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bedlamsbardThis is the reason it took me so long to get Dust 9 out (well, this and the 18K of Water I wrote). I loved this scene so much, but it just wasn't going anywhere. Anyway, this is the original opening scene of Dust 9, and I think it may actually may explain more than what actually came out in the text, but it wasn't going much of anywhere afterwards. I mean, in my head it still happened, but we just didn't see it.
The first thing Peter says when he wakes up is, “Oh, Lion’s mane, I’m on a boat,” and leans over to throw up in the basin someone has so thoughtfully provided.
“Not,” a woman’s voice says meaningfully from behind him, “exactly the reaction I was expecting.”
Peter would answer, but he’s a little too busy retching up everything he’s eaten in the past two weeks, along with some of his stomach lining. He’s aware, in that distant part of his brain that’s always aware of everything, no matter if he’s drugged to the gills, dead on his feet, or otherwise occupied, of the weight on the bed shifting, of someone pushing his hair out of his face with long, cool fingers, and the soft warmth of a woman’s body as she braces herself against his back. The rest of him is more concerned with what the hell am I doing on a boat? and the grim hope that he has to stop throwing up sometime. Sometime, of course, being sometime in the next century. The only good thing about England is that he doesn’t get seasickness half as badly there as he does in Narnia.
The moment he stops throwing up - or dry-heaving, at this point - and just sits there shivering and generally feeling miserable, the woman puts a little wooden cup, barely the size of a thimble, to his lips. “Drink this,” she says, her other hand gentle on the back of his head. “It will help.”
Peter tries to turn his face away. “Not more drugs,” he protests.
“What part of ‘it will help’ do you not understand?”she says. “Come on, your majesty, just drink it.”
At this point, the worst thing it can do is kill him, which is an option that always starts looking more and more attractive the longer Peter’s on the water. He drinks whatever it is in the cup down as quickly as he can, recognizing the aftertaste. The same thing Osumare had given him when he’d gone out with the then-still-pirate-captain on the Rising Sun. That had been just about the only thing that kept him from throwing himself off the galleon to end it all, because surely swimming the twenty leagues or so back to the Narnian mainland through not entirely friendly waters - the saltwater Narnians never being quite as obedient to Cair Paravel as the dryland Narnians - was better than staying on the Rising Sun a single moment more.
It helps.
Peter puts his head down, breathing hard through his mouth and trying not to taste the bile that still lingers there, and although his stomach is still acutely aware of the fact that they’re no longer on solid ground, at least it no longer seems inclined to protest.
“Isn’t that better?” the woman says reassuringly, the bed shifting again as she gets up and takes the basin from him. There’s the creak of shutters opening, then a splash. She comes back and presses something else into his hand - wood, from the feel.
“It’s just tea,” she says, and Peter nods and drinks it, too quickly to really taste it. But it washes the taste of bile from his mouth and clears his head enough that he can start to look around, finally get a feel for where he is.
The room is small and paneled in dark wood, a few bright paintings decorating the walls. There’s an armoire tucked into the corner of the room, a vanity and mirror beside it. The vanity’s cluttered with glass jars and bottles, small boxes. There’s a window set in one wall, the shutters pulled shut and locked. The main feature of the room is the big bed Peter and the strange woman are sitting on.
The scent of the sea is sharp in his nose, familiar and wanted; it’s been a long time since he’s been in close proximity, but it’s not the sort of thing easily forgotten, especially in Narnia, especially in Cair Paravel. It doesn’t smell the same as it had eight (three hundred) years ago when he’d last come to Narnia - too much humanity, too much urbanity, the stink of rot and corruption - but it’s Narnia. His Narnia.
He turns his head to look at the woman. Girl, really; she’s in her late teens or early twenties. Dark hair, dark eyes, skin about the same shade Caspian’s had been, if Peter’s memory’s not failing him. She’s wearing a thin slip of silky-looking fabric.
Peter runs a hand through his hair, damp and lank with sweat and three - four - days without a wash. “Please tell me we’re not at sea.”
“We’re on the river,” the woman says. “If you want to be more precise, we’re on the Queen of Mirrors, one of Capo Maresti’s riverboats. My name is Ruby, by the way.”
No jacket, no waistcoat, no sword-belt and certainly no Rhindon, no boots - Peter slides a hand down his calf, feeling for the knife that should be there.
“Don’t bother,” Ruby says. “The capo’s bruisers patted you down before they brought you in here.” She holds up the switchblade he’d brought through from England. “They missed this. Although I’m not entirely sure what it is.”
