Narnia (movieverse) fic: "In Constellated Wars: Gone Under the Hill" (3/5)

[bedlamsbard]

The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.
– T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets: East Coker”

Peter is so angry that Susan is more than half-convinced he’s going to kill something before the night is out. For the sake of all involved, she’s hoping that he gets drunk enough to make murder an improbability – unfortunately, when it comes to Peter, she knows all too well that few things are impossible to him. It’s not the first time she’s hoped he drinks himself to unconsciousness.

She’s been trying to get to sleep for almost two hours now, if her grasp on time is correct. It could just be adrenaline from the last night’s battle; she never has been able to sleep after a fight. Peter can, and Edmund and Lucy; they’re used to it and understand the need for rest, because the next day they may have to fight again. Susan does not like wars, and never has. Oh, she understands the necessity of them, the circumstances that lead to a declaration of war rather than calm resolution in the negotiating room – some of her failures have led to war, and some of her successes as well – but she doesn’t quite understand war in and of itself. Peter can read violence like an open book, maps and troops and war machines playing themselves out in his mind like counters on a game board, and Edmund understands the men beneath the armor and their motivations, and Lucy loves the thrill of it – but Susan is made of something else. She understands the necessity, but she doesn’t live and breathe combat the way her siblings do.

She doesn’t think it’s the aftermath from the battle keeping her awake. After all, it’s been almost a full day since they fought and died – less since they made their ragged way back to the How, of course, but the walk had been good for her. She’d needed the time. So had Peter, but all the trek had done for him was give his anger time to fester and grow stronger.

He hadn’t killed Caspian. It was a nearer thing than Susan thinks anyone else knows – certainly Caspian doesn’t, or he would have fled the How in fear of his life.

Perhaps it’s the ghost of the White Witch hanging over the How that’s keeping her awake. She’s neither Peter nor Edmund, whose mistakes will haunt the both of them until the day they die, but she is a queen of Narnia too, and the fear of seeing her country lost beneath the snows is hers to share as well.

Restless, she turns over, pulling the blankets around her. She doesn’t really need to – it’s summer, and Narnia is warm enough to sleep outside and feel no more than a slight chill – but it’s something to do with her hands. She’s never liked having them empty. Carefully, Susan lifts herself up on one elbow to squint through the darkness at Lucy, who’s sleeping the sleep of the innocent – or the unashamed. If this was their time – but it’s not. The innocent, then. She lies back down and tries to get to sleep. She needs the rest. The How will start running short on food soon, and as Peter has always said when he comes back from campaign – or when she’s joined him on campaign – food is sleep and sleep is food.

She stopped seeing bodies in front of her eyes a long time ago. She’d thought that it might bother her again now that she’s back in Narnia – it’s been a year, after all, and she’s seldom gone so long without being in conflict of some kind, whether that be bandits at the borders or a would-be assassin inside the walls of Cair Paravel – but she’s gone back to being Queen Susan of Narnia again easily. There’s not as clear a demarcation between Susan of Narnia and Susan Pevensie as she’d hoped, and she’s not entirely certain how she feels about that. She’d prefer an easy answer: in Narnia, to be Queen Susan; in England, to be ordinary Susan Pevensie.

There is no easy answer. After fifteen years of politics and diplomacy, she supposes she should have known that, but she’d hoped magic would be different.

She’s just not tired. Frustrated, Susan opens her eyes again and stares at the cave wall. They have a tiny arrow-slit to let in light, and the moonlight spills across the cave floor, polishing her chainmail to a burnished glow. Lucy’s didn’t fit her, of course, and so they hadn’t brought it. No use carrying the extra weight if it wouldn’t be used. She hasn’t accompanied Peter on campaign often, but she’s been in the field often enough that she knows the protocol: her bow and quiver are at the head of her bedroll, in easy reach if Miraz should launch a night attack while the How is sleeping. There is a dagger beneath her pillow, for more pressing needs. She dislikes the need, but can’t discount it; she’s needed it too often, and this isn’t her own Cair Paravel. Not that the Cair was safe at the best of times; Susan has seen Peter standing with his sword bloody too often in the castle halls, still in shirtsleeves, his hair tousled from sleep and his eyes sharp and angry.

Even when they were grown, they used to play hide and seek. She hadn’t understood why until she’d asked Peter. He’d been back from campaign barely a week – that must have been the year he turned twenty-four; he’d been missing for three months and they’d feared the worst. When they’d found him, they’d gone to war with neighboring Lasci, and after they’d routed the country’s brigand army, Peter had taken the Narnian army straight to Berigy, the Lascar capital. Susan hadn’t seen him for nearly six months when he returned to Cair Paravel, and she hadn’t understood the need to play children’s games. Even Lucy had been a grown woman then.

Peter had rubbed a hand over the fresh scars on his face – the faintest nicks, she remembers; he’d said something about jumping through a glass window and she hadn’t bothered to find out the details – looked her in the eye, and said, “What do you know about Cair Paravel, Su?” She’d shaken her head, not understanding the question, and he’d gestured at the walls around them. “There’s the castle – and then there’s the castle inside the castle. Secret passageways no one else knows. If the worst should happen here, I want my family to be able to survive. I want you to be able to hide, and to get out unhurt. And the best way to learn that is by learning where the hiding places are.”

A castle inside a castle, Susan thinks bitterly. She knows now that Miraz’s castle has those same secret passageways, that same double-life, and the fact that Caspian didn’t know about it may have cost them their victory.

