Narnia fic: "The Coastwise Lights"

[bedlamsbard]

Title: The Coastwise Lights
Author: bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: If he were forced to guess – not that he had any more idea than anyone else what the High King was thinking at any given moment – he’d guess that Peter wanted Terebinthia like a drunkard wanted wine. Queen Lucy, escorted by a Narnian warship and her captain, visit Terebinthia on the eve of a war. Golden Age, gen. (Peter/other, Lucy/other implied.)
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title from Rudyard Kipling's poem The Coastwise Lights.
Author's Notes: Written for cliche_bingo prompt "roadtrip"; my card is here. Thanks to storm_of_roses for the beta! Further notes at end.



1

“She’s dancing naked as a jaybird, sir,” was the petty officer’s answer to his question, and Osumare sighed and shaded his eyes with one hand as he looked up at the crow’s nest on the Rising Sun’s mainmast.

“Of course she is,” he said dryly.

The petty officer, Kaveran Thorne – not one of Osumare’s original crew, but still a good seaman, even if he was using an assumed name, but half the Narnian Navy and more than half of the Army used assumed names – grinned happily. “Just like she’s been doing every day, sir,” he went on. “Lucky thing we haven’t had any kind of rough weather yet; I’d hate to be the one to tell her she has to go up with a lifeline.”

“Everyone goes up with a lifeline in rough weather,” Osumare pointed out. “And everyone with her kind of inexperience should be going up with a lifeline no matter if it’s clear as Tethys’s bathtub.”

Thorne shrugged matter-of-factly. “I’m not going to be the one who tells a queen of Narnia what to do, Admiral, begging your pardon.”

“No, the High King has left that unenviable task up to me,” Osumare said, and sighed. He turned away from the mast and bellowed, “Chinyere!” at the top of his lungs.

“Admiral!” his first lieutenant bawled back, leaning over the rail on the quarterdeck.

“You have the deck, Lieutenant.”

“I have the deck, aye aye, sir,” Chinyere Greywater said, raising one hand to her forehead in a lazy salute before she turned back to the wheel.

“Are you going up after her majesty, sir?” Thorne asked, reaching for a coil of rope lying on the deck by the base of the map.

“Yes, I am, and no, I don’t need a bloody safety line, I was dancing naked on the masts when you were still in your mother’s womb,” Osumare said, stepping out of his weathered sea boots and shedding his officer’s coat, dark blue and faded from saltwater and sunlight, the golden stripes embroidered on the cuffs starting to tarnish.

Thorne smiled beatifically. “I was hatched, sir,” he said. “From an egg.”

“Tethys protect us,” Osumare said, and decided he didn’t want to know what species of saltwater Narnian Thorne was. One of the ones from the deep sea, probably; he knew most of the species that lived closer to the coast.

He slung easily into the rigging, using his bare feet to cling to the lines as he climbed upwards. He could hear the snap of the canvas sails in the wind, clean and white as clouds, and the creak of the ship as it rode the waves. The higher he climbed, the more the movements of the Rising Sun in the water were exaggerated, and Osumare found himself automatically compensating as the ship seemed to roll on the waves, at times threatening to tip over. He pulled himself up into the crow’s nest, where Queen Lucy of Narnia obligingly scooted over to make room for him.

“Hullo, Osumare,” she said sunnily. “Was the Guard bothering you again? Or was it Lord Rance?”

“Lord Rance would not notice if the masts detached themselves and began to do a jig upon the deck,” Osumare said, referring to a particular bitter diplomat that thought little of sea travel, “and the Guard is still curled up with the barrels and the extra rope in the orlop, trying not be miserably sick.” He straightened up and tapped his fingers on the crow’s nest’s railing, spreading his feet for balance. “I don’t understand it,” he added after a moment. “The High King’s Guard never had any problem onboard the Sun, and I have great cats myself among my crew.”

“That’s because Peter can’t step on a ship without getting queasy,” Lucy said. “I, on the other hand, could dance a quadrille on the quarterdeck and not even blink. I have a cast-iron stomach,” she boasted. “I suppose it’s a tradeoff between the monarch and the Guard. One is sick and the other is impervious.”

“I suppose,” Osumare agreed, since it seemed as good a reason as any. “The High King got used to it eventually,” he noted.

“You had to drug him, didn’t you?” Lucy said, grinning.

“Only for the first three days,” he told her, and she laughed out loud.

“After that,” Osumare finished, more sober now, “there was killing to do and that cured him quickly.”

The Battle of the Bight, during the short-lived Masongnongese War, which Osumare supposed had been his fault, after a matter of speaking, since it was him the Matties had been coming for. The High King could have tossed him to the sharks, but instead Peter had put his country and his reputation on the line and defended him. Defended him quite handily, as it turned out; they’d by some miracle destroyed not one but two of the legendary Masongnongese fleets, which had had the dual effect of getting rid of the threat and making Narnia’s reputation across the Eastern Main.

“I should have been there,” Lucy said after a moment, tipping her head back against the rail. She was sitting on the floor of the crow’s nest, barefooted and dressed in trousers and a loose shirt, with nothing to distinguish her from any other sailor onboard the Sun. Osumare supposed it might help in a fight, since he and his officers would be recognizable in their blue coats, but no one would be able to tell that a queen of Narnia was hidden among the other seamen.

“You were twelve, your majesty,” Osumare said, “if I remember correctly.”

“Eleven,” she corrected absently. “How old were you when you first went to sea, Admiral?”

“Younger,” he said, his voice dry, “but my people were fisher folk and I didn’t set foot on a proper ship until I was nine. It’s quite a difference.”

Lucy spread her hands open in front of her, palms up, as if to say that it made no difference at all to her, but didn’t argue with him and Osumare didn’t bother resuming the argument. Instead he leaned on the rail, careful not to look down – a hundred and fifty feet from the banners at the top of the mainmast to the deck below, another forty or so feet from the main deck to the waves. A long way to fall. Habit made him look for another sail on the horizon, Narnian or otherwise; they would enter Terebinthian waters today or tomorrow. They’d only seen a handful of other ships in the week since they’d left Cair Paravel – two Calormene merchantmen and an Ansketts longship on their way to the Shifting Market and Captain Addai’s Glory, a Narnian warship that usually traveled with the Sea Queen, but Pertwee’s great galleon was riding at dry dock having her hull repaired after she’d run aground off Heresceaft Point. Glory had hailed them and Addai and his officers had taken dinner onboard the Sun with Osumare, Lucy, his diplomat cargo, and the Sun’s officers.

“Do you think we’ll go to war with Terebinthia?” Lucy asked suddenly.

Osumare turned away from the rail so that he could look at her. “You would have to be the one to tell me that, your majesty,” he said.

“I’ve no idea what Peter is planning,” she said. “Terebinthia has always been friendly with us,” she added, but there was a hint of doubt in her voice.

“They’ve been somewhat less so of late,” Osumare noted.

“Can you blame them?” Lucy asked bitterly. “Now that we’ve taken the Lone Islands, Narnia holds the entirety of the Eastern Ocean north of the Spearhead. All except for Terebinthia. They must be certain they’re next.”

“Mmm,” Osumare said, neutrally. If he were forced to guess – not that he had any more idea than anyone else what the High King was thinking at any given moment – he’d guess that Peter wanted Terebinthia like a drunkard wanted wine. The interior of the island was made up of forests of valuable hardwoods, and somewhere in the midst of the deep, nearly impenetrable jungles were the famed emerald mines of Terebinthia. No one lived in the jungles; men and women stayed there for a few months out of the year sometimes, but no one was born and lived and died there; there were no towns once you got more than five miles from the coast. But Terebinthia’s one big harbor was protected from the ocean, home to close on ten thousand souls, and had the third largest market north of the equator. Peter would have to be dead or not ambitious not to want it, and he was neither.

Lucy chewed absently on a fingernail. “Don’t say it,” she decided, and got up, holding onto the rails for balance.

The motion reminded Osumare of his original purpose in coming up to the crow’s nest and he said, “Your majesty, you shouldn’t come up here without a lifeline. It’s not safe –”

“I’m perfectly all right,” Lucy said, with her brother’s stubborn edge in her voice. “I climb the towers at Cair Paravel all the time, and I’ve climbed Giantkiller Ridge and the White Cliffs of Morgencolla.”

