter’s End, though, or there may well be rioting in the streets. On the other hand, there may well be rioting in the streets anyway.
Villi clops to a stop on the side of the Black Pearl side of the neutral ground, and Symeon scrambles out, looking suspiciously at the pair of guardsmen leaning against the outer wall of the High King’s Arms. They don’t even look around at the disturbance, just pass the mug they’re sharing back and forth and continue on with their conversation.
Elizar swings out of the cab, catching himself on the side of it as he starts to stumble. Villi swings around to look at him, raising an eyebrow as Elizar gropes for his purse. “You want me to wait?”
“That’d be peachy,” Elizar says, flipping him a ha’crescent for the trouble.
“You also maybe want to go stick your head a barrel of water before you go and meet this broad you’re seeing?”
“What, and make her think I’m a drunk?” Elizar says comfortably, slaps Villi on the flank, and strides away, nodding to the guardsmen as he passes them.
The club’s recovered well from the disturbance of the past few weeks. There’s water damage on the floor and the lower parts of the walls, one corner roped off while it undergoes considerable repairs, but the flooding had covered up any damage from the fight, and the Calormenes had been too ashamed by their defeat to admit that they’d broken the sacred peace of the High King’s Arms. The floor’s not as crowded as the Poison Well tonight; the Arms doesn’t do the kind of in-house pit-fighting the Well offers. There’s an argument going on over by the billiards table, a wer-wolf shrieking in outrage while his partner, a Calormene man Elizar recognizes as one of Onahoua’s people, tries to calm him. One of the Arms’ bouncers is winding his way through the crowd, scowling mightily.
Elizar waves to let the barkeep know he’s here, looking around for the woman he’s meeting. He finally spots her in one of the booths on the far side of the bar, her back to the door. A fall of ruffled blue skirts protrudes from the side of the bench.
“Did she bring any guards?” Elizar mutters to Symeon.
The hyena nods to the front of the bar, where a hag is perched on a stool, brooding over a tall glass of sangria. Not exactly the kind of companion Elizar would have expected from a respectable Narnian noblewoman; some of the creatures that are traditionally associated with the White Witch have been able to reintegrate themselves into Narnian society without much difficulty, but many others are still marked out. Even in the Black Pearl, Elizar doesn’t see hags often, and he’s seen two in less than an hour. Some might call that an omen.
He wends his way across the floor to the booth, sliding into the seat across from the woman. She looks up at him, her gaze impassive, and moves her glass of sangria a fastidious inch away from him. “Elizar Confesor, I presume?” Her accent is so upper-crust that it makes his back teeth ache to listen to it. No wonder he hadn’t hated Peter on sight, Elizar realizes suddenly; he and his sister had both lacked the accent of the palace and the Garden District, the product of six hundred years’ pained Telmarine differentiation from the Narnian masses.
“You presume correctly.” Elizar sheds his coat, tossing it onto the bench beside him, and loosens his already rumpled cravat.
Lady Marcia Bracken looks at him with polite distaste. She’s a tall woman with a fashionable tumble of blonde curls pulled back from her face, with sapphire and silver drops in her ears. The very picture of a typical Narnian noblewoman, although she’s fair rather than dark. Nowhere near as beautiful as Queen Susan, and not conventionally pretty – her jaw is a little too strong for that, her lips not full enough – but handsome enough, in that made-up way nobles are.
“I see,” she says. “Well, this certainly makes an interesting change from being summoned to sit and smile at Prince Bahadur’s puppet Assembly. Dare I ask what it is you want from me? As pleasant as this diversion promises to be, I haven’t got all evening, Master Confesor.”
Elizar takes his cup of sangria as a barmaid brings it to him, slipping her a minim for her trouble, and turns back to Lady Marcia. “I’ll try and keep this quick, then, so you can hurry on back to – whatever I’m diverting you from.”
“Please do.”
“I understand Bahadur’s given you the contract for the new Temple of Tash on the nameless isle.”