She rolls over onto her back, and that’s the reason she’s looking at the door when it opens, light from the hallway torches spilling into the room. Susan pushes herself up on one elbow and begins, “What –” before she sees the raised bow.

“LUCY!” she screams, flinging herself to the side as the arrow thunks into the space she was occupying not a heartbeat before. She comes up on her knees with her own bow in hand, an arrow on the string, and shoots more or less blindly – but her bow is the gift of Father Christmas, and it will not miss unless she means it to. She hears the grunt of pain at the same time she looses the second arrow.

Beside her, Lucy scrambles to her feet, drawing her arm back and flinging her dagger. The moonlight picks up the spray of blood that fountains from the badger’s chest. She doesn’t have another weapon and Susan turns her head aside briefly to say, “Lu, beneath –”

She sees the shape out of the corner of her eye, and then she sees nothing at all.

When she comes back to herself a few minutes later, it’s to Lucy leaning over her, cordial in hand, and Edmund and Caspian on her other side. Susan pushes herself up.

“What happened?” she demands. “Why –”

Caspian stares at her with wide, shocked eyes. “You –” he splutters. “You were just –”

“Hit on the head, yes, she’s now better,” Edmund interrupts. He’s ignoring the blood streaming down his face, so Susan does too. “Su, you’d better go, Peter’s going to want you. He can’t outrun a centaur, and Strongback’s going to be out of range by the time he gets someone to put an axe in his hand.”

Susan doesn’t spare a moment’s thought for the fact she’s wearing her shift and nothing else, just lets Edmund pull her to her feet and put her quiver in her hand, and then she breaks into a run, ignoring the fact she’s barefooted on packed dirt and hard stone. As she’s running – she’s practiced this a thousand times, just not recently – she shrugs her quiver over her back and puts an arrow to her bowstring. Narnians, just waking up, scatter to the sides of the tunnels and then follow or stay where they are.

She draws as soon as she’s outside and has the centaur in her sights. “I have him, Pete,” she says to her brother, who’s standing with his sword in his left hand, shouting for someone to get him an axe. She looses a second arrow, and then another, vaguely aware of a fallen humped shape on the field before them. When the centaur goes down, she waits to see if he’ll get back up; when he tries, she puts a fourth and final arrow in him.

“Go get them,” Peter orders to someone behind them; Susan turns to see Glenstorm, his youngest son, and two centaurs she doesn’t know. “If they’re alive,” he adds deliberately, “keep them that way.”

At the moment – her bow lowered, only now becoming aware of the fact that her shift is caked with blood – Susan isn’t feeling generous enough to think anything beyond, Well, good, because what Peter is saying is that he wants to kill the remaining assassins himself.

His orders given, he turns toward Susan, concern on his face. She can smell blood and alcohol on him; the blood, she realizes, comes from a wound in left shoulder. The fabric of his sleeve is dark with blood. If she knows her brother, he hasn’t even realized it yet.

“You all right, Su?” he asks, catching her chin in his free hand and tilting her face from side to side, inspecting the injury. He lets go once he’s done.

“Very glad for that cordial of Lucy’s,” Susan says, raising her free hand to her head. That’s the only explanation for the fact she lost time. The hair on the right side of her face is thick and sticky with blood. Yes, head injuries do bleed more than others. She’ll ask the extent of it later. “You might want to see her yourself,” she tells Peter, “you’re bleeding.”

Sure enough, he looks down in complete surprise. “Oh,” he says, and then, predictably, “It’s not that bad.”

Once, after he’d spent the better part of three months living in a forest and hunting game for his dinner with a handmade spear, fought the King of Lasci in single combat, and taken three arrows in the back, Peter had looked up at her with that same expression on his face – from the litter he was being carried off the battlefield on – and said, “It’s not that bad.” The only time he’s said anything other than, “It’s not that bad,” he’d been retching his guts up over the side of the battleship Winter’s End on their way to Galma, and then he hadn’t been able to say anything at all.

“Come with me,” Peter orders, and he’s the High King, so she follows him back inside the How, where they meet Trumpkin and Reepicheep’s troop of Talking Mice.

“Majesty, how dare they!” Reepicheep says indignantly, presumably before he can see the look on Peter’s face, or maybe the vengeance of the High King is something else that’s been forgotten over thirteen hundred years.

Susan would try and explain that talking sense to Peter isn’t going to get anyone anywhere, but all Peter sees are his captains, and he snaps harshly, “You! I want the prisoners secured and kept alive for questioning.” He storms off before Trumpkin and Reepicheep can voice their obedience, and Susan follows in his wake, doing her best to give the others an apologetic look. As angry as he is – and she can’t predict him right now, because he’s not the Peter she knows from fifteen years in Narnia, and he’s not the Peter she knew before the wardrobe – she doesn’t dare leave him alone. If the best swordsman in Narnia can draw in anger and not need –

It’s not misplaced pride or vanity that makes her call Peter that, but simple truth. Peter is a thousand-year swordsman, forged out of Narnia’s need and Aslan’s will, and if Narnia has seen his like since she’ll eat her crown. Fate does as she wills, she remembers, and shivers. Peter has always been Narnia’s favored son, just as Lucy is Aslan’s favorite. Susan’s not sure whether to blame his erratic behavior on the transition between England and Narnia, or on Narnia itself.