Peter plucks it from her hand. “You called me ‘your majesty,’” he says, tucking the switchblade inside his sleeve.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asks. “About who you are. The High King.”
He eyes her for a moment in silence, but he’d pretty much blown his cover in the the Broken Arm - last night? How long had he been out? He hasn’t been in this business for an age and a half, but the taste of the drug he’d been given is distantly familiar; Peter digs through his memory and comes up with sweetsleep. Never common in Narnia, the last time he’d had it - forcibly administered - had been in Natare with the Red Company. Not a fun memory; he’d woken up with three broken bones in his face, a black eye, and the Red Company’s badge tattooed on his left bicep.
“You’re right,” Peter allows, looking around for his boots. “The men who were with me, do you know where they are?”
She gestures at the window with one hand. “I saw them bringing you and your friends in. They’re probably upstairs in the tavern, since they were both conscious.”
He lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d been relatively sure they wouldn’t kill Tirian and Eustace, but “relatively sure” isn’t the same as “absolutely positive.”
“Your boots are beneath the bed,” Ruby says.
He leans down to find them and slide them on, checking to see if there are any knives left, just in case. Whoever patted him down is good; the places they should be are empty. “Thanks.”
When he straightens, Ruby is reclining against her pillows, sipping from a tall metal glass. “See?” she says. “The capo’s men are very good.” She tips back the rest of her drink and tosses the glass down on the bed. “Before you go,” she says, and leans forward to catch the front of his shirt in both his hands, pulling him in for a long kiss.
When she draws away a little while later, she’s smirking. “I always wanted to kiss a king,” she says. “And a hero. And the High King of Narnia. Three for one.”
Peter reaches into his mouth and pulls out a gold coin, one side painted with the image of a sea-eagle with its wings spread over a crossed Telmarine sword and trident, the other with a golden lion rampant on a black field. He raises his eyebrows.
Ruby smirks. “The King of the Sea sends his regards.”
He flips the coin up into the air and catches it; opens an empty hand. “Thanks for the help,” he says.
“When you leave the room,” Ruby says, “turn left and go down the hall until you reach a set of stairs. Go up those for two flights; that will take you to the tavern.”
“Should I leave a tip?” Peter asks.
“The capo took your money,” she tells him, smiling. “Besides, almost a full day of a man in my bed who didn’t want to get under my skirts? Payment enough. And I’m expecting a nice bonus from the capo, too.”
“Fair enough,” Peter says, and goes out the door.
And two of the alternative following scenes. These two don't quite add up to the actual Dust 9; the second one is probably the one closest to what happened, but by that point I was losing my hold on Peter's characterization. The conversation in the first one is also probably fairly similar to what went down in Dust 9; there is a point where I went "TOO MUCH EXPOSITION ARGH DEATH", although I think this sets stuff up that will hopefully not come out of the blue later on. (Unfortunately, I do this a lot, set stuff up with scenes that later get deleted because I switch POVs. Like Vespasian's entrance; that was originally a Tirian POV from Dust 5.)
The hallway is narrow and a little cramped, lit by glass-sided lanterns at regular intervals between the doors on both sides of the hall. Peter does his best not to think about what’s behind them, although it’s hard; a few of the doors crack open an inch or so and he catches sight of the bright green eyes of a huldra, the scarlet blaze of a banshee’s hair, the steady drip-drip of water that precedes a water spirit like a naiad or a banshee, the tip of a faun’s ear. Prostituion in Narnia, in Cair Paravel - may the gods help them all, and Narnia first.
The second floor is more of the same, from what Peter can see; he grinds his teeth and keeps climbing the stairs, listening to the voices carrying down from above and trying to pick out Tirian’s or Eustace’s. He palms his switchblade; it’s not Rhindon, isn’t even close, but it’s a blade and he’s had this one since he went in for officer training at Cranwell.
He emerges onto a floor that looks like any other tavern; his sudden appearance doesn’t seem to raise any eyebrows. Probably a lot of men go down there and come up again. As if in answer to the thought, a red-headed dwarf pushes past him, a huldra hanging on his arm. She looks up sharply as they pass Peter, her lips forming his name and title briefly before the dwarf pulls her down the stairs.
Peter pushes through the crowd, looking for Tirian or Eustace. A few eyes flit curiously toward him, but he’s just one man among many; nothing exceptional or even particularly interesting. The one high point of Narnia three hundred years after Miraz’s death is that his blond hair and pale skin doesn’t stand out; he could never have passed in Caspian’s Narnia.
