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bedlamsbardTitle: On a Summer Sunday
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Come on. Sun's shining, Lu is at Arn Abedin, Ed is at Anvard, the Shifting Market's in full fling, it's a beautiful day." Golden Age fic.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Some characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. The concept of alchemical lights is borrowed from Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard sequence.
Author's Note: Foralmostinstinct, who went above and beyond the call of duty to bring me PC footage for geographical analysis.
"Get up."
Susan looks up from the stack of papers in front of her to see Peter in the doorway of her study, leaning lazily against the frame with his arms crossed over his chest. "Why?"
Peter grins at her. "Because you've been working since you woke up this morning, and you need a break."
"Trade agreements don't write themselves, Peter," Susan says, tapping her quill against her cheek. The hawk-feather is soft against her skin.
"That ambassador from Alvarado is just going to make you rewrite half of what's in there anyway," Peter says. "Come on, Su. It'll be fun. I promise."
"I am not really in the mood for getting myself bruised to bits in the ring," Susan says primly.
"We're not going near the ring. Promise." He pushes himself off the door and approaches, taking the quill from her hand and shutting the file on the half-written draft. "Come on. Sun's shining, Lu is at Arn Abedin, Ed is at Anvard, the Shifting Market's in full fling, it's a beautiful day."
"Oh, all right," Susan says, acquiescing before Peter's indomitable charm. It's been a long time since she's seen him smile like that, and she's a little helpless before it. Two years since he went missing, six months since he got back -- and this is the first time that he's really felt like her brother again.
Peter's grin widens. "You're going to have to change your clothes," he warns.
-
-
"And where exactly is the Royal Guard?" Susan asks archly, doing up the last buttons on the leather vest she's wearing over a full-sleeved white shirt and plain brown trousers, worn and a little stained. The boots are her own -- an older pair she doesn't wear often any more, although the leather's still good. It's more that she hasn't particularly had occasion to wear them rather than that she can't. The etching on the boots matches the etching on her vest, faded a little by time and weather. Over that go a pair of pair of baldrics that cross between her breasts and support a Shoushani-style saber on her left hip and a matching dagger on her right. Both feature basket-hilts elaborately covered in leaf and vine patterns, a star peaking out at irregular intervals. The baldrics are unpatterned, but the buckle is overlaid with a weathered bronze fox's head. It's the only part of the costume that's not made in Narnia, and the effect is --
Well, she doesn't look Narnian. She certainly doesn't look like Queen Susan the Gentle, and she's secretly a little pleased by the effect, though she's not going to admit it any time soon.
"Kaikura and Sidonie think I'm in my study reading Ed's latest reports," Peter says, fiddling absently with his cuffs. He's dressed similarly to Susan -- the patterns are different, the vest longer, his shirt open to show off the chain around his neck (although his signet rings are hidden beneath his shirt), and he's wearing a belt and a single baldric supporting a longsword across his back, an Ansketts hand-axe on either hip. The longsword is unfamiliar -- a little longer and narrower than Rhindon, the hilt differently styled from comparable Narnian swords. She can't quite put her finger on what bothers her about it. "Rivasoa and Tiaret think you're in your study working on the Alvaradan trade agreement."
"You know that we have bodyguards for a reason," Susan points out, shifting her shoulders experimentally. She'd prefer to carry a bow, even if it's not her own, but Peter had pointed out reasonably that swords were taken for granted in the Shifting Market, while strung bows were not, and it would take too long to string a bow if the use of one was suddenly necessary. Besides, she has throwing daggers on her wrists, hidden below her full sleeves and ready to drop into her palms at a moment's notice.
"I'm sure we can take care of ourselves for one afternoon," Peter says reasonably. He pushes his hair back from his face -- it's almost, but not quite, long enough for him to tie back -- and Susan smiles.
"One afternoon," she agrees, and presses the correct combination of stones on the mosaic on her wall, watching it split down the center and slide aside. She reaches for one of the unlit lanterns hanging from the sconces on her walls, but Peter pushes her wrist down.
"I've got it," he says, and presses a round stone the size of her fist into her palm. Susan looks down at it.
"What is it?"
"It's the sort of thing they sell in the Shifting Market," he says. "Narnians don't tend to buy them because they're still wary of magic, but the traders do a brisk business with other foreigners. It's an alchemical light. That one's from Shoushan, but they make them in Natare and Edan too. There's some variation on it that Calormen has, but the principle's the same. Shake it."
Westron magic. Of course. Susan presses her lips together -- she's a queen of Narnia; she might as well be a prime example of her people's prejudices, since Peter's not filling those particular shoes -- and shakes the stone anyway. It lights suddenly from within, and the glow is soft and green, penetrating the darkness of the corridor before them.
