Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (6)

[bedlamsbard]

Title: Dust in the Air 6
Author: bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Author's Notes: This is part six, obviously, and this is also the first WIP I've posted since 2006. (And that WIP was abandoned, so one can see I'm understandably nervous about posting another one.) The structure of this lends it to being posted in sections, though, so that's how it's going up. Because of this, however, it's not getting posted to any comms until the whole thing is done.



Six years of absence has gotten her to the point where she doesn’t look for magic in the corners of her life anymore, so when the world had begun to blur around her on the train, the window she was sitting next to blinking in and out before her eyes, Lucy hadn’t thought to think of magic, hadn’t thought to think of Narnia, not even when she heard, absurdly, the sound of drums. And then she’d tasted it in the air, flames flickering briefly around her as the train faded away to darkness, to forest and a hundred watching eyes, and the gleam of moonlight and starlight off Rhindon’s blade as Peter drew his sword.

Magic. She’d tasted magic. And she’d been glad.

Later, when they’d returned to Arn Abedin with King Tirian and Eustace and Jill in tow, the true impact of what had happened had struck her – the blind terror of knowing that something had happened to Narnia to make Aslan break his word. Dearest, Aslan had said to her all those years ago, you and your brother will never come back to Narnia. And yet they’re here, she and Edmund and Peter too, when they shouldn’t be. Either Aslan has broken his word – and Aslan would never break his word – or something has gone badly wrong. We cannot just be summoned like errant dogs! Lucy wants to scream at whoever had blown Susan’s horn, but even that shouldn’t have worked. Things never happen the same way twice, and even so, they’ve been forbidden from Narnia, all of them. Not even Father Christmas’s magic should be able to circumvent Aslan’s will.

She’d said as much to Peter on their way to the roseroad, and he’d smiled at her and said wryly, “Does it matter who called us here, little sister, so long as we’re here?”

“Yes,” Lucy mutters to herself now, biting the thread off between her teeth as she finishes sewing up the wounded faun in front of her. “Of course it matters.”

“What, milady?” the faun asks, his voice slurring with pain and the drugs she’s given him. “What matters?”

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. “Don’t worry,” Lucy reassures him, patting his shoulder absently. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

She’s lost track of the patients she’s treated since the screams had woke her up this morning. Out of the seventy-three refugees from the Lantern Waste camp that had arrived, there are two dozen wounded and two dead, five children missing – that from the attack outside Arn Abedin alone. More from the Calormene attack back in Lantern Waste. None of the wounded are hurt badly enough that she needs to use her cordial on them, which means she’s back to surgeon’s work and herbcraft. It’s been a long, long time since she’s had to do any of this; most of what she’s doing isn’t covered in her nurse’s training. It means she’s grabbing at the threads of memory from her own rule, always weaker and thinner, a little more distant, than her siblings’. As always, she remembers a little more with every trip back and every day she breathes Narnian air, but it’s been the full nine years since she’s had to remember this and not something as randomly absurd as the stories she’d told on the Dawn Treader, battles and festivals and assassination attempts gone bad, adventures. This is different – not just the remembering but the doing. Like fighting. She’d done a little of this last night with the wounded from the roseroad ambush, but most of her work had simply been as another pair of hands, watching and remembering what needed to be done. Now, though – too many wounded, not enough healers. The Lantern Waste healer had been killed in the attack, which leaves the three Arn Abedin healers, the one bonesetter who’d come from Haven, and Lucy.

She rises from the faun, wipes her hands clean on an already bloodstained towel, and moves to the next patient, a centauress with claw marks across her shoulders and arms, a long strip of skin and hair hanging freely from her skull. Someone’s given her painkillers already; her pupils are dilated when Lucy pushes an eyelid open gently, and she doesn’t respond to questions. The damage looks worse than it is.

Hopefully the drugs now are as good as or better than the ones they’d had back during their own reign; Lucy hasn’t had occasion to find out firsthand. Not yet, at least, though she’s sure it’s only a matter of time the way they’ve been going so far. “This is going to sting a little,” she warns the centauress as she leans over to dip the needle in the pot of boiling water she’s carrying with her. It’s heated by a little handheld brazier, meant to be hung from the wrist or carried; she remembers them being used in Tashbaan sixteen hundred years ago, the last time she’d been to Calormen. The style and the design are both a little different now, but the basic idea is the same. Back then she’d always been rather thrilled when she saw foreign accoutrements being used in Narnia, liked the exoticness of them, but now it makes her gnash her teeth in frustration and anger. This is Narnia; this isn’t just another of Calormen’s many client states. This is her country.

Lucy pulls the cap off the wineflask slung across her chest with her teeth. No medical alcohol here; this is the closest they’re going to get until they can buy or steal more medical supplies.

The centauress hisses a little when Lucy spills the wine across her wounds, then starts to thrash, trying to surge upright. “No, no,” Lucy says, trying to hold her down. “It’s all right, I’m going to help, I just need you to hold still, just listen to my voice –”

“Hurts,” the centauress whimpers.