Most of the people here are humans, but there are a handful of nonhumans as well - no centaurs on a boat, of course, but Peter spots a minotaur standing head and shoulders above the crowd, two fauns sitting at the bar, a table full of dwarves in the corner. And, of course, the nonhuman prostitutes. No saltwater Narnians except for a lone selkie drinking with two humans in the back; he’d expected more this close to the sea.
He’s probably standing still too long; a man slides out of the crowd beside him and runs a hand up his thigh, lingering on his hip. “How much?” he asks, lips against Peter’s ear.
Peter catches his wrist and twists until he hears bone crack. “Not for sale,” he says. “And even if I was? Far more than you can afford.”
The man’s face is white with pain; he tries to pull away and Peter holds on for a moment longer than he has to before he finally lets go. He steps away from the would-be john, who’s clutching at his broken wrist with his other hand and making small whimpering noises.
It’s Eustace’s whine that finally cuts through the crowd. Peter hides his smirk and moves toward it.
There’s a table in the back, by a wide bank of windows that stretch from floor to ceiling; Peter sees the reflection of Tirian’s dyed hair in it, along with the alley-piece crossbow in the hand of one of Capo Maresti’s bruisers. Peter moves to avoid the mirror effect, adjusting his gait so that he blends into the crowd; he doesn’t want to get made just yet.
“- I mean, seriously, how do we know you haven’t just tipped Peter into the river or something -”
“Does he ever shut up?” a dark-haired man inquires.
“Not usually, no,” Tirian replies. He’s nursing a glass of something purple, about half-drunk. “Although,” he adds meaningfully, “he does tend to get quieter around the High King, so if you want some peace, perhaps you should see through to letting us see him.”
Three men with light alley-pieces, two with swords, a sixth with a pair of axes. Tirian and Eustace, unarmed. The last man is the one who spoke; Peter warily places him as Bencivenni Maresti - but he’s not inclined to make assumptions this time. Not his country, not his Cair Paravel: enemy territory. Like Burma or Malaya. Or London.
Peter leans against the wall - slow, lazy, careless. He’d order a drink, but he can’t pay for it right now. He lets his gaze flicker across the room. Six exits, not counting the floor to ceiling windows on both ends of the big room; guards on all of them. Upwards of a hundred - maybe two, two-fifty - people in this room, the majority of them armed. Oh, yeah, and the guard that’s been tailing him since he walked out of Ruby’s room. He glances out the nearest window.
The Great River’s definitely gotten wider since the last time he was here; it looks like early evening outside, not quite dusk, and the river is still packed with boats of all sorts - big riverboats like this one, a few last timber rafts - cut logs loosely bound together - making their way down to the harbor, smaller fishing boats, a few boats darting amidst the others that he takes as river taxis or something similar. The riverboat’s tied up at dock somewhere on the south bank of the city, up a ways from the mouth of the river but still within the walls. From what he can remember of the maps of Cair Paravel he’d studied back at Arn Abedin, they’re probably closest to the Riverfront District, not the Mare’s Quarter, which sits right on the southern edge of the harbor.
He drifts closer to the table, trying to clear the fastest route to the nearest exit that doesn’t involve jumping out the windows, although that’s Plan B. He’s gone crashing through windows before; he’s not particularly looking forward to regaining those scars.
“We’ve been here for almost twenty hours now,” Eustace says, “and you haven’t told us why you’re keeping us here or where Peter is. Two kings of Narnia, and you’re just a common thug, so why -”
“Oh, do be quiet, Scrubb,” Peter says. He shifts his stance as he does so, a minute readjustment that turns him from any other bystander to the High King of Narnia, and lets himself smirk a little as the capo’s guards go for their weapons.
The man raises his hand, lowers it, and the guards move their hands away from their weapons. “You’re very good, your majesty,” he says.
“You’re not bad yourself,” Peter allows. “Was that sweetsleep?”
“You’re familiar with it?”
“Unfortunately.” He pulls up a chair and sits down next to Eustace, nudging his cousin’s knee with his reassuringly. Eustace gives him a horrified look. Peter puts his head to one side, watching the man and wishing that he’d brought his siblings with him to Cair Paravel. It wouldn’t have been practical, though; the situation they’ve gotten themselves into is too big for more than one of them to leave at a time, not without trusted seconds in Narnia. And the only people he trusts in Narnia are the two with him and the four back at Arn Abedin.
“So you’re High King Peter,” the man says. “You’re older than I expected.”
“I haven’t heard that one before,” Peter drawls, raising his eyebrows. “I’d order a drink, but your bruisers seem to have lifted my purse. It is Capo Maresti this time, isn’t it?”