“For my sins, yes,” she says, with another slight shudder of distaste. At his raised eyebrow, she goes on, “My late husband had the poor taste to be dying when Cair Paravel fell, thus depriving the Tisroc of the pleasure of confiscating his property as a traitor to Calormen. As a result, Prince Bahadur is more than happy to force me to spend my not-inconsiderable fortune on his pet projects.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” says Elizar, taking a sizable gulp of his sangria. Symeon’s sulked off to a suitable distance, tucking himself out of the way.
“I don’t expect someone like you to care, Master Confesor. If your interest was in my money, I’m sure I’d already have a crossbow pointed at my head.”
“I’m a little more subtle than that,” Elizar says, letting his gaze trail across her body, lingering on the curve of her breasts beneath the blue damask of her overgown.
Marcia Bracken seems unimpressed by the implied threat. “Dare I ask what it is you want from me? If it’s the pleasure of my body you’re hoping for, I fear you’ll be sadly disappointed.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Elizar says, drains his glass, and waves for another one. “I need to get onto the nameless isle.”
“How very nice for you. And I suppose you want my help with this little blasphemy of yours?”
“I sincerely doubt it’s still considered blasphemy if the King of Summer is with you,” says Elizar. He doesn’t care one way or another, to be honest; he lost his faith a long time ago, and even when he’d still had it, he’d been Old Narnian, like his father before him.
The words shake Lady Marcia, just for a moment, and then she recovers her calm, taking a sip of her sangria to hide her discomposure. The liquor dyes her lips red; Elizar pauses to admire the effect. Symeon was probably right, he acknowledges as the barmaid brings him his second glass of sangria. He’s a little drunk.
“I see,” she says eventually, her voice cool. “And what do I get in return? You do realize that this could be considered an act of high treason against the Tisroc and I’m sure you know the punishment for that. You wouldn’t be the one putting her neck out for the axe.”
“Actually I am, since I’ll be the one in the boat,” Elizar says. “Although I think your lineage is fancy enough that they give you a sword, if you ask for one. Or, well, you’re a woman. Maybe they hand you a cup of hemlock if you ask nicely.”
“My dear Master Confesor,” says Lady Marcia, “are you drunk?”
“No,” Elizar says, smiling at her. “I’m comfortable. Are you?”
“Comfortable or drunk? Far from both of those, I assure you, though I’m starting to wonder about the latter, given the things that are coming out of your mouth. Now, my question.”
“What mercenaries you nobles are,” says Elizar. “Don’t you have any patriotism at all?”
“I can’t see that you’re asking for any, just a highly dangerous favor in the name of the High King. You might as well ask in the name of Aslan.” From her tone, either plea is equally as unlikely.
“Why, will that help?”
She gives him a withering look. “What fools men are,” she says, starting to rise. “Now, if you’ve quite finished wasting my time –”
Elizar grabs her wrist, meaning to hold her in place until he gets his head straight enough to figure out a suitable bribe. Even before he can blink there’s a blackjack in her free hand, dropping down out of her sleeve as she starts to swing at him. He lets go hastily, and the blackjack just barely misses breaking his wrist.
“I like you,” he decides abruptly, reaching for his second sangria. Out of the corner of his room he sees Symeon settle back down, the line of his back tense with worry.
“How flattering,” drawls Marcia Bracken. “A drunken criminal likes me. Now there’s something I’ve always wanted.” She slips the blackjack back up her sleeve; even though he’s looking for it now, Elizar can’t see it. That, he has to admit, he didn’t see coming.
“Sit down, Lady Bracken,” he says. “Have a drink. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot –”
“You don’t say.” But she does sit down, holding herself very tense, and takes a quick sip of her sangria.
“You have something I want,” Elizar says. “There must be something you want. Everyone wants something.”
“Nothing you can give me, I’m sure.”
Elizar runs his tongue over his teeth, thinking. “You sit in the Assembly of Lords. When was the last time you were allowed to speak?”
Lady Marcia tenses further. “You know the answer to that very well. Calormenes don’t exactly hold with women having a place in government. Anything I wish to say in the Assembly goes through my representative. Not that the Assembly does anything but vote on what Prince Bahadur puts before us, of course, and not that we vote any way but the way he pleases.”
