Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (16)
Jun. 6th, 2009 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air 16
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language
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 sixteen, 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. Thanks tosnacky for the beta!
Not all that long ago, Eustace had been in this very same tunnel – or one very like it, anyway – on his way back from the castle after he and Tirian had done their best to rob it blind and come away only with Susan’s bow, quiver, and horn. He’s surprised they’d gotten away with that; the castle had been swarming with soldiers after the breakout in the dungeons and they’d nearly gotten caught at least twice before they’d made it back into the tunnels.
He’s not positive this is the same tunnel as the one that leads up to the castle, but it’s enough like it that Eustace can’t tell for sure. Tunnels are much the same to him; he’s seen too many in Narnia. Some days it seems like every time he turns around he’s crawling around beneath the earth for one reason or another, even though he knows that’s not true. Even if this isn’t the same tunnel, it has to connect to the other one eventually; they’re going back to the Newisle manor.
There’s a cut on the side of Eustace’s neck that stings like someone’s rubbed winter pepper on it; he rubs at it with two fingers, which doesn’t do anything but irritate it more and open the wound, a few more drops of blood beading up and smearing across his fingertips. He’s uncomfortably aware of the tiger behind him, padding near-silently through the inch or so of water in the crowded tunnels. There hadn’t been a lot of the great cats at Haven; they make them nervous. The size of their sodding teeth –
Most of the Long Table had wanted to make an example of Lord Prejun, kill him themselves and burn the Newisle manor to the ground with the sign of the Long Table written on the gates. Tirian and Peter and Susan had managed to talk them out of it, somehow; Tirian had said, “This is not about the Long Table, it is about me; Prejun of Newisle is a noble of Narnia and my responsibility – mine to punish. He did this to me, not to you.”
Eustace has the feeling that the Long Table doesn’t particularly care who Prejun might have been targeting when he informed to the Calormenes; no matter what Tirian says to Prejun when they get back to the manor, the Long Table will go after him as soon as they leave the city. They give off the certain impression of not giving a shit what the King of Narnia thinks. They care slightly more about the opinions of Peter and Susan, enough so to let them have first crack at Prejun. He still doesn’t know why the tiger is here; it’s probably just the Long Table’s way of spying on them.
Abruptly, Eustace says out loud, “Why is the city under two feet of water but there’s barely an inch of it down here under the city?”
“The tunnels under the city are dwarf-built,” Tirian says. “The best engineers in Narnia. Rilian the Disenchanted had dwarves build the tunnels beneath the castle, but the ones beneath the city are reinforced with tree roots because of the city dryads. They support the tunnels rather than work against them, the same thing with the levees on the river. When they put sewers in beneath the city, they work around the tunnels, although I think some of the tunnels intersect with the sewers. There used to be crimnaiads in the sewers as well as the fountains to make sure they don’t flood the tunnels or the city. Sprites, too.”
“There still are,” the tiger – Mayor, Eustace thinks his name is – says. “We’re not likely to run into any, though. How does a castle boy like you know so much about the city?”
Tirian glances up at the ceiling of the tunnel, where a web of thin, wispy tree roots weave a net around the dark earth above. “After my grandfather died I spent a lot of time wandering around the lower city, all the places that I’d read about in the castle library.”
“I bet King Erlian loved that.”
“My father was a little too occupied with his mistress and his bastards to care about what his son was doing in my copious spare time,” Tirian says bitterly. “Aside from making sure that I turned out for the funeral and the coronation. And the wedding, unfortunately, where I wasn’t as drunk as I would have liked to have been.”
“The Bitch,” Mayor says, sounding bemused, and Eustace can hear the capitalization. “Tarkheena Firouzeen Blackhair.”
“The Bitch,” Tirian says, and they share a moment of frankly alarming empathetic hatred.
“Your father married a Calormene woman?” Peter exclaims.
“My father married Bahadur’s bastard half-sister,” Tirian says, sounding far too cheerful about the matter. “Morganatically, or my grandmother would have had him killed. I think she was considering it anyway. Bastian Thrice-Married’s first wife Nealie was bad enough, but he had two other wives to try and get a son. Grandmother would never suffer the Tisroc’s bastard daughter on the throne of Narnia, even if the Bitch was acknowledged.” After a moment, he adds thoughtfully, “Sometimes I wonder if that’s why the Tisroc invaded Narnia – because he thinks it should have been his after my father died. But I was still the heir; Firouzeen’s children were never legitimized.”
“I doubt it,” Susan says, her voice bitter. “Calormen has wanted Narnia since before our time – I know they tried at least once during the Long Winter, and there are records in Tashbaan of invasions hundreds of years earlier. I saw them once when I was there, a long time ago.”
Eustace doesn’t miss the look Peter throws her, his brows drawing together in worry before he looks away. He hasn’t stirred more than a few feet from her side since they left the High King’s Arms.
Susan doesn’t appear to notice. “The Tisroc probably would have invaded no matter who your father married.”
“Probably,” Tirian says, his voice soft. He touches his hand to the hilt of his sword, staring off into the distance of the tunnel.
Up ahead of him, the lantern Tirian is carrying throws up long shadows on the damp, dark walls, thick with the rich earth of Narnia, with a few wispy tendrils of root weaving in and out. Eustace imagines the whole network of tunnels beneath Cair Paravel, spreading out like blood vessels in a human body. He tries to picture a London Tube map, because surely the underground of Cair Paravel must look something like that, but it’s been so bloody long since he’s looked at one that he can’t remember what it looks like.
There are dozens of tunnels like this one beneath Cair Paravel. Some of them have collapsed in the centuries since they were built, others have flooded, some have been closed off for various reasons. (Tirian had been cagy about the old story of a dragon that’s never seen the light of day living in the tunnels; Eustace is only mostly convinced it’s a story used to scare small children. He never jokes around with dragons.) Apparently there are a fair number that have either been found by the Calormenes or reported by Narnian traitors; this is where a lot of the Long Table’s smuggling has been going on, but it’s been significantly curtailed in the past few years because the Calormenes have been looking beneath the earth rather than above it.
Being down here doesn’t remind him as much of being Underworld has he’d thought it might; it’s too…high, high is a good way to describe it. Underworld had always felt like being stifled, like the weight of the earth was pressing down on him from all sides, even in the wide open space of the city or the lake. It’s much easier for Eustace to picture Cair Paravel going about its business only a few feet over his head; he thinks that if it were during the day, he might be able to hear a wagon or a carriage rumble by, if they happen to be beneath a street, and that’s several kinds of ridiculously relieving. He hadn’t liked Underworld at all; the Lady of the Green Kirtle had barely been a factor. This reminds him more of the orlop deck on the Dawn Treader – dark and comfortable, rocked by the belly of the ocean. He can almost smell the sea.
“Here,” Tirian and Mayor say, nearly at the same time, and Eustace looks around until he sees the wooden ladder set into the wall. It should lead straight up into a storage room in the servants’ quarters of the Newisle manor; another relic of the smuggling ring that the old Newisles had apparently run from beneath the very shadow of the castle.
Peter glances around at them, the torchlight in the little round lantern on his wrist reflecting off the golden hilt of his sword. “I’ll go first,” he says, and reaches for the ladder, but Tirian gets his hand on it first and says, utterly polite, “Your majesty, I know this area,” in the kind of tone that means he won’t be argued with.
Peter steps back, raising both hands a little as if to say, “What can you do?” and lets Tirian ascend, pushing up a hatch above them and sending down a shower of dirt to the floor. Peter goes up after him, then Susan, and Eustace follows, noting the Newisle arms carved in repeating patterns on the ladder. The Narnians have to make everything pretty, it seems; sometimes it seems like there’s not a square inch left undecorated, even in the middle of the wilderness.
Once he’s above ground, Eustace turns to stare down at Mayor, who’s standing alone at the bottom of the ladder. “He’s not going to be able to make it up here –” he begins, and Peter turns to look over his shoulder at him, his sword unsheathed in his hand.
“Didn’t Aunt Alberta have a cat?” he says.
Eustace stares at the non sequitur. “No,” he says slowly. “Alberta thought that cats were pests and spread disease. And shed. Or maybe that was pigeons, I don’t know. And Harold was allergic.”
Peter frowns. “I thought she had a cat.”
“Gerbils,” Susan corrects. “She had gerbils.”
“What are you talking about?” Mayor demands.
Eustace turns around and nearly falls back into the tunnel, because the tiger is three-quarters of the way up the ladder and going strong, even though he’s scowling like a madman, which mostly involves showing far too many of those far too long and sharp teeth. How in blazes anything as big as a tiger – anything with four legs – can make it up a ladder –
Mayor scrambles the rest of the way out, tail lashing in distaste, and says, “Dear gods of my ancestors, I’m out of shape. I don’t remember that being nearly so difficult.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time in bars drinking with Elizar Confesor,” Susan suggests, her voice light and teasing, and Mayor turns his scowl on her before he thinks better of it and goes back to nosing around the floor.