Peter doesn’t veer aside, though, and heads straight for the upper levels of the How. They pass the body of a leopard on the way, its neck half-cut through. Peter doesn’t glance at it. Susan does, and feels a shiver run down her spine. Our royal guard, once, she thinks. And now the minotaurs are our allies.

“Su, you look horrible,” Edmund says when they arrive in the hallway of their sleeping quarters after Peter has snapped his orders to the griffin holding down the wounded centaur Lucy is administering her cordial to. His voice muffled by the shirt he’s holding to his face; she assumes his nose is still bleeding.

“Why, thank you, Edmund,” Susan replies courteously. “You look quite wretched yourself. How bad was it?” she adds, scrubbing at the blood caking the side of her face with her free hand. Now that she doesn’t have to worry about shooting down running centaurs, she can pay attention to other things. The blood hadn’t obscured her vision or complicated her draw; she hasn’t registered it till now.

There’s a moment before Edmund replies, because Lucy comes over and waves her cordial at him. “Su, your head was completely split open,” he says once he’s proven to Lucy that his nose has stopped bleeding. “You might want these,” he adds, holding out a pair of arrows and the hilt of his sword; Susan takes the arrows.

“Are you all right?” Caspian asks Susan discreetly. His eyes are wide and alarmed.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Susan says, cleaning the arrowheads on her sleeve and replacing them in her quiver. “Lucy’s cordial heals completely – well, almost completely,” she’s compelled to add, because there’s two knuckles-worth of the smallest finger on his left hand that Peter never got back until they returned to England. But the cordial does do wonders for mortal injuries; it’s just missing limbs that are a problem.

She’s been listening with one ear as Peter gives orders to the minotaurs who’ve come to dispose of the bodies, and as he finishes she adds, “Get the body out of my room first, please, I’d like to change.” The centaur in the hallway is the one she must have shot – neither wound was mortal, apparently, and she’s rather disgusted at herself – but that leaves the badger killed by Lucy’s flung dagger.

“Yes, of course, your majesty,” Trufflehunter says – she’d missed him behind the bulk of the minotaurs. A minute later they’ve hauled the badger’s body out, Trufflehunter’s expression stony, and Susan goes in, Lucy trailing behind her with a torch from the hallway to light the cold ones in their room.

With the torches lit, Susan can see the spill of blood on her bedroll clearly. That won’t be used again, she thinks, and sighs. Getting blood out of fabric isn’t easy, and there’s a lot of blood here, thick enough that it’s still sticky, even though it should have dried since. Her shift is a lost cause too.

“I don’t believe I said thank you, Lu,” Susan says as she slings bow and quiver aside and pulls on a clean dress, doing up the ties in the back with fingers that are only now starting to shake from post-battle adrenaline, or fear finally kicking in. That’s a lot of blood, and it’s never been her before.

“You’re welcome,” Lucy says serenely from the other side of the room, seemingly unaffeccted. “I hope Trufflehunter gives me my dagger back.”

“I’m sure he will,” Susan replies. Lucy is like Peter in that she doesn’t see shades of gray, just black and white. Death is a hazard of Narnian life, and battle is a thrill and not real danger. “Could you –”

Lucy comes over and gets the ties that Susan can’t. “There!” she says, knotting the last of them with a flourish. Susan turns around and smiles.

“Thank you.”

Lucy frowns at her. “You’d better wash your hair,” she says.

Susan touches her hair. It crinkles. “Yes, I suppose so,” she agrees.

When she goes back out into the hall, bow and quiver slung over her shoulder – she’s not in the mood to be surprised again, even if it seems reasonably unlikely after one attempt already – Edmund’s leaning against the wall cleaning his dagger, conferring quietly with Caspian, both of them properly dressed now. They look up at her approach.

“All right, sis?” Edmund asks.

“A little tired,” Susan says, “but that might just be from the fact I wasn’t actually asleep before the attempted assassination began.”

“Nah,” Edmund says, “that’s from Lu’s cordial. The energy has to come from somewhere. Have you – no, you haven’t actually, have you.”

“Peter –” Susan begins, frowning.

“Peter doesn’t have the common sense Aslan gave a squirrel, and you may have possibly noticed that he fights battles, gets healed, fights some more, and then falls over and sleeps for three days,” Edmund says bluntly. “Which, granted, is sometimes necessary, but most of the time it’s just stupid.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Although in retrospect, it might just be because Lucy’s healed him so often he’s started to – he started to,” he corrects himself, frowning, “work up an immunity, so his own body had to do more and more of the work. The cordial just…got the ball rolling.”

He glances away as Reepicheep’s second in command scampers up the stairs, dipping a deep bow. “Your majesties,” Peepiceek says, “my captain bids me tell you that the prisoners are confined in the red cave, to be questioned at your leisure.”

The mice follow Reepicheep’s lead; the words are directed at Edmund and Susan, not Caspian, although Susan’s not entirely sure Caspian notices.

“We’ll probably be down in a few minutes, as soon as Peter finishes primping,” Edmund says, and Peepiceek takes that as a dismissal, dipping another bow before leaving. “Su, did you want to join us?”

It’s a courtesy question rather than a serious one; Susan leaves interrogations to Peter and Edmund whenever she can. They don’t do all that much for her, and she’s not particularly good at it. Neither is Lucy, who shakes her head when Edmund turns inquiring eyes on her.

“I,” Susan announces, “am going to go wash my hair.”

