Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (17)

[bedlamsbard]

Title: Dust in the Air 17
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 seventeen, 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.



Land’s End is a kidney-shaped spit of land whose thinnest spit of land sticks half a mile out into the Great Eastern Ocean, forming the northernmost edge of the Bay of Heroes and nearly connecting with the archipelago of scattered islands Susan remembers as Narnia’s eastern seaboard. On the north bank of the Great River, it’s outside the city walls and across the Bridge of Sighs – apparently named for a work colony on the north side of the river that had at some point in time turned into the north bank neighborhoods; once they were across the bridge, they would only be able to see Cair Paravel, never touch it again. Susan empathizes.

Despite the fact that the curfew had still been in effect by the time they appeared on the Cair Paravel side of the Bridge of Sighs, the Calormene soldiers manning the bridge had been only too happy to let them across, their palms greased by the crescents Mayor had produced from the pouch around his neck.

“No one wants to go to the North Bank,” Mayor had explained. “And the Tisroc underpays foot soldiers anyway – lucky for us. Narnia’s gotten boring for the ill luck to be stationed in Cair Paravel; we’re probably the most interesting thing to happen to these poor bastards since they left Tashbaan.”

It’s quite obvious that the curfew is either not in place or unenforceable on the north bank of the river. While the city is more or less well-kept, neat brick or stone buildings in various states of repair, this neighborhood is full of sagging wooden buildings that seldom go more than two stories above the ground, the streets dark, narrow, and winding; any streetlights that had been here once have long since been pilfered for the glass or metal. Rundown dive bars spill their drunken patrons out into the street, some of whom are even sober enough to stare at them as they pass by. Susan slips her sleeve-stiletto out of its sheath and palms the hilt, reassured by the body-warmed leather and steel against her bare skin. She keeps her eyes straight ahead and watches Lady Leocadia without turning her head, well aware that the other woman is trying hard not to show her fear. It seems somewhat unlikely that a spoiled noblewoman like her has ever been in Cair Paravel’s slums. Even Tirian seems to hesitate for a moment, unable to keep from looking around and swallowing hard, the line of his throat moving beneath the shirt he has buttoned up to his chin. It’s the only protection he has against the weather; Leocadia is nearly buried beneath his heavy canvas jacket, only the top of her butter-yellow hair poking out the top of the damp fabric.

Land’s End is in slightly better care, but not by much; it’s a neighborhood of warehouses that stink of fish and other seafood, sailors’ inns, and the homes of those who make their living from the ocean. Susan sees the closed, empty stalls of a market down a dark alley; a shadowy shape flits past – disembodied nereid or oceanid? bird or bat? some other Narnian creature? – and does her best not to shudder, suddenly very glad of the knife, as well as the reassuring weight of her bow and quiver on her back, beneath her long overcoat.

The Blackfire Club is a squat, stony building at the very tip of the peninsula; the only structure closer to the water is a tall lighthouse that rises above them and strikes Susan as extremely optimistic, given the seemingly impassible maze of islands that make up the off-shore archipelago. She raises a hand to shade her eyes from the rain, squinting out into the gloom at the dark shape of the nearest island, which is nothing more than a tall stony reach jutting out of the ocean, a few trees dotting its sides. It’s too small and steep for anyone to live there.

The club is brightly lit by warm lamplight, a merry fire crackling in a fireplace made up of stones rounded from the rush of waves. The walls are decorated with nautical portraits, each in a frame that’s clearly made of either driftwood or broken pieces of wrecked ships. Susan doesn’t recognize any of the ships pictured, even though she assumes that one of them must be Caspian’s Dawn Treader. There’s a bar against one side of the building, bottles racked neatly inside locked cabinets but no barkeep behind the counter. Elizar Confesor is sitting on a stool, nursing a glass of pale green liquor and broodingly watching his sister, curled up asleep in an armchair by the fireplace. They’re not the only ones in the room; besides Sitarah Halfaxe and Skami Aegirssen, there are also a handful of other toughs that Susan assumes are Elizar’s most trusted bruisers, all of them heavily armed and dressed for war in vests with a thin layer of chainmail between two layers of water stained leather and most of them eyeing the two capos – or capo and second, rather – suspiciously. One of them drops a bar across the door after they’ve all filed inside; Susan stiffens, her fingers tightening on her stiletto.

Elizar Confesor gets up as they come in, his expression lightening slightly. “You’re back,” he says, leaving his glass on the counter. “I was starting to worry.”

“And they’ve brought a guest,” Sitarah says dryly, running the tips of her fingers over the axe at her belt as she approaches. “My, my, my. Lady Leocadia of Newisle, the Lord Provost’s wife, right here in front of me…I think I’ve had dreams about this day.”

Leocadia’s eyes go wide in terror, but before she can say anything Tirian steps in front of her. “You don’t touch her,” he says. “She’s not here for you.”

“Pity,” Aegirssen says, eyeing her with naked hunger in his eyes. “Tell me, Woodsman, is the Lord Provost still alive? Because I’d love to see his face when someone tells him that the Long Table has his wife.”

“The Long Table doesn’t have her,” Peter says.

“It doesn’t look like that from here,” Sitarah says, running her tongue lightly over the tips of her teeth, pointed like a nixie’s or a Lothaire tribesman’s, a little odd against her dark half-Calormene coloring. If Susan was forced to guess, she’d put the other half as Edanese; the epicanthic fold on the woman’s slanted black eyes gives it away.

Though none of the Eastern Islands use axes. That’s pure Ansketts.

“It looks like she’s right here in the hands of the Long Table,” she goes on. “Having Leocadia of Newisle beneath our knives might do an awful lot at repairing the damages Lord Prejun’s done to us.”

Leocadia squeaks; Tirian’s good hand falls to the dagger at his hip. Susan sweeps her hood off her head and shakes her stiletto out of her sleeve and into her hand. Peter says calmly, “Pity she’s not in your hands, then.”

“Then whose hands is she in?” Aegirssen asks, raising one eyebrow indolently. It’s pierced with half a dozen gold rings, raider-style; there are a good dozen encircling his entire left ear. Keeping his wealth mobile, Susan sees.

Peter’s smile is cold and a little dangerous. He doesn’t reach for his sword, doesn’t even touch it, just smiles, all teeth and no humor, and says, “Mine.”

From the look on her face, Leocadia doesn’t consider this much of an improvement.