“A ship’s rigging is not exactly the same as a rock wall, your majesty.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s easier. Besides, your crew won’t let me fall.”

Osumare did have a handful of swanfolk in his crew, but he doubted they could change form in time to catch the queen if she fell, and by the time she hit the water, she’d probably be dead. “Your brother would never forgive me,” he warned. “What’s that saying the High King likes?”

“Fortune favors the brave?” Lucy suggested, a quirk to her smile.

“Not that one. There’s nothing so like a god on earth –”

“– as a general on the battlefield,” she finished. “What of it?”

“The same holds true for a captain on his ship,” Osumare said. “If you want to come up here again, your majesty, wear a harness and a lifeline. I’d rather not have your blood and brains spattered across my nice clean deck.”

“Hmmph,” Lucy said, pressing her lips together tightly, but she didn’t protest again, just left the crow’s nest and started climbing down the rigging until she found a line that suited her and slid the rest of the way, letting go and dropping the last few feet with careless grace. Osumare watched her go, swallowing down the automatic nausea at the sight of the deck so far below. She was quick and clever, if a little reckless; it was suns to stars that her overconfidence would have had her falling to her death in another day or so. And then Osumare would have had to tell the High King that his sister had died on his ship and then, ex-lover or not, Peter would probably kill him.

2

The Rising Sun was a warship, and a large and capable one, at least when she didn’t grow barnacles on her hull riding at anchor in the Shield Marina. The fleet admiral’s lions-in-suns on his shoulders meant that Osumare spent more time on land than he did at sea now, something that Peter had apologized for even as he gave Osumare the position, and both his ship and his crew had shared the duty. They were slow and out of practice on deck and on the masts; after a week of watching them slowly get back up to what a landlubber might consider respectable, Osumare had Chinyere blow the all-hands whistle, which was repeated through the ship by the other officers and petty officers. He stood on the quarterdeck with his arms crossed over his chest as the Rose Watch tumbled out of their bunks and hammocks to scramble onto the deck and join the Iris Watch, which looked just as surprised as their comrades; there was nothing in sight on horizon. Not a fleet, not a ship, not a sail, not so much as one of the great monsters of the deep sunning itself on the white-topped waves. Some of the Rose Watch were still pulling on shirts and buckling on weapons belts; as they stared out at the ocean, their expressions gradually turned from alarm to puzzlement. Only a few of them, Osumare noted with grim anger, had remembered to go to their action stations. He made of a note of their names; they wouldn’t be rewarded for doing their proper duty, but they would be remembered.

“You are a disgrace,” Osumare told his crew, projecting his voice to carry over the entirety of the Sun, from stern to bow. “Call yourselves Narnian sailors? The High King would throw you back to the rat holes you came from if he could see you now. If that had been a Masongnongese galleon or a Calormene xebec they would be sinking bolts into our sides now and we would be sinking to a watery grave. If that had been a cirein-croin or a sea serpent, we would be sliding down their gullets just now and you wouldn’t even have had time to say your last prayers, even though we would have dearly needed them.

“Lieutenant!” he barked suddenly; Chinyere, beside him, didn’t flinch, although her eyes went a little wider than they had been a moment previously. “Sound action stations!”

She still had the silver whistle she’d used to call the crew up in her hand; she raised it to her mouth and blew three long blasts and two short.

This time the crew responded more quickly, scrambling off the waist and to the stations they should have been practicing at winter harbor under Chinyere, when Osumare had been writing reports, filling out forms, and attending balls at Cair Paravel, spending a few stolen hours out of the weeks in the High King’s bed. Archers dashed to the arms closets for their bows and quivers, climbing the rigging or shimmying up the masts on their ways to the fighting tops or the crow’s nest, while others went below to man the sixteen scorpia on the lower decks, along with the eight on the top deck. Razor-nets to repel boarders went down over the sides of the ship, spaced to provide no distraction to the scorpion-holes on the lower deck. A small minority of the crew, the best and most experienced of Osumare’s seamen, who could have sailed a barrel through a hurricane, calmly went to fill their regular stations and make sure the ship could sail as quickly and neatly as she might have to in a battle situation.

“Jurasik!” he called. “Drop targets!”

Six members of the ship’s quarter-wing of griffins rose from the fore weather deck, each pair carrying a raft with two barrels strapped onto it. They flew out, circled a few times as if considering the positions, then dropped the targets into the water, where they went down with a splash, briefly disappearing before surfacing again, floating gently on the waves as the griffins returned to the flight deck, joining their fellows as their crews hastily put them into harness, a light, flexible contraption of leather straps that offered no protection but allowed them to carry firepots and heavy stones with ease.

Osumare judged the targets carefully. “Bring us about two points to starboard!” he called, spreading his feet slightly to brace himself as Chinyere repeated the order and the petty officer manning the wheel brought the ship slightly around so that the scorpia on the larboard side had a good sighting at the three bobbing targets.

“Lieutenant Reisende! Time this, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Reisende, who was a dark-faced officer from Alvarado. He had Osumare’s collection of sandglasses spread out in front of him; he found the smallest ones and moved them to the front, moving the larger ones back in order by size.

“Target’s coming on to bear, sir!” called an officer from the waist, and Osumare nodded. Reisende flipped the first hourglass over.

“Load scorpia!”

He couldn’t see what was going on below decks, but it was little different than what was happening on the waist as the petty officer in charge called orders and bullied the seamen. Scorpion bolts, thick around as Osumare’s forearm and about as long, with heads the length of his hand and sharp as knives, were loaded into the sliders, then winched back until the bowstrings were as taut as the sails above them, billowed out against the wind. He realized belatedly that he hadn’t run up the Narnian ensign on all three masts, essential in a battle, and berated himself silently for it before he let it slide out of mind.

“Loose at target!”

The scorpia snapped all together, a single massed sound as they flew out across the ocean, and their crews raced to reload, scrambling new bolts out of the barrels they were kept in.

“Corpsmen!”

Osumare took his telescope out of the case he kept in, straightening it out and raising it to his eye. The lenses were the best money could buy, purchased rather than stolen from a lens-grinder’s shop in Tashbaan, and he could see the targets perfectly. Most of the scorpion bolts floated on the water around the targets; one had pierced a barrel directly and spilled the red powder inside onto the raft. Two others stuck out from the raft.

He lowered the glass and looked up as the griffins rose up from the flight deck, webbing slung beneath their bellies that carried rounded stones and would – in another situation; he wasn’t going to fool around with flammables at the moment, not without another Narnian ship nearby – carry firepots as well. They flew in a formation of four, a lead flier and his or her wingman, flanked on the other side by another pair, and made their way out gracefully to the targets. The sound of Jurasik, the griffin captain, calling orders carried faintly across the water, and Osumare raised his telescope again to watch the stones fall on each pass, two of them bursting barrels and another one breaking a hole through a raft.

“Loose at target!” the scorpion petty officer called again, and the scorpia shot. The griffins made another pass. There were three burst barrels now, spilling their contents – red earth from the mines in the Southern Marches – onto the water, giving it the eerie quality of spilled blood.

“Archers!”

The archers on the deck were gathered in four rows; they drew their bows back at their officer’s call, aiming high as the griffins broke away and out of range, and then shot. Two hundred bowstrings snapped at once, and the air went black as sin and sorrow before they scattered among the waves, spilling open all but one of the remaining barrels. The rafts were feathered by scorpion bolts and arrows, punctured by the rocks the griffins had dropped, bristling like porcupines. The water around them was dark with arrows and bolts.

“Somebody open that last barrel!” Osumare barked.

Another scorpion shot, but the bolt fell short, and he could hear the petty officer below berating the crew from the quarter-deck.

“Archers, draw!” shouted the officer on the waist. “Loose!”

The arrow storm flew again, spreading across the waves, and at least the barrel spilled its contents onto the waves, split by no less than six arrows.

“Time, Lieutenant?” Osumare asked Reisende.

“Five minutes and a quarter, sir,” the Alvaradan officer said calmly. The griffins were coming back in to land in twos on the weather deck, their crews running to refill their webbing. A full wing would include dwarf archers as well, held in a griffin’s claws with safety lines connected to their harness, but Osumare had none of them here.