“It is.” He reaches into the pocket of the jacket hung over the back of his chair and tosses Peter’s coinpurse onto the table. “But your drink’s on the house.”
“Then I’ll take your best whiskey,” Peter says.
The capo snaps his fingers; one of the guards at the table rises and moves off towards the bar. “Now,” Maresti says, his gaze fixing on Peter, “what brings you to Cair Paravel, your majesty?”
“Money, supplies, intel, manpower, contacts,” Peter says. “Some of which I’ve been told you might be able to help me with.”
“Who told you that?”
“Lord Vespasian of Glasswater.”
Eustace turns his head and gives him a sharp, surprised look; Tirian just stares down at his drink, seemingly unsurprised. Apparently he knows that his cousin has contacts among Narnia’s underworld.
The guard comes back with a glass of whiskey on the rocks; Peter takes it without looking up, making an appreciatve sound when he tries it. Not up to Golden Age standards, but damned good nonetheless.
“I can’t help you with that,” Maresti says finally.
Peter puts the coin Ruby gave him down on the table. No fancy tricks this time; he just pulls it out of his sleeve and puts it down, eagle side up. “Maybe Casmyn Wavewalker can, then.”
Maresti picks up the coin, turns it over, then bites down on it. “Genuine,” he notes. “Let me clarify: I can’t help you. Whether we can help you or not is something that we’ll have to dicuss elsewhere.”
“‘We’ being you and the rest of the thugs that control this city,” Peter says, gritting his teeth. This is too much like the mess he’d dealt with in Lasci four years before they’d left Narnia: a city ruled by whoever has the balls and the fists to enforce what they choose to accept as law.
“Yes,” Maresti says. “Do you still want our help?”
“It would be appreciated,” Peter says, tipping back the rest of the whiskey. He toys with the glass.
The capo slides the Black Fleet marker back across the table to Peter. “I’ll send someone to the Tumblehome when the arrangements have been made.”
“One more thing.”
Maresti raises an eyebrow inquisitively. “You want a bottle?”
Peter lets his voice go icy. “I want my sword back.”
Note, above, that Eustace isn't concussed. Lovely description of the river, though; one of those things that Eustace didn't notice because of the concussion.
This is a much shorter scene; it begins at the same place where the previous did. This is the point where I switched POVs because I was losing too much characterization.
Two of the capo’s men - both human - seize his arms as soon as he steps outside. Peter twists automatically to free himself, then forces himself to stillness, gritting his teeth as one of the men shoves him sideways into the wall, holding him there as the second man pats him down.
“What?” he spits out, the wood paneling of the wall cool against his forehead and the man’s hands rough through the thick fabric of his trousers. “Don’t you trust your friends to have gotten it right the first time?”
“He’s clean,” says the second man, and the first one pulls him away from the wall, slamming his head sideways against it as he does so.
“Oh, good,” Peter says. “I’m glad we’ve figured this out.”
“The capo del’fiume wants to see you in his private rooms,” says one of the Wonder Twins. “Upstairs.”
Peter glances down the hall towards the stairs there.
Seriously, I loved that opening scene so much, and it's one of the ones I can't reuse -- I mean, I sincerely doubt Peter's going to fall for being drugged again any time soon.
The first thing Peter says when he wakes up is, “Oh, Lion’s mane, I’m on a boat,” and leans over to throw up in the basin someone has so thoughtfully provided.
“Not,” a woman’s voice says meaningfully from behind him, “exactly the reaction I was expecting.”
Peter would answer, but he’s a little too busy retching up everything he’s eaten in the past two weeks, along with some of his stomach lining. He’s aware, in that distant part of his brain that’s always aware of everything, no matter if he’s drugged to the gills, dead on his feet, or otherwise occupied, of the weight on the bed shifting, of someone pushing his hair out of his face with long, cool fingers, and the soft warmth of a woman’s body as she braces herself against his back. The rest of him is more concerned with what the hell am I doing on a boat? and the grim hope that he has to stop throwing up sometime. Sometime, of course, being sometime in the next century. The only good thing about England is that he doesn’t get seasickness half as badly there as he does in Narnia.
The moment he stops throwing up - or dry-heaving, at this point - and just sits there shivering and generally feeling miserable, the woman puts a little wooden cup, barely the size of a thimble, to his lips. “Drink this,” she says, her other hand gentle on the back of his head. “It will help.”
Peter tries to turn his face away. “Not more drugs,” he protests.
“What part of ‘it will help’ do you not understand?”she says. “Come on, your majesty, just drink it.”