Sitarah and Aegirssen both stop their slow, steady drift forward, their faces betraying naked fear for a moment before they school them to identical masks of blankness. “Consider it forgotten,” Aegirssen says slowly.

“Because the Lord Provost of Narnia will hardly notice that you’ve kidnapped his wife,” Elizar says dryly. “Why is she here?”

“Because I said so,” Peter says. “And I think Prejun has other things on the mind, like the fact his house is on fire.”

“The rain has probably put it out by now,” Susan points out reasonably, slipping the stiletto back up into her sleeve. She touches Leocadia’s shoulder lightly, trying to ignore the way the noblewoman jumps, and says, “Go and dry out by the fire.”

“But –” Leocadia says, her gaze flickering towards Sitarah and Aegirssen.

“They won’t touch you,” Susan says.

Unexpectedly, Eustace says, “I’ll go with you,” and steps forward past Tirian, glaring determinedly at the two capos until they part like the Red Sea for Moses. Leocadia follows a little hesitantly, shedding rainwater with every step. Elizar’s men turn to watch her go, staring at her like slavering dogs after a piece of raw meat, and Sitarah’s gaze flicks after her, stark with avarice, before she snaps her attention back to Peter and Susan.

“No trouble getting over the Bridge of Sighs?” Elizar asks, as if nothing has passed at all.

“Slick as a nixie’s thighs,” Mayor says, shaking himself dry until his fur stands out around him in a white and black cloud. “The only thing for those poor bastards that man the outer city to do is spend their pay; heartbreaking that the Tisroc doesn’t give them enough of it.”

“Heartbreaking,” Sitarah agrees after a moment, still seemingly torn between them and Leocadia, whom she keeps looking back at speculatively. “One can’t help but shed a tear for them. It was all I could do to add some weight to their purses when I crossed over into your gods-forsaken hellhole, Skami.”

Aegirssen’s shoulders relax slightly at the banter, but his gaze is still steady and wary, one hand resting unconsciously on the on the gilded iron pommel of his big “cat skinner” broadsword. Anskettell is home to two species of wild cats, the tiny striped oscalla cats, barely the size of a small English housecat, native to the farthest reaches of southern Anskettell, and the big catamounts that frequent the vast empty stretches of the north, some of them half again the size of a large pony. The Ansketts broadsword, secondary sword to the two-handed six-foot sword that Aegirssen isn’t carrying, had been nicknamed after the latter. Edmund had gone to Anskettell once, a year-long journey; they’d always looked forward to the letters brought back by Narnian and Ansketts traders.

“Only gods-forsaken because it’s full of bloody Narnian heathens, Sitarah,” he says.

For a moment there’s a heavy silence and Susan closes her eyes in the vain hope that it will somehow make this madness go away, feeling the entire room’s attention suddenly focused on her and Peter. Then Aegirssen coughs and the spell is broken; he adds a little awkwardly, “Meaning no offense to your majesties, of course.”

“Of course,” she agrees, the words empty in her mouth, and makes herself smile at Aegirssen. From the expression on his face, there’s a distinct possibility that it doesn’t come out nearly as warm as she’d hoped.

Apart from not expecting it at all, Susan hadn’t expected the oath-swearing ceremony to be nearly as flashy as it had ended up being. She’d seen plenty of them in her time, enough to know what they looked like and what they did to Peter, to her, to Edmund and Lucy, to anyone unlucky enough to be in the immediate area – magic pure and simple, in a form that Narnia probably hasn’t seen since they’d left. Blood magic ties back to the Deep Magic; Susan knows that, in theory, it’s why Aslan had been able to sacrifice himself for Edmund on the Stone Table. She or Peter could have done the same thing, would have done the same thing if only they’d known – but they hadn’t known, and instead they’d been indebted to Aslan for their brother’s life. Perhaps they even still are, though she likes to think Peter repaid that debt when he went to war at fourteen, alone and inexperienced.

Still, it’s clear that the Long Table hadn’t expected real magic; when they’d gotten it – they are people, after all; when exposed to something like that, the easiest thing in the world to do is paint the word religion over it. There’s little chance that Cair Paravel, at least, will regard them as anything but the gods they’re believed to be.

Peter frowns a little, the expression sharp and unkind, and Sitarah flinches as if she’s been struck. “Horses?” he says to Elizar, ignoring her.

Elizar nods slowly. “There’s a stable out back,” he says. “Five horses from Lord Gerazan’s stables, saddled and with packs.”

“Five?” Peter says, raising his eyebrows. Without knowing that Tirian would bring Leocadia, Elizar should have only gotten four.

“Lord Gerazan’s stables?” Tirian says warily. From the expression on his face, he knows the name.

“With the long races shut down for the immediate future, he can spare them,” Elizar says negligently. “Or are you too noble to use stolen horses, your highness?”

Tirian presses his lips together tightly, but doesn’t protest further.

“Five?” Peter says again, his voice cooler now, impatience bleeding through into icy calm. He doesn’t want to stay in this bloody city any longer than Susan does.

“You’re taking my sister with you,” Elizar Confesor says.

The way he says it, it’s not a question, just a flat statement. Beka Confesor, on the other side of the room, raises her head and stares at her brother, clearly not entirely certain of what she’s just heard. Mayor, who’s been up behind the bar, somehow managing to pour brandy into a bowl, knocks the bottle over and barely manages to catch it between his teeth, spilling golden liquor all over the polished blond wood of the floor as he lowers it gently. Peter doesn’t even blink, just puts his head slightly to one side and says, “It’s safer in the city.”

“Did you kill the Lord Provost?” Elizar asks.

Peter’s gaze flicks to Tirian, who says, “No,” like a miser grudgingly opening his purse to offer up the last coin.

Sitarah rolls her eyes, as if to say, Of course. Bloody Telmarine coward.

“Then she’s not safe,” Elizar says. “Prejun knows my family’s names, where we live. And if he saw Mayor –”

“He did,” the tiger interjects.

“– then he knows I’m involved. I’m not letting that bastard loose on my family.” He sets his jaw, pretending not to notice as Beka sheds the blanket she’s wrapped in and comes over, barefoot on the floor’s wooden panels. “Back in Sukie’s shop, you made me a promise. Anything, you said.”

“Yes.” Peter’s gaze is cool as winter ice on the Great River, which has only frozen twice in two thousand years, and about as unreadable. Susan thinks, absurdly, of the White Witch, and shivers, folding her fingers around the overlong sleeves of her overcoat.