“I know,” Lucy says sympathetically. “I know it hurts. But I’m going to help you, all right? Just concentrate on my voice and try not to move.”

The centauress makes a faint sound that Lucy takes as assent, but when she dips the needle beneath her skin, she screams again, knocking the needle out of Lucy’s hand and sending the pot of boiling water spilling across the ground, soaking Lucy’s skirts as she leaps up.

“It’s all right,” Lucy insists, getting her hands on the unwounded parts of the centauress’s shoulders. She’s not strong enough to hold the centauress down, though – at least not if the woman was at full strength, which she’s not. As it is –

“I need some help over here!” she yells over her shoulder, and in a hospital back in England, this would be the point where a pair of orderlies would come running.

Of course, if she was in a hospital back in England, she wouldn’t be doing this sort of work anyway. Nurses don’t do this. And if she was back in her own Narnia – well, she’d have help there, too.

Jill Pole seems to materialize out of nowhere, a vial of their precious poppy juice in her hand. “I’ve got her,” she says, and helps Lucy wrestle the centauress back down to the ground. “Shh,” she tells the centauress as Lucy tilts her head back and holds her nose closed so Jill can splash some of the poppy juice in her mouth.

Within a few minutes the centauress has gone limp again and they both stand back, panting. Jill recaps the vial and slips it into her pocket.

“Thanks,” Lucy says, and sets about gathering up her fallen implements. At least the coals haven’t spilled out of the firepot, but she needs that boiling water, may the Herdsman damn it all. Sighing, she sets that aside and picks needle and thread out of the dirt, uncapping the wineflask to use that instead.

Jill moves unasked to hold the centauress down as Lucy sets to work sewing up her wounds. Her thrashing has reopened some of them, and Lucy swears between her teeth and wipes the blood aside with her sleeve.

“Give me the wine,” Jill says, and Lucy replies absently, “Get it yourself; my hands are full.”

“All right.”

She ducks her head so that Jill can pull the strap free. “You’d be a good nurse,” Lucy says as Jill washes the newly opened wounds clean, the red wine only a few shades different than the blood. “Have you thought about going in for training once you get back to England?”

“I had begun to think we wouldn’t get back to England at all,” Jill admits. “And then you showed up, and – well, I mean, I hadn’t thought about it when I was, you know, there.”

Lucy’s hands and eyes are occupied, so she can’t look at Jill, but she says, “Where did you learn this?”

“Here,” Jill says. “I mean, not here, not this camp, but with Tirian and at Haven – and a little bit the last time I was in Narnia, from Puddleglum when we were looking for Rilian, but not that much. There wasn’t really much need for it then. But there is now. There always is.”

“That’s a shame,” Lucy says softly.

“But you know it!” Jill exclaims suddenly, shifting as Lucy bites off the thread between her teeth and moves on to the next wound. “And your Narnia was – was different, wasn’t it? Than this.”

“Very different,” Lucy agrees.

“So you learned this in nurse training, then? Because you’re not using your magic potion.”

“No, I learned this in Narnia,” Lucy says. “They don’t really teach you this in nurse training, or at least, I’m not far enough along for it. Can you hold her hair out of the way, please?”

Jill moves to obey. “So why aren’t you using your potion?”

“The wounded here are hurt badly, but not badly enough that my cordial is going to make the difference between life and death,” Lucy explains. “And we’re not on a battlefield; they can be treated here without any danger.”

“Oh,” Jill says, sounding hesitant. “Can you really bring the dead back to life, like the way the stories say? Or aren’t they true?”

“Only Aslan can bring the dead back to life,” Lucy says. “But yes, some of the stories are true, to an extent. I’d tell you which ones, but I’d have to know them, and I’ve been to Narnia often enough to know how much they can change over the years. Not even,” she adds with a hint of a smile, “just over the years. You should have heard some of the things they used to say about Peter back during our reign the evening after a battle. Listening to the bards, you’d think he was nine feet tall and carried a flaming sword, and that there hadn’t been anyone else in the Narnian army.”

“So you really ruled Narnia, then.” Jill’s voice is soft, and Lucy glances up to see the faintly dreamy look on her face. “That must have been amazing.”

Lucy frowns. “Not that I’m hoping to crush your dreams of connubial bliss with King Tirian, if that’s what you’re thinking of, but I rather doubt that’s what Aslan has planned for you.”

“What?” Jill squeaks. “No, of course not! How could you say such a thing? Tirian would never – I mean – I think Aslan would have said something. If that’s what he wanted.”

Lucy looks up at that. “He has been here, then? You’ve spoken to him?”

“Well, no,” Jill says. “But you’re here, so – that’s what he’s saying. That you should be here. Since you’re here.”

“Since we’re here,” Lucy agrees, suddenly uneasy again. She lowers her head and resumes her work, careful, tiny stitches to make sure that the wounds heal clearly and without unnecessary scarring.

“Since you’re here,” Jill says after a few minutes, “doesn’t that mean that all this will be over soon?”