Edmund gives her a slow, lingering onceover that – Susan is amused to see – Caspian bristles at. “Yeah, sis,” he says, “you may want to do that. You haven’t been such a mess since that time in the swamps, you know, with the giants. You fell in, and –”

Lucy giggles. “Oh, I remember that,” she says.

“So do I,” Susan points out. That had happened during the miserable year when Peter was missing without a trace; she doesn’t think she could forget anything that happened then if she wanted to. “And I hardly need a reminder,” she adds pointedly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me –”

Edmund makes a deep leg, all courtly manners spoiled by his boy’s grin, and Susan snorts as she goes down the stairs, Lucy following unasked. Behind them, she hears Peter bang out of his room and snap questions at Edmund.

The How is fed by the river Elif, an underground offshoot of the Rush. It wasn’t underground in their day, but now it’s the perfect water supply for the How, since it can’t be reached without going all the way back to the Rush. Peter had asked, of course, worrying about poison and swimmers and other things they’ve dealt with in their own time, and been reasonably assured that the Elif was untouchable by the Telmarines, unless of course they wanted to harm their own people. He’d posted a guard anyway. There hadn’t been a guard before they’d come, and Susan hadn’t missed Edmund’s quiet snort of disdain. Evidently the New Narnians are certain that nothing will approach the How through the Elif, but Peter and Edmund aren’t willing to risk all their lives for it. They’ve all seen stranger things in their day – creatures that come out of solid stone, water nymphs and selkies and merpeople, dangerous magic and ordinary poison. It is very hard to believe an enemy will not do something when you’ve seen one enemy or another do everything you think they won’t dare.

The guards Peter has set over the opening of the Elif are a pair of unicorns named Llamrei and Hengoern, the best kind of creatures for this sort of work, and when Peter had done so Caspian had stared at him blankly and said, “But why a unicorn?”

“Because unicorns,” Lucy had explained, feeding Llamrei her apple core, “can detect poison, and purify anything touched by it. They also aren’t very well-liked by most dark creatures, although of course that’s very relative. Wasn’t there a unicorn with the White Witch, Ed?”

“I don’t remember,” Edmund admitted, “but there were unicorns in a few of the rebel groups that sprang up later.”

“But my uncle would never –” Caspian had begun, horrified, “I mean, the River Rush runs through Telmarine land as well.”

Edmund had raised his eyebrows and said, “So?”

Now, as Susan and Lucy go down the last set of stairs, Llamrei (who is on the night shift) raises her head. “Your majesties,” she says. “Is all well? I thought I heard a commotion.”

“Oh, you know,” Lucy says gaily, going to pet her neck. The unicorn submits, nuzzling Lucy’s shoulder briefly. “Assassination attempts. Peter’s not very happy.”

“Assassination –” Llamrei sputters.

“Well, they were only attempts,” Lucy says matter-of-factly.

There is a distinct possibility that they are all far too used to this. Susan crosses the cave to the teetering stack of buckets and takes two, filling them with clear, cold water from the flowing Elif. She kneels down on the packed dirt to begin washing the blood out of her hair, shivering at the icy chill of the water. It’s the fact that it flows underground that keeps it so cold; both the Rush and the Great River are warmer than this in summer, or at least they were once.

Lucy tells Llamrei a story about fighting off assassins with Peter and Edmund on Galma.
“– and Aslan told him that when Galma had been part of Narnia the first time ‘round, before the White Witch, the King of Narnia was called the Son of the Sun – because the Sun and Aslan are the same person, you see. And I thought the assassin understood that, but then he said that he still wanted to kill Peter, and Aslan sort of sighed and looked at Peter and said, ‘Do your duty, High King.’ And then he left.”

“What happened then?” Llamrei asks when Lucy doesn’t say anything more.

“About what?”

“What did the Lion mean when he told the High King to do his duty?”

“Oh,” Lucy says matter-of-factly. “Then Peter killed him. He met a very brave end. He never once begged for mercy, and he did keep saying he wanted to kill Peter, so he never repented. But I suppose he went to Aslan’s country in the end, since he was doing what he thought was right for the Sun, and the Sun is Aslan.”

There’s a pause, and then Llamrei says, “The High King killed him?”

“Well, yes,” Lucy says. “Obviously. What else were we going to do with him? I suppose we could have taken him back to Cair Paravel and had the execution there, but Peter did want to make a point to Galma, and it’s rather hard to do that from the mainland – that’s why we were on Galma in the first place, of course.”

Llamrei doesn’t say anything, and Lucy says excitedly, “Su, I remember! I hadn’t thought of that in ages, and I remember it like it was yesterday!”

Susan smiles and turns to tell her, “It’s always been yesterday for me,” wringing her hair out over one of the buckets. “Did I get it all?” she asks.

Lucy barely glances at her. “Yes, you’re fine,” she says. “Su, I remember!”

Susan gets up to empty the buckets. “I’m glad,” she says. Over the sound of the splashing water, she hears footsteps on the stair, and without conscious thought, drops the buckets and snatches her bow and quiver off the ground, turning to find that she’s aimed straight at Caspian’s heart.

He looks startled. Susan lowers her bow and replaces the arrow in her quiver. “Sorry,” she says.

“If this is going to be a habit, I don’t like it,” Caspian says, rather dubiously. “The High King barely missed impaling me only a few minutes ago.”

“He is rather rash and impulsive like that,” Lucy says knowingly, like she and Peter aren’t two peas in a pod.