Tirian crouches down and closes the hatch again, spreading a ragged carpet over it and the cracked stone floor around it. He straightens up again, his gaze flickering to the bow in Susan’s hand, where she’s nocked an arrow but hasn’t yet drawn it. “This part of the servants’ quarters hasn’t been used for anything but storage in years,” he says. “All the servants should be sleeping at this hour, I’d think.”
“Is it connected to the house?” Susan asks.
“No. We’ll have to go outside.” He scowls suddenly, his expression darkening, and says, “I want to use the bloody front door.”
“All right,” Peter agrees suddenly. “Tell us the way. We’ll lead.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say, ‘First you open the door’,” Eustace offers, and Peter rolls his eyes, his expression long-suffering. Susan smiles a little, though, and finally draws her bow, raising it so that the kiss-ring on the arrow touches the corner of her mouth.
Peter glances back at her and smiles, then opens the door. The two of them go out first into the hallway, Tirian short on their heels.
“Go left,” he says as Eustace and Mayor follow them out. He gives directions through a maze of hallways, his voice soft.
It’s on the tip of Eustace’s tongue to ask why the servants’ quarters are so large, but then he remembers how many servants the Newisle manor had actually employed; it had seemed like they’d hired someone for each individual task, like their servants were incapable of doing more than one thing. There are probably as many servants here as there are inhabitants of whole camps back in the Western Wild. It’s completely mad, that’s what it is.
He thinks they’ve made it into the clear when a door opens and a faun girl he recognizes as a chambermaid steps out, raising one hand to her mouth as if she’d been in the midst of stifling a yawn. She stands like that, frozen and staring at Peter and Susan in front of her, for a moment of terrifying silence, and then she exclaims in a soft whisper, “King of Summer and Queen of Spring! I have not been wicked, I swear; you know I light a candle to you both each night, that I have put out offerings all this winter that you might come again.” She makes the four point sign over her chest. “The Queen of Winter take me away if I lie.”
Not again! Eustace thinks, because is there anyone in Narnia – but he sees Peter’s gaze flicker quickly to Susan, then Susan lowers her bow and steps forward, holding her arrow in place with one hand as she cups the girl’s cheek in the other. “Be at peace, child of Narnia,” she says softly. “Spring is in Narnia again, and summer on his way.” She tilts the girl’s chin up with her fingers. “Find a way to leave this place before the dawn,” she says. “You and the innocent here. Something ill is coming. Do you understand?”
“Yes, your majesty,” the chambermaid whispers. “Thank you.”
Susan leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Go now,” she says, and the chambermaid sinks into a low curtsy before her, her gaze fixed on the floor. She doesn’t raise her eyes until they’ve all passed; Eustace glances back over her shoulder to see her rise shakily, pressing her fingers to her face, touching the places where Susan touched her.
They emerge from the servants’ quarters onto a stretch of sodden green earth, hidden from the magnificent Newisle gardens by a ten-foot-tall hedge. It’s still raining steadily, wind whipping the trees into a frenzy; Eustace starts to wipe the water out of his face and then gives it up as a lost cause. Tirian points the way to a gate that Eustace is absolutely positive he wouldn’t have been able to see if he’d been looking for it without help; they step out into Prejun’s gardens to find the house crimnaiad sitting on the edge of the big fountain, kicking her heels against the marble. The fountain is wide enough to swim in, or at least would be without the three statues seemingly suspended in mid-air in the middle, each leaping dog-seal – Eustace thinks they might be called doyarchu, though he’s never seen one – liberally spilling water through their open mouths or outstretched paws
“Your majesty!” she exclaims, seeing Tirian, and then her eyes widen and she jumps down from the fountain, sinking into a low curtsy as she murmurs, “Your most royal majesties.”
“Get up,” Peter says, not entirely ungently, and she straightens slowly, raising one hand to push her waist-length hair out of her face.
“Is he in there?” Tirian demands, gesturing at the back of the manor.
The crimnaiad says, “Yes.”
“Then you’d best leave here.”
She nods calmly and without hesitation, as if she’s been expecting their arrival. Given the fact that she’d been the one to bring Tirian the news of the Long Table’s meeting, perhaps she has; Eustace knows that Cair Paravel’s criminals have spies in all the powerful noble houses in the city. Completely unsurprisingly, she looks at Peter and Susan again before she says, “If I live for another hundred years, I don’t think I’ll ever have so great an honor.”
“Thanks,” Peter says dryly.
More kindly, Susan adds, “It’s our pleasure as well, child of water,” her fingers moving in calm patterns over the scarlet arrow-rest on her bow.
The crimnaiad curtsies again, so low that her long, wet hair, gathered up by strands of dark green waterweed and with a spray of tiny lilies behind one ear, brushes the ground, then she turns and takes a long shallow dive into the fountain. Eustace can’t help but wince, even though he’s well aware that she dissolved into water droplets as soon as she hit the surface.
“Crimnaiads in sewers,” Peter mutters, staring at the spot where the crimnaiad vanished. “To think I’d live to see the day.”
Susan reaches out with one hand and curls her fingers briefly around his. He smiles down at her, his expression soft and a little distracted, before she slips her hand free of his and puts both hands back on her bow.
Peter raises his free hand to wipe his sodden hair out of his eyes, then turns his head to look steadily at Tirian, who’s staring at the manor. There’s a light on in one window; Eustace thinks it might be the master bedroom. “Are you sure about this?” he asks, a question that Eustace to be considered entirely belated, considering the fact that if it wasn’t for Tirian’s vendetta, they could be out of Cair Paravel and well on their way back to Arn Abedin by now.
Tirian doesn’t even look at him. His face is set and miserable, water running freely down it as the rain darkens his red hair. “Yes,” he says. “I’m absolutely certain.” He starts towards the front of the house, his boots leaving outlines in the damp grass before their footprints cover them up, a steady track towards the front of the manor.
Eustace hesitates – God, he’s gone over this with everyone involved already, but it’s not too late yet – then runs to catch up with Peter. “You should stop him,” he says. “Peter, you have to stop him! He’ll listen to you,” he adds, hearing the bitterness in his voice. Tirian only listens to him when there’s nothing being risked.
Peter regards him curiously, not missing a step. He’s sheathed his sword; Eustace notes. “Why would I stop him?” he asks.
“Because he’s going to get us caught,” Eustace says, frustrated. “We should have left Cair Paravel after we finished at the High King’s Arms; this is stupid. What does it matter if Lord Prejun reported to Bahadur? It’s already happened; we can’t change it.”
Peter tilts his head towards Tirian’s back. “King of Narnia,” he says, like that explains anything. “His choice.”
Being a king of Narnia doesn’t protect Tirian from making stupid decisions. Eustace has already raised his protests, but now seems like a good time to echo them, before they get into something they can’t undo and will probably regret. He grits his teeth and hastens his steps to keep up with Peter’s longer legs, saying, “Fine, then, what about the rest of us? The Calormenes took our horses and Prejun has servants, even at night; they’re going to notice if we just start tramping in there doing – I don’t even know what we’re doing. I don’t know what he wants to do!”
The bitterness in his voice surprises him.
“The Long Table’s getting us horses,” Susan says practically.
“And I, for one, am personally in favor of confronting traitors to the throne,” Peter says. They both look at him with identical cool blue gazes; Eustace can’t read anything behind their eyes. It must have been an absolute nightmare to face them in any kind of diplomatic setting, if they really had been king and queen. They’re bad enough over the dinner table.
“I still say you should just leave the matter to us,” Mayor says, still with that faint air of disapproval the entire Long Table had been giving off like thick perfume. Apparently, it’s simply not done for the nobles to interfere in lower city business, and even less so for the King of Narnia or the Narnians’ precious King of Summer and Queen of Spring to do so. “We could take care of him quickly and quietly. This is an offense against the Long Table.”
“It’s an offense against the King of Narnia,” Peter says.
Tirian stops in his tracks and turns around. “It’s an offense against me,” he says – growls – looking as angry and cold-eyed as Eustace has ever seen him. It’s not an unfamiliar expression; Eustace has seen it before. Just not on him.
“Fine, then,” Peter says calmly. He tilts his chin upwards at the lit window. “Whose room is that?”
That makes Tirian blink; he evidently hasn’t thought that far ahead. “Ah…” he begins uncertainly, then blinks again and visibly gets his thoughts together. “That’s my cousin Leocadia’s bedchamber.” He bites his lip, his expression sharpening, and adds, “The servants aren’t in there. The footmen’s and maidservants’ rooms are dark. Ankuso’s is, too, and I’ve never known him to even sleep. Prejun’s sent them away. He’s expecting company he doesn’t want anyone else to see.”