At this point, the worst thing it can do is kill him, which is an option that always starts looking more and more attractive the longer Peter’s on the water. He drinks whatever it is in the cup down as quickly as he can, recognizing the aftertaste. The same thing Osumare had given him when he’d gone out with the then-still-pirate-captain on the Rising Sun. That had been just about the only thing that kept him from throwing himself off the galleon to end it all, because surely swimming the twenty leagues or so back to the Narnian mainland through not entirely friendly waters - the saltwater Narnians never being quite as obedient to Cair Paravel as the dryland Narnians - was better than staying on the Rising Sun a single moment more.
It helps.
Peter puts his head down, breathing hard through his mouth and trying not to taste the bile that still lingers there, and although his stomach is still acutely aware of the fact that they’re no longer on solid ground, at least it no longer seems inclined to protest.
“Isn’t that better?” the woman says reassuringly, the bed shifting again as she gets up and takes the basin from him. There’s the creak of shutters opening, then a splash. She comes back and presses something else into his hand - wood, from the feel.
“It’s just tea,” she says, and Peter nods and drinks it, too quickly to really taste it. But it washes the taste of bile from his mouth and clears his head enough that he can start to look around, finally get a feel for where he is.
The room is small and paneled in dark wood, a few bright paintings decorating the walls. There’s an armoire tucked into the corner of the room, a vanity and mirror beside it. The vanity’s cluttered with glass jars and bottles, small boxes. There’s a window set in one wall, the shutters pulled shut and locked. The main feature of the room is the big bed Peter and the strange woman are sitting on.
The scent of the sea is sharp in his nose, familiar and wanted; it’s been a long time since he’s been in close proximity, but it’s not the sort of thing easily forgotten, especially in Narnia, especially in Cair Paravel. It doesn’t smell the same as it had eight (three hundred) years ago when he’d last come to Narnia - too much humanity, too much urbanity, the stink of rot and corruption - but it’s Narnia. His Narnia.
He turns his head to look at the woman. Girl, really; she’s in her late teens or early twenties. Dark hair, dark eyes, skin about the same shade Caspian’s had been, if Peter’s memory’s not failing him. She’s wearing a thin slip of silky-looking fabric.
Peter runs a hand through his hair, damp and lank with sweat and three - four - days without a wash. “Please tell me we’re not at sea.”
“We’re on the river,” the woman says. “If you want to be more precise, we’re on the Queen of Mirrors, one of Capo Maresti’s riverboats. My name is Ruby, by the way.”
No jacket, no waistcoat, no sword-belt and certainly no Rhindon, no boots - Peter slides a hand down his calf, feeling for the knife that should be there.
“Don’t bother,” Ruby says. “The capo’s bruisers patted you down before they brought you in here.” She holds up the switchblade he’d brought through from England. “They missed this. Although I’m not entirely sure what it is.”
Peter plucks it from her hand. “You called me ‘your majesty,’” he says, tucking the switchblade inside his sleeve.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asks. “About who you are. The High King.”
He eyes her for a moment in silence, but he’d pretty much blown his cover in the the Broken Arm - last night? How long had he been out? He hasn’t been in this business for an age and a half, but the taste of the drug he’d been given is distantly familiar; Peter digs through his memory and comes up with sweetsleep. Never common in Narnia, the last time he’d had it - forcibly administered - had been in Natare with the Red Company. Not a fun memory; he’d woken up with three broken bones in his face, a black eye, and the Red Company’s badge tattooed on his left bicep.
“You’re right,” Peter allows, looking around for his boots. “The men who were with me, do you know where they are?”
She gestures at the window with one hand. “I saw them bringing you and your friends in. They’re probably upstairs in the tavern, since they were both conscious.”
He lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d been relatively sure they wouldn’t kill Tirian and Eustace, but “relatively sure” isn’t the same as “absolutely positive.”
“Your boots are beneath the bed,” Ruby says.
He leans down to find them and slide them on, checking to see if there are any knives left, just in case. Whoever patted him down is good; the places they should be are empty. “Thanks.”
When he straightens, Ruby is reclining against her pillows, sipping from a tall metal glass. “See?” she says. “The capo’s men are very good.” She tips back the rest of her drink and tosses the glass down on the bed. “Before you go,” she says, and leans forward to catch the front of his shirt in both his hands, pulling him in for a long kiss.
When she draws away a little while later, she’s smirking. “I always wanted to kiss a king,” she says. “And a hero. And the High King of Narnia. Three for one.”
Peter reaches into his mouth and pulls out a gold coin, one side painted with the image of a sea-eagle with its wings spread over a crossed Telmarine sword and trident, the other with a golden lion rampant on a black field. He raises his eyebrows.