“Lieutenant Cydippe!” he called, and saw the nereid’s head lift from her place at the waist. “Take your swimmers and retrieve those arrows, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” she called back, stripping off her shirt and trousers as the swimmers with her – saltwater Narnians, who could leave the ship and venture into the sea without worry of harm; even most sea serpents wouldn’t hurt a nereid or oceanid, the children of the sea – began to do the same. They went over the side in a series of clean dives for the discrete Narnians and dissipations of water droplets for the oceanids and nereids, the heads of the finfolk and nix rising up from the waves before they stroked out for the targets, gathering up the used arrows and scorpion bolts into oiled silk bags. He’d send a boat out to retrieve the split wood later; it wouldn’t do to leave it out here.

“New targets!” Osumare shouted across the ship to the flight deck as they returned, and the officer there held up a green flag to show that he’d heard the order. “Make it four minutes this time!” he barked down to the officers at the waist, and they shouted agreement back up to him, a few of them berating the crewmen under their command. One of the archers on the tops, he saw only now, perched like a bird with a lifeline tied around her waist so that she’d dangle if she fell, was Lucy, her quiver on her back and her bow in her hands, looking indecently cheerful.

“Damn the girl’s hide,” he muttered under his breath, turning away.

“Sir?” Chinyere questioned, and he shook his head, watching as the new targets were dropped on the opposite side of the ship to the previous ones.

“Three points to larboard, and handsomely now! Again!”

3

It was the better part of two weeks from Cair Paravel to the Port of Paradise if the weather held fair, and a little to Osumare’s surprise, given the timing of this particular excursion – he’d argued with the High King for later in the spring, when the storms didn’t churn the Bight nearly as much – it did. A bit of a squall blew up on the eighth day out of Cair Paravel, but that was the worst of it, and the sea was calm except for a brisk northwest wind that drove them on relentlessly towards Terebinthia, carving almost two days off Osumare’s calculations for their estimated arrival date.

Late on the ninth day, when Osumare’s new midshipman, Edek Scaife, Narnian-born selkie and so fresh from the naval training program at Marshalcliffe that he practically squeaked, was sounding eight bells and the first and second dog watches were trading places with somewhat more enthusiasm than Osumare usually approved of – his crew had gotten bloody lazy while he’d been sailing a desk and the Sun had been riding at anchor in the Shield Marina – the swan-maid in the crow’s nest, so caught up in talking to the Iris Watch nix who’d shimmied up the mainmast to take her place that she hadn’t left yet, suddenly bellowed, “Sail ho! Two points off the starboard bow!” louder than seemed possible for someone who made barely seven stone as a human and significantly less not.

Lucy, who’d eaten with the first dog watch rather than in the officers’ wardroom, came rushing up from below, nearly bowling over a sailor named Leyden, who stepped hastily out of the way onto someone’s paw. The great cat yowled protest as Leyden began apologizing profusely. Osumare was already at the starboard rail of the quarterdeck, pulling his telescope out of his pocket and extending it to full length.

“What is it?” Lucy asked excitedly, scrambling up the steps.

Osumare resisted the urge to hit her over the head with it; it would probably only break the glass on her skull and he’d be down a good telescope. Since he’d spoken to her, she’d stayed out of the crow’s nest – but she spent most of her time clambering over the rigging, crouching on the tops with the archers during weapons drill. The rest of the diplomats he was carrying on the Sun, as well as the Guard and Lucy’s maids, at least had the grace to stay out of the way, remaining below decks or venturing up to the quarterdeck during drill. This, he swore silently to himself, was the last bloody time he took her to sea on his ship; Edeny Yricsdottir could have the pleasure the next time Lucy of Narnia needed to be ferried about. She was pleasant enough company on land; at sea, she was a fucking menace.

“A Paradise hooker out of Terebinthia,” he said instead of telling her so. “Fishing boat,” he elucidated at her blank expression, handing her the telescope. He pointed out the slim curves of her dark hull – there was barely a flat board on a hooker – and her three calico lateen sails, the small half-cabin in the stern of the ship. Hookers came in a number of sizes, all under the same design; this was one of the larger ones, meant to go out for several days and then return to port with her catch, or even to run cargo from the Port of Paradise to the nearest port in Archenland, less than a week’s sail from Terebinthia.

“Hooker?” Lucy asked curiously.

Osumare shrugged. “I didn’t name them,” he said. The hooker had seen them and was changing course, tacking back and forth into the wind to meet them. He took the telescope back from Lucy and watched the pennant with its twisting serpents dip briefly in greeting.

“What do they want?” Lucy asked.

“Business,” Osumare said, letting his gaze flicker over the waist. He was the only officer on the quarterdeck, but Ensign Merryweather was coming up from below, talking animatedly with the bosun, who was looking good-naturedly bemused by the young officer’s enthusiasm. Most of Osumare’s experienced officers had gone to fill officer slots on the other ships in the Narnian Navy; they would be short on experienced sailors for a long time yet, though they were fast making up the lack. As a result, most of the junior officers were shockingly young. “Merryweather! Be so good as to get the purser.”

“Aye aye, sir!” the nix called, waving up at him in something that might have been a salute before he ducked back below.

Osumare nodded at the approaching hooker. “I used to sail on one of those,” he said to Lucy. “Not a deep sea fisher like that one, but the rock sailors, the ones that stay close to the Labyrinth.”

“You’re Terebinthian?” she exclaimed, sounding surprised. “I thought you were from Lycoris!”

Osumare patted the rail in front of him. “The Rising Sun is from Lycoris,” he corrected. “But yes, I was born in Terebinthia.”

“And you used to be a fisherman?” Lucy asked curiously. “Before you became a pirate?”

He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable with her line of questioning. He hadn’t meant to bring his past into the open; with so many expatriates in Narnia, a person’s past was both currency and courtesy. Most of them considered it basic politeness not to inquire what had brought a talented sailor or soldier out from their home country and into exile, but the royal family transcended that. Peter had never asked Osumare, but he’d seen the High King demand a reason at sword point, or while the recipient was spitting up blood and broken teeth. He only asked when necessary.

“I used to be a fisherman, yes,” Osumare said at last. “Or my family was, at least. I left for my first ship when I was nine.”

Lucy opened her mouth to reply, her eyes wide with surprise, but the purser was coming up from the undercastle and Osumare stepped away to go and talk to the him. Julcir’s body was as crooked as his hands, his long fingers gnarled where they’d been broken decades earlier – Osumare had never heard the story of how they’d come to be that way – and he was the oldest sailor on the Rising Sun, not counting the nereids and oceanids, who seemed as ageless as the ocean itself. But he had been with Osumare since Osumare had left Terebinthia, ancient even then, under the command of Urvashi Julane on the Bastard Queen. He was probably the only person left alive who remembered Osumare as the stubborn boy he had been, not the pirate captain or the Narnian naval officer.

Or at least, he had been until Lucy had reminded Osumare that he was going back to the island he’d been born on.

Julcir flicked a gnarled hand at the hooker as Osumare came down the quarterdeck stairs. “Feeling sorry for them, skipper?” he asked dismissively.

“It’s good to be friendly with the locals,” Osumare said. “And we have the money. The fresh fish will do the crew well.”

“You say that now,” Julcir grumbled, but the Paradise hooker was already drawing up beside the Sun, its captain raising a speaking horn to his lips.

“Ahoy the ship!”

4

They continued to see Paradise hookers the closer they came to Terebinthia, and around mid-afternoon two days later the Rose Watch top-eyes called a land sighting.

Osumare didn’t bother hurrying up to the deck to see it; he’d been here before, many times, and they had the better part of the day until they would be within reach of Terebinthia. Instead he finished eating his lunch in the officers’ wardroom, where Chinyere, Cydippe, and Lucy were eagerly discussing some feminine mystery on the opposite side of the table and Reisende was complaining – loudly – about the scorpion crews’ latest performance, with occasional input by the two ensigns that had been on the artillery decks that morning. The midshipmen were all on the deck with Lieutenant Marcolis, as was Jurasik, who didn’t bother to bring himself down to the wardroom for lunch, though he’d appeared a few times for dinner and breakfast. The diplomats were holding a whispered conversation amongst themselves, watched over by Ensign Breen, who’d inherited the usual selkie expression of looking lazily amused by everything and anything.