“Probably a good idea,” Peter says. “Half his servants report to members of the Long Table. The other half report to Calormen.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Tirian says softly and starts towards the manor again. Eustace starts to follow him, then Peter catches his shoulder and says softly, “Is there a back door, coz?”
Eustace looks at him in surprise. “Yeah. Why?”
“Show me.”
“But Tirian –” he begins, looking around for him, but Tirian hasn’t even noticed they’ve stopped. He’s almost at the house now.
“Come on, coz,” Peter says patiently. “Su, Mayor, you go after Tirian, but hang back as long as you feel prudent. I want to see what he does on his own.”
“I should –” Eustace says indignantly as Susan nods sharply to Peter and hurries after Tirian, the tiger loping at her heels.
“You,” Peter interrupts, “I don’t trust to wait until a prudent moment. Susan I do. Come on, Scrubb.”
Eustace scowls and changes course towards the back of the manor. It’s not like the back door is particularly hard to miss, after all; there’s a wide half-circle of marble porch, holding up a balcony with slim Corinthian columns around the edges, the top of each one carved in the shape of a bull’s head – no, not bull’s heads, Eustace realizes a moment later as they draw closer. Minotaur heads, each one unique. None of them is Prejun.
“The door’s going to be locked,” he predicts, then tries it. When it doesn’t open beneath his hand, he looks pointedly at Peter.
Peter raises his eyebrows, his expression mild, and produces a slim leather case from inside his jacket. He flips it open, drawing out two slender pieces of metal, and bends over the handle.
“Where the hell did you learn how to pick locks?” Eustace demands. “Were you robbing banks for kicks back in England, is that why –” He doesn’t even have an end for that sentence. He starts again. “I thought you were a king, not a thief!”
“You might be surprised how often those two occupations dovetail,” Peter notes, the door opening beneath his hands. He puts the lock picks away and draws his sword, motioning Eustace behind him before he pushes the door open.
Inside, the hall is cool and dark, the frosted glass lights cold and unlit in their sconces. There’s a light on the far end of the hall, through the open door of Prejun’s study. Eustace glances up at the second floor as they pass the wide, curving staircase that divides the hall in two, but that’s dark too. He can’t see the bedroom with the light from here. The porch outside the front door is dark, no movement visible through the amber panes of glass on either side of the door.
“What –” Eustace begins, and Peter puts his free hand over his mouth. He takes it away at Eustace’s squeak of protest, turning around and reaching into his jacket again. He unfolds the package of cloth he pulls out, taking a thin strip of grayish metal from it, then replaces the package and this time produces what’s unmistakably a packet of matches, complete with the hotel mark on the package.
Eustace gapes at him. “Where did you get that?” he whispers.
Peter raises his eyebrows. “Brighton,” he says, his voice barely a breath on the air. He presses the metal and the matches into Eustace’s hands, glancing around until he spots a delicately made china basin filled with flowers in water. He dashes those out on the floor and takes the metal back from Eustace, crumbling it into the bowl with his bare fingers, then carries it carefully forward, pacing back and forth between the staircase and the wall until he seems to find a position he likes. He puts the bowl down carefully and motions Eustace forward. “When I say so, light the match and drop it in there,” he murmurs in Eustace’s ear. “Then look away as quickly as you can.”
“Why?” Eustace demands, glancing across the staircase at the far hall, the light in Prejun’s study.
“Because –” Peter begins, then strong-arms Eustace back against the staircase as someone pounds on the front door. The pounding continues relentlessly as they watch Prejun emerge from his open door, pacing over the hardwood floor to the door.
“My lord tarkaan Inzamum, I had not thought –” he begins as he opens the door, and Tirian punches him.
He hits for the shoulder, not the face, and it’s probably not the strength of the blow that sends Prejun staggering back so much as it is surprise. It’s next thing to impossible for a human to take a minotaur down by force; it has to be surprise.
“Expecting someone else?” Tirian says, and hits him again.
This time Prejun catches his fist in his great paw of a hand, snapping, “Your majesty, what are you speaking of? Come in before someone sees you.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Tirian snarls. “And take your hands off me, you damned traitor!”
“You aren’t thinking straight,” Prejun says, but there’s a nervous tremor in his voice; he hadn’t expected Tirian to be here. “Come inside, Tirian. Come inside.” When Tirian doesn’t move, he jerks him forward, over the threshold of the house, and lets him go, leaning past him to pull the door closed.
Tirian draws his sword. “Inzamum Tarkaan,” he says. “He’s dead, by the way. In your ambush. Did you try and argue for the Provost’s Guard to be there or did you just decide that the Calormenes make good attack dogs? I trusted you!”
“Listen to yourself, Tirian!” Prejun cries. “You’d trust the Long Table? Bencivenni Maresti? Onahoua Malukai? Elizar Confesor? Some of the worst criminals on the Eastern Ocean, and you would ally yourself with them? What would your father –”
“My father’s been dead for seven years!” For a moment, there’s nothing but pure rage on Tirian’s face, blanched white beneath his red hair with his freckles standing out sharply. He raises his sword one-handed, resting the tip at an angle against Prejun’s chest, where a thrust will push it up beneath the ribs and into the minotaur’s heart. Tirian’s not tall enough to put his sword anywhere above the waist without it being more awkward than threatening.
Prejun goes silent, staring down at the gleaming blade of Tirian’s basket-hilted sword.
Tirian takes a deep breath. “Don’t make this about my father, Prejun,” he says, calmer now. “And don’t make this about the Long Table; I know the Calormenes don’t give a damn about the Table. They wouldn’t turn out for that lot – they’re your business, after all. Lord Provost of Narnia – a position you bought from Bahadur. And to think I defended you.”
Prejun’s look is cold. Eustace has never known a dark minotaur, never met one on the opposite side of a battlefield, but he’s heard the stories; he’s heard the old Narnian legends that say they used to fight for the Queen of Winter until the King of Summer defeated her. He thinks those winter minotaurs must have looked very much like Prejun looks now: like he’s a bare heartbeat away from crushing Tirian’s throat beneath his hand. “You’ve been away from Cair Paravel a long time, Tirian. Do you think I don’t care about Narnia? My Narnia begins and ends at the city gates. I don’t care about what kind of disturbance goes on outside those walls until it makes it inside – so yes. If I could get those scum off the streets by baiting the Calormenes with someone else, then so be it. There is no king of Narnia. There are a few peasants and a few idealists squatting in some forest leagues away from Cair Paravel. There is no king.”
“You’re wrong,” Tirian says. “You’re wrong.” But he’s gone white again; Eustace sees his sword hand start to drop.
Prejun moves too quickly for Eustace to shout a warning; he doesn’t even get out a sound before Peter’s hand is over his mouth again. The minotaur slaps his bare palm into Tirian’s wrist, sending the sword spinning across the hall to stop in a corner of the entryway, and shoves Tirian up against the wall with his other hand around his throat, lifting him up off the floor.
“You will not be killed,” he says, although he sounds rather disgusted with himself. “I have Prince Bahadur’s word that you will be sent to Tashbaan to live out the remainder of your life in exile. Do you think I would be privy to your death, Tirian? You and your sisters are all that remain of Erlian.”
“Don’t call them my sisters!” Tirian chokes out, scrabbling at Prejun’s grip with his hands. “They’re not my fucking sisters!” His struggling has no effect on Prejun, who holds him up impassively.
“Deny them if you will, but they are still your blood,” he says. “They’re still Erlian’s daughters. I will summon Bahadur’s men here and you will be taken away, treated as befits your station –”
“And you believed that lying –”
A light goes on in the upper story. All of them look up as Leocadia of Newisle comes out of her bedroom, leaning over the railing to peer down into the foyer. “Tirian?” she demands, her voice shocked. “Prejun? What in the name of the Queen of Spring are you doing? Have you gone utterly mad?”
“Go back in your room, Leocadia,” Prejun says.
“Get your things and get out of the house, Leo,” Tirian says, his voice going up an octave on the last few syllables as Prejun tightens his grip.
“I will do no such thing –”
“Get out of here!” Prejun bellows suddenly, making Tirian flinch. “You are my wife and that is an order!”
Leocadia steps away from the balcony, and for a moment Eustace thinks she’s obeyed him, then he sees her coming down the stairs, carrying a candle in one hand and holding the front of her dressing gown closed in the other. “What are you doing?” she says again. “Let him go!”
Prejun turns toward her, his expression softening slightly. “You’ll understand later, Leocadia. Now go –”
The movement gives Tirian enough freedom to do something; he punches Prejun in the face. Eustace winces as he shouts in pain, his own hands twitching for want of his sword – where the hell are Susan and Mayor – but the shock is enough that Prejun lets go of him, bellowing with rage as Tirian drops to the floor and rolls away, grabbing for his sword and coming up on one knee with it held out two-handed in front of him.