“So take my sister with you when you leave.” Elizar raises his hand, showing off the red line across his left palm where he’d cut it during the blood oath. “And then I’ll consider your debt repaid.”

“No!” Beka protests suddenly. “I’m not running away, I’m not leaving Cair Paravel –”

Elizar looks surprised that she’s spoken, but he turns around anyway, catching her shoulders in his hands and forcing her to look him in the eye. “Yes, you are,” he says forcefully. “It’s not safe. I’ll take care of Mother, but you’re not staying here. I won’t allow it.”

“You can’t make me go!”

“You’re going if I have to tie you into the saddle,” Elizar snaps.

“King Peter hasn’t agreed yet,” Beka says suddenly. “So you can’t make me go.”

Elizar looks up over her head at Peter. “Do you love your sister?” he demands.

Peter blinks. Susan looks away so that she doesn’t have to see him look at her, the naked honesty in his eyes, because she doesn’t want to know if he’s lying to Elizar or not. “Yes,” he says. “But I learned a long time ago that trying to send either of my sisters away to keep them safe doesn’t help anything and just means they steal a horse in the middle of the night to sneak back to Cair Paravel and wake you up by sitting on your bed and pelting you with blood oranges.”

“That was Lucy,” Susan says. She looks back up and smiles at Peter; he presses two fingers lightly against her wrist but doesn’t look back.

“It’s not the season for blood oranges,” Elizar says, “and Beka can’t ride.”

“I can steal horses,” she says, trying to sound certain. Her voice wavers in the middle.

“You’re not going to,” Elizar says – in contrast to his sister, absolutely certain. “Beka, I don’t want you here; I don’t you want you where the Calormenes can get at you. And Mayor’s going with you.”

“What?” Mayor says, while Beka’s still gaping at Elizar. “Are you out of your fucking mind, Confesor? I’m not leaving you with this!”

“Charming,” Skami says abruptly. “A pair of suicidal madmen no matter which way the wind blows, in or out of the city. Why, if you stay here, the Calormenes will get you, but if you don’t, the monsters in the Western Waste will. How will either of you ever make this decision?”

“Shut up, Skami, there’s no decision to make,” Elizar snaps. “Yes, you are, Mayor, and yes, you’re going, Beka. Mayor, I swear to the gods, I will take care of your family for you; they will not want and neither Bahadur nor the Lord Provost will touch a hair on their furry heads.”

Mayor lies down and put his head on his paws, sighing deeply. “They’ll just think it’s a blessing from the gods,” he says. “Please don’t encourage them. I’d like to come back to find them actually sane. And you alive, have I mentioned?”

The tension in Elizar’s shoulders eases slightly and he smiles at Mayor before his expression turns serious again, his attention back on his sister. Beka looks like she’s about to cry.

“But Mother –” she begins.

“I’ll take care of Mother,” Elizar says, very gently. He looks up at Peter. “Your majesty –”

Peter nods without saying anything. Beka bites her lip, eyes glistening, then suddenly throws her arms around her brother’s neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Sitarah, perhaps more sensitive than Skami, grabs his wrist and jerks him around, saying loudly, “So how are we going to decide whose neighborhood gets buried beneath a tide of river water that will go fetid and won’t be removed for months? Single combat to the death?”

“I’ll dice you for it,” Skami says. “Let the gods decide.”

“You cheat. Jan-ken-pon?”

“None of your bloody Edanese children’s games. I’ve got a crescent in my pocket; we could flip for it –”

“Like I said,” Sitarah interrupts, “you cheat. Besides, it would be a mercy to the gods to wipe your hellhole of a neighborhood off a map.”

“Which means that the Calormenes may not even notice if the North Bank suddenly vanishes under a flood of water,” Skami says. “Or care. The South Bank, on the other hand –”

Tirian, who’s been listening with furrowed brow, says, “What exactly are you planning to do to my – to Cair Paravel?”

Sitarah turned around and beamed at him. “Haven’t we said?” she says.

“We’re going to breach the levees,” Skami finishes for her.

Dawn hasn’t yet arrived by the time they leave Cair Paravel; a few fingers of light are just beginning to stretch over the vastness of the Great Eastern Ocean. Land’s End suddenly stirs to life: a veritable hive of fishermen all emerging at once and going down to the little boats tied up at the rotting docks and piers, most of which look like they were once built to accommodate much larger ships, but clearly haven’t done so for at least twenty years. They don’t seem to mind the rain except to put on extra layers of oil coats and hats; if this is how they make their living, then stopping for a little thing like rain – especially this rain – might well doom their families to starvation until it ceases. Susan watches them put out to sea from the back of her horse, waiting patiently for Elizar Confesor to finish saying his goodbyes to his sister and his best friend.

“There’s still good fishing in the Bay of Heroes and the Oldghost Isles,” Tirian says, seeing her looking. “Most of what we trade comes from Glasswater, but the majority of Narnian seafood is brought in by Cair Paravel fishermen. There used to be oysters the size of your arm; it was like eating a baby. I haven’t seen those in years though.” He lapses into silence, leaning on his saddle horn, and stares out at the half-moon curve of the Bay of Heroes, the castle just visible on the far side of the bay, a few lights gleaming from within its tall towers as it sits above the city. The bay narrows slightly into the swollen Great River, wide enough along the city that it’s nearly impossible to tell where the river ends and the bay begins, except for the shadow of the Bridge of Sighs cutting across it. It’s impossible to see from here, but along the last stretch of the lionsroad into the city, where the South Bank throws up its walls against the outside world, a group of big Narnian oaks have moved to shade the road, sinking their roots deep into the earth of the tall levees, which are near to overtopping already. Other trees and the stone creeper vines that have infested Narnia for years (though they’d never touched the white walls of Cair Paravel; there’d been no mortar for them to grip, nothing to devour) have been at the walls of the South Bank all night, with no evidence left behind in the morning. They’ll fall at the first pressure.

Elizar hugs Beka one last time, then lifts her up onto the pillion saddle behind Leocadia of Newisle, the lightest rider of the five of them. Susan can’t hear what he says to the noblewoman, but she nods her head after a moment and twists to spit in her hand and offer it to Elizar, who does the same and shakes hands with her. It’s a commoner’s custom; Susan blinks a moment in surprise, because it’s the last thing she would have expected Leocadia to know, let alone do. Elizar nods to her, face briefly grim with respect, then turns away to kneel down in front of Mayor. The tiger abruptly butts his head into Elizar’s shoulder and Elizar puts an arm around his neck, murmuring against his fur.