“It wasn’t true when there was a Narnian on the throne, instead of a Calormene. If King Tirian were to be restored –”
“Forgive me if I find this sweet dream highly unlikely,” says Lady Marcia. “Even if the rumors are true, and Tirian is massing an army in the Western Wild, he could never face the Calormenes in open combat. Bahadur would smash him in moments.”
“You and I both know that that’s not what the rumors are saying,” says Elizar. “Tirian couldn’t command troops if the High King’s army rose from the grave and formed up in ranks in front of him. I’m sure they know that in court even better than we in the Pearl do. But the High King himself, back from Aslan’s Country with his siblings –”
Lady Marcia closes her eyes for a moment, breathing in. “It’s impossible,” she says at last. “And even if it was true – I won’t risk my life and my fortune on a dream.”
Damn these stubborn nobles. Elizar drums his fingers on the table, irritated, and says, “Then there must be something more substantial you want. Money –”
“Despite the Tisroc’s insistence on my frittering it away on his pet projects, I am more than adequately equipped in that department.”
“Someone then. The Calormenes have half the nobility in prison –”
“Just under a quarter, actually,” she corrects, precise. “Surely you have the means to hire a boat yourself?”
“Calormene patrols in the harbor,” Elizar reminds her. “Because of the blockade. I’d rather not put any of my people at risk.”
“So you’d rather put me at risk. If you’re so desperate to get to the nameless isle, Master Confesor, getting arrested and assigned to the construction crews would certainly be easier.”
“I’d also like to get off again,” Elizar says. “Alive, by preference. Look, Lady Bracken, I’m not asking for much – I don’t want you to row the boat yourself, I just need to get onto that island. And even then you could tell Bahadur that it was all an accident. After all,” he adds, his mouth quirking, “you’re a woman. Surely a nice Calormene boy like him could never dream that a woman might seek to conspire against the Tisroc.”
She smiles, a thin, stiff little twitch of her lips. “Your point is taken, Master Confesor. Well, I certainly have civilians working on the nameless isle, as slave crews tend to lack skilled labor. I suppose something could be arranged. Though not without compensation, of course.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Elizar says dryly. “What do you want? Some relative in prison, some painting carried away to the palace –”
“Well, I certainly have no end of either of those,” Lady Marcia says, with a slight sigh. “I suppose the impossible is a bit much to ask, even for a man of your…talents. There’s a timber merchant from Terebinthia sitting in the harbor now, trying to find a suitable importer in Narnia. I would appreciate it if he chose my business rather than Lord Isambro’s.”
“I can do that,” Elizar says, feeling his shoulders relax slightly.
“If I don’t get that contract,” says Lady Marcia, rising, “you can swim to the nameless isle, for all I care.” She picks up her overcoat, smoothing down her skirts with her free hand. The hag from the bar hurries up to hold her overcoat from her as Lady Marcia slips into it, pulling the hood up over her bright curls. “Good night, Master Confesor.”
“Good night, Lady Bracken,” he says, frowning after her as she leaves. Symeon wanders back over, scrambling up into Lady Marcia’s abandoned seat.
“Will she do it?” he asks, sniffing at her abandoned glass.
“Sure,” Elizar says, draining the remainder of his sangria. “We get to go intimidate a foreign merchant. It’ll be fun.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all she asked for,” Elizar says. “Now it all depends on the colliers.”
“The colliers?” Symeon says, blinking, and Elizar shakes his head.
The guardsmen are gone when he and Symeon exit the High King’s Arms a few minutes later, but Villi’s still there, reading a newspaper by lantern light. He folds it up as Elizar climbs back in. “Back to the Well?”
Elizar considers this. “For the moment,” he agrees, and indicates the newspaper. “Anything interesting in that?”
“The usual shit. All the letter-writers are spooked since Cordylion got dragged off by the Callies, though I suppose they’ll start up again as soon as they forget about that.” He sighs, turning himself around in the street. “I wonder what happened to him?”
“Imprisoned or enslaved, probably,” Symeon says, scratching his ear.
“Or dead,” Elizar adds. All three are equally likely. Even the Calormenes can’t shut down the newspapers entirely, but they can make it damned hard for Narnia’s numerous and vocal editorial writers to publish their letters, and those they catch disappear, never to be heard of again.