“Tirian!” Leocadia cries, starting towards him, and Prejun grabs her arm, yanking her back and sending her stumbling towards the stairs, where she sits down hard on the steps, the candle falling from her hand and rolling across the floor until it stops against the wall, the flame licking thoughtfully at the wood paneling, like it hasn’t yet decided whether to catch or not.
There is a pair of huge axes on the wall, what Eustace has taken for the past few days as purely decorative, but Prejun reaches for them now, pulling them from their settings and raising them before him as easily as if they’re made of cardboard.
“No!” Leocadia shouts, jerking to her feet. She grabs at Prejun’s right arm with both hands, trying to drag the axe from his hand, and Tirian yells, “Leo, get out of here!”
“What are you thinking!” she screams at her husband. “That’s Tirian! That’s my cousin!”
Prejun shrugs her aside as easily as he might a fly and Leocadia goes stumbling back again before she straightens herself and moves forward again, her jaw set with determination. Tirian, on his feet now, says, “Leo, please get out of here – go to a friend’s house – your mother’s –”
“My mother’s dead,” Leocadia says, though she stops in her tracks just behind Prejun. “The Calormenes killed her. In case you forgot that Bahadur murdered my entire family,” she snarls at Prejun’s back.
He turns toward her, letting the axes dangle from his hands. “Not your entire family,” he says. “You still have me. And we’ll have children –”
Leocadia blanches white. “I can’t have children!” she all but shrieks. “The Calormenes took that from me too! Or hadn’t you ever wondered where the scars on my belly came from?”
Stab him now, Eustace thinks furiously at Tirian, while his back is turned, but Tirian seems frozen in place, staring at Leocadia in horror.
Quieter, Leocadia adds, her voice pleading, “Tell me what I heard wasn’t true, Prejun. Tell me that you didn’t sell out my cousin – my king – to Bahadur. Tell me you didn’t –”
“He would have come anyway,” Prejun declares. “He would have come and taken his anger out on us, on you. I saved your life –” He lets one axe dangle from a thong around his wrist as he reaches for her, but Leocadia jerks away, stepping back until she stops against a banister.
Her expression is one of stark horror. “You did it,” she says, “you betrayed Narnia. You’re no better than any of them –” Her gesture takes in the entirety of the Garden District, all the peers of Narnia that survive on Calormen’s pittance.
“There’s nothing to betray, Leocadia,” he says. “This is Calormen –”
She slaps him. The blow glances across his muzzle, one of a minotaur’s few vulnerable places, and Prejun roars in rage, backhanding her and sending her sprawling back across the stairs, screaming.
“Leo!” Tirian shouts, lunging forward with his sword outstretched.
Prejun brings one axe down on the blade, breaking it in two, then drops the axe and grabs the remaining half-length of blade in one hand and twists.
Eustace hears the bones in Tirian’s wrist break as he screams in pain. “Do –” he begins, grabbing at his sword, and Peter closes his fingers around his wrist before he lets go and holds up his hand with three fingers raised. He puts them down one by one; Eustace stares before he remembers to light the match, wondering what the hell Peter thinks he’s doing. He puts the third finger down at the same time Susan kicks the door open, and Eustace drops the match in the bowl, belatedly throwing up his arm to cover his eyes.
The world explodes in bright white light.
It only lasts for a few seconds; Eustace is briefly aware of the metallic smell of something burning, but by the time he can see again there’s nothing left in the bowl but a few grains of white ash. He looks up to see Susan standing in the door with her bow drawn and an arrow nocked; there’s another one gone straight through the palm of Prejun’s sword hand, scarlet fletching still quivering. Peter’s at Tirian’s side, his sword raised, and Mayor is crouching on his other side, teeth bared in a snarl.
Behind Prejun, the wall is on fire, flames from the spilled candle steadily devouring the paneling and the hung paintings.
Peter tilts his chin up, his expression utterly cold. “I don’t like traitors, Lord Prejun,” he says, and Prejun gapes at him in shock.
“I – you – you’re –”
“I’m the High King of Narnia,” Peter says. “Peter the Magnificent of Narnia, King of Summer.”
Eustace sees Susan catch his eye, then tilt her head toward the fallen Leocadia. He spares a glance at Tirian, who’s still clutching the broken hilt of his sword, and scrambles to Leocadia’s side. She’s conscious; Prejun hadn’t hit her with a minotaur’s full strength. If he had, he’d have broken her neck. Still, her gaze wanders a little as he helps her up, drawing her carefully back into the shelter of the hallway, where it’s a straight shot to the back door and the tunnel in the servants’ quarters.
If Prejun were human, Eustace would expect him to go dead white with fear. He’s tempted to do so; Peter’s never looked less human in his life. He looks – he looks like Aslan, implacable and disdainful of anything beneath him.
Prejun drops his one remaining axe; it hits the floor blade-first and stands up, quivering. He stares at the arrow in his hand, his gaze flicking quickly to Susan. Shaking, he makes the four point sign with his good hand.
“I think it’s a little late for that,” Susan says coldly. Her bow doesn’t waver an inch, even though she’s holding it at full-draw, bent back in a C. Eustace can only imagine the strain on her arms and shoulders. She looks like some of the statues of the Narnian archer-goddess he’s seen; Strongbow, equivalent with the Queen of Spring and the goddess of spited women, the Widowmaker.
A little wildly, Eustace thinks that surely Leocadia must count as a spited woman now. She’s leaning hard into his shoulder; her pupils are different sizes and he thinks she might have a concussion. Prejun might not have hit her with his full strength, but he’d still hit her hard.
“One punishment for traitors,” Peter says, and flips his sword around in his hand as if it weighs nothing, offering the hilt to Tirian. “To me belongeth vengeance and recompense. If you’re going to kill him, King Tirian, do it properly. Don’t make the mistake your ancestor King Caspian did.”
Leocadia squeaks a little in protest, then turns her face into Eustace’s shoulder, trembling. Mayor, who’s moved in front of them both, growls.
Tirian lets the broken hilt of his sword fall, reaching for Rhindon with both hands. His fingers brush the pommel – and then he lowers his hands and shakes his head. “No,” he says, and his expression is cold and so familiar that Eustace wants to drop everything and run as far and fast as he can. The last time he’d seen that look had been on the face of the Lady of the Green Kirtle, just after Puddleglum had broken her spell and just before she’d turned into a serpent to try and kill Rilian.
“No,” Tirian says again. “I would save that blade for a Narnian, your majesty. Prejun of Newisle has said himself that he has chosen Calormen over Narnia; since it’s Calormen he’s failed this night, let it be Calormen that punishes him. After all,” he adds slowly, “he is the one who led Tarkaan Inzamum and his men into an ambush. The Tisroc has his own punishments for such failure and betrayal, whichever of the two it may be.” He turns away from Prejun, deliberately and comes over to Eustace and Leocadia, putting an arm around his cousin’s shoulders.
Prejun is shaking. “Your majesty,” he says to Peter, “I beg you – I still bow to the Kings and Queens of Summer –”
“You are none of mine or my family’s,” Peter says, but his gaze is cool and steady. Susan steps away from the door, her aim never wavering as she takes smooth steps sideways until she and Peter are flanking the entrance to the hallway.
Mayor doesn’t move, his growl a low, constant rumble, the only sound in the room besides the crackle of flames and the drip-drip of blood from Prejun’s punctured palm. Eustace sees the minotaur take one shaky breath, then another, his gaze finally fixing on Mayor. “So,” he says, his voice surprisingly steady now, as if he’s made the decision to disregard Peter and Susan’s presence. “So. May Your Life Be Long And Your Enemies Honorable, Elizar Confesor’s pet. It is true. You ransom your name and your honor for nothing, Tirian; bring your gods to Narnia if you will, but not even the Kings and Queens of Summer can stand against the might of Calormen and the wrath of Tash.”
“Believe that if you wish,” Tirian says coldly, turning back towards him. “Red and gold are good colors for a funeral.”
This time, when he leaves, he doesn’t look back.
Mayor rises without a word and pads silently after him, his tail twitching furiously. There’s a crack as a section of the wall collapses; the firelight casts orange shadows on the tiger’s white fur before he follows Tirian and Leocadia out the back door. Peter and Susan go without a word between them, just another one of those unreadable shared looks, until only Eustace and Prejun are left together in the burning house.
Prejun grasps the arrow in his good hand and pulls it out without breaking the shaft, bringing on a fresh gush of bright blood. He looks down at the arrow with real fear in his eyes, then some of his arrogance comes back as he turns his gaze on Eustace. “And what do you want, Outlander?” he demands.
“Your house is on fire,” Eustace says, and deliberately smashes the bowl he’d dropped the match into as he leaves.
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language
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 sixteen, 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. Thanks to
snacky for the beta!Not all that long ago, Eustace had been in this very same tunnel – or one very like it, anyway – on his way back from the castle after he and Tirian had done their best to rob it blind and come away only with Susan’s bow, quiver, and horn. He’s surprised they’d gotten away with that; the castle had been swarming with soldiers after the breakout in the dungeons and they’d nearly gotten caught at least twice before they’d made it back into the tunnels.