"You don't have to worry about burning the castle down if you drop it," Peter adds, grinning, and opens his palm to reveal a second alchemical light in the shape of a teardrop, this one red.
Susan decides, very warily, to trust in this foreign magic for now, even though she'd rather have a torch or a lantern. She follows Peter into the passageway, which grows noticeably darker as the doors slide shut behind her. She can't ell if the light-stones really grow brighter or if it's just a trick of her eyes.
She's unsurprised to find that the hidden passageways have done their usual trick of shifting around to find the quickest route of getting them where they want to go -- always more common when Peter's with her than when she's alone or with one of her other siblings, but she's been used to that for a long time. Cair Paravel's just as in love with Peter as everything else in Narnia. It only takes them a third of the time to get down to the harbor as it would if they were to go through the main halls of the castle.
Outside, the air is warm and the sun plays on her bare neck. She tastes the tang of salt in the air when she licks her lips, and around the cries of gulls and the Aerial Corps patrol rise the constant babble of the Shifting Market, a mixture of vendors calling their wares, sailors shouting at each other, and the general sound of the hundreds of people that make up the city below Cair Paravel.
This particular door opens onto the Shield Marina, but the guards pay them little mind as they walk past. The tall ships of the Narnian Navy are either swarming with sailors or nearly deserted except for a skeleton crew that sprawls on the decks playing cards and throwing dice. There are two ships in dry-dock -- the massive skeleton that will be the Dawnstrike when it's completed, and the Copper Rain, which is undergoing repairs after a sea serpent attack off Terebinthia.
"Slipped your leashes, your majesties?" a rangy wolfhound asks as they near the gates, his tongue lolling out in amusement. There are two other hounds with him, and a selkie and a swan-maid watching from the watchtower up above.
"Don't tell my guard," Peter says, grinning back as he flips open the lock on the gate.
The hound laughs. "Never saw you, sire. Or you, your highness," he says to Susan, and flops back down, head on his paws.
Peter holds the gate open for her as she passes, and lets the lock fall shut behind them. They stroll down the wharf to the Strangers' Marina, and Susan lets her usual dignity relax to look up at the foreign ships docked side to side, jockeying a little for space at the docks. Not far down the way, the crew of an Ansketts longship is unloading; a little beyond that, a Calormene galleon is putting to sea. She catches the sudden flare of light at the corner of her eye and looks up in time to see the watchtowers on Heresceaft Point signaling the watchtowers at Cair Paravel, a bare moment before the low groan of an unpatterned horn carries over the water, one of the huge horns that man the watchtowers. Ship coming in from the south, colors unknown.
Peter's grinning when he looks around, and Susan elbows him and mutters, "You are aware that I was the one who negotiated the agreement with Masongnong that got us their traders in the first place, aren't you?"
"You are aware that I was the one the Konungr of Anskettell came to see when he was deciding whether to send his merchants here or not, aren't you?" Peter returns. He tilts his head to the side, back towards solid ground. "Come on."
The Shifting Market is a riot of color and life, and Susan keeps a good hold on the hilt of her sword as they shoulder their way through the crowd. Foreign language overlaps foreign language, and she recognizes maybe three words out of every ten. Calormene merchants, Ansketts longshipmen, marsh-wiggles from the Northern Marshes, Red Dwarves forcing their way through at waist-height, centaurs towering head-and-shoulders above the rest, huldrerfolket flirting delicately with foreigners. There are buskers set up at irregular intervals between the stalls; they only take a few paces before one song hits another, Come answer where the north winds groan running headfirst into You know me by my hair, I see.
"I hate that song," Peter hisses through his teeth.
Susan doesn't have to ask which of the two he means. "It's a popular ballad," she points out gently.
"It was a tragedy and a massacre and I was at fault," Peter says, his voice tight, and she curls her fingers around his and pulls him to the opposite side of the way, where a vendor from Galma is selling blood-oranges and kiwi and starfruit and a dozen other fruits that don't grow in Narnia.
She makes Peter buy them a pair of blood-oranges, and they make their way back down to the wharf, where there are fewer people and the vendors are selling meals to go, not whimsy. They sit on the edge of the dock, legs dangling over the side next to a sign that prevents foreigners from tying up here in eight different languages, and peel the oranges, laughing as they try not to get the red juice all over their clothes. It only takes a few minutes for the line between Peter's eyes to fade, and he cuts blood-orange slices with a knife the length of his hand that he produces from thin air and feeds them to her.
The juice stains their lips and tongues red, and Susan is a little thrilled with the effect it produces, studying their reflections in the water beneath them. Even this close to the city, it's so crystal-clear that she can make out individual grains of sand at the bottom of the ocean, and she has to tilt her head just so to get her reflection.