“There’s something cheerful to think of,” Villi says finally. His hooves clop dully on the cobblestones, and Elizar closes his eyes as the cab bumps over them, jarring his head. Possibly that last sangria was a bad idea.
“You know how I try to be cheerful,” he says.
“Yeah, you’re a regular clown,” Villi rumbles, pausing at an intersection as another pedicab tears by, the satyr in the traces looking desperately out of breath. He draws to a stop before the Poison Well and Elizar swings out, tossing him a crescent for the trouble. Symeon follows him, muttering softly to himself.
The Well is hot and packed; Elizar can’t see the fighters when he enters, but at his nod Symeon worms forward through the crowd at thigh-level, his brush of a tail wagging furiously before he disappears entirely. Elizar sheds his coat, draping it over his arm as he tugs the collar of his shirt open. He snags a glass off a passing barmaid’s tray; she stifles her protests when she recognizes him, nodding to assure him she’ll add the price to his tab. He starts edging his way towards the stairs, hoping Gunderic’s saved his seat.
Symeon emerges from the crowd before he reaches the stairs, in advance of a mass clearing of a path as two fauns carry a minotaur out of the ring on a stretcher. Elizar cranes his neck to see who it is – Octar, who works at the warehouses down at the very edge of the Black Pearl. His opponent follows, looking suitably pleased with himself.
“Sammi won,” Symeon reports. “So did Gjergy. Gav lost. Tailspinner’s up next, after they clean up Octar’s missing teeth.” He looks at the drink in Elizar’s hand rather hopefully, then around at the crowd.
Not bad, Elizar thinks, nodding. “Who’s that who beat Octar?”
“Some Galman sailor off the docks,” Symeon shrugs. He presses suddenly against Elizar’s leg as somebody shoves past them, and Elizar almost spills his drink down his shirt.
“Hey –”
“Calormenes!”
Elizar’s hand falls to his sword hilt, or the place where his sword would be if he was wearing it, but there’s nothing there. He looks up at the speaker, a pigeon who’s just fluttered through an open window – he knows her, her name is Whitewing, she lives in the bell-tower above one of the small temples of Tash in the Pearl. She perches in the rafters, wings mantling as she shouts again. A few other people look up.
“The Calormenes are coming!” she yells, and Gunderic Leadbeater, on the balcony, takes up the call.
“The Callies are coming!”
Chaos.
Elizar shoves back against the nearest wall, someone knocking his mug from his hand as the general crowd makes a rush for the main door, like the idiots they are. He grabs for the thick ruff of fur around Symeon’s neck when it looks like the hyena is going to get swept away in the crowd, pulling Symeon with him. He doesn’t bother running – there’s nothing illegal going on in the Well tonight, and he’s the owner, he’s not exactly going to flee the premises and give the Callies an excuse to seize it in his absence. Besides, running for the front door is criminally stupid when the Calormenes are doubtless coming down the street; anyone who’s that dumb practically deserves to be arrested. He’s not sure what he’s more curious about: why the Calormenes are here, or why it’s the Calormenes and not the Provost’s Guard.
Elizar sees when they arrive, because the mob at the front door stops and stills, then shouts in protest as the Calormenes force a pathway through them. Some mad dwarf winds up to throw a punch at groin level and is promptly knocked aside by a particularly grim-faced Calormene, falling back into the ranks of the crowd and probably getting trampled on.
It’s not just any Calormene soldiers, but the palace guard, Elizar notes with some curiosity – the men who are supposed to answer directly to Prince Bahadur. They stop in even ranks in the hastily cleared center of the club, right next to the pit, and the captain looks around at the waiting crowd, every inch of his body radiating disdain.
“I have a warrant,” he announces coldly, his Narnian only slightly accented. Well, the warrant makes a fascinating change; usually the Callies just drag people off without explanation.
Elizar shoulders his way through the men in front of him to the front of the crowd and steps out into the empty floor. “For who and for what?”
The captain looks him up and down. “Elizar Confesor, I presume?”