It’s been a long time since Lucy’s been called to give battle strategy on anything or make predictions regarding the future on one political crisis or another, but she’s been here almost a week now; some things come back quicker than others. “Soon,” she says, biting off the thread and holding the needle between her teeth as she examines the scalp wound, “is all very relative. This is rather larger a mess than the White Witch or the Telmarines. We could be here for a while. It will depend on what Peter decides to do.”

“But we will be going home?” Jill’s voice is anxious, and Lucy looks up at that. The girl – no, that’s not right. Jill isn’t a girl, not anymore; she’s older than Lucy by a few years now.

Jill’s face is faintly panicked and deadly earnest, and Lucy realizes suddenly that she really, truly doesn’t want to stay in Narnia a moment longer than she has to. What her siblings would be saying now would be something cruel and cutting – or maybe not cruel, but unnoticing, uncaring. But Lucy isn’t any one of her siblings, and she has been away from Narnia long enough and often enough to know that home is different for everyone; that what means the world to one person is dust and ashes to another.

“Of course we’ll be going back to England,” Lucy says, smiling at her. “Once Narnia is free again, there will be no reason for us to stay here.”

“It’s not that I don’t like Narnia,” Jill explains, looking away. “It’s just that – it’s not home. I’m just visiting. And I miss England, I miss my friends and my family and – everything. I miss running water and hot baths and electric lights,” she adds, sounding faintly ashamed, and Lucy laughs.

“Do you know what I mean?” she adds.

She’s going to have to shave away the hair around the wound so she can stitch the skin back down. Lucy draws her dagger from her belt. “Yes,” she says, “I know what you mean. But it’s not England for me. I don’t think it ever will be as long as I live. I like England,” she says thoughtfully. “I like it a lot. I like my friends, I like my work, I like – I love – my parents. I like London. But for me, home will always be through the wardrobe and east and south a bit until you reach the sea and the headland and Cair Paravel.” She smiles at the memory, then looks down at her knife blade and blinks.

“What is it?” Jill asks, craning her head to see.

“There’s blood on my dagger,” Lucy says. “And I haven’t used it since I got back, I’d remember if I’d cut someone.”

“Maybe someone else used it and just didn’t clean it,” Jill suggests.

“Pole, have you seen these Narnians?” Lucy says. “Half the time I have to fight them just to make sure they take the cordial, and that saves people. I can’t see anyone here using my dagger to hurt someone or gut an animal or anything else that involves blood. And the last time I used my dagger was three hundred years ago on the Dawn Treader, and I know I cleaned it then. I always clean my weapons.” She frowns down at the dark stain on the otherwise spotless blade and resheathes it. “Do you have a knife on you?”

“Yes,” Jill says, drawing the one on her hip and passing it over to Lucy hilt first.

“Thanks,” she says absently, testing the blade on her thumb before dousing it in wine. It’s sharp enough, and she twists until she’s in a good position to start shaving away the hair from the centauress’s scalp wound.

She passes the knife back when she’s done and threads the needle, dimly registering the sudden rise in background noise. Peter and Edmund have come back with the rescue party, probably. It doesn’t sound like any of the parents are crying, so they must have been successful.

She’s only a few stitches in when Peter says suddenly from behind her, “Lucy, I need you.”

Lucy almost puts the needle through the centauress’s skull. Her brother could learn to make some noise once in a while. “That’s very flattering, Peter,” she says, “but I’m with a patient right now.”

“She can wait, mine won’t,” Peter says brusquely, his gaze flickering briefly across the centauress. “Human male, early twenties, bleeding out because a hippogriff bit off his arm and ate it. And they’re not from around here, so I need to keep them happy and letting one of them die because my baby sister’s too busy dealing with a scalp wound isn’t the way to do that. Pole can finish up. Come on.”

“Peter, I can’t regrow the arm –” Lucy says.

He takes the needle from her fingers and hands it over to Jill, pulling Lucy up with his grip hard on her arm. “No, but you can keep him from bleeding to death and make sure he doesn’t get sepsis because the stump wasn’t cauterized well enough or something equally unfortunate and unpleasant. Come on. You can come back later.”

“Peter!” Lucy exclaims, and Jill says, “No, you should go, I can do this,” already splashing her hands with wine.

“You smell like a vintner gone wrong,” Peter says, as Lucy pulls herself free from his clutch. “And you look like you just walked out of a slaughterhouse.”

“Why, thank you, Peter,” she says spitefully. “It’s good to know I can always count on you to make me feel better about myself. And how are you today?”

“I’ve been killing Narnians,” he says flatly.

“Oh,” Lucy says. For anyone else, that might not be much of an explanation for Peter’s behavior, but it’s all the one she needs. “The hippogriffs?” she adds, glancing at the ugly scratches across his face, the long rips in both sleeves. He doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by either, so Lucy doesn’t comment on them just yet.

“I thought they might have gone feral after the Calormenes invaded,” Peter says, his voice heavy as they track across the beaten, bloodstained snow. “But the number of bones there put them back at least five generations, maybe six.”