Peter discards the orange peels, wipes his knife and fingers clean on his trousers before offering her a hand up. Susan takes it, throwing a little of her weight behind it so that Peter has to put real effort into pulling her upright, and for a moment they waver on the edge of the dock, almost, but not quite, in danger of falling into the ocean below.
The market has, by custom and practice, divided itself into different sections based on goods, and they browse amongst them. Peter examines a pair of curved knives from Lycoris until Susan archly reminds him that he has a whole armory of weapons to choose from, and surely enough knives to outfit a whole army. She fingers arrows from Bengay, their points and fletching differing depending on purpose, and finally Peter reaches over her shoulder to take the quiver from her, dropping three silver moons and six copper stars in front of the vendor. He takes the knives too, and Susan rolls her eyes.
"Knives are extremely useful," Peter informs her archly. "Besides, if we were to come back later, the price would have doubled."
"This is true," Susan agrees, "but we do actually have an armory. Several of them."
"This is true," Peter echoes, grinning.
They wander through the rows of jeweler, guarded by ones and twos of grim-faced foreign mercenaries whose gazes bore into the back of Susan's neck as she bends low to examine carved ivory pendants, a handful of charms made from semiprecious gemstones, a pair of earrings that are perfect replicas of Narnian homewood trees in miniature gold and silver, emeralds studding their branches. She bargains the price on those down for half as much, then hands over two golden suns and watches as the vendor wraps the earrings in paper and silk.
Peter is two stalls down, frowning a little in concentration as he listens to a vendor extol the virtues of the eardrops he's selling in heavily accented Narnian. Susan comes up beside him, puts a hand on his elbow to let him know she's there, and leans forward to look at the contents at the stall. "Thinking of getting an earring, like a pirate?" she asks.
Peter snorts. "No, but Ed has one, and I thought he might like another."
"Oh, Peter," Susan sighs, "you don't buy jewelry for your brother. It's simply not done."
He laughs a little and points to a little silver hoop with a little gold fox sitting at its base. The creature's eyes are tiny chips of sapphire. Peter gives her a sheepish shrug as he pays and takes the package. "He likes foxes."
"You just bought jewelry for your brother," Susan points out. "You are aware you have two perfectly good sisters, aren't you?"
"Lu's awfully peculiar about her jewelry," Peter says, sounding perfectly reasonable as they move through the crowd, scanning each stall briefly as they pass it. "I wouldn't want to make judgments on what she'd like. What would you like?"
"Surprise me," Susan says, and adds, "Something other than weapons."
"I have," Peter points out dryly, "other interests."
They wander down the long rows of the Shifting Market, threading the crowds and browsing the stalls. Susan buys a dozen ells of Edanese silk and orders them sent up to Cair Paravel, which she's sure doesn't do much for her cover, but that much fabric can't be carried. Peter vanishes briefly, then reappears from behind a distracted faun and presents her with a box filled with a dozen delicately carved wooden figurines, each one the size of her thumb.
"I thought you might like it," he says, and Susan stands on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.
"I love it. Thank you." She fingers the curve of the satyr's horns with the tip of one finger, then closes the box and tucks it away. "Let's get something to eat."
The food stalls are back down near the docks, and the market's just as packed here as farther inland, so Peter says, "Wait here," and moves forward through the crowd. Susan browses the odd trinket-seller's stalls -- mostly cheap Narnian souvenirs for sailors or other travelers.
By now she's used to the crowd pressing against her, so she's not surprised when someone stumbles into her back. When he stays there for longer than a heartbeat, she starts to move forward, and then she feels the knife at her back.
"Don't go for your weapons," a man's voice says softly in her ear. She catalogues the accent automatically: Archenlander. Aslan's mane, Edmund's in Archenland now. "Don't cry out. Do you see your brother up there, Queen Susan?"
Peter is visible through the crowd, standing at a stall and talking to the vendor as he pays for their lunch. She nods.
"Do you see the archer in the crow's nest of that ship?" the stranger says, and Susan's gaze flickers upward. The archer's bow is drawn and aimed at Peter's back. She nods, her fists clenched tight around her packages.
"One false move," the stranger warns her, "and that archer will put an arrow through your brother's back. You don't want that, do you?"
She shakes her head.
"Go to him," the stranger orders, and Susan swallows hard and takes a step forward, the knife a constant pressure at her back. A pair of centaurs pass in front of them, and when they can move again, Peter's gone.
"Where is he?" the stranger demands.
"I don't know!" Susan spits, desperately relieved. "I'm not my brother's keeper."
"You warned him somehow --"
His words are cut off by a sharp crack and Susan spins around as the pressure on her back vanishes, drawing her sword. There's a crumpled body at her feet, head twisted at an unnatural angle, and Peter's standing over it. The crack came from Peter breaking the man's neck.
"Su, are you all right?" he demands as the crowd flows on around them, blissfully ignorant.