“Yes.” He crosses his arms over his chest, watching out of the corner of his eyes as a few of his men prepare themselves to step forward as well, reaching for concealed weapons or makeshift clubs. “Who’s your warrant for?”
The captain takes the piece of paper out from inside his robe, unfolding it. “For the charge of conspiracy against the crown – Starla the Banshee, Jacker the Hound, Gjergy Lackwind the Satyr, Alkort Erosa, and Llorais the Selkie.”
“Conspiracy against the –” says Llorais, who’s never been all that smart.
Someone else, probably without any more brains but who’s at least hidden in the crowd, says, “What crown?” and laughs.
“The crown of Calormen,” says the Calormene captain, scowling. “In the name of the Tisroc, may he live forever, and Prince Bahadur, governor of Narnia –”
“Jail keeper of Narnia,” says the same idiot who’d spoken before, and there’s a murmur of laughter in the crowd. The Calormene soldiers shift nervously, hands falling to sword hilts or tightening on spear hafts. Elizar’s men in the crowd, and even those that aren’t directly associated with the Table, start to shift, preparing to fight back.
Elizar raises a hand to quiet the laughter, because all he needs is for this to go even more poorly. “Can I see your warrant, Captain?” he asks, holding out his hand
For a moment he thinks that the Calormene is going to refuse, then the man steps forward and hands him the paper. Elizar fights down his automatic urge to rip it in two and reads it instead. It’s hastily written, what looks like a form charge, with the names scribbled in and the Prince’s seal stamped on the bottom. No signature – that would be necessary by Narnian law, because anyone can stamp a seal, but the Calormenes aren’t so discriminating. He reads it over again, and then once more.
“Do you find everything in order, Master Confesor?” drawls the Calormene captain. “May I take my prisoners now?”
“Everything looks in order,” Elizar says, but he holds onto the paper as the Calormene reaches for it. They both grip it, staring into each other’s eyes. Just a man, Elizar knows: a man like any other, a man like him, who probably kissed his wife and parents goodbye when he left his home in Calormen to march north against Narnia.
The Calormene drags on the warrant and Elizar releases it, abrupt. “Take them,” he snaps, and his men start to spread out.
There’s a moment of panicked unrest, and Elizar holds up his hand again to keep back any violent action. “Don’t fight back,” he orders. “This is just a mistake. I’ll see it rectified.”
“I don’t make mistakes,” says the Calormene stubbornly.
“But they’re taking the barkeep!” someone protests, as Starla’s dragged around the side of the bar. There’s a ripple of uneasy laughter; even a few of the Calormenes grin, amused. The captain’s mouth quirks slightly.
“I assure you,” he says, with considerable dignity, “if this is indeed a mistake, I’ll make sure that it’s rectified as quickly as possible, with all apologies. My name is Amjad; you may ask for me.”
“Confessor, you can’t let this happen −” Gjergy protests as he’s cuffed and marched out by two Calormene guardsmen.
“I’ll do what I can,” Elizar says, raising his hands to calm him. “It’s just a mistake –”
“And the Callies are accepting of those?” someone says softly. Elizar doesn’t think the captain’s heard him, but a few of the guardsmen do, and they look around, tense. Everyone’s tense. If this comes to drawn blades, everyone in the bar will go to the slavers, and Elizar can’t let that happen. He won’t let that happen.
When all five Narnians named on the warrant have been collected and marched out into the street, Captain Amjad nods to Elizar. “My thanks for your aid, Master Confesor,” he says, and Elizar clenches his jaw.
“I don’t want a bloodbath any more than you do, Captain,” he says. “I think we all know that. And this is a mistake.”
“It will be looked into,” says the captain. He looks around at the crowd of silent Narnians, then says, “A good evening to you,” and follows his men out the door. It swings shut behind him, and Elizar curses.
“Fucking Callies –”
Gunderic Leadbeater and Sammi shove their way towards him. “Why did you –” Gunderic begins.
“I didn’t feel like seeing everyone in the club killed!” Elizar snaps at him. He grabs Gund’s collar, pulling the satyr down to eye level. “Was it true? You and Gjergy are thick as thieves – well, you are thieves – if he was up to anything, you’d know –”
“No!” Gund says in shock. “Capo, we’d never act without your permission –”
“What about Jacker and Llorais? Starla and Alkort?” Jacker and Alkort he only knows on sight, Starla in passing, while Llorais is one of his sworn people.