Susan turns her attention away to give them some little privacy, watching Peter watch the Oldghost Isles, all that remains of the White Cliffs of Morgencolla, of Cair Paravel, of the Shifting Market, of Narnia of old. They’re impossible to see from the Confesors’ flat in the Black Pearl, they’d been clear but distant from the castle, but from here they seem needlessly close, a cruel reminder of what’s been lost without hope of repair. Impossibly, there are still a few landmarks she can pick out, weathered and weakened after sixteen hundred years of erosion, but that only makes it worse. If she couldn’t recognize the seed of her home here, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad. It would be somewhere new.

Elizar straightens up and steps away from Mayor, coming over to Peter. “There are still Calormene patrols throughout most of northern Narnia,” he says, echoing the warnings he’d given earlier. “They won’t be expecting trouble out of Cair Paravel, though, especially since there’s no major road going north. You’ll still have to cross the Great River at some point –”

“Hope-of-Gold,” Peter says, which is a bald-faced lie; they’re going to try and cross at Beruna, which is more heavily guarded but an easier crossing, especially with the river flooded like this. But he’s not going to tell Elizar that; they’ll be at their most vulnerable when crossing.

Elizar nods, seemingly distracted, and says, “Take care of my sister.”

“I will,” Peter says, and turns his horse away. The rest of them follow single-file, the horses picking their way delicately through the muck of the street; Land’s End is the only part of the city Susan’s seen that isn’t flooded, lying on slightly higher ground than its neighbor the North Bank to the west.

There are no walls on this side of the river, just a procession of battered guardhouses on the outer edge of the north bank neighborhoods – Land’s End, the North Bank itself, Rustwater, Kingshope, West-of-Death, Fisher’s Green, and Maidensorrow. The guardhouses are little one-storey buildings, each with a covered platform, a bell, and an unlit fire twenty feet above, most of them supported by scaffolding that looks dangerously near collapse. The unlucky guards with that particular miserable duty huddle there in thick desert robes that Susan knows from personal experience are marvelous with sandstorms but wretched with rain. They don’t seem to be paying any kind of particular attention to the horsemen on the ground below them – and even if they were, Susan suspects that their interests are concentrated on those trying to get into the city, not out of it. It seems significantly easier to get out of Cair Paravel from this side of the river; why more people haven’t done so –

She says as much to Mayor, pacing the horses beside her, and he says, “The north is even wilder than the Western Waste, the coast is too dangerous for anyone but a madman to land a ship, and there’s no way to cross the Great River that the Calormenes can’t see. The only place worth going in walking distance is the marshes, and the marsh-wiggles and the bog people are worse than the Calormenes. If you’re lucky the Calormenes catch you before you get more than a day’s walk from the city. Make it to the High Reaches and it’s no better; the tribes there won’t hand you to the Calormenes, but they’ll stake you out on the plains and leave you to starve to death – an offering to the gods. Starving to death’s the good way to go, of course.”

“Of course,” Susan says slowly, her mouth dry. “Why wouldn’t I have thought about that? Of course.”

“Granted,” Mayor goes on, “it doesn’t stop people from trying, though it’s somewhat off-putting when they all die.”

He pauses gruesomely. “Or worse.”

“Lovely.”

He grins at her, all teeth, and lopes ahead to the horse Leocadia and Beka are sharing, neither one of them evidently pleased about the subject.

Susan lets her horse pick its slow way through the mud, finding the best footing as they move up onto a small ridge of earth. Cair Paravel spreads out beneath them, a thin gleam of sunlight breaking out through the dark clouds that have been present for a week now to illuminate the Great River, briefly turning the raindrop-fractured surface into a long, multicolored ribbon.

And the levee on the South Bank breaks.

The tall earthen walls crumble under the weight of the water pressing against them, the Narnian oaks withdrawing their wide spread of roots and plunging them down deep into the earth, holding their ground against the rushing water. For a moment, and just a moment, the walls of the South Bank hold, and then they break too, water shoving the bricks inward as the entire wall crumbles. Hundreds of thousands of tons of water wash in through the gap, ripping through manors and gardens, battering against the walls of the city itself. Susan can’t make herself look away: it’s too much of a spectacle. And may Aslan help them, there are thousands of people in the South Bank.

How many of them are going to die because of the decision she and Peter made?

Late – too late – Cair Paravel’s warning bells begin to sound.

A second portion of the levee, farther west, breaches, spilling water into the Calormene army encampment. Tents wash away, horses rear screaming before the water knocks them down, and doll-figures try and flee, but they’re too slow. The Great River spreads its might across the wide southern plain.

“Susan,” Peter says, dropping back alongside her. “Susan!” He leans over in the saddle and grabs her arm to catch her attention.

She turns toward him. “We did this,” she whispers. “Peter – we did this.”

His face is grim. “I know,” he says. “But we have to get back to Arn Abedin and we can’t do that with the Calormenes on our tail. We can make it to Beruna before they realize we’ve left the city – and they will know soon.”

Susan closes her eyes briefly. “For Narnia,” she says, opening them again, and puts her horse into a trot.

They go walk-trot, walk-trot for the rest of the day, which puts them at Hope-of-Gold. They should have been able to make Beruna, but the muck and the mud slow the horses and they can’t go as fast as they would like. On a rise of denuded hill above the old mining town, they look down at the heavy Calormene guard on the ford, which from here seems nearly impassable. The river’s been choked with debris as far as they can see from the logging operations upriver; it’s slightly less so here, in a wide, calm stretch of river where a cache of treasure from the Golden Age had once been found, nearly buried beneath fourteen hundred years of silt. For a moment, Susan wonders idly what it had been, if any of her things had been there, then dismisses the thought.

“We should get off this hill,” Eustace says, sounding listless and utterly exhausted. “If they happen to look up –”

“We’ll make camp on the northern side of the hill,” Peter says, turning his horse away.

They go slipping and sliding down the hill, Susan’s heart in her throat every time one of the horses seems to lose its balance. If one of them breaks a leg –

Camp is a miserable affair, the rain driving down at them without cover. There are no tents in their saddlebags, so they huddle against each other and the horses for warmth, burying themselves beneath blankets and overcoats after they’ve eaten. Peter puts his arm around Susan’s shoulders and she curls against him, feeling his pulse beat against her cheek. He kisses her hair and murmurs, “Aslan forgive us for the exigencies of war.”