Lucy jerks around to look at him. “That’s almost two hundred years!”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “We’ve got all the children thanks to Su and Ed; they’re all safe, Su and Ed included. We also brought back all the hippogriff chicks; we need the airpower, and we should be able to civilize them if we can place them with good families.”

“Good luck with that,” Lucy says. “I’ve been talking to some of the people here, the ones that don’t run away the second I look at them, and they say that the wolfswood and the rosewood have been full of ferals as far back as they remember. And there haven’t been civilized hippogriffs, griffins, any of that, in just as long. Pete, these Narnians are going to look at those chicks as wild animals, not as children.”

“They are children, though,” Peter says, his face set. “And we have a responsibility to them; we killed their parents. Here.”

Here is a grouping of men and centaurs, none of them familiar but all of them well-equipped, both arms and armor. Their leather jerkins have a vaguely familiar badge over their breasts, red with a pair of crossed swords at the top, a roaring lion rampant in the center, and spread of four cards across the bottom – the suits are a cup, a crescent moon, a star, and a dagger. The lion is new, but the rest of it Lucy knows.

“The Red Company –”

“Yeah, we’re hoping for a good explanation too,” Edmund says. He and Susan are standing at the edge of the group, and Lucy notes with distant and grim satisfaction that Susan’s hands are bandaged. She’s hurt. Good. At this point, she deserves it.

“Wounded,” Peter says impatiently, and shoulders his way through the crowd, men moving out the way so he can get through.

There’s a Red Company man lying on a blanket laid out on the snow, a makeshift tourniquet tied around the stump of his arm. Lucy pushes past Peter and drops to her knees, pulling the tourniquet away and noting the ragged tear of bloody flesh. She ignores the man kneeling next to him.

“How long did it take you to get back?”

“Forty-five minutes,” Peter says from behind her. “The nest was at Giantkiller and we were riding hard. It was the last hippogriff.”

Her fingers are red with fresh blood instantly. She smears it across her skirts and belt as she pulls her cordial free and uncaps it. Funny how fast you can get used to some things again; looking back a few days, she’s more than faintly ashamed of the way her hands had shook when she’d been tending to Edmund and Peter had been yelling at her. It had just been so long – and longer still since she’d had to deal with one of her siblings being mortally wounded.

“My name is Lucy,” she tells the man, getting her free arm beneath his head. “I know you’re in pain, but I just need you to swallow this, all right? It’ll make the pain all go away. Somebody get his mouth open for me,” she adds sharply, and is aware of Peter starting to move forward, but the stranger on the other side of the patient is closer and faster.

“It’s all right, Noach,” he says. “This is Queen Lucy Strongheart. Listen to my voice, all right? And hers. It’s all going to be all right.”

Lucy lets a single drop of cordial fall into his mouth and sees the man’s throat work as he swallows. There’s a moment where he shudders all over, and the stranger strokes his fingers over the man’s head, murmuring quietly to him.

Then he opens his eyes. “Lieutenant Seaworth?” he whispers.

Seaworth? Lucy thinks, shocked, as the lieutenant grins at him and says, “Yeah, Noach. It’s me. You’re all right. We got you back here. How about that, hmm? Back to Narnia after all these years. Hell of a thing.”

“Hell of a thing,” Noach agrees, and then his eyes droop closed.

The lieutenant – Seaworth, and how, how – turns his head up to look at Lucy anxiously. “Is he supposed to –” he begins.

“Yes,” Lucy says. “The energy has to come from somewhere. He’ll be very tired for the next twenty-four hours or so; you should make sure he has enough to eat and drink, he’s also going to be hungry. Did you say your name was Seaworth?”

His eyebrows go up as he lowers Noach’s head gently back down to the blanket. “Lieutenant Alleyne Seaworth of the Red Company at your service, your majesty.”

“You can’t possibly be serious,” Lucy says, sitting back on her heels. The adrenaline high is starting to come down, and she suddenly feels very, very tired. Her skirts are soaked through from kneeling in the snow for hours, and she starts to shiver.

“Come here, Lu,” Peter says, his voice gentler now. He pulls her to her feet and shrugs off his coat, wrapping it around her shoulders. “You’ve been out here since the original attacks. Go get cleaned up, get something to eat –”

“Peter, do you have any idea how many wounded there are here?” Lucy says. “The Calormenes ripped through that camp even before they got here and the ferals came down on them. I don’t think there’s a single person here who isn’t wounded somehow.”

“Take a few minutes,” Peter says, and she can tell from the tone of his voice that it’s an order. “You’re not going to do anyone any good if you’re falling over. Seaworth, did you bring a healer with you?”

The lieutenant straightens. He doesn’t look like Osumare Seaworth at all – well, maybe a little, but only if Lucy actually looks for it. “No, your majesty,” he says. “But all my men have field medical training –”

“Good, I’m borrowing them,” Peter says.

“Of course, your majesty,” Seaworth says without hesitation. “I’m trained as well –”

“Go,” Peter says. “Lu, where are they needed?”

“I think the words ‘anywhere and everywhere’ sum it up nicely,” she begins, swiping a hand over her eyes.