Gunderic shakes his head, and Sammi echoes the motion, his spotted tail lashing. “Capo,” the leopard says, slowly, “Jacker said –”
“What? Tell me?”
“He said all that about the King of Summer being in Narnia. And Gjergy was talking about it when we came in, a couple of hours ago. I don’t know about the others, but Starla made some crack about it to some dwarf, I don’t know his name –”
Elizar lets go of Gunderic and the satyr staggers back, rubbing at his neck. “Someone’s informing,” he says slowly. “Some stupid son of a bitch is running to the Callies with every little meaningless whisper –”
And Bahadur’s paranoid. He has to know that the levees breaking up and down the river districts were no accident, not all at once, not right after a prison breakout. What’s still a mad rumor in Cair Paravel about the High King of Narnia and his siblings returning to Narnia and gathering an army to them is reality to them – he’s already lost men in the west. He has to know that something’s brewing in Narnia, something utterly inimical to him, and he’s doing everything he can to stomp it down in its tracks, before it grows out of his control. Even if it means chasing down harmless rumors in the Black Pearl.
Elizar can’t say that he gives a damn what Prince Bahadur does, save when it reflects down on the Pearl or Land’s End. But it’s his people being snatched up this time, and someone’s informing, some spineless traitor –
“Find them,” he snarls. The alcohol of the earlier evening has burned off in a wave of cold anger. “Find out whoever the fuck told on my people, and then bring him to me.”
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: 2011-01-03 03:58 am (UTC)And speaking of which... so Peter needs Elizar to get onto the island of old Cair Paravel. Perhaps to dig out some of the old treasures, or other things hidden amongst the ruins? I wonder though.. when Caspian and Edmund were there (in The Bone's Prayer), the old ghosts still haunted the place. Ed released some of them but there are likely to be others... wouldn't these restless spirits still haunt the ruins? And would that affect Elizar on this madcap quest the High King's sending him on?
Lady Bracken is an interesting woman. She asked for so little considering the nature of Elizar's request. (I also love how he compares her to Susan, as well as how the aristocratic accents [which neither Pevensie had] grates on his nerves.)
And oh dear, a Calormene spy among the ranks! For a gangster, Elizar's quite honorable and not stupid. He allows the Narnians to be taken away only because there would be more bloodshed otherwise. Also, the Calormene captain is an interesting man as well... not sure what I make of him just yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-04 11:54 pm (UTC)These are actually the same errands that Peter sent in the last Elizar chapter -- I'm sorry that wasn't clear! I think Peter's logic is that at least he knows Elizar, but not the other members of the Table. Or he expected Elizar to give the message to everyone on the Table, I'm not sure.
I haven't quite decided what I want to do with the original Cair Paravel yet. I've tossed a couple of ideas back and forth (including the ghosts, yes!), but we shall see. Of course, the Pevensies are still lacking their crowns, along with a few other useful trinkets. (Peter is even lacking one of the Gifts.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-03 08:39 pm (UTC)Elizar looking after his folk is just perfect, and so is negotiating when he's drunk. I am a little curious about what he mean by "Old Narnian" in terms of faith - would that be Aslan only, not the four little gods? Or something else? The way he misses Mayor's snark is fantastic, too.
Is that an honorable Calormene soldier I see? Elizar's reminding himself that the officer is just a man like the rest of them is a nice touch - harkens back a bit to the dog from I don't remember what chapter, when they first get to Cair Paravel, who's just worried about feeding his family and seeing his pups.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-05 12:02 am (UTC)Aslan only, yes. Which is the exact opposite of Mayor, actually -- Mayor's faith is the four little gods alone, but no Aslan. Also, Elizar'a an atheist (more or less.)
I thought it was about time we had a sympathetic Calormene! I'm glad he works.
Dust 23
Date: 2011-01-06 10:58 am (UTC)Re: Dust 23
Date: 2011-01-07 09:55 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-06 03:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-07 10:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-08 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:57 pm (UTC)