“Aslan forgive us,” Susan whispers, then turns her head and kisses the corner of his jaw. They’re both soaked to the skin, clammy and wet, but he’s warm and alive and here, and that’s enough, for now.

Morning comes without a dawn, just a slow, sullen lessening of darkness as the sun comes up behind thick cloud cover. They breakfast quickly, then mount up and start on their way towards Arn Abedin, skirting the Calormene encampment at Hope-of-Gold.

It’s noon when the first Calormene troop appears behind them.

Susan uncases her bow and strings it, pulling the tie off the oiled silk bag that’s been protecting her arrows. Peter’s gaze is sweeping across the skyline; visibility is at some of the worst Susan’s ever seen, but it doesn’t disguise the fact that there’s nowhere to hide or that they can’t outrun the Calormene horses. Susan puts an arrow to her bow and glances at her brother. “What do you want to do?” she asks.

Peter looks down at the river beneath them. It’s narrow here, spilled well over its banks, with bits of wood and other debris rushing through it. He doesn’t say anything.

Susan raises her bow, counting off the paces until the Calormenes are in bowshot. Behind them, the others are too tired to fidget on, staring at the approaching troop, Tirian and Eustace reaching for their weapons. “Peter?” she says.

“Cross the river.”

“What?” That’s Tirian, looking at Peter as if he’s gone mad.

“Cross the river!” Peter uncases his own bow, stringing it with a twist of his wrist before he nocks an arrow. “Go. Go!”

Tirian doesn’t need a second urging; he turns his horse down the hill towards the river, sending it plunging into the white-washed water. Eustace and Leocadia follow, Beka clinging to the older woman, and Mayor gives the water one horrified look before he leaps down into it, paddling furiously as he’s buffeted by the rapids, being swept downstream with every length before Tirian plunges his horse sideways and grabs him by the ruff, hauling him up two-handed over his saddlebow. It’s a hell of a piece of riding; the water’s nearly up to his horse’s head.

Susan turns to glance at Peter. “You’re mad,” she says warmly.

“So I’ve been told,” he says. “So I’ve been told.”

Susan draws until the kiss-ring touches her mouth and the fletching brushes her ear, counting off the distance until the Calormene troop is in bowshot. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

She looses.

From this distance, the Calormene in the lead is nothing more than a light-colored blur in the rain, but she sees him topple from his horse at the same moment she draws and looses again. Peter’s bow doesn’t have as much range as hers; he’s still waiting. And the Calormene crossbows don’t have as much range either; that and they take longer between bolts. Susan only needs three seconds: they need nine.

“I count twelve,” Peter says calmly. “A third-troop.”

Susan nods without speaking, looses, sees another Calormene go down. Peter raises his bow. He aims for the horses, not the men, and hits his target; the horse goes tumbling down the hill, throwing its rider. They shoot again, and again, until all the Calormenes are dead or unhorsed.

Then the second troop emerges from round the side of the hill, closer than the others had been – and nearly in crossbow range.

Without a word passing between them, Peter and Susan case their bows and turn their horses down towards the river, plunging into it without hesitation. The icy cold water is a shock to her skin, even soaked as she has been, and Susan hears herself gasping for breath as her horse’s hooves struggle for purchase on the riverbed. They’re being swept downstream with every step.

The crossbow bolt takes her horse in the right leg.

The horse goes down in the water, screaming in pain and terror, and Susan barely manages to get her feet out of the stirrups and pull free, trying furiously to gain some kind of purchase in the water. It sweeps her along relentlessly; it’s all she can do to keep her head above water, gasping furiously for air before she’s swept down below again.

Susan claws her way up to the surface, seeing a log twice the size of her own body rushing towards her, and tries desperately to avoid it. For a moment she thinks she’s succeeded, then pain tears belatedly through her cold-numbed shoulder, followed by warmth – or at least, a sudden lessening of cold. Blood. The log glanced off her, and a glancing blow is still extremely damned bad.

The water drives her down below again before she has time to take another breath and Susan chokes on icy snowmelt, throat and lungs screaming in protest before she surfaces. She can’t see Peter or the others, can’t spare the energy to think of them, because she needs to get out of this water –

A boulder looms suddenly out of the water ahead of her. Oh, Aslan, if she hits that – no, she’s not going to, but –

Susan grabs out at it as she passes, succeeding in nothing more than ripping half her fingernails off and spilling more of her blood in the river. Another log shoves its way at her; she grits her teeth and manages to get one hand around a branch, which is something at least. She clings to it determinedly, using it as a kind of shield against other oncoming debris.

“A little help would be nice,” she manages to cough the first time she has her head above water long enough to speak. No matter what the Calormenes have done, surely there must still be some freshwater Narnians in this most Narnian of Narnian rivers.

The next time she can speak, the only thing she can do is gasp, “Help,” feeling the effort tear at her throat. Her fingers are going numb despite her best efforts; she loses her grip on the branch and watches it rush away, suddenly strangely dreamy. The pain in her shoulder is beginning to fade; she nearly doesn’t feel cold anymore, even though every breath of water tears at her lungs. She can barely see.

One last chance. Susan takes a last gasp of air and screams as loudly as she can, “Achelous, remember your oaths!”

She doesn’t see the log that strikes her in the head.

The river spits her out on what passes for a beach on the Great River, a sloping twenty-yard stretch of water-rounded pebbles. Susan crawls up it, coughing up river water, until no part of her is in the water anymore. She rolls over, quiver pressing uncomfortably beneath her, and sees a portion of the river lift itself away from the white-washed waters, resolving itself into a tall, bullish old man with a long beard and reeds in his uncut hair, a horn easily three times the size of any living bull’s slung at his side, elaborately decorated with scenes of aquatic life.

Susan pushes herself up on her elbows, wincing as the movement jars the wound in her shoulder. “My lord Achelous,” she says, trying not to cough as she speaks. “I owe you thanks.”

The river god kneels easily down in front of her. “Easy, your majesty,” he says. “You are injured.” His cool fingers brush over the long scrape on her forehead where the log glanced off her and Susan closes her eyes, hissing a little as it goes hot, then cools again. Achelous is no god of healing, but he’s not entirely powerless, and this was done in his own waters; his abilities are greater because of it.

“I beg your most especial forgiveness,” Achelous goes on, his hands moving down to her injured shoulder. “I have slumbered of late; there has been ill done in my waters and I have been too weakened to wake. But now – now I feel nearly free again. This flood is washing away the disease!”