“Stop, you’re getting blood on your face,” Peter says, reaching for her wrist. Over her head, he says to Seaworth. “You heard her. Go. If anyone asks who you happen to be, just tell them it’s on my orders.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Seaworth says, and gives the man on the ground one last anxious look before he leaves.

“Peter, I have patients,” Lucy says, closing her eyes briefly as he wipes the blood from her face with his sleeve.

“And I’m sure they’re not going anywhere,” he assures her. “Just take a minute, will you? You look worse than I do, and I’ve spent the past three hours hanging off a cliff and getting scratched up by pissed off baby hippogriffs.”

Lucy reaches up and touches the scratches on his cheeks. “You should get those seen to,” she says. “You don’t know where their claws have been. Those could get infected.”

Peter rubs idly at the dried blood with the edge of his thumb. “You just told me we’ve got far larger problems than a few scratches. They’re not life-threatening; don’t worry about them. Su’s hands are all shot to hell, though, can you –”

“She doesn’t need her hands,” Lucy says flatly, pulling away from Peter.

“I need her hands,” he says, his eyes narrowing as he looks at her.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure.”

Peter’s face is set. “Let me clarify, Lu: I need her to be able to shoot. She saved Edmund’s life today, she saved those five children, and she nearly died doing so. She risked her life in the ambush yesterday –”

“Yes, wasn’t that supposed to be your role –”

“I know you’re mad at her,” Peter says. “All right. You two can work that out at some point when it doesn’t interfere with the war I’m trying to win. Right now, I need her in one piece because she’s the best archer in Narnia and I need her to be able to shoot. That’s an order, Queen Lucy.”

Lucy crosses her arms over her chest. “I have patients I need to see to,” she says.

He holds up a finger. “One drop of cordial.”

“The cordial I haven’t been giving to people who need it far more than she does!” Lucy protests. “People with far worse wounds –”

“Not life-threatening, not immediately necessary or important. Susan is.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re –”

“Lucy,” Peter says flatly, “I don’t have to give you explanations, and I just gave you one anyway, and I gave you an order. This isn’t a request.”

“I hate being with you in Narnia,” Lucy spits, and pushes past him.

Susan and Edmund are talking in low voices and that hurts, that just hurts, because Edmund’s supposed to be on her side, supposed to understand what’s going on, and clearly he’s gone over.

“You!” Lucy snaps, pointing at Susan and then at a ridge of wall. They’re somewhere near the eastern guardhouse. “Sit. Shut up. Don’t say anything.”

“Lucy –” Susan begins, her voice gentle.

“What part of don’t say anything don’t you understand? Or would it help if I said it in English instead of Narnian, since you’ve been perfectly clear about the fact that Narnia is nothing but a fantasy and Narnian is some language we made up when we were children and scared, all alone in some big house in the countryside with some lonely old man while the Jerries bombed the hell out of London? After all, all we were was scared little children, so of course –”

“Lucy,” Peter says flatly. Edmund doesn’t say anything at all; he’s looking at the ground and not at her.

“Would it help,” Susan says slowly, “if I said I was sorry, and it was wrong of me –”

“No,” Lucy spits. “Sit down and shut up. I wouldn’t even be doing this if it wasn’t –”

“Well, then shut up and do it,” Edmund snaps suddenly, looking up. “Feel free not to drag it out, for the rest of our sakes.”

Lucy glares at him, then at Peter. Peter rubs a hand over his face, looking tired, and the friction reopens one of the scratches on his right cheek. He doesn’t seem to notice the drops of flesh blood beading up on the edge of the wound.

Susan sits down slowly and Lucy uncorks her cordial, approaching with distaste. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she snarls, her voice tight with anger. She keeps her grip on the cordial gentle, and only for a moment considers flinging it aside rather than giving it to Susan. That passes quickly; it would be a horrible waste, and Peter would gut her.

Susan opens her mouth to reply and Lucy dashes a drop of cordial between her lips. “There!” she says, turning furiously back to Peter as she corks the cordial again. “Now I have actual patients to get back to, so unless you have any other minor injuries you need tending to –”

“Lucy,” Edmund begins, reaching for her, and she twists away from his grasp – right into Peter’s hands.

“Go get cleaned up and find me out what’s going on here,” he says over her head. To Lucy, “You’re in no shape to be treating patients, Lu. Not if you’re making a habit of treating them like that.”

“Only one of them,” she snaps, trying to pull free, but Peter’s grip is too strong.

He catches her chin with one hand and tilts her face up so he can look her in the eyes. “Lucy,” he says, “end it. That’s an order. I didn’t want to make it one, and I was hoping to hell the two of you would work it out on your own, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. I forgave her, Edmund forgave her, and you can too.”

“Let go of me,” Lucy says.

“Do you hear me, Lucy?” Peter insists.

“Yes,” she spits. “I’m not deaf. I’m also not an idiot, do you even remember the things she said? To you, about you, about us?”

“Yes,” Peter says. “Rather better than I’d prefer to, considering the fact it was my mental state she was insulting. I fucked up my body in any number of fun and interesting ways every time I got shot down, but getting hit on the head was never one of them. Which she knew.” He lets go of her chin and Lucy turns her head away.