Ruby smirks. “The King of the Sea sends his regards.”
He flips the coin up into the air and catches it; opens an empty hand. “Thanks for the help,” he says.
“When you leave the room,” Ruby says, “turn left and go down the hall until you reach a set of stairs. Go up those for two flights; that will take you to the tavern.”
“Should I leave a tip?” Peter asks.
“The capo took your money,” she tells him, smiling. “Besides, almost a full day of a man in my bed who didn’t want to get under my skirts? Payment enough. And I’m expecting a nice bonus from the capo, too.”
“Fair enough,” Peter says, and goes out the door.
And two of the alternative following scenes. These two don't quite add up to the actual Dust 9; the second one is probably the one closest to what happened, but by that point I was losing my hold on Peter's characterization. The conversation in the first one is also probably fairly similar to what went down in Dust 9; there is a point where I went "TOO MUCH EXPOSITION ARGH DEATH", although I think this sets stuff up that will hopefully not come out of the blue later on. (Unfortunately, I do this a lot, set stuff up with scenes that later get deleted because I switch POVs. Like Vespasian's entrance; that was originally a Tirian POV from Dust 5.)
The hallway is narrow and a little cramped, lit by glass-sided lanterns at regular intervals between the doors on both sides of the hall. Peter does his best not to think about what’s behind them, although it’s hard; a few of the doors crack open an inch or so and he catches sight of the bright green eyes of a huldra, the scarlet blaze of a banshee’s hair, the steady drip-drip of water that precedes a water spirit like a naiad or a banshee, the tip of a faun’s ear. Prostituion in Narnia, in Cair Paravel - may the gods help them all, and Narnia first.
The second floor is more of the same, from what Peter can see; he grinds his teeth and keeps climbing the stairs, listening to the voices carrying down from above and trying to pick out Tirian’s or Eustace’s. He palms his switchblade; it’s not Rhindon, isn’t even close, but it’s a blade and he’s had this one since he went in for officer training at Cranwell.
He emerges onto a floor that looks like any other tavern; his sudden appearance doesn’t seem to raise any eyebrows. Probably a lot of men go down there and come up again. As if in answer to the thought, a red-headed dwarf pushes past him, a huldra hanging on his arm. She looks up sharply as they pass Peter, her lips forming his name and title briefly before the dwarf pulls her down the stairs.
Peter pushes through the crowd, looking for Tirian or Eustace. A few eyes flit curiously toward him, but he’s just one man among many; nothing exceptional or even particularly interesting. The one high point of Narnia three hundred years after Miraz’s death is that his blond hair and pale skin doesn’t stand out; he could never have passed in Caspian’s Narnia.
Most of the people here are humans, but there are a handful of nonhumans as well - no centaurs on a boat, of course, but Peter spots a minotaur standing head and shoulders above the crowd, two fauns sitting at the bar, a table full of dwarves in the corner. And, of course, the nonhuman prostitutes. No saltwater Narnians except for a lone selkie drinking with two humans in the back; he’d expected more this close to the sea.
He’s probably standing still too long; a man slides out of the crowd beside him and runs a hand up his thigh, lingering on his hip. “How much?” he asks, lips against Peter’s ear.
Peter catches his wrist and twists until he hears bone crack. “Not for sale,” he says. “And even if I was? Far more than you can afford.”
The man’s face is white with pain; he tries to pull away and Peter holds on for a moment longer than he has to before he finally lets go. He steps away from the would-be john, who’s clutching at his broken wrist with his other hand and making small whimpering noises.
It’s Eustace’s whine that finally cuts through the crowd. Peter hides his smirk and moves toward it.
There’s a table in the back, by a wide bank of windows that stretch from floor to ceiling; Peter sees the reflection of Tirian’s dyed hair in it, along with the alley-piece crossbow in the hand of one of Capo Maresti’s bruisers. Peter moves to avoid the mirror effect, adjusting his gait so that he blends into the crowd; he doesn’t want to get made just yet.
“- I mean, seriously, how do we know you haven’t just tipped Peter into the river or something -”
“Does he ever shut up?” a dark-haired man inquires.
“Not usually, no,” Tirian replies. He’s nursing a glass of something purple, about half-drunk. “Although,” he adds meaningfully, “he does tend to get quieter around the High King, so if you want some peace, perhaps you should see through to letting us see him.”
Three men with light alley-pieces, two with swords, a sixth with a pair of axes. Tirian and Eustace, unarmed. The last man is the one who spoke; Peter warily places him as Bencivenni Maresti - but he’s not inclined to make assumptions this time. Not his country, not his Cair Paravel: enemy territory. Like Burma or Malaya. Or London.