"I'm fine, there's an archer, a sniper -- look out!"
Peter whirls, both axes suddenly in his hand as he blocks the Archenlander's swordstroke. The drawn steel is what finally gets the crowd's attention, and all of a sudden there's a panicked mass of people fleeing in all direction, screaming in terror. The only ones who aren't leaving are the ones coming towards Peter and Susan.
Susan knows how to use a sword, but she's neither Peter nor Edmund; she doesn't have her brothers' training or field experience. Still, she was trained by the best in Narnia -- trained by Peter, and it's enough that she can keep up with the attackers coming at her, especially once she learns they're not coming at her to kill, but instead to capture. That's her advantage, because she's not inclined to be nearly so lenient. But there are more than a dozen Archenlanders and only the two of them; the city guard hasn't arrived yet.
"Susan!" Peter yells, suddenly at her side. Both his axes are gone, and he has his longsword in both hands now. He cuts down the man she's fighting with one savage stroke.
An arrow, its fletchings dyed green, takes a swordsman in the chest as he comes at Peter. With a roar of rage, Kaikura leaps into the fray, the rest of the royal guard and the city guard on her heels.
"What took you so long?" Peter shouts.
"What were you thinking?" Kaikura shouts back, then rips half a man's face off with her teeth. "Are you mad?" she adds after she's spit that out. "You don't just walk out of Cair Paravel by yourself!"
"I wasn't by myself!" He strikes a man's head from his shoulders.
Susan shuts their bickering out, concentrating on her sword, trying not to get tangled up in it, because this isn't at all like fighting in the ring, even with Peter or Edmund, who aren't inclined to go easy on her by any definition of the word.
With a scream, death strikes from the sky: three griffins from the Aerial Corps patrol, snatching men from the ground in their talons. "Take them alive!" Susan bellows up at them as they start climbing again, and the foremost griffin dips its wings in answer.
With the guard here to even the odds, they dispatch the other Archenlanders quickly, and Peter's standing with his sword in his hand, blood streaked liberally across his face and clothes, when Susan remembers the archer. She turns wildly to see the arrow hurtling at her brother.
"Peter!" she shrieks, and throws herself in front of him.
The arrow takes her in the chest. She hears Peter's shout, and then nothing at all.
-
-
She wakes in her own bed, the windows open and the sunlight playing across her face. Susan raises one hand dreamily, the pain a distant throb, and touches her fingers to her chest, the space on her collarbone, just above her breasts. She feels a thick pad of bandage there. When she tries to look down, the movement brings on a sudden, stabbing pain, and she hisses a curse out between her teeth.
"Su --" Peter jerks awake abruptly and nearly falls out of the chair beside her bed, his arm slipping off the arm-rest.
"Hey," she says, reaching out for him.
He curls his fingers against hers and leans over her, pushing her hair out of her face. "How are you?"
"You're blocking my sun," Susan chides, and Peter laughs a little, nervously, and starts to sit back down. Susan keeps her grip on him and pulls, and Peter's off-balance enough -- he can't have been sleeping -- that he stumbles forward, catching himself on the bed as she pulls him down.
"Su, you're hurt," he says anxiously, shifting his position so he's supporting himself on his elbows above her. "Are you --"
"It means I can blame this on the drugs if I have to," she says, and reaches up to catch her fingers in his hair and pull his head down to hers.
Peter's lips are shockingly, surprisingly soft, still with surprise against hers before he opens his mouth to kiss her back. He tastes of chilled fruit liquor and the faint tang of blood; she runs her tongue over the cut on his lip as she kisses him.
"Susan," he says breathlessly, pulling away.
She reaches to pull him back down, but he's resolved. "No," he says.
"Peter," she protests.
"You're wounded, Su," he says, his face worried above her. "You could have died -- you should have died. And Lu's not here with her cordial."
"You always do know what to say to make me feel better, don't you?" she says, and he laughs.
"I'm holding the prisoners in the black cells," he says. "I haven't interrogated them yet."
"You should get on that," Susan advises. "The one who grabbed me, the first one, he had an Archenlander accent, and Edmund's at Anvard now."
Peter nods. "They're not going anywhere," he says, but his brow furrows a little. "Let them sweat. I know Ed can take care of himself for at least a few days."
"Hmmph," Susan says, but the drugs are starting to take over again. "You should stay here," she says drowsily, pulling Peter back down; her fingers are still tangled in his hair.
"All right." He kisses her again, soft and slow and careful, and then shifts until he's lying on the bed next to her. She drags a last kiss from his lips before she falls back into slumber, Peter a warm, steady weight against her side, one arm slung across her belly and his head against her shoulder. The last thing she hears is his whisper against her skin, "This is not exactly how I planned our afternoon to go."