“She shouldn’t be here, Peter. We should be the only ones here – you, me, Edmund. The ones who care.”

“She cares,” Peter says softly. “Oh, but she cares. I can’t ask you to forgive her, Lu, but I do need you to be able to work together. I need all of you. Narnia needs all of you. There’s a reason it’s the four of us. Can you do that?”

“Don’t insult me, Peter,” Lucy says, and pulls free as his grip loosens. “I have to go see to my patients.”

“You’re not fit to deal with people right now,” he says. “Go see to the hippogriffs. I don’t trust any of the Narnians here with them, and you’ve always been good with children, especially Narnian children.”

She stares at him blankly. “You’re actually forbidding me to do what I’m trained for?” she demands.

Peter raises his eyebrows. “Yes,” he says, and then adds, “I’ve got a pair of Red Company men on the hippogriffs – they’re over in the area where the western guardhouse used to be, you remember. They’re in baskets right now, because that’s what we transported them back in, and they’re bound and fairly panicked. I was hoping not to have tie them up, but –”

“I get the picture,” Lucy says, grinding her teeth. “You’re mad at me because I’m not willing to be led around by the –”

“I’m going to go help with the healers,” Peter says. “And be nice. They’re scared. We just killed their parents.” He turns away without another word and Lucy stands still her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides.

Why, why, are they both so dismissive? There are things that shouldn’t be forgiven or forgotten, and what Susan said to Peter are some of them. And that wasn’t all Susan had said! Just the worst of it. You’ve been shot down so many times you’ve got brain damage, Peter. You’re starting to believe the games we used to play when we were children. It’s a wonder they still let you fly. Peter had laughed it off. It’s only the crazy ones they let test fly planes, Su, he’d replied, but he’d looked like he’d just been hit over the head. And that – what she’d said – that hadn’t been the worst of it. Peter hadn’t been home from the hospital yet when she and Edmund had locked themselves in a room and screamed at each other for more than an hour. Lucy can’t see why Peter, of all people, would be the first to forgive Susan, and what could possibly have happened out there in the rosewood that would make Edmund go along with it.

Frustrated, Lucy stomps a foot down in the snow and immediately feels ashamed for it. This is Narnia. She shouldn’t act like – like a child. Not here. Not in Narnia. Peter doesn’t want her to see patients because he doesn’t think she’s fit for civilized company? Fine. She can do that. There’s nothing there that needs her help, and let him get his hands dirty with the wounded. Let Susan get her gods-damned newly healed hands dirty for once; maybe it will be good for her, though Lucy doubts it. She has other things to do, and Peter’s right: she has always liked Narnian children.

Aware that the baby hippogriffs must be starving – especially if the children had been snatched as food – she goes to change her clothes and wash the blood off her hands, scrubbing hard to get it out from beneath her fingernails. Then she goes to find the remains of the guardhouse.

Even if she didn’t have the memory of the old Arn Abedin to guide her, it wouldn’t be hard to find. She can hear the panicked cheeping of the baby hippogriffs as soon as she really starts listening for it, high-pitched and carrying. It must be driving those Narnians who can hear higher sound frequencies than humans mad.

There are two centaurs with Red Company badges standing guard over the dozen or so baskets. Lucy looks at them curiously, because the Red Company as she’d known it – as one of the three oldest mercenary companies in Natare, under the command of Mathin Terblanche, a dedicate of the Trickster, one of the seven Natarene gods that Peter still swears by – had been overwhelmingly human, and those nonhumans that had been with the company had been what they called human-form Narnians in Narnia – werewolves, mostly. A few selkies, a handful of swan-maids. Shapeshifters. Contrary to popular belief, Narnia wasn’t the only place in the world home to nonhumans. It was just home to the most; the only country where the majority of the population was nonhuman. They hadn’t even had other humans in Narnia besides traders until the second year, when Osumare Seaworth had sailed into the harbor at Cair Paravel.

“I’m Queen Lucy,” she says, approaching. “My brother the High King sent me to check on the hippogriffs.”

“Your majesty,” one of the centaurs murmurs, and both of them bow their heads briefly.

“They’re rather panicked,” the centaur continues. “I would see to them myself, but, well –”

“He’s bad with children,” the second – female – centaur says. “Very bad. They run away screaming.”

“That was once,” the centaur corrects, and Lucy finds herself grinning.

“May I ask your names?” she inquires.

“I am Keirasti Oreiana,” says the centauress, “and this lummox is Breadan Oreianus.”

Oreius. “Is that a clan name?” Lucy asks. Oreius himself had been from the Cian clan in the Southern Marches, but after almost two thousand years – and the Red Company certainly hadn’t been in Narnia during Caspian’s time, so she can’t quite think where they’ve come from now –

“It is,” Keirasti says. “All centaurs within the Red Company are Oreians. We can trace our blood back a thousand years to Narnia itself, though no member of the Red Company has set foot in Narnia until now.”