Susan winces as his touch burns her arm, then relaxes. “How is it that this was allowed to happen?” she asks after the pain’s gone down to a dull ache.

“Tash walked these lands.”

She flinches so hard that the pain shoots from fingertips to shoulders, doubling over and biting her lip to keep from screaming. Achelous catches her shoulders, steadying her.

“He is not in Narnia anymore,” the river god goes on when Susan has caught her breath. “These lands are too green for him; he is a desert god, fond of sand and sun. But he was here; his priests chained my children and my brothers, my sisters, breaking them to the Tisroc’s yoke. I could keep myself from being caged, but no more; I slipped into slumber as I have many times before, and when I felt his presence leave these lands, I woke and found Narnia as it is now. And I was weakened. It has become harder and harder to wake each time; the Calormenes pollute my waters as if I was a sewer. But now I am free again!” He rises, pacing back and forth along the shore, his hair swirling around him as if stirred by an invisible current.

Susan draws her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “You said that the naiads and the other rivers are being controlled by the Calormenes?”

“I did not think such a thing was possible until it was done,” Achelous admits slowly, turning his attention back to her. “The White Witch chained us in ice and forced us to slumber, but something else has been done here; I know not what. Some foul magic of the deserts, I should think.” He pauses, eyeing her thoughtfully. His eyes shift constantly, green and blue and grey, all the colors of the Great River. “But you are here again – and your siblings as well. I felt the High King spill his blood on Narnian soil, but I thought it was nothing more than a snore, like a doyarchu kicking his legs as he chases a trout through his dreams. I see I was wrong.”

Susan raises her horn and turns it over, trying not to wince as river water spills out of it. “Narnia summoned us and here we are, answering to her need.”

“And such need it is!” Achelous exclaims. “I and my brothers bargained with one of the Telmarine kings that he might use our waters in exchange for an offering every year, but the Tisroc has imprisoned us, chained us, sickened us, deprived us of what is rightfully ours. You have felt my waters, your majesty; you know what I lack. He leaches the life out of Narnia.”

“Yes.”

“It is a crime against the Deep Magic,” he adds, scowling. “Such indignity! Even the White Witch did not dare; though she would not allow us to wake, she still made proper offerings. Narnia was her land as well as it was Aslan’s, though the balance tipped and she overstepped her boundaries. She did not go against the Deep Magic as Tash has done.”

“We will repair the damage that has been done,” Susan says. “I swear by Aslan.”

Achelous suddenly fixes her with a piercing grey-green glare. “What has Aslan to do with it?” he says. “Swear by Narnia.”

“I swear by Narnia,” Susan says.

He nods slowly. “You and your siblings have never done me wrong. I place my trust in you and the High King; I and my children are at your command.” He raises his head suddenly. “Your friends approach, Queen Susan.”

Susan scrambles up quickly, looking upriver. She can just barely make out four horses and one dark shape lower to the ground that must be Mayor.

When she looks back at the beach, Achelous has gone.

“Thank you!” Susan shouts at the river, cupping her hands around her mouth.

She sits back down on the riverbank to wait for the others, checking her bow and arrows for breakages. No harm done, thank Aslan, and she murmurs a quiet thank you to Father Christmas. She’s still sore and aching from being battered by the river, but it’s not nearly as bad as it had been before; she’s still going to be feeling it for a week, but that’s better than bleeding out on the shores of the river.

Susan stands up, buckling her quiver back on and pulling the straps tight. Her fingers are starting to warm up again, just barely, and for a moment the rain on her face feels warmer than it has in days – the promise of spring, almost. She lets herself smile a little – and then she sees the crossbow quarrel that’s gone straight through the meat of Peter’s left shoulder as the others ride up.

“Peter –”

“It looks worse than it is,” he says through clenched teeth, though he doesn’t offer her a hand up into the saddle. Susan pulls herself up behind him as the other three horses and Mayor mill around for a moment, snorting at the lingering scent of the river god.

“I’m going to take the arrow out –”

“No time,” Eustace says, half-shouting to be heard over the rain. “There’s a storm coming in from the east!” He points downriver and as if in response to his words, Susan hears the roll of thunder. Lightning flashes in the distance, in the midst of a dark roil of clouds that’s blown up out of nowhere and is moving fast towards them.

“We can’t be out here for that!” Tirian exclaims, sounding alarmed. “But there’s no cover –”

The countryside has far west as Beruna has been clearcut, stripping trees, stumps, and roots alike from the earth and turning the land into a featureless expanse of churned up dirt – all of it mud, now, slippery and nearly calf-deep in some places. There’s not a tree to be seen for miles; the nearest things to any kind of shelter are a few rolling hills –

Peter turns his head to stare at the oncoming storm; during the next roll of thunder – what, are the bloody Ansketts gods of Storm and Salt here to pay a visit? – Susan breaks the arrow in his shoulder in two and yanks it out. He doesn’t seem to notice as she rips at the bottom of her skirt, wrapping the fabric around in a quick and dirty bandage. “Yes, there is,” he says suddenly, turning his horse inland, south. He kicks it into a gallop and Susan puts her arms around his waist, clinging to him as the horse shoves its way through the muck.

“No, there isn’t!” Eustace screams after them. “Are you out of your mind?”

Susan glances over her shoulder to see the others following and the storm on their heels, then turns her face into the back of Peter’s neck, breathing hard.

The mud slows the already-exhausted horses terribly; it’s slow going, and the weight of the oncoming storm sits heavy on her shoulders, making her jump with every roll of thunder and streak of lightning. The horses are too tired to do even that.

“King Peter!” Beka Confesor shrieks from behind them. “The Calormenes!”

Susan twists to look, and yes, damn their hides, it’s the bloody Calormenes on their tails. The troop must have back-tracked and crossed somewhere gentler – and their horses are fresher, and they probably haven’t spent a night out in this awful pouring rain; they must be from the guard at Hope-of-Gold, not Cair Paravel.

“Peter,” she warns, uncasing her bow and stringing it. “Hurry.”

Awkward, awkward, to shoot like this; she can’t get the full draw of her bow and the rain is fouling her shot. The only thing she can do is wait for the Calormenes to come closer, which is exactly what they don’t want. She turns back around, one hand tight on Peter’s sword belt and the other holding her bow.