"'s'all right," Susan mumbles, and then she's out.
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Come on. Sun's shining, Lu is at Arn Abedin, Ed is at Anvard, the Shifting Market's in full fling, it's a beautiful day." Golden Age fic.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Some characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. The concept of alchemical lights is borrowed from Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard sequence.
Author's Note: For
almostinstinct, who went above and beyond the call of duty to bring me PC footage for geographical analysis."Get up."
Susan looks up from the stack of papers in front of her to see Peter in the doorway of her study, leaning lazily against the frame with his arms crossed over his chest. "Why?"
Peter grins at her. "Because you've been working since you woke up this morning, and you need a break."
"Trade agreements don't write themselves, Peter," Susan says, tapping her quill against her cheek. The hawk-feather is soft against her skin.
"That ambassador from Alvarado is just going to make you rewrite half of what's in there anyway," Peter says. "Come on, Su. It'll be fun. I promise."
"I am not really in the mood for getting myself bruised to bits in the ring," Susan says primly.
"We're not going near the ring. Promise." He pushes himself off the door and approaches, taking the quill from her hand and shutting the file on the half-written draft. "Come on. Sun's shining, Lu is at Arn Abedin, Ed is at Anvard, the Shifting Market's in full fling, it's a beautiful day."
"Oh, all right," Susan says, acquiescing before Peter's indomitable charm. It's been a long time since she's seen him smile like that, and she's a little helpless before it. Two years since he went missing, six months since he got back -- and this is the first time that he's really felt like her brother again.
Peter's grin widens. "You're going to have to change your clothes," he warns.
-
-
"And where exactly is the Royal Guard?" Susan asks archly, doing up the last buttons on the leather vest she's wearing over a full-sleeved white shirt and plain brown trousers, worn and a little stained. The boots are her own -- an older pair she doesn't wear often any more, although the leather's still good. It's more that she hasn't particularly had occasion to wear them rather than that she can't. The etching on the boots matches the etching on her vest, faded a little by time and weather. Over that go a pair of pair of baldrics that cross between her breasts and support a Shoushani-style saber on her left hip and a matching dagger on her right. Both feature basket-hilts elaborately covered in leaf and vine patterns, a star peaking out at irregular intervals. The baldrics are unpatterned, but the buckle is overlaid with a weathered bronze fox's head. It's the only part of the costume that's not made in Narnia, and the effect is --
Well, she doesn't look Narnian. She certainly doesn't look like Queen Susan the Gentle, and she's secretly a little pleased by the effect, though she's not going to admit it any time soon.
"Kaikura and Sidonie think I'm in my study reading Ed's latest reports," Peter says, fiddling absently with his cuffs. He's dressed similarly to Susan -- the patterns are different, the vest longer, his shirt open to show off the chain around his neck (although his signet rings are hidden beneath his shirt), and he's wearing a belt and a single baldric supporting a longsword across his back, an Ansketts hand-axe on either hip. The longsword is unfamiliar -- a little longer and narrower than Rhindon, the hilt differently styled from comparable Narnian swords. She can't quite put her finger on what bothers her about it. "Rivasoa and Tiaret think you're in your study working on the Alvaradan trade agreement."
"You know that we have bodyguards for a reason," Susan points out, shifting her shoulders experimentally. She'd prefer to carry a bow, even if it's not her own, but Peter had pointed out reasonably that swords were taken for granted in the Shifting Market, while strung bows were not, and it would take too long to string a bow if the use of one was suddenly necessary. Besides, she has throwing daggers on her wrists, hidden below her full sleeves and ready to drop into her palms at a moment's notice.
"I'm sure we can take care of ourselves for one afternoon," Peter says reasonably. He pushes his hair back from his face -- it's almost, but not quite, long enough for him to tie back -- and Susan smiles.
"One afternoon," she agrees, and presses the correct combination of stones on the mosaic on her wall, watching it split down the center and slide aside. She reaches for one of the unlit lanterns hanging from the sconces on her walls, but Peter pushes her wrist down.
"I've got it," he says, and presses a round stone the size of her fist into her palm. Susan looks down at it.
"What is it?"
"It's the sort of thing they sell in the Shifting Market," he says. "Narnians don't tend to buy them because they're still wary of magic, but the traders do a brisk business with other foreigners. It's an alchemical light. That one's from Shoushan, but they make them in Natare and Edan too. There's some variation on it that Calormen has, but the principle's the same. Shake it."
Westron magic. Of course. Susan presses her lips together -- she's a queen of Narnia; she might as well be a prime example of her people's prejudices, since Peter's not filling those particular shoes -- and shakes the stone anyway. It lights suddenly from within, and the glow is soft and green, penetrating the darkness of the corridor before them.