Lucy’s eyebrows go up. “Where have you been, then?” she asks. “Natare?”

Both Keirasti’s and Breadan’s faces are blank. “Where is that?” Breadan asks. “We have been in Shoushan since we left Narnia – first as the Shoushan Empire, and then as Lesser and Greater Shoushan.”

“Oh,” Lucy says. Shoushan had been one of the countries crowded onto Narnia’s western border during their own reign, the only one of the half-dozen or so that had survived after the collapse of Narnia. But there doesn’t seem to be a logical reason for Mathin Terblanche to take the Red Company there – Mathin had been Natarene, the majority of the Red Company had been Natarene, the Red Company itself had been Natarene.

Just one of the many mysteries that surround the fall of Narnia. Most of them will probably never be solved; there has been too much lost in the intervening years.

She smiles at the two centaurs and steps past them to the first basket, which is rocking slightly on its base, its occupant emitting small wailing cries.

“Be careful, your majesty,” Breadan warns. “They’re vicious. Surely you’ve seen what they did to the High King?”

“Oh, Peter’s gotten worse scratches in bed,” Lucy says lightly. Still, she puts on leather gloves just to be cautious, fastening her boiled leather gauntlets on over them and flexing her wrists and elbows experimentally.

“Watch your eyes, majesty,” Keirasti adds. “I’ve dealt with baby griffins before, and I’m sure they’re much the same.”

“They are,” Lucy agrees. “It’s been a while, but I still remember. Griffins are a little more bloodthirsty, but hippogriffs can do more damage as babies. It’s the hooves.” She unfastens the lid of the basket and reaches down inside, tilting her head out of the way as the hippogriff strikes out at her with one claw, miniature wings beating furiously at the air. They’re not developed enough for flight, not yet.

“Hullo there,” Lucy says, scooping it up. She’s careful not to wince as it squirms, screaming protest and doing its best to shred her clothes and her along with them. “Stop that now; it’s hardly dignified at all. Come on. My name’s Lucy; I think you’ve already met my brothers Peter and Edmund. Do you have a name?”

“They’re ferals,” Breadan says. “They can’t talk.”

“They can talk,” Lucy says over her shoulder. “They just don’t know how too. But I think that this one, at least, is young enough to learn. Aren’t you?” she asks, and the baby hippogriff does a damn good job at trying to take out an eye. Lucy jerks her head out of the way just in time to get off with a shallow scratch down the side of her cheek.

“I think you’re hungry,” she says to it. “That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Given what Peter said, and what with your parents trying to steal other people’s children for food. That’s not very nice, is it? No, it’s not.” She shakes her head, and the hippogriff screams in her face.

“That’s also not very nice,” Lucy rebukes. To Keirasti and Breadan, she says, “Can one of you go and find me a basket of raw meat or fish? Or maybe two? They haven’t been fed, and food is always a good way to make friends.”

“I’ll go,” Keirasti says, cantering away towards the main body of the camp.

Breadan watches Lucy with a critical eye. “When the rest of the Red Company arrives, I’m sure someone in the aerial wing will be willing to take them in. I’ve got a friend, Marured, a griffin, and she’s wanted children for a while now. Just hasn’t been able to settle for any of the males in the Company, and outside the Company, there’s not really anyone else in Greater Shoushan. No one that interests her, at least.”

“There are griffins in the Red Company?” Lucy says, startled.

“Griffins and hippogriffs,” Breadan corrects. “The Red Company is the most sought-after merc company in Greater Shoushan, and for good reason.”

“I’ll be damned,” Lucy murmurs. “We might just have a chance at winning this thing after all.”

By the time she finally gets all of the baby hippogriffs calmed enough to eat and fall asleep, she’s exhausted – and she’d been tired already from a day’s worth of doctoring on top of what had more or less accounted for a sleepless night and a battle. She’s done worse – but not for more than a decade. She’d thought studying for her exams had been bad; she’d just forgotten what it was like to actually be tired, bone-deep exhausted from nothing but work piled on top of work piled on top of work.

“Come on, Lu,” Edmund says, coming to collect her and passing her a mug of hot beef broth, which Lucy has to wrap both hands around to keep steady. “It’s bound to be a short meeting; Pete’s been up as long as the rest of us. He probably just wants to get faces straight before something equally as exciting happens in the morning to throw us off our game again.”

“He couldn’t wait until morning?” Lucy demands as Edmund puts an arm around her shoulders, hustling her off through the lingering twilight.

“Buck up, little sister,” Edmund says, absurdly cheerful. “By this time tomorrow we could be fighting for our lives against a rebel firewyrm or something equally absurd.”

Lucy squints at him. “Yes,” she says. “That is absurd. Firewyrms don’t come this far north. Firewyrms have never been seen in Narnia, Ed, last I heard they were a strictly Calormene problem.”

“My point exactly,” he says brightly. “Who knows what fresh hell they’ve brought down on Narnia?”

“I hate you,” Lucy mumbles, and he laughs.