There’s a hill rising above them, out of the seemingly flat earth; something about the shape is vaguely familiar, but she can’t place it, not without the forests as a reference point and not without better light. Peter turns their horse to the east of it, easing into a walk as they pull away from it, the ground rising up again. He’s looking for something; she realizes a moment later, seeing his head turn.

“What is it?” she asks in his ear, then glances over her shoulder again. The Calormenes aren’t yet in bowshot.

“The entrance,” he says. “The back entrance, that you and Lu used during the duel.”

For a moment Susan doesn’t understand what he means, then it comes to her like a rock to the head. The area around here has just started to grow back after last year’s forestry; there’s a thin layer of struggling grass and a few scrubby bushes shoving their way out from among the tumbled rock. Susan stares around frantically, trying to will everything into familiar shapes, layering old-growth forest and afternoon sunlight over the butchered land. Please, please, please let it still be here –

She sees it.

“Peter!”

They both dismount and go to clear away the tumbled rocks that have hid the entrance for centuries now, shoving them aside and working with frantic haste. Tirian dismounts to help and together they reveal the gaping mouth of a long, dark passage into the earth, nearly unchanged after three hundred years.

“Take the others and go!” Susan orders, shoving him towards it. Eustace, Leocadia, and Beka all dismount, not bothering to stare before they disappear into the tunnel with Mayor on their heels and Tirian watching their back, holding the reins of Peter’s horse along with his own.

Peter sags against her side, breathing hard. He raises his fingers to his injured shoulder, staring at the amount of blood that comes away. The wound’s reopened again.

The Calormenes are approaching quickly; the horses have greater purchase on the rocky ground here than on the mud-churned plains. They’re still too far away to make out the entryway, which is more or less concealed by a stone overhang. Thunder rolls again and Susan seizes Peter’s arm and drags him into the tunnel, throwing an arm up over her eyes as lightning strikes directly in front of the Calormene horses, sending them rearing and screaming their terror, trying to buck off their riders. More lightning strikes to the side, and again, and the war-trained horses break, scattering across the plain and taking their riders with them.

“Thank you!” Susan shouts at the dark sky; Achelous’ doing, or Aslan’s.

Peter staggers hard against her side before he pulls away to lean against the wall. Susan unstrings her bow and cases it quickly, leaning down to hunt in the dim light and by distant memory. She finds what she’s looking for – a pile of unused torches, their ends soaked in pitch.

“Here,” Peter croaks, and produces a silver lighter from the inside of his jacket. She rubs her thumb over the RAF engraving on the side before she strikes a flame, touching it to the head of the torch. It flares into light just in time for her to see Leocadia and Beka go white, making the four-point sign over their chests in bad unison.

Eustace and Tirian come forward to take more torches from her, touching them to Susan’s so that they catch. Susan puts an arm out for Peter, letting him lean on her shoulder.

“What is this place?” Eustace asks as Susan gestures them down the tunnel, into the depths of the earth.

“This is Aslan’s How,” Peter says.

The How is nearly unchanged from the last time they were here. The detritus of a thousand desperate Narnians lies scattered about, along with extra stores of weapons and armor, most of it rusted and useless by now. The forges are all cold and there are still stores here, lying around from where they were left before the duel. No one came back here after the battle. No one had wanted to.

“We can stay here,” Susan says, finding a mostly clear fire pit and some wood, old but still dry and not rotting. She passes a pot to Beka Confesor, conjuring up a mental map of the interior of the How before she says, “There’s an underground river that runs through the lowest chamber, about two levels down from here. If you go that way –” she points, “– you should find the stairs.”

Beka looks alarmed, but goes without protesting, Mayor following at her heels like a dog. Unasked, Leocadia brings over a saddlebag full of basic medical supplies and Susan nods her thanks as she hands the lighter to Eustace so that he can kindle the fire. She’s vaguely aware of Tirian and Leocadia unsaddling the horses, but most of her attention is on Peter, who’s white-faced with pain, unprotesting as she pushes his jacket off his shoulder and carefully cuts away the fabric of his shirt. The bolt had gone clean through, missing the bone, the muscle, and anything vital, and Susan thanks Aslan silently, sorting through the saddlebags until she finds a skin of some kind of alcohol that smells a little like apples.

“Planning on basting me and roasting me for dinner?” Peter jokes when he smells it. He reaches for the skin with his good hand. “Before you pour that over me, give me some of that.”

Susan hands it to him, watching as he takes two mouthfuls, swirling the first around in his mouth before he swallows. “Anything else besides the shoulder?” she asks.

“Left leg, but that was just a graze. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The quarrel hadn’t stuck, but it hadn’t needed to; the barbs on it had ripped an inch of flesh from him. Susan can see the muscle beneath a thin white layer of fat.

“Morningstar,” Beka whispers, coming back with the pot of water, and Susan nods her thanks before she puts it on to boil over the fire.

Peter smiles faintly at her. “That bad, hmm?” he says, then curses as Susan pours the alcohol over it.

“Yes,” she says. “That bad. You idiot.”

“Yes, I just stood in the middle of the river with my arms spread, shouting, ‘Come and get me, you Calormene bastards!’ and they kindly took me at my word. Son of a bitch.”

Susan doesn’t bother apologizing as she stitches it up. “I had a nice chat with Achelous,” she says.

“I thought that might have been him,” Peter says through his teeth. “How’s he been?”

“Asleep.”

“Stands to bloody reason.”

“Tash was in Narnia.”

“Pulling out the big guns, are they? Also stands to bloody reason.” He takes another drink of the liquor, looking over her shoulder, away from what she’s doing.

“He’s not anymore, but the Calormenes have some kind of hold over the other river gods and the naiads.”

“I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Neither did I,” Susan admits, and ties off the thread, washing her hands before she moves on to his shoulder.

They’re both silent for a few minutes, Peter grunting a little in pain, then he says abruptly, “Su, when you fell –”

She turns her face away. “Don’t say it,” she says. “Please.”

“If Achelous hadn’t pulled you out –”

She doesn’t tell him that the river god nearly hadn’t; she just says, “But he did, Peter, so please don’t –”

He reaches out with his good hand and cups her cheek in his palm, turning her face towards him. “Susan,” he says, and there’s a weight of meaning in those two syllables; he doesn’t need to say anything more.

They stay like that for a few minutes, then Susan pulls away and ties off the thread, biting off the excess and reaching for the rolls of bandage. “At least you know there are clothes in your size here,” she says. “I can’t believe they never came back.”