"You don't have to worry about burning the castle down if you drop it," Peter adds, grinning, and opens his palm to reveal a second alchemical light in the shape of a teardrop, this one red.
Susan decides, very warily, to trust in this foreign magic for now, even though she'd rather have a torch or a lantern. She follows Peter into the passageway, which grows noticeably darker as the doors slide shut behind her. She can't ell if the light-stones really grow brighter or if it's just a trick of her eyes.
She's unsurprised to find that the hidden passageways have done their usual trick of shifting around to find the quickest route of getting them where they want to go -- always more common when Peter's with her than when she's alone or with one of her other siblings, but she's been used to that for a long time. Cair Paravel's just as in love with Peter as everything else in Narnia. It only takes them a third of the time to get down to the harbor as it would if they were to go through the main halls of the castle.
Outside, the air is warm and the sun plays on her bare neck. She tastes the tang of salt in the air when she licks her lips, and around the cries of gulls and the Aerial Corps patrol rise the constant babble of the Shifting Market, a mixture of vendors calling their wares, sailors shouting at each other, and the general sound of the hundreds of people that make up the city below Cair Paravel.
This particular door opens onto the Shield Marina, but the guards pay them little mind as they walk past. The tall ships of the Narnian Navy are either swarming with sailors or nearly deserted except for a skeleton crew that sprawls on the decks playing cards and throwing dice. There are two ships in dry-dock -- the massive skeleton that will be the Dawnstrike when it's completed, and the Copper Rain, which is undergoing repairs after a sea serpent attack off Terebinthia.
"Slipped your leashes, your majesties?" a rangy wolfhound asks as they near the gates, his tongue lolling out in amusement. There are two other hounds with him, and a selkie and a swan-maid watching from the watchtower up above.
"Don't tell my guard," Peter says, grinning back as he flips open the lock on the gate.
The hound laughs. "Never saw you, sire. Or you, your highness," he says to Susan, and flops back down, head on his paws.
Peter holds the gate open for her as she passes, and lets the lock fall shut behind them. They stroll down the wharf to the Strangers' Marina, and Susan lets her usual dignity relax to look up at the foreign ships docked side to side, jockeying a little for space at the docks. Not far down the way, the crew of an Ansketts longship is unloading; a little beyond that, a Calormene galleon is putting to sea. She catches the sudden flare of light at the corner of her eye and looks up in time to see the watchtowers on Heresceaft Point signaling the watchtowers at Cair Paravel, a bare moment before the low groan of an unpatterned horn carries over the water, one of the huge horns that man the watchtowers. Ship coming in from the south, colors unknown.
Peter's grinning when he looks around, and Susan elbows him and mutters, "You are aware that I was the one who negotiated the agreement with Masongnong that got us their traders in the first place, aren't you?"
"You are aware that I was the one the Konungr of Anskettell came to see when he was deciding whether to send his merchants here or not, aren't you?" Peter returns. He tilts his head to the side, back towards solid ground. "Come on."
The Shifting Market is a riot of color and life, and Susan keeps a good hold on the hilt of her sword as they shoulder their way through the crowd. Foreign language overlaps foreign language, and she recognizes maybe three words out of every ten. Calormene merchants, Ansketts longshipmen, marsh-wiggles from the Northern Marshes, Red Dwarves forcing their way through at waist-height, centaurs towering head-and-shoulders above the rest, huldrerfolket flirting delicately with foreigners. There are buskers set up at irregular intervals between the stalls; they only take a few paces before one song hits another, Come answer where the north winds groan running headfirst into You know me by my hair, I see.
"I hate that song," Peter hisses through his teeth.
Susan doesn't have to ask which of the two he means. "It's a popular ballad," she points out gently.
"It was a tragedy and a massacre and I was at fault," Peter says, his voice tight, and she curls her fingers around his and pulls him to the opposite side of the way, where a vendor from Galma is selling blood-oranges and kiwi and starfruit and a dozen other fruits that don't grow in Narnia.
She makes Peter buy them a pair of blood-oranges, and they make their way back down to the wharf, where there are fewer people and the vendors are selling meals to go, not whimsy. They sit on the edge of the dock, legs dangling over the side next to a sign that prevents foreigners from tying up here in eight different languages, and peel the oranges, laughing as they try not to get the red juice all over their clothes. It only takes a few minutes for the line between Peter's eyes to fade, and he cuts blood-orange slices with a knife the length of his hand that he produces from thin air and feeds them to her.
The juice stains their lips and tongues red, and Susan is a little thrilled with the effect it produces, studying their reflections in the water beneath them. Even this close to the city, it's so crystal-clear that she can make out individual grains of sand at the bottom of the ocean, and she has to tilt her head just so to get her reflection.