They slip quietly into the heartwood, settling at the edge of the group gathered within the confines of the henge. Peter is sitting cross-legged on top of the altar, his head high and his back straight, like some golden-haired Indian rajah. Lucy sees his gaze flicker towards them as they come in, and he nods in acknowledgment as Edmund raises one hand, wrapping an arm around Lucy’s waist to brace her as he leans against a pillar and she leans against him, still sipping at her broth. Across the henge, Susan’s gaze is clear and direct; she sees Lucy and Edmund and blinks once, slowly, before returning her attention to Peter. Tirian is a little ways away, in quiet conversation with a tall, unfamiliar man who looks like an older Caspian. His chin is a little more pointed and his hair is shorter, but otherwise, he could be Caspian’s brother. Definitely a Telmarine, that one; he’s nothing like Tirian’s pale skin and red hair, though she thinks they may have the same eyes. A relative, maybe? Eustace and Jill are sitting on a tumbled column, Jill leaning into Eustace’s shoulder as they share a cup of something. Tea, perhaps, or wine. The rest of the group is made up of the now-familiar Arn Abedin leaders – Arnau, Baldesca, Adega, Monreal – several Haven Narnians, only a few of which Lucy knows – Ourente is familiar, and Jewel the unicorn, but the human she doesn’t know – and a handful of other Narnians, presumably from the two Lantern Waste camps, as well as Alleyne Seaworth and a slim woman with a Red Company badge on her breast.

“All right,” Peter says. “I’ll keep this short, since we’ve all been up for longer than I really care to think about now.”

It’s quiet enough that Lucy can hear Eustace mutter, “Oh, thank God,” from the other side of the henge and Edmund’s soft chuckle against her hair.

“There are a lot of people here,” Peter says. “Narnians – and old Narnians. There are only going to be more people coming; right now I know that my sister’s horn was heard all across Narnia and by Narnians as far away as Archenland and Greater Shoushan. Everyone who answers that call is going to be coming here, and with the Calormenes setting up house in Narnia, we can’t have internal problems. I know there’s tension. I don’t know what it’s about. I’d rather not be given a reason to have to find out. I don’t want to turn around and find out we’ve started a civil war on top of our external problems; that’s the last thing we need.

“I am the High King of Narnia. I am your highest authority. You answer to me; you don’t refuse one of my orders without a damn good reason. You called me here and Aslan brought me; you listen to that. You also listen to my brother King Edmund and my sisters Queen Susan and Queen Lucy. You don’t forget that you have a king of your own.” He nods at Tirian, who looks uncomfortable.

“We are going to win this war. We’re not going to win it quickly, but we are going to win it. My siblings and I don’t fail. Narnia is our highest priority. Don’t jeopardize that for something petty; you don’t want to see what punishment I’ll mete out for treason, and I will punish treason. We’re not fighting for land, we’re not fighting for money, we’re not fighting for ideals – we’re fighting for Narnia. We’re fighting for a free Narnia. We’re fighting for something that’s bigger than every one of us, human or nonhuman. Narnia isn’t just the land, Narnia isn’t just the people, Narnia isn’t just a golden ideal – Narnia is a living, breathing entity, and right now she’s in shackles. We’re fighting to free her. And with her – us. Every one of us who’s ever called Narnia home. We will win this, but we don’t win it alone. We win it together.”

He falls silent, looking around at all of them with his face set, his eyes calm.

After a moment, Arnau says, “So when do we attack?”

“We don’t,” Peter says, his eyebrows arching upwards slightly. “Not yet.”

“Then what the hell did we bring you here for –” He stops abruptly, and Lucy sees Adega’s sudden smirk. The faun has stepped on his foot.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Peter says, his voice very dry, “but we are, at the moment, extremely outnumbered. We’re going to even those odds.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that, your majesty?” the Telmarine by Tirian’s side says. “Ask Prince Bahadur if he feels inclined to remove some of his men from Narnia? Politely, of course.”

“Who is that?” Lucy asks Edmund quietly.

“Lord Vespasian of Glasswater,” Edmund replies, equally soft. “Tirian’s cousin. He came in today from Archenland.”

“No,” Peter says, “mostly because I don’t think he’d understand my Calormene anyway; it’s been a while since I’ve had to speak it and my accent has always been wretched anyway.”

There’s a ripple of laughter, and even Vespasian offers up a smile. “A legitimate question, your majesty,” he says.

“What we’re going to do –” Peter says, smiling back at him. Lucy feels her heart drop down somewhere into the vicinity of her shoes. She knows that smile – that’s the way Peter smiles at people when he’s flirting, when he wants something – and who the hell is this Vespasian anyway? This is not exactly what Peter needs to get himself into! Especially since people he’s attracted to tend to want to kill him a good half of the time; that’s one particular remnant from their reign that doesn’t need to reassert itself.

“– is that you all are going to stay here and get to know each other very well.”

“Oh, shit,” Edmund says, stiffening against her back.

“‘You all?’” Eustace bursts out as Susan’s expression shifts from amusement to worry. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

Peter grins. “I’m going to Cair Paravel,” he says.


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Shoushan and Natare are first mentioned in Once More for the Ages.



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Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31