“There was no reason to,” Peter says. He takes another drink of the liquor, then holds the skin out to her.

It’s not as sticky sweet as she’d been expecting, just a light taste of apple layered on top of the smoothest Glasswater brandy, and it lingers pleasantly when Susan hands the skin back. “Now that was a shame to waste on you,” she says, and Peter laughs.

“I’ll see what there is to eat,” he goes on. “Do you want to go see what’s been left behind? I’d rather not move around at the moment.”

“Probably a wise decision,” Susan agrees. “You might fall over and dent the floor with your head. It would be hard on the poor rock.” She kisses him on the cheek and rises, taking one of the torches for light.

Beka, Leocadia, and Mayor are sitting around another fire pit, the two women talking a little tentatively and sharing a little travel pot of tea. Eustace and Tirian are nowhere in sight, but Susan’s not surprised; the How is very large and this is Tirian’s history. She expects him to be interested in it, if she’s learned anything about him at all.

She goes through long dark corridors and up narrow stairs carved out of earth and living stairs, past caverns that still bear the remains of the inhabitants – a few pots, several empty barrels, the usual scattered weaponry discarded before the battle for one reason or another. Usually because they had had more weapons than they had had people. There’s some minor damage from Miraz’s siege machines, but most of the damage had been done to the outside of the How, not the inside. None of the inner tunnels have collapsed; the How has stood far more than the passage of a mere three hundred years.

Their old rooms are on one of the topmost levels of the How. Susan ducks into the one she’d shared with Lucy, picking up the bags they’d brought with them from Cair Paravel’s little treasury. She grounds the torch in a sconce and picks through hers, unsurprised but pleased to find that time has touched them not at all; the worst damage is that some of the colors have faded a little more. Apparently the magic of the little treasury extends outside it; that or the How has some intrinsic power of its own. She closes her bag and slings both hers and Lucy’s over her shoulder, taking the torch and ducking into the room Edmund and Caspian had shared.

The leather of Edmund’s schoolbag is dry and brittle with age, flaking away beneath her fingers, but its contents are in nearly perfect condition. She takes that bag too, leaving aside Caspian’s things when she goes back into the hall.

The benefit of Peter’s rank had gotten him a room to himself; she takes his bag without looking inside it, as well as a heavy roll of leather she recognizes as Peter’s collection of small arms – knives, brass knuckles, kamagong sticks, garroting wire, the usual assortment. He’ll be glad to have it back. Susan bundles that neatly into his bag and leaves the room behind, shutting the door behind her before she goes down the stairs.

There’s a light in the table room; Susan hesitates before she follows it, fighting down her instinctive shiver as she goes into the room. She’d rather that Narnia had just crushed the Stone Table into so many pieces of gravel rather than build a bloody temple around it.

Eustace is standing in front of the carving of Aslan, holding a torch in one hand and in the other –

Susan doesn’t even recognize her voice when she snarls, “Drop that.”

He turns toward her slowly, still holding it, and says, “Why? What is it?”

“It’s the White Witch’s wand.”

He drops it.

It hits the ground with a dull thud and Susan stares at it with the gorge rising in her throat, trying to pretend that that thing isn’t still here. At least – at least if it’s still here, it means that no one’s tried to use it to summon her in the past three hundred years. That’s something. Something is better than nothing. She’d prefer that someone had thrown that thing into a volcano, but apparently no one’s done so.

“I thought you didn’t believe in all that religious nonsense,” Eustace says slowly, coming around the edge of the Stone Table easily, like he doesn’t know what it is. Because he doesn’t know what it is. “The Narnian devil. Queen of Winter, Lady of the Eternal Snows and all that.” He gives her a suspicious look.

“She’s real,” Susan says, barely recognizing her own voice. “I’ve met her.” And she’d give her eyeteeth not to have, but the past is done and gone and the Witch is too – or so she’d thought once.

“Don’t bleed on that,” she adds after a moment. “And don’t – tell anyone it’s here. Please.”

“Why?” Eustace asks, but for once he sounds more curious than defiant and Susan thanks her lucky stars for that; she doesn’t think she could put up with defiance right now.

“Because it’s a symbol,” Susan says; a half-truth. “And if there are any White Witch worshippers left they could use it to – to – we don’t need that kind of trouble right now.”

Eustace blinks, frowning like he’s realized that she’s not telling him the whole truth, but all he says is, “All right.”

Susan smiles at him, a little weakly, and turns to go, forcing herself not to look back over her shoulder at the Witch’s wand.

Back in the great cave, Peter’s making some kind of soup and talking quietly with Tirian, sharing the skin of brandy back and forth. Susan puts the bags down and sits next to her brother, putting her head on his good shoulder. He turns his head and kisses her hair.

Tirian’s turning something over in his hands; he passes it to Eustace as he sits down. It’s a carved toy lion, legs, head, and tail segmented to move. There hadn’t been many children in the How, but there had been a few, huddled in the back of the How with their mothers during the battle. “I hadn’t thought this place was real,” he murmurs.

“Real enough,” Peter says. “Find anything interesting?”

Susan pulls away and twists around to pull his weapons pack from his bag, putting it in his lap. “Your bag of magic tricks,” she says.

He smoothes his hands over it, looking pleased. “Thanks,” he says. “I’d forgotten I’d left this here and not at Cair Paravel.”

Eustace hands the toy back to Tirian. “How did the Calormenes find us?” he asks. “I thought they would have been a little more worried about the flooding in the city than with chasing us down. Isn’t that why the Long Table breached the south bank levees in the first place?”

“One of the reasons,” Susan says.

Peter rubs the heel of his hand over his face. “Bahadur’s seen us,” he says. “He knows who we are, he knows who Narnia thinks we are. He knows how powerful that is. And he doesn’t give a damn about Narnia; he’s more interested in revenge than taking care of the damage. If he has the river spirits under his thumb, he might have sent naiads upriver to send a message to Hope-of-Gold.”

“Bastard,” Eustace mutters. “So what now?”

“Now we eat something, get some rest, and go back to Arn Abedin after the storm’s passed,” Peter says. He passes the nearly empty skin to Susan.

She drinks the last mouthful of apple brandy and sets the skin down, leaning back against Peter’s shoulder. “Rest,” she says. “And a roof over our heads. It sounds nice.”


----------
The White Cliffs of Morgencolla first appear in The White Cliffs. The rooming arrangements at the How appear in In Constellated Wars. Peter's bag of weapons appears in The Bone's Prayer.



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