For once, Lucy appeared to take her cue from him and stayed below even after Osumare excused himself to go up to the decks. Marcolis, his third lieutenant, had the deck, and he was standing on the quarterdeck watching the tall rocks slide slowly out of the ocean, seeming to grow as they approached. They turned into a twisting tangle of sharp stone, some of them half-again taller than the Sun’s mainmast, dark as sin and gloomy to the eye. It was impossible to see from this far out, but Osumare knew that some of them had lichen, moss, or even a few scraggly trees growing from cracks in the stone, though none of the far ones did. Behind them, seemingly unreachable, rose the black peak of Calypso’s Heart, which lay at the rough center of Terebinthia and was so high that even the thick rainforest that blanketed most of the island trickled away to nothing on its heights. The volcano was dormant now, as it had been for time out of mind, though occasionally it belched thick gray smoke or rumbled a warning, a reminder that though Terebinthia was nearly impregnable by sea attack, she risked the price of being destroyed from the inside out.

Because Terebinthia was impregnable. Paradise hookers were as small, fast, and maneuverable as they were for one reason and one reason alone. The thick spars of rock that sprouted from the waters ahead of the Rising Sun went all the way around the island, creating a dark maze whose walls were sharp stone and whose depth was uncertain and ever-changing. It was called the Labyrinth and for a ship the size of the Rising Sun – or anything bigger than the largest of the Paradise hookers, which went only to some forty feet and could have floated in a puddle – the only way through the Labyrinth was a twisting passage called the Needle. Paradise hookers could slip through much smaller passageways in the maze called eel-holes, but no one knew which passages were safe and which ones would trap even a hooker between two narrow rocks or scrape her hull open on the reefs. No ship-of-the-line had ever made it to Terebinthian soil by any passage other than the Needle. No invading force had ever taken Terebinthia or even made it through the Labyrinth.

Many of the rocks of the Labyrinth – called the Guardians – were connected by rope catwalks. There were huts on a few of the Guardians, lived in by minders who kept an eye on the open sea for approaching danger. If someone made the fatal mistake of trying to invade Terebinthia, they could rain down arrows and, worse, fire-arrows from above, stopping the ships long before they managed to thread the twisting Needle into the open water around the shore. And once a ship had been burned or run aground on the rocks, the Terebinthians could come to finish them off – or they could leave their enemies for the creatures that lived in the Labyrinth. Twisting sea serpents, giant devilfish, razor-backed sharks, deathworms, a thousand predators that lurked amid the shadows of the Labyrinth waiting for a ship to make one mistake. Even Paradise hookers, their captains and crews experienced from a lifetime of work beyond the Labyrinth, disappeared sometimes, their bodies feeding the things in the Labyrinth. It was a bad end. And those dangers lurked for natives, visitors, and traders alike.

To think Peter wanted to take Terebinthia by force.

Five years ago Osumare would have laughed and said that such a thing was impossible, especially for tiny Narnia, blanketed in the ice and snow of the Long Winter, but since then he’d seen so many impossible things that the idea of conquering Terebinthia no longer seemed impossible, but merely difficult. If the High King wanted to add Terebinthia to the Narnian empire, then he would find a way to do so, no matter how unlikely the idea seemed looking at the Labyrinth.

Before the Labyrinth, the red triangles of the Paradise hooker sails flirted about like so many birds, with the deeper blue and green of the Terebinthian banners sometimes visible. One was close enough to the Rising Sun that its crew and the Sun’s that they could have spoken if so inclined, but the fishing boat’s captain barely seemed to notice that it was sailing in the shadow of the big man-of-war and its crew took their cue from him, only a few of them casting curious looks up at the Sun as they slid by. Osumare put his elbows on the rail to watch them and saw his brother.

It had been the better part of a quarter-century since the last time Osumare had seen his brother, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Adan Wisewaters looked exactly as their father had he might never have recognized him, because there was nothing of the round-faced teenager he remembered in the burly seaman hauling on the hooker’s lines. But Adan had their father’s face and build, his slightly bowed legs, the big ears and curly hair all three of them shared – though Adan’s was concealed beneath a fisherman’s knit cap – and their mother’s slightly crooked nose. He glanced up at the Sun, then away, apparently seeing nothing of interest.

Osumare drew in a sharp breath.

He had no wish to see his family, or what was left of it; he’d been to the Port of Paradise a dozen times and never made any attempt to go back to Whitetyde. He’d gone so far to change his surname when he shipped aboard the Bastard Queen as a cabin boy. The last time he’d seen his brother, Adan had been cursing his decision to stay onboard the Queen rather than be returned to the Port of Paradise after their hooker – even at its smallest, two big for a pair of half-grown boys to handle – had been blown three leagues out to sea, where Julane had picked them up, bemused at her prize. Osumare didn’t even know if their mother was still alive. He hadn’t known if his brother was alive; he hadn’t cared.

“Ahoy the boat!” he cried suddenly, surprising himself and the Sun’s crew. Marcolis, on the quarterdeck, was drawn out of his silent reverie and stared down at him like he’d never seen Osumare before. The bosun, playing cards with the ship’s surgeon, a scorpion master, two griffins, and one of the few members of the Royal Guard not stricken by seasickness, looked up, his expression startled. He’d known Osumare too long, perhaps.

The hooker’s captain finally deigned to notice them. “What ho!” he called back cheerfully. “What news from the west, sailor man?”

“Little enough,” Osumare said; at this distance, a speaking trumpet was superfluous. “The King of Telmar is dead,” he added as an afterthought, though that news was months old, and saw the hooker’s captain shrug; what did landlocked Telmar have to do with Terebinthia. He tried again, “There are merchantmen in the Bight; the Shifting Market opens to the sea.”

That was good news; Narnia’s Shifting Market drew merchants from up and down the eastern seaboard, as well as from inland. Any merchant who sent his goods to the Shifting Market was nearly certain to come away with a profit, and Terebinthia had more than a few prizes to offer up. He saw the captain nod with satisfaction.

“What ship and what port?” he asked.

“Royal Narnian Ship Rising Sun, out of Cair Paravel in Narnia. Fleet Admiral Osumare Seaworth commanding,” he added when the captain’s gaze went curiously to the gold stripes on his cuffs and the lions-in-suns pinned to his collar.

“That’d be you?”

“That would be me,” Osumare said. Adan’s head had come up at his first name, but it wasn’t that uncommon of a name and he went back to what he had been doing. Osumare felt a little frisson of disappointment run up his spine, but it had been twenty-four years; it probably would have been more than awkward if Adan had recognized him. “Are you selling?”

“If you’re buying, Narnia,” the captain said cheerfully, and he and Osumare bartered for a few minutes before coming to a satisfying arrangement. Osumare sent a crewman for Julcir, who came with a sack of coin and an expression of shocked disbelief. They exchanged the coin for a crate of crabs, a few of them still squirming in protest, and sent the crate back down to the hooker, which wished them well before the Rising Sun left them in their wake.

“Feeling homesick, skipper?” Julcir asked, calling over a pair of crewmen to see that the pile of crabs on the deck were taken down to the kitchens. The cook came stomping up in their wake, trailing a string of cook’s apprentices behind her, and the crewmen backed off hastily.

Osumare snorted. “Hardly,” he said.

Julcir turned around to watch the hooker, diminishing in size in their wake. “Hope those are good crabs,” he said eventually, and left. Like the rest of what remained of Osumare’s pirate crew, he’d never taken to military discipline.

Nasreen, the cook, picked up one crab gingerly and held it out in front of her, squinting at it through her one good eye. “Well, at least we’ll eat well tonight, skipper,” she said, and dropped it into the barrel one of her apprentices was holding out.

5

The word had passed through the ship hours earlier that there would be an all hands call sometime around dusk, and as they slid closer and closer to the entrance to the Needle the whistles sounded, bringing the crew boiling out of whatever cubbyholes they’d sequestered themselves in. Every flag that the Rising Sun was entitled to fly – and there were rather a lot, with both the admiral of the fleet and a queen of Narnia onboard – was flying; the masts and bowsprit were bright with color. A series of colored pennants ran up and down the mizzenmast at Osumare’s order as the Sun responded to the messages the Terebinthian minders on the farthest seaward Guardians were sending. They had been recognized, they would not be shot at if they entered the Needle, the Needle was empty – it was impossible for two ships to pass by each other, especially if one of them was the size of the Rising Sun – and they could enter when they felt ready. Osumare acknowledged receipt of that last and ordered the pennants taken down and stored away; unless something went drastically wrong, they would be unnecessary the rest of the journey.