He’s not positive this is the same tunnel as the one that leads up to the castle, but it’s enough like it that Eustace can’t tell for sure. Tunnels are much the same to him; he’s seen too many in Narnia. Some days it seems like every time he turns around he’s crawling around beneath the earth for one reason or another, even though he knows that’s not true. Even if this isn’t the same tunnel, it has to connect to the other one eventually; they’re going back to the Newisle manor.
There’s a cut on the side of Eustace’s neck that stings like someone’s rubbed winter pepper on it; he rubs at it with two fingers, which doesn’t do anything but irritate it more and open the wound, a few more drops of blood beading up and smearing across his fingertips. He’s uncomfortably aware of the tiger behind him, padding near-silently through the inch or so of water in the crowded tunnels. There hadn’t been a lot of the great cats at Haven; they make them nervous. The size of their sodding teeth –
Most of the Long Table had wanted to make an example of Lord Prejun, kill him themselves and burn the Newisle manor to the ground with the sign of the Long Table written on the gates. Tirian and Peter and Susan had managed to talk them out of it, somehow; Tirian had said, “This is not about the Long Table, it is about me; Prejun of Newisle is a noble of Narnia and my responsibility – mine to punish. He did this to me, not to you.”
Eustace has the feeling that the Long Table doesn’t particularly care who Prejun might have been targeting when he informed to the Calormenes; no matter what Tirian says to Prejun when they get back to the manor, the Long Table will go after him as soon as they leave the city. They give off the certain impression of not giving a shit what the King of Narnia thinks. They care slightly more about the opinions of Peter and Susan, enough so to let them have first crack at Prejun. He still doesn’t know why the tiger is here; it’s probably just the Long Table’s way of spying on them.
Abruptly, Eustace says out loud, “Why is the city under two feet of water but there’s barely an inch of it down here under the city?”
“The tunnels under the city are dwarf-built,” Tirian says. “The best engineers in Narnia. Rilian the Disenchanted had dwarves build the tunnels beneath the castle, but the ones beneath the city are reinforced with tree roots because of the city dryads. They support the tunnels rather than work against them, the same thing with the levees on the river. When they put sewers in beneath the city, they work around the tunnels, although I think some of the tunnels intersect with the sewers. There used to be crimnaiads in the sewers as well as the fountains to make sure they don’t flood the tunnels or the city. Sprites, too.”
“There still are,” the tiger – Mayor, Eustace thinks his name is – says. “We’re not likely to run into any, though. How does a castle boy like you know so much about the city?”
Tirian glances up at the ceiling of the tunnel, where a web of thin, wispy tree roots weave a net around the dark earth above. “After my grandfather died I spent a lot of time wandering around the lower city, all the places that I’d read about in the castle library.”
“I bet King Erlian loved that.”
“My father was a little too occupied with his mistress and his bastards to care about what his son was doing in my copious spare time,” Tirian says bitterly. “Aside from making sure that I turned out for the funeral and the coronation. And the wedding, unfortunately, where I wasn’t as drunk as I would have liked to have been.”
“The Bitch,” Mayor says, sounding bemused, and Eustace can hear the capitalization. “Tarkheena Firouzeen Blackhair.”
“The Bitch,” Tirian says, and they share a moment of frankly alarming empathetic hatred.
“Your father married a Calormene woman?” Peter exclaims.
“My father married Bahadur’s bastard half-sister,” Tirian says, sounding far too cheerful about the matter. “Morganatically, or my grandmother would have had him killed. I think she was considering it anyway. Bastian Thrice-Married’s first wife Nealie was bad enough, but he had two other wives to try and get a son. Grandmother would never suffer the Tisroc’s bastard daughter on the throne of Narnia, even if the Bitch was acknowledged.” After a moment, he adds thoughtfully, “Sometimes I wonder if that’s why the Tisroc invaded Narnia – because he thinks it should have been his after my father died. But I was still the heir; Firouzeen’s children were never legitimized.”
“I doubt it,” Susan says, her voice bitter. “Calormen has wanted Narnia since before our time – I know they tried at least once during the Long Winter, and there are records in Tashbaan of invasions hundreds of years earlier. I saw them once when I was there, a long time ago.”
Eustace doesn’t miss the look Peter throws her, his brows drawing together in worry before he looks away. He hasn’t stirred more than a few feet from her side since they left the High King’s Arms.
Susan doesn’t appear to notice. “The Tisroc probably would have invaded no matter who your father married.”
“Probably,” Tirian says, his voice soft. He touches his hand to the hilt of his sword, staring off into the distance of the tunnel.
Up ahead of him, the lantern Tirian is carrying throws up long shadows on the damp, dark walls, thick with the rich earth of Narnia, with a few wispy tendrils of root weaving in and out. Eustace imagines the whole network of tunnels beneath Cair Paravel, spreading out like blood vessels in a human body. He tries to picture a London Tube map, because surely the underground of Cair Paravel must look something like that, but it’s been so bloody long since he’s looked at one that he can’t remember what it looks like.
There are dozens of tunnels like this one beneath Cair Paravel. Some of them have collapsed in the centuries since they were built, others have flooded, some have been closed off for various reasons. (Tirian had been cagy about the old story of a dragon that’s never seen the light of day living in the tunnels; Eustace is only mostly convinced it’s a story used to scare small children. He never jokes around with dragons.) Apparently there are a fair number that have either been found by the Calormenes or reported by Narnian traitors; this is where a lot of the Long Table’s smuggling has been going on, but it’s been significantly curtailed in the past few years because the Calormenes have been looking beneath the earth rather than above it.
Being down here doesn’t remind him as much of being Underworld has he’d thought it might; it’s too…high, high is a good way to describe it. Underworld had always felt like being stifled, like the weight of the earth was pressing down on him from all sides, even in the wide open space of the city or the lake. It’s much easier for Eustace to picture Cair Paravel going about its business only a few feet over his head; he thinks that if it were during the day, he might be able to hear a wagon or a carriage rumble by, if they happen to be beneath a street, and that’s several kinds of ridiculously relieving. He hadn’t liked Underworld at all; the Lady of the Green Kirtle had barely been a factor. This reminds him more of the orlop deck on the Dawn Treader – dark and comfortable, rocked by the belly of the ocean. He can almost smell the sea.
“Here,” Tirian and Mayor say, nearly at the same time, and Eustace looks around until he sees the wooden ladder set into the wall. It should lead straight up into a storage room in the servants’ quarters of the Newisle manor; another relic of the smuggling ring that the old Newisles had apparently run from beneath the very shadow of the castle.
Peter glances around at them, the torchlight in the little round lantern on his wrist reflecting off the golden hilt of his sword. “I’ll go first,” he says, and reaches for the ladder, but Tirian gets his hand on it first and says, utterly polite, “Your majesty, I know this area,” in the kind of tone that means he won’t be argued with.
Peter steps back, raising both hands a little as if to say, “What can you do?” and lets Tirian ascend, pushing up a hatch above them and sending down a shower of dirt to the floor. Peter goes up after him, then Susan, and Eustace follows, noting the Newisle arms carved in repeating patterns on the ladder. The Narnians have to make everything pretty, it seems; sometimes it seems like there’s not a square inch left undecorated, even in the middle of the wilderness.
Once he’s above ground, Eustace turns to stare down at Mayor, who’s standing alone at the bottom of the ladder. “He’s not going to be able to make it up here –” he begins, and Peter turns to look over his shoulder at him, his sword unsheathed in his hand.
“Didn’t Aunt Alberta have a cat?” he says.
Eustace stares at the non sequitur. “No,” he says slowly. “Alberta thought that cats were pests and spread disease. And shed. Or maybe that was pigeons, I don’t know. And Harold was allergic.”
Peter frowns. “I thought she had a cat.”
“Gerbils,” Susan corrects. “She had gerbils.”
“What are you talking about?” Mayor demands.
Eustace turns around and nearly falls back into the tunnel, because the tiger is three-quarters of the way up the ladder and going strong, even though he’s scowling like a madman, which mostly involves showing far too many of those far too long and sharp teeth. How in blazes anything as big as a tiger – anything with four legs – can make it up a ladder –
Mayor scrambles the rest of the way out, tail lashing in distaste, and says, “Dear gods of my ancestors, I’m out of shape. I don’t remember that being nearly so difficult.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time in bars drinking with Elizar Confesor,” Susan suggests, her voice light and teasing, and Mayor turns his scowl on her before he thinks better of it and goes back to nosing around the floor.
Tirian crouches down and closes the hatch again, spreading a ragged carpet over it and the cracked stone floor around it. He straightens up again, his gaze flickering to the bow in Susan’s hand, where she’s nocked an arrow but hasn’t yet drawn it. “This part of the servants’ quarters hasn’t been used for anything but storage in years,” he says. “All the servants should be sleeping at this hour, I’d think.”