Caspian comes down the rest of the stairs and comes over to Susan. “Trufflehunter said to give this to you,” he says, holding out an unsheathed dagger hilt first.

“Oh, that’s mine,” Lucy says, snatching it from his hand. “Su always goes for her bow before she goes for a dagger.”

Caspian blinks slowly. “You…stabbed Prettyfur,” he says.

“No, don’t be ridiculous, I wouldn’t let him get close enough to stab him. I threw my dagger at him.” Lucy inspects the blade knowledgeably, testing the edge on her finger, and upon apparently finding it satisfactory, sheathes it at her belt. “What did you say to Peter?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Caspian says helplessly, looking at Susan as if she has an answer for him. “He came out of the red cave, threw his dagger, and then snapped some kind of order at King Edmund before running off.”

Anger and not need. Susan shakes her head slightly. “What was the order?”

“What?”

“What was the order?” she repeats, patient. “I’m sure Edmund told you what it was, otherwise you wouldn’t be down here.”

“He said that he wanted everyone in the army in front of the How by sunrise,” Caspian says. “Including the…Sileas, Deiree, and Strongback. King Edmund said you’d know what that meant, but I don’t –”

“He’s going to execute them, of course,” Susan says. “It’s the standard punishment for high treason, which is what trying to kill your king is. Did he really say everyone?”

“Yes,” Caspian says hesitantly. “He said ‘every member of the army.’ Did you say execute?”

“What did you think we were going to do with them? We’re not exactly equipped to imprison and provision traitors. We’re fighting a war.” She turns her back on Caspian to restack the buckets and slings her quiver over her shoulder, picking up her bow. “I suppose Lucy and I had better go talk to Peter, and you’d better see about finishing carrying out Peter’s orders, unless Ed has told you otherwise.”

“Majesty,” Llamrei says, “does the High King mean me as well?”

Susan considers this. Normally Peter won’t risk pulling back guards for an execution, but normally his own men aren’t so willing to turn on him. “Yes, he does,” she says. “Stay here as long as you can, and then go up just before sunrise. Peter may not know everyone in the army by name, but he does know faces; he’ll know who’s not there and he’ll remember.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Llamrei says, nodding her beautiful head.

Susan glances at Caspian, who’s still staring at her. “Well?” she says mildly. “What are you waiting for? Edmund can’t inform the entire army by himself.” Especially when they’re not always inclined to listen to him. This isn’t their army, where all any one of them had to do was whisper and the entire army would know within five minutes. Gossip will have spread news of the attack already, but there’s no way of telling if gossip would be enough to make sure Peter’s orders would be obeyed, especially after the disaster at the Telmarine castle.

“I – yes, your highness,” Caspian says, and glances at her again before he goes upstairs. Susan balances her bow on her shoulder and twists her hair into a knot at the back of her neck – still wet, but at least it won’t drip on her this way. She and Lucy follow Caspian up, but part ways to continue upwards to Peter’s room.

Predictably, his door is closed. Susan and Lucy lean against the walls, neither one speaking. They’ve been here before, many times. Susan thinks that this assassination attempt has struck Peter harder than the others, and hopes that whatever rhyme or reason he got for it, it’s enough for him.

She isn’t as good as telling time as Peter, especially when she can’t see the sun. Peter knows Narnia inside and out; it doesn’t matter whether he’s in the woods on her western borders or sitting on his throne in Cair Paravel. Once in Narnia, he knows the hour even if he’s squatting in the darkest, deepest cave in the country. It had been a few hours after midnight when the attack happened, though, and it’s been another hour or so since. Not long till sunrise now.

It’s fifteen minutes before Peter’s door opens. He carries Rhindon sheathed in his hand. He doesn’t look surprised to see them.

Susan straightens, and as her eyes fall on his sword, she thinks abruptly of another execution on this same ground and can’t stop herself from saying, “Peter, you’re not – not on the Stone Table –”

Lucy shoots her a sharp, alarmed look, but Peter doesn’t glance her way at all. “I’m not the God damn White Witch,” he snaps, and Susan remembers too late what Caspian had very nearly done. So many Narnians dead in one day…they’ve had worse, but seldom so heartbreakingly. Only Angrisla, perhaps, comes near, and that was only the one crisis.

“I wish we didn’t have to do this again,” she murmurs. They’ve killed so many of their own people like this.

Peter, who’s already started walking down the hall, stops and touches her shoulder with his free hand. Susan stares up at him and wonders which execution, which assassination attempt, which lost battle he’s seeing now. There have been so many. “So do I,” he says, and his voice is gentler than it was a moment ago.

Susan doesn’t say anything. Peter lets go of her shoulder and turns to Lucy, putting Rhindon into her waiting hands. Besides the Stone Table, there’s only one other place that Peter will do an execution that will hold so many people. They go down to the ruins in front of the How.

The entirety of the army is there, murmuring among themselves and waiting. Within the ruins are the three prisoners, Edmund, and Caspian. When Peter has set foot on the stone, Edmund turns to him, words sharp and ritual.

“I turn these souls into your keeping, High King,” he says, and steps back, shouldering Caspian along with him. Susan and Lucy join him, in ritual positions behind Peter. Caspian stands between Susan and Edmund, a position usually nonexistent. Susan glances at Edmund out of the corner of her eye; this is his doing. She doubts Caspian realizes whose place he’s taken.