Dusk had fallen, and the fleets of Paradise hookers around the Labyrinth had all retreated shoreward, slipping through the eel-holes and back to home. The Sun’s bow and rigging were festooned with every lantern in the ship’s stores – a dangerous risk for a ship at sea, but he’d rather have the light than go without. Crewmen were standing by barrels of water to extinguish any fire. He could have anchored outside the Labyrinth and wait for morning, but in the Needle it made very little difference whether it was day or night, and for now the tide was right and the Needle was empty. It was possible to do this in dead dark, but times would have to be significantly more desperate for Osumare to contemplate that possibility.

He sent his best top-men up to the rigging, unfurling every one of the Sun’s white sails for the time being. He put top-eyes both in the crow’s nest and the tops – archers with two quivers of arrows, though he didn’t expect to have to use them. Terebinthia and Narnia weren’t at war yet. However, if they saw anything in the water, he wanted to be able to shoot at it. The griffins huddled on the flight deck, restless at the air of tension on the ship but ready to take flight at a moment’s notice. Kaveran Thorne stood at the taffrail, running the log-line through his hands, and Osumare put leadsmen on either side of the ship, constantly throwing their lead-lines out into the water and calling the depth. The wheel master was at the wheel, his gaze steady and his touch sure. Chinyere stood by him with the Rising Sun’s collection of precision sandglasses in front of her, a hand-drawn chart of the Needle and the Labyrinth beneath them, though Tethys willing it wouldn’t be used. Maps seldom did any good in the Labyrinth; chances were this one wasn’t even accurate.

Lucy had ventured up onto the quarterdeck, along with two members of her Guard who looked distinctly uneasy and a faun Osumare knew distantly – Quaderi, who had lost an arm in the battle against the White Witch and now served as one of Narnia’s premier diplomats. The rest of his passengers were below decks in the officers’ wardroom.

“Lieutenant, give me twelve minutes,” Osumare said, and Chinyere flipped over one of her sandglasses as they slipped silently into the Labyrinth and began to thread the Needle. Here, at least, the area between the rocks on either side of him was wide enough to accommodate three ships the size of the Rising Sun, though he knew it narrowed off ahead. But even with the lanterns on the bow lit, all he could see beyond a few feet in front of the ship was a pool of dark water.

“By the deep nine,” called the larboard leadsman.

Every now and then, darker openings would appear on either side of the Sun, some of them big enough for the ship to fit through. The crew eyed them warily, fingering their weapons and murmuring prayers to their gods. Osumare touched the thin cedar line that ran through the quarterdeck rail for reassurance – cedar was a reminder to the gods of the sea that all ships were bound to the land by the thinnest of threads – and gave the next order as Chinyere called time.

“Helm a-weather, northwest by west. Two spokes to larboard. Chinyere, give me five minutes.”

The ship heeled over slightly as the wheel master made his adjustment and the top-men ran back and forth across the yardarms, pulling some of the sails up and making shifting the others. The crew at the waist scrambled to do their duties, checking and double-checking their work. The Sun passed between one rock that stood as tall as the mainmast and another whose top was broken off crookedly, giving it the look of a jagged tooth. Small, eerie lights began to blossom from the rocks around them, and Osumare swallowed his nervousness as one of the Guard muttered a curse. There were dozens – hundreds – of them, and they seemed to illuminate various paths through the Labyrinth, casting their reflections into the clear dark water. Some of them were purple, others green, a few red, but most of them were a strange bluish color.

“Please tell me that that’s supposed to light our way,” Quaderi said, his voice strangely high-pitched.

“Not unless you want to run aground,” the wheel master said calmly. “Or get caught between the rocks. Become something’s dinner.”

Osumare called the next order and the Rising Sun turned again, Chinyere mechanically flipping over sandglasses. They slid through the narrowest passage yet; Osumare could have reached out and touched the rocks on the ship’s starboard side. Lucy did, and came away with her fingers glowing gold. She raised them in front of her face, looking fascinated, and then wiped them clean on her skirt at the urging of one of her guards.

“By the mark five,” one of the leadsmen called.

“Time, Admiral,” Chinyere said, her face pale in the ghostly light.

“Helm a-lee!” Osumare called, giving the rest of the orders. “Brace the yards, brace the yards! Fifteen minutes, Lieutenant.”

“Fifteen minutes, aye, Admiral.”

“By the deep eight,” called the starboard leadsman, just as his counterpart shouted, “By the half four!”

There was a strained moment on the decks, and Osumare barked, “For the love of the gods, most of us have been here before, you know how the Labyrinth is! Hold her steady!”

Still, he dropped one hand to the hilt of his sword, reassured by the cold metal under his fingers and paced to the larboard rail, glancing down. There was nothing there, of course, or at least nothing he could see, just dark water moving smoothly around the Sun’s hull and the steady reflection of the ghost-lights on the rocks. He stepped away, crossing to the starboard rail, and saw one of the glowing lights move. Glow-sharks, maybe, or wraith-sisters. Harmless so long as none of them touched the water.

“Three knots, Admiral,” called Thorne from the taffrail, and Osumare nodded his understanding.

“Time!”

He gave his next set of orders, and the Sun shifted again, the wind stirring Osumare’s face and catching at his curls as the Sun turned into it. Chinyere reset her sandglasses, studying them assiduously.

“By the quarter less seven!”

Movement up on the Guardians drew Osumare’s attention and he glanced up. A pair of Terebinthian minders were watching their passage, longbows with nocked arrows in their hands. Lieutenant Reisende, on the flight deck with the griffins, started to raise a hand to them and then seemed to think better of it, touching the hilt of his sword in warning instead. Osumare felt their eyes on the Sun until they made their next turn.

“I feel like we’re going in a circle,” Lucy whispered, coming up to his side. “Like the forests under the White Witch. Everything feels the same.”

“Only a few more yet,” Osumare said encouragingly. Chances were they had ended up circling around at least once; the Needle was confusing and by no means straight or sensible. But it did lead to the Port of Paradise. Eventually.

“How many?”

“Four,” he said. “Less than an hour.”

Lucy swallowed hard, clutching at the rail and hanging over, looking at the water beneath. Osumare resisted the urge to grab her by the collar and haul her back, but all she did was hiss, “There’s something in the water –”

This one didn’t glow. It churned the water to their starboard side, and a few of the crewmen at the waist muttered unhappily; a griffin hissed like a cat. The archers on the tops shifted to cover it with their arrows.

“Probably a devilfish or a deathworm,” Osumare said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. He’d threaded the Needle a dozen times before; he’d never seen anything bigger than a glow-shark. This was at least three times that size. “Maybe a sea serpent. It won’t touch us.”

“Time!”

He turned away from Lucy to shout, “Farid, put up your helm. Tacks and sheets, tacks and sheets, southwest by west! Handsomely now. Chinyere, give me seven minutes.”

“Seven minutes, aye, skipper.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” one of the Guard members announced.

“Do it on my ship and I’ll keelhaul you,” Osumare said, in the few seconds before the jaguar was messily sick over the side, her partner pressed anxiously up against her.

He glanced up at the Guardians as the Rising Sun adjusted to her new course, but the minders were gone.

The creature in the water followed them all the way to the harbor.

6

Even without the Labyrinth’s protection, the Port of Paradise would have made an ideal harbor. The sides of it curved inward like a quarter-moon, deep enough at one end that ships that drew three times as deep as the Rising Sun could anchor at the docks – though they wouldn’t be able to make it through the Needle; the shallowest passages would scrape their hulls open. The piers, called the Golden Steps, were made of deep blonde wood that seemed to catch the light of the lanterns and hold it, almost glowing; it was this that gave them their name. Behind them, the vast stretch of the city splayed out alongside the beach, going nearly a mile inland before the thick tangle of temperate rainforest took back its own. Osumare knew there were fields back of the city, but they were hidden from the harbor and he’d never been given a reason to go beyond what the center of the city. At the southern end of the city, in the nobles quarter, rose Waterside Hill, which may have sat on the shore but wasn’t particularly much of a hill. The castle had been built and rebuilt half a dozen times over the centuries and looked it in sections – some curving, some straight, some columned, some arched, some towers peaked, others rounded – but it seemed to boast of its irregularities, not hide them, and they somehow managed to blend together into a somewhat mellifluous whole.