Peter leans against the wall - slow, lazy, careless. He’d order a drink, but he can’t pay for it right now. He lets his gaze flicker across the room. Six exits, not counting the floor to ceiling windows on both ends of the big room; guards on all of them. Upwards of a hundred - maybe two, two-fifty - people in this room, the majority of them armed. Oh, yeah, and the guard that’s been tailing him since he walked out of Ruby’s room. He glances out the nearest window.
The Great River’s definitely gotten wider since the last time he was here; it looks like early evening outside, not quite dusk, and the river is still packed with boats of all sorts - big riverboats like this one, a few last timber rafts - cut logs loosely bound together - making their way down to the harbor, smaller fishing boats, a few boats darting amidst the others that he takes as river taxis or something similar. The riverboat’s tied up at dock somewhere on the south bank of the city, up a ways from the mouth of the river but still within the walls. From what he can remember of the maps of Cair Paravel he’d studied back at Arn Abedin, they’re probably closest to the Riverfront District, not the Mare’s Quarter, which sits right on the southern edge of the harbor.
He drifts closer to the table, trying to clear the fastest route to the nearest exit that doesn’t involve jumping out the windows, although that’s Plan B. He’s gone crashing through windows before; he’s not particularly looking forward to regaining those scars.
“We’ve been here for almost twenty hours now,” Eustace says, “and you haven’t told us why you’re keeping us here or where Peter is. Two kings of Narnia, and you’re just a common thug, so why -”
“Oh, do be quiet, Scrubb,” Peter says. He shifts his stance as he does so, a minute readjustment that turns him from any other bystander to the High King of Narnia, and lets himself smirk a little as the capo’s guards go for their weapons.
The man raises his hand, lowers it, and the guards move their hands away from their weapons. “You’re very good, your majesty,” he says.
“You’re not bad yourself,” Peter allows. “Was that sweetsleep?”
“You’re familiar with it?”
“Unfortunately.” He pulls up a chair and sits down next to Eustace, nudging his cousin’s knee with his reassuringly. Eustace gives him a horrified look. Peter puts his head to one side, watching the man and wishing that he’d brought his siblings with him to Cair Paravel. It wouldn’t have been practical, though; the situation they’ve gotten themselves into is too big for more than one of them to leave at a time, not without trusted seconds in Narnia. And the only people he trusts in Narnia are the two with him and the four back at Arn Abedin.
“So you’re High King Peter,” the man says. “You’re older than I expected.”
“I haven’t heard that one before,” Peter drawls, raising his eyebrows. “I’d order a drink, but your bruisers seem to have lifted my purse. It is Capo Maresti this time, isn’t it?”
“It is.” He reaches into the pocket of the jacket hung over the back of his chair and tosses Peter’s coinpurse onto the table. “But your drink’s on the house.”
“Then I’ll take your best whiskey,” Peter says.
The capo snaps his fingers; one of the guards at the table rises and moves off towards the bar. “Now,” Maresti says, his gaze fixing on Peter, “what brings you to Cair Paravel, your majesty?”
“Money, supplies, intel, manpower, contacts,” Peter says. “Some of which I’ve been told you might be able to help me with.”
“Who told you that?”
“Lord Vespasian of Glasswater.”
Eustace turns his head and gives him a sharp, surprised look; Tirian just stares down at his drink, seemingly unsurprised. Apparently he knows that his cousin has contacts among Narnia’s underworld.
The guard comes back with a glass of whiskey on the rocks; Peter takes it without looking up, making an appreciatve sound when he tries it. Not up to Golden Age standards, but damned good nonetheless.
“I can’t help you with that,” Maresti says finally.
Peter puts the coin Ruby gave him down on the table. No fancy tricks this time; he just pulls it out of his sleeve and puts it down, eagle side up. “Maybe Casmyn Wavewalker can, then.”
Maresti picks up the coin, turns it over, then bites down on it. “Genuine,” he notes. “Let me clarify: I can’t help you. Whether we can help you or not is something that we’ll have to dicuss elsewhere.”
“‘We’ being you and the rest of the thugs that control this city,” Peter says, gritting his teeth. This is too much like the mess he’d dealt with in Lasci four years before they’d left Narnia: a city ruled by whoever has the balls and the fists to enforce what they choose to accept as law.
“Yes,” Maresti says. “Do you still want our help?”
“It would be appreciated,” Peter says, tipping back the rest of the whiskey. He toys with the glass.
The capo slides the Black Fleet marker back across the table to Peter. “I’ll send someone to the Tumblehome when the arrangements have been made.”