Peter discards the orange peels, wipes his knife and fingers clean on his trousers before offering her a hand up. Susan takes it, throwing a little of her weight behind it so that Peter has to put real effort into pulling her upright, and for a moment they waver on the edge of the dock, almost, but not quite, in danger of falling into the ocean below.
The market has, by custom and practice, divided itself into different sections based on goods, and they browse amongst them. Peter examines a pair of curved knives from Lycoris until Susan archly reminds him that he has a whole armory of weapons to choose from, and surely enough knives to outfit a whole army. She fingers arrows from Bengay, their points and fletching differing depending on purpose, and finally Peter reaches over her shoulder to take the quiver from her, dropping three silver moons and six copper stars in front of the vendor. He takes the knives too, and Susan rolls her eyes.
"Knives are extremely useful," Peter informs her archly. "Besides, if we were to come back later, the price would have doubled."
"This is true," Susan agrees, "but we do actually have an armory. Several of them."
"This is true," Peter echoes, grinning.
They wander through the rows of jeweler, guarded by ones and twos of grim-faced foreign mercenaries whose gazes bore into the back of Susan's neck as she bends low to examine carved ivory pendants, a handful of charms made from semiprecious gemstones, a pair of earrings that are perfect replicas of Narnian homewood trees in miniature gold and silver, emeralds studding their branches. She bargains the price on those down for half as much, then hands over two golden suns and watches as the vendor wraps the earrings in paper and silk.
Peter is two stalls down, frowning a little in concentration as he listens to a vendor extol the virtues of the eardrops he's selling in heavily accented Narnian. Susan comes up beside him, puts a hand on his elbow to let him know she's there, and leans forward to look at the contents at the stall. "Thinking of getting an earring, like a pirate?" she asks.
Peter snorts. "No, but Ed has one, and I thought he might like another."
"Oh, Peter," Susan sighs, "you don't buy jewelry for your brother. It's simply not done."
He laughs a little and points to a little silver hoop with a little gold fox sitting at its base. The creature's eyes are tiny chips of sapphire. Peter gives her a sheepish shrug as he pays and takes the package. "He likes foxes."
"You just bought jewelry for your brother," Susan points out. "You are aware you have two perfectly good sisters, aren't you?"
"Lu's awfully peculiar about her jewelry," Peter says, sounding perfectly reasonable as they move through the crowd, scanning each stall briefly as they pass it. "I wouldn't want to make judgments on what she'd like. What would you like?"
"Surprise me," Susan says, and adds, "Something other than weapons."
"I have," Peter points out dryly, "other interests."
They wander down the long rows of the Shifting Market, threading the crowds and browsing the stalls. Susan buys a dozen ells of Edanese silk and orders them sent up to Cair Paravel, which she's sure doesn't do much for her cover, but that much fabric can't be carried. Peter vanishes briefly, then reappears from behind a distracted faun and presents her with a box filled with a dozen delicately carved wooden figurines, each one the size of her thumb.
"I thought you might like it," he says, and Susan stands on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.
"I love it. Thank you." She fingers the curve of the satyr's horns with the tip of one finger, then closes the box and tucks it away. "Let's get something to eat."
The food stalls are back down near the docks, and the market's just as packed here as farther inland, so Peter says, "Wait here," and moves forward through the crowd. Susan browses the odd trinket-seller's stalls -- mostly cheap Narnian souvenirs for sailors or other travelers.
By now she's used to the crowd pressing against her, so she's not surprised when someone stumbles into her back. When he stays there for longer than a heartbeat, she starts to move forward, and then she feels the knife at her back.
"Don't go for your weapons," a man's voice says softly in her ear. She catalogues the accent automatically: Archenlander. Aslan's mane, Edmund's in Archenland now. "Don't cry out. Do you see your brother up there, Queen Susan?"
Peter is visible through the crowd, standing at a stall and talking to the vendor as he pays for their lunch. She nods.
"Do you see the archer in the crow's nest of that ship?" the stranger says, and Susan's gaze flickers upward. The archer's bow is drawn and aimed at Peter's back. She nods, her fists clenched tight around her packages.
"One false move," the stranger warns her, "and that archer will put an arrow through your brother's back. You don't want that, do you?"
She shakes her head.
"Go to him," the stranger orders, and Susan swallows hard and takes a step forward, the knife a constant pressure at her back. A pair of centaurs pass in front of them, and when they can move again, Peter's gone.
"Where is he?" the stranger demands.
"I don't know!" Susan spits, desperately relieved. "I'm not my brother's keeper."
"You warned him somehow --"
His words are cut off by a sharp crack and Susan spins around as the pressure on her back vanishes, drawing her sword. There's a crumpled body at her feet, head twisted at an unnatural angle, and Peter's standing over it. The crack came from Peter breaking the man's neck.
"Su, are you all right?" he demands as the crowd flows on around them, blissfully ignorant.