The Labyrinth ended a few hundred yards off the shore; the Rising Sun passed out of the Needle and into open water with a sigh of relief that seemed to go around the entire ship, heading inland towards the Golden Steps to anchor alongside a smaller Narnian brig that rode gently at anchor. Osumare recognized her; the Black Pearl, Taini Ticotin’s sleek Vandal beauty, which had brought the Narnian ambassador to Terebinthia a few months ago and whose return had been delayed when a clumsy merchantman had rammed her as she turned to enter the Needle. He could see the scars on her side now; she’d been weeks in the mend and Ticotin’s letters to him had been filled with fury, more than understandably so. She looked seaworthy enough now; Terebinthia, at least, was a good place to be grounded, filled with shipwrights and rope-menders of all sorts. Ticotin herself was on the Pearl’s quarterdeck, Osumare saw as the Rising Sun slid carefully into place at the docks, jolted into a stop by the anchor. The captain waved a greeting at him; he returned the gesture, and the Pearl dipped her flags briefly in salute.

“Home,” Chinyere said happily, stepping up to the taffrail beside Osumare. She stared out at the vast stretch of rainforest behind the Port of Paradise, rising gently up onto the slopes of Calypso’s Heart. Somewhere in that mess were the famed emerald mines of Terebinthia. “Glad to see it, sir?”

“Home?” Osumare questioned curiously. He patted the rail in front of him. “This is home, Chinyere. This and Cair Paravel.”

She shrugged, unrepentant, as below them the crew ran about putting the ship to order. Lucy and Quaderi had vanished into their cabins to prepare for arrival on land. “I’ll be glad to see my parents again, at least.”

“Give them my regards,” Osumare said after a minute.

Chinyere nodded knowingly. She was Paradise born and Paradise bred, shipped out on a Terebinthian merchantman when she’d been barely a girl; from what Osumare knew of her past she’d spent the better part of a decade on various merchantman before she’d had the ill luck to be captured and enslaved by a Calormene pirate. He’d found her pulling an oar on a xebec, chains on ankles, wrists, and neck, and she’d elected to join his crew after he’d sold the xebec. Lucky for them both he’d taken that ship.

“And you, sir?” she asked. “What will you do while her majesty goes about the High King’s business?”

“Meet with old friends,” Osumare said. “I should have a few of them still about.”

7

His opportunity to do so, however, was unceremoniously – or rather, far too ceremoniously – delayed by the court at Waterside Hill. Queen Lucy and the rest of his passengers had spent the night ashore in the Narnian ambassador’s house, but the following morning saw them installed in Waterside Hill, along with Osumare, somewhat to his distress. He would have greatly preferred to stay onboard the Rising Sun, even if the suite allotted to him in the castle were far more luxurious than his cabin or even his rooms in Cair Paravel, but the courtesy wasn’t merely that of the prince, but the orders of King Edmund, who had misgivings about Terebinthia’s intentions. The kings of Narnia were a suspicious lot.

Osumare found himself presented to the Prince of Terebinthia, a handsome young man who was neither as young nor as handsome as Peter was – the thought was probably ungenerous, but true nonetheless – but who lacked the High King’s icy temperament. He’d never had opportunity to meet the old Prince Seabright, who’d died of an ague the year after Osumare had sworn to Narnia; common pirates usually didn’t chance to meet the sovereign lords. The young Prince Seabright seemed amiable enough, if a little high-strung, and far too interested in Osumare’s history for his taste. Just because the entire eastern seaboard knew that he’d been a pirate captain before he’d been a naval admiral didn’t particularly mean that Osumare wanted to share his stories with the prince of Terebinthia.

“He seems very nice, don’t you think?” Lucy asked him afterwards. She was skirts now, her hair in artful loops, with her crown pinned among her dark curls, and not for the first time Osumare found himself wishing that the High King had come himself instead of sending his sister.

“I suppose,” he said dubiously. “But ‘very nice’ will do Terebinthia no good. ‘Reasonable’, perhaps, or ‘inclined to heed a threat.’”

Lucy laughed, and the sound of it made a pair of guardsmen in Terebinthian livery look over, eyeing Lucy with appreciation before one of the Royal Guard growled at them. “We don’t threaten people, Admiral,” she chided, not seeming to notice the disturbance. “Narnia will be perfectly reasonable, and Terebinthia, if they’re wise, will be as well.”

“And do you think they’re wise, your majesty?”

“I think they might find that the circumstances incline them to be so.”

“Indulge me, your majesty,” Osumare said, as they stopped at a wide, airy balcony that looked out over the rainforest. “If, say, Rabadash of Calormen came to Cair Paravel making the same reasonable requests that you are making of Prince Seabright, what would his majesty’s reaction be?”

“Peter would send him back to Tashbaan with his bum smacked and his trousers on fire,” Lucy said happily. “It’s not as if it hasn’t been tried, you know.”

“Indeed.” He tapped his fingers against the stone in front of him, wishing that it was the wood of the Rising Sun instead. Beneath him, the rainforest spread out, deep green and pristine and seemingly untouched by the hand of man. The Terebinthians took trees from the wood, many of them, but never more than half a dozen from the same place in the jungle a year, giving the impression, from the above, that they took nothing at all from it. And yet in some ways that was the truth, since no sane Terebinthian would go more than half a mile into the jungle. The families that worked the logging and mining trades were just that, families, the only people on the island who had never taken their living from the sea, and it was rare for someone new to try their hand at the working. Death lurked in the rainforest; Osumare could still remember seeing a boy he’d known in his village pulled out by a pair of foresters, dead as a doornail and with the entire lower half of his body missing, the tear ragged, as if something had taken bites out of him. The majority of the island had never been mapped or even explored; civilization perched on the very edge of it and pretended that whatever lurked at the island’s heart didn’t exist.

Lucy reached out and flicked a finger at the lions-in-suns on his collar, where the gold could have used some polishing before Osumare had dragged his formal uniform out of his sea chest to go and stand before a prince. “Make sure you get those cleaned up before dinner tonight,” she said. “The invitation is extended to your officers as well; I expect to see them here.”

Osumare sighed. “I shall have to leave someone aboard the Sun,” he said.

8

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the only real outcome of the formal dinner was that Osumare met the majority of the Terebinthian naval captains – most were onshore rather than at sea, since Terebinthia, all appearances to the contrary, didn’t actually have much of a navy – and that none of his officers managed to make fools of themselves. He considered the latter the real success of the evening; none of them had served on naval vessels prior to joining the Narnian Navy and thus had little to no experience of conduct at formal affairs, especially those as formal as what Waterside Hill put on, since Narnia’s formality was, by Terebinthian standards, nothing of the sort.

Whatever Queen Lucy and her diplomats planned to discuss with Prince Seabright and his council was no business of the Narnian Navy’s – not yet, at least, and by the time it came to them it would be far past what diplomacy could manage – so Osumare left the castle to go down into the city. His crew onboard the Rising Sun had been more or less released for shore leave, save for a skeleton crew under Lieutenant Reisende, and he saw one or two of them as he passed by Halfcrown Alley, notorious across the Eastern Main for its drinking houses. Osumare didn’t bother stopping in any of the bars there; he’d have more than enough opportunity to get good and plastered without worrying about being sick all over the Terebinthian gentry in the few weeks he expected they’d be here. Instead he cut between two taverns that, despite the early hour, were already spilling men and women out into the street and took a back alley up to Twistrope Way, home of the Port of Paradise’s chandleries.

Like any other port town, he could have found rumor and seaman’s stories a-plenty in the taverns, but in the Port of Paradise, truth could be found in the chandleries, where every reputable seaman went for ducks, lines, spars, instruments, all the odds and ends that a ship needed to run. The chandlery masters heard every story that came through Paradise, and they could discern truth from lie and the heart of a matter from a tangled mess of rumor and innuendo as easily as a hooker cut close to the wind. Different captains favored different chandleries, some better or worse than others, though Osumare had never found a particularly bad one in all the twenty years he’d been coming to the Port of Paradise.