“Is it connected to the house?” Susan asks.
“No. We’ll have to go outside.” He scowls suddenly, his expression darkening, and says, “I want to use the bloody front door.”
“All right,” Peter agrees suddenly. “Tell us the way. We’ll lead.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say, ‘First you open the door’,” Eustace offers, and Peter rolls his eyes, his expression long-suffering. Susan smiles a little, though, and finally draws her bow, raising it so that the kiss-ring on the arrow touches the corner of her mouth.
Peter glances back at her and smiles, then opens the door. The two of them go out first into the hallway, Tirian short on their heels.
“Go left,” he says as Eustace and Mayor follow them out. He gives directions through a maze of hallways, his voice soft.
It’s on the tip of Eustace’s tongue to ask why the servants’ quarters are so large, but then he remembers how many servants the Newisle manor had actually employed; it had seemed like they’d hired someone for each individual task, like their servants were incapable of doing more than one thing. There are probably as many servants here as there are inhabitants of whole camps back in the Western Wild. It’s completely mad, that’s what it is.
He thinks they’ve made it into the clear when a door opens and a faun girl he recognizes as a chambermaid steps out, raising one hand to her mouth as if she’d been in the midst of stifling a yawn. She stands like that, frozen and staring at Peter and Susan in front of her, for a moment of terrifying silence, and then she exclaims in a soft whisper, “King of Summer and Queen of Spring! I have not been wicked, I swear; you know I light a candle to you both each night, that I have put out offerings all this winter that you might come again.” She makes the four point sign over her chest. “The Queen of Winter take me away if I lie.”
Not again! Eustace thinks, because is there anyone in Narnia – but he sees Peter’s gaze flicker quickly to Susan, then Susan lowers her bow and steps forward, holding her arrow in place with one hand as she cups the girl’s cheek in the other. “Be at peace, child of Narnia,” she says softly. “Spring is in Narnia again, and summer on his way.” She tilts the girl’s chin up with her fingers. “Find a way to leave this place before the dawn,” she says. “You and the innocent here. Something ill is coming. Do you understand?”
“Yes, your majesty,” the chambermaid whispers. “Thank you.”
Susan leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Go now,” she says, and the chambermaid sinks into a low curtsy before her, her gaze fixed on the floor. She doesn’t raise her eyes until they’ve all passed; Eustace glances back over her shoulder to see her rise shakily, pressing her fingers to her face, touching the places where Susan touched her.
They emerge from the servants’ quarters onto a stretch of sodden green earth, hidden from the magnificent Newisle gardens by a ten-foot-tall hedge. It’s still raining steadily, wind whipping the trees into a frenzy; Eustace starts to wipe the water out of his face and then gives it up as a lost cause. Tirian points the way to a gate that Eustace is absolutely positive he wouldn’t have been able to see if he’d been looking for it without help; they step out into Prejun’s gardens to find the house crimnaiad sitting on the edge of the big fountain, kicking her heels against the marble. The fountain is wide enough to swim in, or at least would be without the three statues seemingly suspended in mid-air in the middle, each leaping dog-seal – Eustace thinks they might be called doyarchu, though he’s never seen one – liberally spilling water through their open mouths or outstretched paws
“Your majesty!” she exclaims, seeing Tirian, and then her eyes widen and she jumps down from the fountain, sinking into a low curtsy as she murmurs, “Your most royal majesties.”
“Get up,” Peter says, not entirely ungently, and she straightens slowly, raising one hand to push her waist-length hair out of her face.
“Is he in there?” Tirian demands, gesturing at the back of the manor.
The crimnaiad says, “Yes.”
“Then you’d best leave here.”
She nods calmly and without hesitation, as if she’s been expecting their arrival. Given the fact that she’d been the one to bring Tirian the news of the Long Table’s meeting, perhaps she has; Eustace knows that Cair Paravel’s criminals have spies in all the powerful noble houses in the city. Completely unsurprisingly, she looks at Peter and Susan again before she says, “If I live for another hundred years, I don’t think I’ll ever have so great an honor.”
“Thanks,” Peter says dryly.
More kindly, Susan adds, “It’s our pleasure as well, child of water,” her fingers moving in calm patterns over the scarlet arrow-rest on her bow.
The crimnaiad curtsies again, so low that her long, wet hair, gathered up by strands of dark green waterweed and with a spray of tiny lilies behind one ear, brushes the ground, then she turns and takes a long shallow dive into the fountain. Eustace can’t help but wince, even though he’s well aware that she dissolved into water droplets as soon as she hit the surface.
“Crimnaiads in sewers,” Peter mutters, staring at the spot where the crimnaiad vanished. “To think I’d live to see the day.”
Susan reaches out with one hand and curls her fingers briefly around his. He smiles down at her, his expression soft and a little distracted, before she slips her hand free of his and puts both hands back on her bow.
Peter raises his free hand to wipe his sodden hair out of his eyes, then turns his head to look steadily at Tirian, who’s staring at the manor. There’s a light on in one window; Eustace thinks it might be the master bedroom. “Are you sure about this?” he asks, a question that Eustace to be considered entirely belated, considering the fact that if it wasn’t for Tirian’s vendetta, they could be out of Cair Paravel and well on their way back to Arn Abedin by now.
Tirian doesn’t even look at him. His face is set and miserable, water running freely down it as the rain darkens his red hair. “Yes,” he says. “I’m absolutely certain.” He starts towards the front of the house, his boots leaving outlines in the damp grass before their footprints cover them up, a steady track towards the front of the manor.
Eustace hesitates – God, he’s gone over this with everyone involved already, but it’s not too late yet – then runs to catch up with Peter. “You should stop him,” he says. “Peter, you have to stop him! He’ll listen to you,” he adds, hearing the bitterness in his voice. Tirian only listens to him when there’s nothing being risked.
Peter regards him curiously, not missing a step. He’s sheathed his sword; Eustace notes. “Why would I stop him?” he asks.
“Because he’s going to get us caught,” Eustace says, frustrated. “We should have left Cair Paravel after we finished at the High King’s Arms; this is stupid. What does it matter if Lord Prejun reported to Bahadur? It’s already happened; we can’t change it.”
Peter tilts his head towards Tirian’s back. “King of Narnia,” he says, like that explains anything. “His choice.”
Being a king of Narnia doesn’t protect Tirian from making stupid decisions. Eustace has already raised his protests, but now seems like a good time to echo them, before they get into something they can’t undo and will probably regret. He grits his teeth and hastens his steps to keep up with Peter’s longer legs, saying, “Fine, then, what about the rest of us? The Calormenes took our horses and Prejun has servants, even at night; they’re going to notice if we just start tramping in there doing – I don’t even know what we’re doing. I don’t know what he wants to do!”
The bitterness in his voice surprises him.
“The Long Table’s getting us horses,” Susan says practically.
“And I, for one, am personally in favor of confronting traitors to the throne,” Peter says. They both look at him with identical cool blue gazes; Eustace can’t read anything behind their eyes. It must have been an absolute nightmare to face them in any kind of diplomatic setting, if they really had been king and queen. They’re bad enough over the dinner table.
“I still say you should just leave the matter to us,” Mayor says, still with that faint air of disapproval the entire Long Table had been giving off like thick perfume. Apparently, it’s simply not done for the nobles to interfere in lower city business, and even less so for the King of Narnia or the Narnians’ precious King of Summer and Queen of Spring to do so. “We could take care of him quickly and quietly. This is an offense against the Long Table.”
“It’s an offense against the King of Narnia,” Peter says.
Tirian stops in his tracks and turns around. “It’s an offense against me,” he says – growls – looking as angry and cold-eyed as Eustace has ever seen him. It’s not an unfamiliar expression; Eustace has seen it before. Just not on him.
“Fine, then,” Peter says calmly. He tilts his chin upwards at the lit window. “Whose room is that?”
That makes Tirian blink; he evidently hasn’t thought that far ahead. “Ah…” he begins uncertainly, then blinks again and visibly gets his thoughts together. “That’s my cousin Leocadia’s bedchamber.” He bites his lip, his expression sharpening, and adds, “The servants aren’t in there. The footmen’s and maidservants’ rooms are dark. Ankuso’s is, too, and I’ve never known him to even sleep. Prejun’s sent them away. He’s expecting company he doesn’t want anyone else to see.”
“Probably a good idea,” Peter says. “Half his servants report to members of the Long Table. The other half report to Calormen.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Tirian says softly and starts towards the manor again. Eustace starts to follow him, then Peter catches his shoulder and says softly, “Is there a back door, coz?”
Eustace looks at him in surprise. “Yeah. Why?”
“Show me.”
“But Tirian –” he begins, looking around for him, but Tirian hasn’t even noticed they’ve stopped. He’s almost at the house now.