For a moment, Peter is silent. The line of his back is set and firm and he’s gone utterly still, which is not necessarily a bad sign, but not necessarily a good one either. Susan wishes she could see his face. He says finally, “These three souls, along with seven others came in the night with death and violence in their hearts. It was their wish to kill those humans among you: our royal self, Peter of Narnia; our royal sister and queen, Susan of Narnia; our royal brother and fellow king, Edmund of Narnia; our royal sister and queen, Lucy of Narnia; and our royal cousin, Caspian of Telmar. They have told us this by their words and by their deeds. So we witness, and so we swear, on the mane of the great Lion, Aslan. Is there any other who would swear likewise?”

He’s using the royal plural, Susan realizes, stricken. Peter never does that; he finds it pretentious and unnecessary. Bad, bad sign. It’s not his favored high court formality, either; it’s low court, which he usually hates. Still, it doesn’t keep her from replying. Like everything else, this is ritual. “So swear I, High King. I, Susan of Narnia, Queen of this land and sometime Queen of Narnia under the High King Peter, swear by the name of Aslan that these souls came seeking nothing but death. I have seen them, and spilled my own blood in defense of myself and my sister Lucy.”

Edmund and Lucy answer likewise, Lucy slower than Edmund – it’s worse for her than it is for the rest of them, Susan knows, because she remembers so little of what they used to be. Caspian answers as well, even slower than Lucy, but he’s never done this before. Edmund must have coached him.

“Sileas of Glasswater,” Peter continues, “Deiree of Lantern Waste, and Strongback of Coldwood: do you freely admit your guilt in the eyes of gods and all civilized creatures?”

The faun – she’s already noticed that naming conventions have changed in the intervening millennium, so Susan’s not certain which of the three he is – turns to look at Peter. “Do you mean,” he says, “that we came to kill you and all your kind? Yes, I speak for us all: we came to kill you, and we failed.”

Well, it’s hardly the first time they’ve heard that. Peter doesn’t even flinch. “Is there any other who would speak for these?”

Knowing the look that has to be on Peter’s face just now – cold anger, utter determination, the burning desire to kill – Susan’s not surprised that no one answers.

“So be it,” says Peter. “Then, by the power granted to us as High King over all Kings in Narnia by the land of Narnia and by Aslan himself, we bid you take a moment to prepare yourselves: for the crime of high treason, to compass and imagine the deaths of our royal self, Sovereign of Narnia, and of our royal sisters and brother, who hold the offices of Queens and King of Narnia under us, and for the crime of attempted murder, to compass and imagine the death of our royal cousin Prince Caspian, we, High King Peter of Narnia, by the grace of Aslan, by the will and favor of Narnia, sentence you, Sileas of Glasswater, centaur; Deiree of Lantern Waste, faun, and Strongback of Coldwood, centaur, to death, to be executed immediately by our hand.”

Next to her, Susan feels Caspian flinch. “He’s not,” he whispers, “he can’t mean to – surely not himself.”

“Shut up,” Edmund says out of the corner of his mouth.

Lucy steps forward, drawing Rhindon as she does so, and puts the hilt of the sword in Peter’s hand. She steps back into the line.

Peter puts the tip of the sword on the ground. Susan knows the next words, so she instead of listening she says quietly to Caspian, “Don’t look away. Peter will know, and he won’t forget.”

One of the centaurs, the one able in body – Susan recognizes him as the one Lucy healed in the hallway – declares, “We die now for Narnia, at the hands of the man who condemned Narnia to a thousand years of chaos. There is no comfort you could give us save to stop your hearts and drop dead at once, and even then we would be little pleased.”

That’s not fair! Susan thinks, but it’s as good a reason for attempted assassination as any other she’s heard, and she’s heard a lot.

“Then may your gods judge you fairly for your sins upon this earth, and may they forgive you, for Narnia will not.” With that, Peter steps forward, and Rhindon flashes downward three times in short order, blood spraying in scarlet arcs. Susan doesn’t look away. She doesn’t see whether Caspian does or not.

Peter turns toward the east, towards Aslan’s country, and raises his sword. “Narnia gives these souls into the keeping of Aslan,” he declares, and Susan shivers. He’s not the only one speaking; there’s a second voice underlying his. Narnia has woken. “May he judge them fairly when they arrive in his country.” This done, he lowers Rhindon, takes his scabbard from Lucy, and turns to Edmund. His voice is utterly cold – and solely his – as he says, “Burn the bodies. All of them.”

And then he’s gone.

Susan knows better than to go after him. Edmund dismisses the army with short words and calls over a work party. “Touch living wood and I’ll kill you myself,” he says tiredly. “If you have to, ask the damn tree and don’t even think about felling it, just take branches.”

Caspian, staring at the bodies, turns abruptly toward Susan. “How could you let her see this?” he demands.

Susan blinks at him coolly. “Whom do you mean?” she asks. “I’ve seen worse things.”

“I have killed men in battle,” Lucy says, voice hard. “I’ve done the work of a sovereign ruler – death is no less my duty than it is my brothers’. And what have you done?”

“My uncle keeps executioners,” Caspian says after a pause. Susan can’t read his face at all.

Edmund glances at him. “A coward’s choice,” he says. “The kings of Narnia kill our own criminals.”

Caspian gapes at him.

“I know,” Edmund drawls. “Horrible, isn’t it? Almost barbaric. I suppose it’s much more civilized to turn your face away and let someone else spill the blood that’s rightfully yours. That way you can pretend your hands are clean.”