Sweet Wyl’s Ship’s Chandlery was in the middle of the block, closer to the cross-street than the center, and the bells over the door rang when Osumare pushed it open. Inside, sunlight spilled through the open windows, illuminating coils of thick rope, barrels of varying woods, instruments carefully kept in glass cases, shelves full of charts, and the general miscellanea that ship’s captains had found useful or interesting for generations now. Osumare stepped inside and let the door close behind him, going over to the shelves to inspect the line of telescopes there. The Port of Paradise had lens-grinders, of course – not as good as Tashbaan, but better than anyone else north of the Spearhead – and they sold the lenses to telescope-makers, who then sold the finished product to the chandleries. Osumare picked one up at random, the leather cool and smooth beneath his fingers – too smooth; it would be easy to lose his grip at sea.

“Njord protect us, it’s Captain Seaworth!” Sweet Wyl exclaimed, a door banging shut as he came out of the back room. “It’s been too long, Captain, I was starting to think that someone had actually captured that red-hulled beauty of yours and hung you from her yardarm.”

Osumare put the telescope down and turned around, grinning. “No such luck, Wyl, I still live. You’re looking as decrepit as ever, I see.”

“And you’re looking quite dashing, don’t tell me that ridiculous rumor’s true and you’ve turned your coat, sailed the straight, loosed your canvas and all that?” The dwarf came close enough to poke a finger at the gold buttons on Osumare’s jacket. “That’s no Terebinthian uniform.”

“Narnian, Wyl, and it’s admiral now, not just captain,” Osumare told him.

“And next you’ll be telling me that that pup of a High King went and made you admiral of the fleet after you made mincemeat of the Seven Isles, of all the mad things. If the gods were sensible creatures, you’d be dead just now, but the gods like to laugh at us mortals and you live, with an admiralty at that. Breakwave must be having kittens.”

Osumare just grinned. He’d met Lord Admiral Breakwave last night, a tall, thin man who’d looked at Osumare at first like something he’d just scraped off his flagship’s hull, but had been as gracious and stiffly civil as possible, considering the circumstances, lapsing into the regular reminiscences old seamen fall into as the night went on. He’d liked Breakwave after the first three glasses of dry Terebinthian red.

“So what can I do you for, Admiral Seaworth?” Wyl asked. “Still have that pretty mate of yours, or did you give her up to the hangman’s noose? There’s a ship or two here who’d be glad to rid you of that tonnage, I’m sure.”

“Chinyere Greywater’s my first lieutenant now, and due for her own ship soon, though I wouldn’t tell her I said that if she comes in here,” Osumare said. He leaned an elbow on the counter, looking down at Sweet Wyl. “I need a chart, Wyl.”

The dwarf’s black eyes sharpened. He gestured behind him at the scroll-rack, full of maps and charts rolled up, some in their oiled leather carrying cases. “I’ve maps and charts a-plenty, you know that. Charts of the Eastern Main, charts of the Bight, maps and charts of the Seven Isles and the Lone Island, charts of the seaboard, maps and charts of Galma, maps and charts of Alvarado and Vandalin, of Calormen –”

“Of Terebinthia?”

Sweet Wyl paused in his recitation. “You know as well as I that the island’s never been mapped nor charted, Seaworth.”

Osumare tapped his fingers idly on the hilt of his sword. “The Port of Paradise has been here for a thousand years, Wyl. Don’t tell me that no one’s ever taken a hooker out for a jaunt around the island, even if only to see if there’s good fishing on the eastern side.”

“Not and lived,” Wyl said shortly. “You know that.”

“I know the stories,” Osumare said. “Well, if not the island, what about the Labyrinth, then?” He knew that as soon as he said the words they were a lost cause; Sweet Wyl barked disbelieving laughter.

“You’ve been away from Terebinthia too long, Seaworth! One might think you were Alvaradan by blood and not just saltwater. There are laws about charting the Labyrinth, and they all clearly say no, on pain of death. Terebinthia likes to keep her skirts down and her knees closed; don’t go trying to feel her up, now, or you’ll get worse than a fan across your knuckles.” He pulled himself up onto the high stool behind the counter and gave Osumare a gimlet glare. “And why would you be asking about maps that don’t exist? Planning to give up your red lady and settle down here, captain a hooker, try and find a good fishing ground? Or does it have more to do with those pins on your jacket?”

Lion’s heads on his collar, lion’s heads on his sleeves, lion’s paws on his buttons. Osumare kept himself from touching any of them and just smiled. “Curiosity killed the cat, Wyl.”

“You’re a bloody great cat now, Admiral,” Wyl said, slapping his palm down on the gold sun that Osumare flipped at him. “A bloody great yellow cat.”

9

There was an air of tension that seemed to grow the longer they remained in the Port of Paradise. Some of it was just that the Rising Sun’s crew was idle; Osumare wouldn’t take the Sun out through the Needle and leave Queen Lucy alone ashore, since there was always the chance she might need to make a quick getaway, and so his ship rode at anchor, her great red hull a startling contrast to the deep blue-green of the harbor. Most of it, though, came from Paradise itself. It was nothing Osumare could put his finger on, nothing specific, just a feeling that grew and grew until he was tempted to start scratching at the inside of his head.

They weren’t wanted here.

It wasn’t an impression that was conveyed by fists or raised voices, just looks and whispers, the increasingly irritated expression Queen Lucy wore when they weren’t in the company of the Terebinthians. Everyone that Osumare spoke to was more than cordial; Admiral Breakwave took time out of his schedule to give Osumare a tour of the Navy’s flagship, which was only a foot or two smaller than the Rising Sun, and Osumare returned the favor by showing him the Sun, from bilges to crow’s nest, where even the ship’s cats managed to be perfectly polite. He only had to haul one of his crewmen out of a fight, and that was over a woman, not politics, and he doubted that he would have heard about it at all if he hadn’t given the officer of the deck the watch off in order to spend some time with the Rising Sun; the crewmen who came back to the Sun for the bail money had expected to find Ensign Merryweather, not their captain.

There had been no word from Sweet Wyl and Osumare was starting to wonder if he’d been chasing a westerly wind after all. He’d had Captain Ticotin to dinner on the Sun the night before the Black Pearl had finally slipped free of the Golden Steps and gone to thread the Needle on her way out of Terebinthia, only three weeks late. Chinyere Greywater had asked for, and gotten, permission to take a week’s leave and go to visit her parents in the city; Osumare had been asked to dinner and had gone, giving the elder Greywaters his compliments and making Chinyere blush. Two of the great cats that were assigned to the Sun’s complement of marines went half a mile into the forest on a dare and were unceremoniously hauled out by the prince’s foresters and turned over to their captain’s tender mercies. Osumare, curious about what was actually in the rainforest, questioned them and found that they’d found it far less threatening than some of the thicker woods in Narnia.

Days turned into weeks and Osumare and his officers were invited once more to dinner at Waterside Hill, where the culmination of the evening was Lieutenant Cydippe slapping a Terebinthian captain who tried to put his hands up her skirts and Osumare and Lord Admiral Breakwave pulling their brawling officers apart while the prince laughed. Cydippe was confined to the Sun for the rest of the week; Osumare never found out what happened to the Terebinthian captain, but whatever Breakwave did to him was probably less embarrassing than getting the shit beaten out of him by a woman. The Sun’s Aerial Corps complement, restless, went on a flight over the Labyrinth and nearly got shot down by the panicked minders, who’d never seen griffins before, and then went on a flight over the rainforest and had their tight formation broken up by some kind of giant bird that came hurtling up from the trees and which had disappeared from sight by the time Jurasik got the formation back together. When questioned, the foresters had no explanation except that there were things in the rainforest. Prince Seabright presented Queen Lucy with a necklace of gold, pearls, and emeralds which she accepted but didn’t wear, since wearing it would evidently have meant some kind of political gesture that Osumare didn’t bother inquiring further into. There was no word from Sweet Wyl, and Osumare restrained himself from going to the chandlery to see his old informer – friend would be pushing the definition of the word.