“One more thing.”
Maresti raises an eyebrow inquisitively. “You want a bottle?”
Peter lets his voice go icy. “I want my sword back.”
Note, above, that Eustace isn't concussed. Lovely description of the river, though; one of those things that Eustace didn't notice because of the concussion.
This is a much shorter scene; it begins at the same place where the previous did. This is the point where I switched POVs because I was losing too much characterization.
Two of the capo’s men - both human - seize his arms as soon as he steps outside. Peter twists automatically to free himself, then forces himself to stillness, gritting his teeth as one of the men shoves him sideways into the wall, holding him there as the second man pats him down.
“What?” he spits out, the wood paneling of the wall cool against his forehead and the man’s hands rough through the thick fabric of his trousers. “Don’t you trust your friends to have gotten it right the first time?”
“He’s clean,” says the second man, and the first one pulls him away from the wall, slamming his head sideways against it as he does so.
“Oh, good,” Peter says. “I’m glad we’ve figured this out.”
“The capo del’fiume wants to see you in his private rooms,” says one of the Wonder Twins. “Upstairs.”
Peter glances down the hall towards the stairs there.
Seriously, I loved that opening scene so much, and it's one of the ones I can't reuse -- I mean, I sincerely doubt Peter's going to fall for being drugged again any time soon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-08 10:41 pm (UTC)And poor Peter. Getting seasick like that! And the boat's not even out of the habour!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-09 12:44 am (UTC)Peter's...interesting. He trusts Eustace and Jill because Aslan sent them here, so obviously Aslan trusts them -- although he's clearly pretty bitter about the fact that they didn't manage to succeed in saving Narnia, so that's coloring his judgment -- and he trusts Tirian because Tirian is a king of Narnia; of course he has his country's best interests at heart, and anyway, Peter damn well better trust him, he has to give Narnia back to him after it's all over.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-09 04:05 pm (UTC)So the reason he trust Eustace has nothing to do with him being his cousin? I really liked your theory (don't remember where you said it.) about the difference between the Pevensies and Scrubb and Pole. How Jill and Eustace wasn't really trained for saving Narnia. (And really someone *cough*you*cough* needs to write when Edmund laughs his ass off when he hears about Aslan giving them signs.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-09 05:13 pm (UTC)Eustace being Peter's cousin probably works against Eustace, actually, because Peter knows Eustace from beforehand. And his reaction to finding out Eustace went to Narnia must have been...special. (Actually, that I wrote, it's linked in the timeline somewhere.) Especially since their cruise on the Dawn Treader was so useless it practically is just an excuse for Aslan to kick the last two Pevensies out of Narnia for good without actually having them go around making thousands of people adore them.
The difference between how the Pevensies saved Narnia and how Eustace and Jill were thrown into Narnia is kind of ridiculous. On one hand: "here's an army, I'm off to give you a guilt complex and die nobly. Do try and win the war even though you are a fourteen-year-old kid who's never held a sword before!" On the other: "I am going to give you exacting signs. If you screw this up, you are just stupid, but everything will work out anyway, you know. Unless you die."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-09 05:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-09 06:09 pm (UTC)*shakes head* LB is like a rinse-repeat of PC, only before the Telmarines invaded. That's a Pevensie problem with a Pole-and-Scrubb solution tacked on. No wonder Aslan had to end the world.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-09 06:25 pm (UTC)clubNarnia, better send the back ups. And besides, if they can't fix it, I can just, you know, end the world or something.(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-14 04:34 am (UTC)Speaking of that, when I got to the line "When she draws away a little while later" I had this vivid image of Peter tensing a bit, then going "eh, well since it's already happening" and going with it. This prompted spontaneous giggles at the thought of Peter basically being a drunk college coed.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-14 05:11 am (UTC)Although initially, Casmyn Wavewalker was mentioned much, much earlier -- back in Dust 5, and with a much clearer picture of who he is. (Dust 5 was originally a Tirian POV. It also originally introduced Vespasian of Glasswater, who shows up very briefly in Dust 6 and in much more detail in Dust 10. A lot of stuff gets introduced in the cut scenes that's only alluded to later. Unfortunately, it's usually the important stuff. *facepalm* The Black Fleet, Vespasian, the Peter/Vespasian flirting -- okay, that's not important, but it's amusing -- why the Pevensies went off to rescue Tirian and Co. from the Calormenes despite the fact that they ended up with the Narnians that hate Tirian...)
*giggles* Peter has kissed a lot of people in Cair Paravel, if you go by Tirian's account in Dust 7 as truth.