“Come on, coz,” Peter says patiently. “Su, Mayor, you go after Tirian, but hang back as long as you feel prudent. I want to see what he does on his own.”
“I should –” Eustace says indignantly as Susan nods sharply to Peter and hurries after Tirian, the tiger loping at her heels.
“You,” Peter interrupts, “I don’t trust to wait until a prudent moment. Susan I do. Come on, Scrubb.”
Eustace scowls and changes course towards the back of the manor. It’s not like the back door is particularly hard to miss, after all; there’s a wide half-circle of marble porch, holding up a balcony with slim Corinthian columns around the edges, the top of each one carved in the shape of a bull’s head – no, not bull’s heads, Eustace realizes a moment later as they draw closer. Minotaur heads, each one unique. None of them is Prejun.
“The door’s going to be locked,” he predicts, then tries it. When it doesn’t open beneath his hand, he looks pointedly at Peter.
Peter raises his eyebrows, his expression mild, and produces a slim leather case from inside his jacket. He flips it open, drawing out two slender pieces of metal, and bends over the handle.
“Where the hell did you learn how to pick locks?” Eustace demands. “Were you robbing banks for kicks back in England, is that why –” He doesn’t even have an end for that sentence. He starts again. “I thought you were a king, not a thief!”
“You might be surprised how often those two occupations dovetail,” Peter notes, the door opening beneath his hands. He puts the lock picks away and draws his sword, motioning Eustace behind him before he pushes the door open.
Inside, the hall is cool and dark, the frosted glass lights cold and unlit in their sconces. There’s a light on the far end of the hall, through the open door of Prejun’s study. Eustace glances up at the second floor as they pass the wide, curving staircase that divides the hall in two, but that’s dark too. He can’t see the bedroom with the light from here. The porch outside the front door is dark, no movement visible through the amber panes of glass on either side of the door.
“What –” Eustace begins, and Peter puts his free hand over his mouth. He takes it away at Eustace’s squeak of protest, turning around and reaching into his jacket again. He unfolds the package of cloth he pulls out, taking a thin strip of grayish metal from it, then replaces the package and this time produces what’s unmistakably a packet of matches, complete with the hotel mark on the package.
Eustace gapes at him. “Where did you get that?” he whispers.
Peter raises his eyebrows. “Brighton,” he says, his voice barely a breath on the air. He presses the metal and the matches into Eustace’s hands, glancing around until he spots a delicately made china basin filled with flowers in water. He dashes those out on the floor and takes the metal back from Eustace, crumbling it into the bowl with his bare fingers, then carries it carefully forward, pacing back and forth between the staircase and the wall until he seems to find a position he likes. He puts the bowl down carefully and motions Eustace forward. “When I say so, light the match and drop it in there,” he murmurs in Eustace’s ear. “Then look away as quickly as you can.”
“Why?” Eustace demands, glancing across the staircase at the far hall, the light in Prejun’s study.
“Because –” Peter begins, then strong-arms Eustace back against the staircase as someone pounds on the front door. The pounding continues relentlessly as they watch Prejun emerge from his open door, pacing over the hardwood floor to the door.
“My lord tarkaan Inzamum, I had not thought –” he begins as he opens the door, and Tirian punches him.
He hits for the shoulder, not the face, and it’s probably not the strength of the blow that sends Prejun staggering back so much as it is surprise. It’s next thing to impossible for a human to take a minotaur down by force; it has to be surprise.
“Expecting someone else?” Tirian says, and hits him again.
This time Prejun catches his fist in his great paw of a hand, snapping, “Your majesty, what are you speaking of? Come in before someone sees you.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Tirian snarls. “And take your hands off me, you damned traitor!”
“You aren’t thinking straight,” Prejun says, but there’s a nervous tremor in his voice; he hadn’t expected Tirian to be here. “Come inside, Tirian. Come inside.” When Tirian doesn’t move, he jerks him forward, over the threshold of the house, and lets him go, leaning past him to pull the door closed.
Tirian draws his sword. “Inzamum Tarkaan,” he says. “He’s dead, by the way. In your ambush. Did you try and argue for the Provost’s Guard to be there or did you just decide that the Calormenes make good attack dogs? I trusted you!”
“Listen to yourself, Tirian!” Prejun cries. “You’d trust the Long Table? Bencivenni Maresti? Onahoua Malukai? Elizar Confesor? Some of the worst criminals on the Eastern Ocean, and you would ally yourself with them? What would your father –”
“My father’s been dead for seven years!” For a moment, there’s nothing but pure rage on Tirian’s face, blanched white beneath his red hair with his freckles standing out sharply. He raises his sword one-handed, resting the tip at an angle against Prejun’s chest, where a thrust will push it up beneath the ribs and into the minotaur’s heart. Tirian’s not tall enough to put his sword anywhere above the waist without it being more awkward than threatening.
Prejun goes silent, staring down at the gleaming blade of Tirian’s basket-hilted sword.
Tirian takes a deep breath. “Don’t make this about my father, Prejun,” he says, calmer now. “And don’t make this about the Long Table; I know the Calormenes don’t give a damn about the Table. They wouldn’t turn out for that lot – they’re your business, after all. Lord Provost of Narnia – a position you bought from Bahadur. And to think I defended you.”
Prejun’s look is cold. Eustace has never known a dark minotaur, never met one on the opposite side of a battlefield, but he’s heard the stories; he’s heard the old Narnian legends that say they used to fight for the Queen of Winter until the King of Summer defeated her. He thinks those winter minotaurs must have looked very much like Prejun looks now: like he’s a bare heartbeat away from crushing Tirian’s throat beneath his hand. “You’ve been away from Cair Paravel a long time, Tirian. Do you think I don’t care about Narnia? My Narnia begins and ends at the city gates. I don’t care about what kind of disturbance goes on outside those walls until it makes it inside – so yes. If I could get those scum off the streets by baiting the Calormenes with someone else, then so be it. There is no king of Narnia. There are a few peasants and a few idealists squatting in some forest leagues away from Cair Paravel. There is no king.”
“You’re wrong,” Tirian says. “You’re wrong.” But he’s gone white again; Eustace sees his sword hand start to drop.
Prejun moves too quickly for Eustace to shout a warning; he doesn’t even get out a sound before Peter’s hand is over his mouth again. The minotaur slaps his bare palm into Tirian’s wrist, sending the sword spinning across the hall to stop in a corner of the entryway, and shoves Tirian up against the wall with his other hand around his throat, lifting him up off the floor.
“You will not be killed,” he says, although he sounds rather disgusted with himself. “I have Prince Bahadur’s word that you will be sent to Tashbaan to live out the remainder of your life in exile. Do you think I would be privy to your death, Tirian? You and your sisters are all that remain of Erlian.”
“Don’t call them my sisters!” Tirian chokes out, scrabbling at Prejun’s grip with his hands. “They’re not my fucking sisters!” His struggling has no effect on Prejun, who holds him up impassively.
“Deny them if you will, but they are still your blood,” he says. “They’re still Erlian’s daughters. I will summon Bahadur’s men here and you will be taken away, treated as befits your station –”
“And you believed that lying –”
A light goes on in the upper story. All of them look up as Leocadia of Newisle comes out of her bedroom, leaning over the railing to peer down into the foyer. “Tirian?” she demands, her voice shocked. “Prejun? What in the name of the Queen of Spring are you doing? Have you gone utterly mad?”
“Go back in your room, Leocadia,” Prejun says.
“Get your things and get out of the house, Leo,” Tirian says, his voice going up an octave on the last few syllables as Prejun tightens his grip.
“I will do no such thing –”
“Get out of here!” Prejun bellows suddenly, making Tirian flinch. “You are my wife and that is an order!”
Leocadia steps away from the balcony, and for a moment Eustace thinks she’s obeyed him, then he sees her coming down the stairs, carrying a candle in one hand and holding the front of her dressing gown closed in the other. “What are you doing?” she says again. “Let him go!”
Prejun turns toward her, his expression softening slightly. “You’ll understand later, Leocadia. Now go –”
The movement gives Tirian enough freedom to do something; he punches Prejun in the face. Eustace winces as he shouts in pain, his own hands twitching for want of his sword – where the hell are Susan and Mayor – but the shock is enough that Prejun lets go of him, bellowing with rage as Tirian drops to the floor and rolls away, grabbing for his sword and coming up on one knee with it held out two-handed in front of him.
“Tirian!” Leocadia cries, starting towards him, and Prejun grabs her arm, yanking her back and sending her stumbling towards the stairs, where she sits down hard on the steps, the candle falling from her hand and rolling across the floor until it stops against the wall, the flame licking thoughtfully at the wood paneling, like it hasn’t yet decided whether to catch or not.
There is a pair of huge axes on the wall, what Eustace has taken for the past few days as purely decorative, but Prejun reaches for them now, pulling them from their settings and raising them before him as easily as if they’re made of cardboard.