“I didn’t say –” Caspian begins.

“To be king,” Edmund quotes, “is to take on the sins of land and people alike. To be king is to keep and hold, shepherd and protect. To be king is to be sole expiator of those sins, for the land is in your keeping alone, and should one of your people fail, then you have failed as well. Mercy is the provenance of lesser men: it is the nature of the king to do that which is unnatural. When you spill the blood of your people: you spill your own blood. You must be willing and able.” He turns away, muttering, “I need a drink.”

“It’s six in the morning,” Susan says sharply.

“Five o’clock back in England, then,” Edmund says, and goes down the path into the How.

Lucy follows him. “I’m going to talk to Peter,” she declares.

Warily, Caspian looks at Susan.

“You are very lucky,” she tells him and turns away, the rising sun at her back.



Introduction | On a Summer Midnight | Of Dead Secrets | Gone Under the Hill | In a Dark Wood | In Constellated Wars

Comments

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

"purely adventure plot" was a poor phrasing, in my last comment. Plot-driven would've been a better term. Most fics I see are character-driven.

I like how this chapter began. That whole bit with Susan and her (and her siblings') attitude towards war and violence was well-done.

zomg no clear demarcation between Queen Susan and Susan Pevensie! I LOVE THIS IDEA. 'Cos it's partly why she doesn't cling to Narnia the way her siblings do. The essence of her ability as a queen was always rooted in her practicality. She moves on from Narnia because it is the practical thing to do. Whether she is queen or Pevensie is just little details. And, uh, this may be a stretch, but in this way Susan more than any of them has found the spirit of Narnia in England: don't get caught up in other people's lies about yourself, embrace the world thrust upon you, keep your heart open and your mind clear.

I am on a Susan kick, as you see.

Lucy, who’s sleeping the sleep of the innocent – or the unashamed
Hell yes.

Susan’s not sure whether to blame his erratic behavior on the transition between England and Narnia, or on Narnia itself.
OH YOU. <33333

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*arches eyebrow* Really? I would have thought that this would be the ultimate in character-driven fic. (Of course, what do I know?) Why do you say so? *is curious*

Yes, exactly! That's exactly my view of Susan, because she doesn't spend all her time looking back the way it's implied the others do. She moves forward, and maybe she doesn't do it the "right" way -- but she moves forward nonetheless, and I like to think that as she got older (especially post-trainwreck), she used more and more of what she'd learned in Narnia to survive in England. Susan knows who she is.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

Yes yes! Susan doesn't need Narnia to be who she is. She doesn't take to games and tests and betrayal, not from emissaries and diplomats, not from her subjects, not (as it turns out) from Aslan.

'Cos this fic actually has plot, like real plot, and action. Most fics I come across (um, probably I guess also most fics that I seek out) are introspective character-shoegazing pieces whose plots are 'Edmund remembers how creepy the White Witch is' and 'Character A discreetly desires Character B' and 'back in England the Pevensies remember Narnia and it is very sad'. Those fics don't necessarily have a plot with a beginning-middle-end, they're mostly slices of life that are centered on emotion and atmosphere, and if there is action, the action is just another way to establish mood. But with this fic, the characters actually have something to do, and their characterization is accomplished not through brooding prettily by the window but through an action sequence. I guess that's really what it comes down to: I haven't seen a lot of action-sequence fics in Narnia fandom, but then again, I don't really seek those out. WELL, there was this one fic at the Pit of Voles that had Edmund negotiating with Dwarfs, and it was funny and snarky and would've been fun to read if it weren't for the fact that the author did NOT UNDERSTAND DIPLOMACY OR NEGOTIATIONS. AT ALL.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*nods frantically* *is bitter at the anti-Susan fen all over again* *is not going to talk about Last Battle here*

Ah. See, I love writing action, and there's a slight possibility it's kind of hard-wired in me to have plot as a basis, so even the ficlet type things have something going on in the background (except for "All Fall Down". *frown* But that's only because I couldn't figure out how to put an adventure plot in England). This kind of sucked when I was writing CSI:NY, because I had to come up with new murders, like, every day.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

Where are you reading your fic?

because I had to come up with new murders, like, every day.
Ahaha! That's funny. 'Cos having to do this would just break my brain. Or maybe it is fanfic that broke my brain and now all I can write are introspective character pieces bubbling with UST. Argh. I will enJOY IT WHILE I CAN. Fic is really just my way of writing character or ship meta, 'cos I kind of suck at writing actual meta and it is just a list of things that make me XD and things that make me D:

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

(My computer suddenly shut down the Internet and my incredibly bitter pro-Susan post. Let us be happy for its loss, because it was seriously bitter.)

That specific fic was off a rec in my journal. *scowls* Which is clearly not the best place to get recs, because if I get one more fic where Susan is an evil vindictive bitch, then I will end up doing something rash. Susan is awesome! I was never a Susan fan till now, and y'all know what? I am glad she got left behind in Last Battle, because she was the only one who moved on despite the fact that Narnia broke her heart and broke her. She was the only one who put herself back together and moved on, damnit.

(No, seriously, this is less bitter than the previous post.)

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

Aww! I would've liked to see that bitter post. MMMM, BITTER, delicious.