"I'm fine, there's an archer, a sniper -- look out!"
Peter whirls, both axes suddenly in his hand as he blocks the Archenlander's swordstroke. The drawn steel is what finally gets the crowd's attention, and all of a sudden there's a panicked mass of people fleeing in all direction, screaming in terror. The only ones who aren't leaving are the ones coming towards Peter and Susan.
Susan knows how to use a sword, but she's neither Peter nor Edmund; she doesn't have her brothers' training or field experience. Still, she was trained by the best in Narnia -- trained by Peter, and it's enough that she can keep up with the attackers coming at her, especially once she learns they're not coming at her to kill, but instead to capture. That's her advantage, because she's not inclined to be nearly so lenient. But there are more than a dozen Archenlanders and only the two of them; the city guard hasn't arrived yet.
"Susan!" Peter yells, suddenly at her side. Both his axes are gone, and he has his longsword in both hands now. He cuts down the man she's fighting with one savage stroke.
An arrow, its fletchings dyed green, takes a swordsman in the chest as he comes at Peter. With a roar of rage, Kaikura leaps into the fray, the rest of the royal guard and the city guard on her heels.
"What took you so long?" Peter shouts.
"What were you thinking?" Kaikura shouts back, then rips half a man's face off with her teeth. "Are you mad?" she adds after she's spit that out. "You don't just walk out of Cair Paravel by yourself!"
"I wasn't by myself!" He strikes a man's head from his shoulders.
Susan shuts their bickering out, concentrating on her sword, trying not to get tangled up in it, because this isn't at all like fighting in the ring, even with Peter or Edmund, who aren't inclined to go easy on her by any definition of the word.
With a scream, death strikes from the sky: three griffins from the Aerial Corps patrol, snatching men from the ground in their talons. "Take them alive!" Susan bellows up at them as they start climbing again, and the foremost griffin dips its wings in answer.
With the guard here to even the odds, they dispatch the other Archenlanders quickly, and Peter's standing with his sword in his hand, blood streaked liberally across his face and clothes, when Susan remembers the archer. She turns wildly to see the arrow hurtling at her brother.
"Peter!" she shrieks, and throws herself in front of him.
The arrow takes her in the chest. She hears Peter's shout, and then nothing at all.
-
-
She wakes in her own bed, the windows open and the sunlight playing across her face. Susan raises one hand dreamily, the pain a distant throb, and touches her fingers to her chest, the space on her collarbone, just above her breasts. She feels a thick pad of bandage there. When she tries to look down, the movement brings on a sudden, stabbing pain, and she hisses a curse out between her teeth.
"Su --" Peter jerks awake abruptly and nearly falls out of the chair beside her bed, his arm slipping off the arm-rest.
"Hey," she says, reaching out for him.
He curls his fingers against hers and leans over her, pushing her hair out of her face. "How are you?"
"You're blocking my sun," Susan chides, and Peter laughs a little, nervously, and starts to sit back down. Susan keeps her grip on him and pulls, and Peter's off-balance enough -- he can't have been sleeping -- that he stumbles forward, catching himself on the bed as she pulls him down.
"Su, you're hurt," he says anxiously, shifting his position so he's supporting himself on his elbows above her. "Are you --"
"It means I can blame this on the drugs if I have to," she says, and reaches up to catch her fingers in his hair and pull his head down to hers.
Peter's lips are shockingly, surprisingly soft, still with surprise against hers before he opens his mouth to kiss her back. He tastes of chilled fruit liquor and the faint tang of blood; she runs her tongue over the cut on his lip as she kisses him.
"Susan," he says breathlessly, pulling away.
She reaches to pull him back down, but he's resolved. "No," he says.
"Peter," she protests.
"You're wounded, Su," he says, his face worried above her. "You could have died -- you should have died. And Lu's not here with her cordial."
"You always do know what to say to make me feel better, don't you?" she says, and he laughs.
"I'm holding the prisoners in the black cells," he says. "I haven't interrogated them yet."
"You should get on that," Susan advises. "The one who grabbed me, the first one, he had an Archenlander accent, and Edmund's at Anvard now."
Peter nods. "They're not going anywhere," he says, but his brow furrows a little. "Let them sweat. I know Ed can take care of himself for at least a few days."
"Hmmph," Susan says, but the drugs are starting to take over again. "You should stay here," she says drowsily, pulling Peter back down; her fingers are still tangled in his hair.
"All right." He kisses her again, soft and slow and careful, and then shifts until he's lying on the bed next to her. She drags a last kiss from his lips before she falls back into slumber, Peter a warm, steady weight against her side, one arm slung across her belly and his head against her shoulder. The last thing she hears is his whisper against her skin, "This is not exactly how I planned our afternoon to go."
"'s'all right," Susan mumbles, and then she's out.