“No!” Leocadia shouts, jerking to her feet. She grabs at Prejun’s right arm with both hands, trying to drag the axe from his hand, and Tirian yells, “Leo, get out of here!”
“What are you thinking!” she screams at her husband. “That’s Tirian! That’s my cousin!”
Prejun shrugs her aside as easily as he might a fly and Leocadia goes stumbling back again before she straightens herself and moves forward again, her jaw set with determination. Tirian, on his feet now, says, “Leo, please get out of here – go to a friend’s house – your mother’s –”
“My mother’s dead,” Leocadia says, though she stops in her tracks just behind Prejun. “The Calormenes killed her. In case you forgot that Bahadur murdered my entire family,” she snarls at Prejun’s back.
He turns toward her, letting the axes dangle from his hands. “Not your entire family,” he says. “You still have me. And we’ll have children –”
Leocadia blanches white. “I can’t have children!” she all but shrieks. “The Calormenes took that from me too! Or hadn’t you ever wondered where the scars on my belly came from?”
Stab him now, Eustace thinks furiously at Tirian, while his back is turned, but Tirian seems frozen in place, staring at Leocadia in horror.
Quieter, Leocadia adds, her voice pleading, “Tell me what I heard wasn’t true, Prejun. Tell me that you didn’t sell out my cousin – my king – to Bahadur. Tell me you didn’t –”
“He would have come anyway,” Prejun declares. “He would have come and taken his anger out on us, on you. I saved your life –” He lets one axe dangle from a thong around his wrist as he reaches for her, but Leocadia jerks away, stepping back until she stops against a banister.
Her expression is one of stark horror. “You did it,” she says, “you betrayed Narnia. You’re no better than any of them –” Her gesture takes in the entirety of the Garden District, all the peers of Narnia that survive on Calormen’s pittance.
“There’s nothing to betray, Leocadia,” he says. “This is Calormen –”
She slaps him. The blow glances across his muzzle, one of a minotaur’s few vulnerable places, and Prejun roars in rage, backhanding her and sending her sprawling back across the stairs, screaming.
“Leo!” Tirian shouts, lunging forward with his sword outstretched.
Prejun brings one axe down on the blade, breaking it in two, then drops the axe and grabs the remaining half-length of blade in one hand and twists.
Eustace hears the bones in Tirian’s wrist break as he screams in pain. “Do –” he begins, grabbing at his sword, and Peter closes his fingers around his wrist before he lets go and holds up his hand with three fingers raised. He puts them down one by one; Eustace stares before he remembers to light the match, wondering what the hell Peter thinks he’s doing. He puts the third finger down at the same time Susan kicks the door open, and Eustace drops the match in the bowl, belatedly throwing up his arm to cover his eyes.
The world explodes in bright white light.
It only lasts for a few seconds; Eustace is briefly aware of the metallic smell of something burning, but by the time he can see again there’s nothing left in the bowl but a few grains of white ash. He looks up to see Susan standing in the door with her bow drawn and an arrow nocked; there’s another one gone straight through the palm of Prejun’s sword hand, scarlet fletching still quivering. Peter’s at Tirian’s side, his sword raised, and Mayor is crouching on his other side, teeth bared in a snarl.
Behind Prejun, the wall is on fire, flames from the spilled candle steadily devouring the paneling and the hung paintings.
Peter tilts his chin up, his expression utterly cold. “I don’t like traitors, Lord Prejun,” he says, and Prejun gapes at him in shock.
“I – you – you’re –”
“I’m the High King of Narnia,” Peter says. “Peter the Magnificent of Narnia, King of Summer.”
Eustace sees Susan catch his eye, then tilt her head toward the fallen Leocadia. He spares a glance at Tirian, who’s still clutching the broken hilt of his sword, and scrambles to Leocadia’s side. She’s conscious; Prejun hadn’t hit her with a minotaur’s full strength. If he had, he’d have broken her neck. Still, her gaze wanders a little as he helps her up, drawing her carefully back into the shelter of the hallway, where it’s a straight shot to the back door and the tunnel in the servants’ quarters.
If Prejun were human, Eustace would expect him to go dead white with fear. He’s tempted to do so; Peter’s never looked less human in his life. He looks – he looks like Aslan, implacable and disdainful of anything beneath him.
Prejun drops his one remaining axe; it hits the floor blade-first and stands up, quivering. He stares at the arrow in his hand, his gaze flicking quickly to Susan. Shaking, he makes the four point sign with his good hand.
“I think it’s a little late for that,” Susan says coldly. Her bow doesn’t waver an inch, even though she’s holding it at full-draw, bent back in a C. Eustace can only imagine the strain on her arms and shoulders. She looks like some of the statues of the Narnian archer-goddess he’s seen; Strongbow, equivalent with the Queen of Spring and the goddess of spited women, the Widowmaker.
A little wildly, Eustace thinks that surely Leocadia must count as a spited woman now. She’s leaning hard into his shoulder; her pupils are different sizes and he thinks she might have a concussion. Prejun might not have hit her with his full strength, but he’d still hit her hard.
“One punishment for traitors,” Peter says, and flips his sword around in his hand as if it weighs nothing, offering the hilt to Tirian. “To me belongeth vengeance and recompense. If you’re going to kill him, King Tirian, do it properly. Don’t make the mistake your ancestor King Caspian did.”
Leocadia squeaks a little in protest, then turns her face into Eustace’s shoulder, trembling. Mayor, who’s moved in front of them both, growls.
Tirian lets the broken hilt of his sword fall, reaching for Rhindon with both hands. His fingers brush the pommel – and then he lowers his hands and shakes his head. “No,” he says, and his expression is cold and so familiar that Eustace wants to drop everything and run as far and fast as he can. The last time he’d seen that look had been on the face of the Lady of the Green Kirtle, just after Puddleglum had broken her spell and just before she’d turned into a serpent to try and kill Rilian.
“No,” Tirian says again. “I would save that blade for a Narnian, your majesty. Prejun of Newisle has said himself that he has chosen Calormen over Narnia; since it’s Calormen he’s failed this night, let it be Calormen that punishes him. After all,” he adds slowly, “he is the one who led Tarkaan Inzamum and his men into an ambush. The Tisroc has his own punishments for such failure and betrayal, whichever of the two it may be.” He turns away from Prejun, deliberately and comes over to Eustace and Leocadia, putting an arm around his cousin’s shoulders.
Prejun is shaking. “Your majesty,” he says to Peter, “I beg you – I still bow to the Kings and Queens of Summer –”
“You are none of mine or my family’s,” Peter says, but his gaze is cool and steady. Susan steps away from the door, her aim never wavering as she takes smooth steps sideways until she and Peter are flanking the entrance to the hallway.
Mayor doesn’t move, his growl a low, constant rumble, the only sound in the room besides the crackle of flames and the drip-drip of blood from Prejun’s punctured palm. Eustace sees the minotaur take one shaky breath, then another, his gaze finally fixing on Mayor. “So,” he says, his voice surprisingly steady now, as if he’s made the decision to disregard Peter and Susan’s presence. “So. May Your Life Be Long And Your Enemies Honorable, Elizar Confesor’s pet. It is true. You ransom your name and your honor for nothing, Tirian; bring your gods to Narnia if you will, but not even the Kings and Queens of Summer can stand against the might of Calormen and the wrath of Tash.”
“Believe that if you wish,” Tirian says coldly, turning back towards him. “Red and gold are good colors for a funeral.”
This time, when he leaves, he doesn’t look back.
Mayor rises without a word and pads silently after him, his tail twitching furiously. There’s a crack as a section of the wall collapses; the firelight casts orange shadows on the tiger’s white fur before he follows Tirian and Leocadia out the back door. Peter and Susan go without a word between them, just another one of those unreadable shared looks, until only Eustace and Prejun are left together in the burning house.
Prejun grasps the arrow in his good hand and pulls it out without breaking the shaft, bringing on a fresh gush of bright blood. He looks down at the arrow with real fear in his eyes, then some of his arrogance comes back as he turns his gaze on Eustace. “And what do you want, Outlander?” he demands.
“Your house is on fire,” Eustace says, and deliberately smashes the bowl he’d dropped the match into as he leaves.
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 05:34 am (UTC)I adore Susan being all goddesslike and Tirian being all pissed off.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 08:05 pm (UTC)That about sums up the chapter, yes! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 04:50 pm (UTC)I am oddly fond of Eustace.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 08:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-27 01:56 am (UTC)Favorite quotes-
( Ohh bad thing to say to your wife that can be killed in Calormen for being the cousin of the King, and bad form that he forgot her mother died, and she can't have children. Bad husband all around, not just a bad traitor.)
( Haha bad guy moment for Eustace. He gets to make a snarky comment. Loved it).
Great chapter on to the next one and the end of part one.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-28 03:22 pm (UTC)