Lewis did say that Susan's story was not over. But it's kind of a relief that he never got around to finishing her story, because I don't think I would've liked the result. I kind of like the idea of Susan eventually making it to Aslan's Country later, but I also kind of don't; I'm torn. I don't necessarily want Susan redeemed because, it's like what the Gaiman story said: what is there to redeem?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*sulks* It's not that Susan was broken or anything, it's just that she didn't get her ass hit by a train like the rest of them. I mean, sure, Aslan could have arranged things so she got in a car accident or something, but come on. All she did was not die, and for that she's villainized? Come on, people. Maybe she grew up, and hated Aslan for a while because he betrayed her family by taking them away, and she changed the world a little bit, and she was happy, and then she started to look towards what will always, always, always be home for any of the Pevensies. And as an old woman, she put her affairs in order, kissed her daughter and her granddaughters, made sure the fires were damped and all the electronics were unplugged, and went home. And her siblings welcomed her with open arms.

That's my Susan. (Okay, granted, my Susan is a lot like Rose from Titanic, but I like that movie, so.)

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

*weeps* YES. Susan! Her pragmatism is good for some things, not for others. And it sucks for her because although you need someone to be pragmatic, that attitude doesn't serve her well in situations where, um, all you need to do is believe. ("I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!")

Oh the pitfalls of trying to flesh out a device in a Christian parable.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

*flails and cheers* A great big "ditto" to everything Lassiter said.

I <3 your Susan immensely. And your Lucy is terrifying.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I think. *grin*

[swift-tales.livejournal.com]

It’s not the first time she’s hoped he drinks himself to unconsciousness. so, so, so telling!

You know what really got to me in this chapter? The fact that, despite how much they love Narnia, despite how much they want to return there every time they're in England (or, you know, maybe because of that) they've suffered during their reign. They've really really suffered. And now, perhaps, most of it seems so pointless, because everything has been forgotten. The history has been lost and all the suffering has been replaced with 'The Golden Age! Everyone had such a merry time! Sunshine shone out of every orifice!'

Also, the notion that Susan is Queen Susan whether she's in Narnia or in England is very ... new to me, I guess. I never thought of her that way. I always thought that there was a very clear difference between Susan the Queen or Susan Pevensie. But maybe Susan doesn't need to be in Narnia to be a Queen? Or the other way around? I don't know, but it's something I'll definitely need to think about.

Susan is such a negotiater in this fic, which really seems to fit her most. All of her siblings are a bit battle crazy, but she's far less so. She understands the necesity of war, understands that it can be unavoidable. But when you need someone to make treaties, I guess it's Susan you ask for, or Edmund. And yet, despite the fact that she's not as battle driven as the rest of them, she's a fucking warrior and she will kick your ass.

The fact that she prefers to talk things through doesn't make her any less strong or any less of a fighter, even if she doesn't fight as much as her siblings wrong. She's strong and quick and fast when she needs to be, but not more then that. After, she's a Queen of Narnia and that means a lot more then sitting on a throne and looking beautiful. (Which is the impression I get from Lewis' work)

And even though her brother's crazy and she knows it. She'll follow him anyway.

This is sooooo awesome!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

The fact that, despite how much they love Narnia, despite how much they want to return there every time they're in England (or, you know, maybe because of that) they've suffered during their reign. They've really really suffered. And now, perhaps, most of it seems so pointless, because everything has been forgotten. The history has been lost and all the suffering has been replaced with 'The Golden Age! Everyone had such a merry time! Sunshine shone out of every orifice!'

Yes, exactly. That's what gets me about Narnia: there's so much that's been lost, so much history -- and yet, it's not history at all, not for the Pevensies; it's yesterday. For some of them (hi, Peter), it's not even yesterday, it's today -- and it's forgotten. It's meaningless. It seems like it was all for nothing, and yet it wasn't, but there's no way to understand that. *thoughtful*

It's not -- well. It's that Susan doesn't stop being Queen Susan the moment she's in England, or that she stops being Susan Pevensie as soon as she's in Narnia. They're the same person. She can't turn off the part of her brain that's been a ruling queen for fifteen years, just like she can't turn off the part of her brain that's been an English schoolgirl for the past year.

[swift-tales.livejournal.com]

And that makes it twice as hard to adjust maybe. They don't have to adjust to just being back in Narnia, they also have to adjust to a whole new Narnia, one that is less organised, less skilled, less pragmatic and everything and so very different to what they were used to in their old Narnia. And then there's Caspian in the mix, which they also need to adjust to. I mean, it's not technically their thrown their fighting for, so it's like it was before.

I see what you mean with Susan, I think. Despite the fact that she moves on with her life in England, she's still a Queen of Narnia, she doesn't stop being one.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Susan : the whole constantly thinking and examining of herself and everythign around her is just glee, really it is, with the reasons behind it. Her 'oh shit' at the fact that Peter's using low court and precisely *why* is a great summer-up of this.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

You know of my endless abundant love for Susan, and you do her wonderfully here - even more truly than I can ever manage for myself, because there's a definite book cast to her, but you've still kept her solid and capable and kick-ass at the same time.

So actually I'm just going to wibble about one thing, and that's the moment when Peter stops on his way to the execution and touches her shoulder - and his voice is gentler than it was a moment ago and YES. Susan the Gentle perhaps not for any intrinsic thing of her own, but for the way she keeps them all, and especially Peter, from hardening beyond repair. And it's so subtle. I love it.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

They're all so necessary to each other -- they just don't work when it's one alone. And Susan is glue, but also water, and I now have no idea where I was going with that metaphor.