They were gone so long that another Narnian naval ship, Captain Tristorm’s Shadowsinger, threaded the Needle and put in at the Golden Steps, bearing the High King’s compliments to his sister and the prince of Terebinthia and an urgent entreaty to Osumare to tell him what the hell was going on, they hadn’t been heard from in months and only the gossip that came through the sea nymphs had kept Peter from putting to sea and demanding his sister’s return. Osumare hadn’t actually thought they’d been gone so long as all that, but news traveled far more quickly in Narnia than it did in the rest of the world; the High King was used to knowing what was happening at any given point in the country within days, if not hours, of its occurrence. Tristorm and his officers came to dinner at Waterside Hill, went out for drinks with the Rising Sun’s officers in Halfcrown Alley, restocked on supplies, put out again. One of the ship’s cats gave birth on the Rising Sun’s orlop deck. A swan-maid came to Osumare with the news that she was pregnant; he restrained himself from asking if she was actually going to give birth or if she was going to lay an egg. Chinyere came back from visiting her parents, slightly disappointed to find she’d missed the Shadowsinger. Osumare watched Paradise hookers come and go from the Golden Steps every morning and evening.

A Terebinthian ship of the line captured a pirate and brought the sloop in through the Needle, where her crew and officers were unceremoniously deposited on the Deadman’s Hopper, a huge frigate twice the size of those that could thread the Needle that was beached on the north side of the harbor. The crew were put in chains and stored below against the time that they might be needed for galley-work in war time; the ship’s officers were hung from the yardarm. The sloop was sold at auction. A few weeks later a smuggling ship was caught and suffered the same fate – though this time they hanged the crew as well as the officers, right beside the dangling, rotting bodies of the pirates. The spring caravan came out of the rainforest bearing hardwoods and emeralds, much to the delight of the merchants that had begun to pour into the harbor only a few days previously. Two members of the Rising Sun’s crew asked for and were denied permission to resign from the Navy and sign on with a Lycoran merchantman; Chinyere later hauled one of them by his ear in front of Osumare after he tried to stow away. He went to the brig; his friend vigorously denied any knowledge of the attempted desertion. The prince of Terebinthia asked Queen Lucy to marry him and she refused him with a smile and a wink and an implication about her brother’s temper regarding such a quick marriage and after all, he was already in her bed; surely marriage would be superfluous at this point? Three of Osumare’s seamen, one of them an ensign, got the pox and had to be treated by Queen Lucy’s cordial, which he considered far too little punishment for their carelessness, though they clearly felt otherwise. The Archenlander ambassador arrived in the Port of Paradise along with a warship half again the size of the Rising Sun, at the upper limit of a ship that could traverse the Needle. Osumare began to hope that if they were going to war, as seemed increasingly likely, the High King would at least give him enough time to beat common sense and the ability to fight back into his crew, since he could see it weathering away in them.

Two months after they’d arrived in the Port of Paradise, Sweet Wyl sent a runner for him.

10

The weather had turned and it was pouring down rain as Osumare made his way to the chandlery – not the constant drizzle that was typical of Terebinthia no matter what time of year it was (though it was broken by sun and clear skies more often in spring and summer than in fall and winter), but real rain, the kind that sheeted down relentlessly and whipped at his face and hair, leaving him soaked to the skin by the time he turned onto Twistrope Way. He pushed open the chandlery door, the sound of the bells lost in the rain, and shook his head so that his hood fell away, licking his lips to try and clear the rainwater away.

“Sweet Wyl?” he called, since there was no one in sight. “It’s Osumare Seaworth.”

His cloak dripped rainwater and his boots left wet prints on the floor as he crossed the room to the tall counter, resting an elbow on it and running a hand through his damp curls. There was a lantern burning on the counter and Osumare turned his head to study the flame, which hadn’t so much as flickered when the door opened. A sturdily built lantern; good for land and sea alike.

“Considering how things at Waterside Hill are apparently going, I’m surprised to see you still here,” Wyl said, appearing from the back room, and Osumare straightened up.

“That bad, hmm?”

Wyl barked laughter. “Surely you’ve better news on that front than I do, Seaworth.” He cleaned his hands on a rag that hung from his belt, leaving behind streaks of grease, and pulled himself slowly onto the tall stool behind the counter. “Since you’ve risen so high in the world that the prince has given you rooms in his very own palace, right next door to a sweet young queen of Narnia.”

Osumare grinned. “I keep out of the politics and save my thoughts for the ocean; I know which waters are mine and which ones will reef me and politics is one of the latter. I hadn’t thought you had much interest in the subject, Wyl.”

The dwarf just grinned. “What you asked for wasn’t easy, Seaworth,” he said, “and it will cost you.”

Osumare reached inside his cloak and pulled out a pouch, fat with coins. He dropped it on the counter in front of Sweet Wyl, but when the dwarf reached for it, put his hand over the soft leather. “Goods first, Wyl,” he said.

“Show me you’ve gold in there and not just brass or beans,” Wyl challenged, not moving.

Osumare undid the knot on the pouch with his thumb, reaching inside to pick out a coin at random and lay it down on the counter. It was butter-yellow gold, Narnian gold, Narnian mined and Narnian minted (and thank the unnamed gods of the earth for that; Narnia had been on the edge of bankruptcy when that particular discovery had been made and the mines had saved her), with the great lion on one side and Peter’s head on the other. It was the High King’s side that lay face up, though Wyl didn’t seem to notice as he took it between his fingers and put it in his mouth, biting down.

“Genuine gold,” he allowed, not putting it back down, letting his fingers run over it greedily.

“And more of it,” Osumare said, tilting the pouch at him so that he could see the gleam of gold and silver inside. “My maps?”

“Ah, your maps,” Sweet Wyl said, reaching beneath the counter with both hands. Osumare heard a click-click-click, in quick succession, and tensed, his left hand falling to his sword hilt before Wyl lifted out a round leather carrying case like the ones racked by the wall. The case was battered red leather, in Narnian colors – Wyl always had had an odd sense of humor – and banded in dull brass. He twisted the cap off nonchalantly and reached inside to pull out a roll of thick vellum, spreading it out on the counter in front of him. Osumare reached for the pouch to weight it down on one end.

There were two sheets, and the one on top had a rough sketch of the island – or at least Osumare assumed it was the island, since he could recognize the Port of Paradise and the villages on either side of it. But chart also included the coast all the way around the island, something Osumare had never seen before, if only because the entirety of Terebinthia had never been mapped. Ships had never made it more than a day’s sail – if that – from the Port of Paradise; they foundered on rocks, were swept into the Labyrinth, were grounded, or sometimes simply disappeared. Osumare still remembered some of the stories he’d heard as a boy – of the Reaper, the prince’s best warship, which had been found months after it had vanished, with everything in place but not a soul left onboard, and of the Prince of the Sea, which had sailed itself back into the Golden Steps without captain or crew or ship’s officers, not even the ship’s cats or rats.

The ink was old on this vellum, brown and a little faded, but the coastlines were still clear and Osumare could see where the cartographer had warned against shallows and reefs, or a spot on the southern edge where the Labyrinth seemed to dip dangerously close to shore, leaving barely enough room for a ship of the line to pass through. “I thought you’d said that no one had ever made it to the other side of the island,” he said slowly, glancing up at Wyl.

Sweet Wyl winced. “I did,” he said. “These were recovered from the Reaper. Or copies of what was recovered from the Reaper, I should say.”

“Tethys and Njord save us,” Osumare said, taken aback, and touched the tiny harbor on the northern side of the island, half the size of the Port of Paradise but drawing deeper from the marks the cartographer had left. “I hadn’t known such a thing existed.”

“That would be why I’m getting that lovely sack of gold you have there,” Sweet Wyl said. “And then there’s this.” He drew off the first sheet and slid it beneath the second sheet, which was just parchment, not vellum.

“The Labyrinth,” Osumare breathed, leaning over it. Just a part of it, the smallest section, barely a mile wide, but with the rocks marked out with infinitesimal care, the water depths and time between each passage written in a clear hand – one eel-hole, but one big enough to accommodate the largest Paradise hooker or the smallest smuggler’s sloop, coming in on the north side of the Port of Paradise, which was off the map but marked out by an arrow in the general direction. There was a village on the map, one of the fisherman’s villages that characterized the coast around the Port of Paradise and made up most of the population of Terebinthia, and which was evidently the goal of whoever had made the map. Whitetyde, the writing said, and Osumare felt a slight chill go down his spine, because he had been born in the village of Whitetyde more than thirty years ago.

“You see the smugglers that danced the hempen jig on the Deadman’s yardarm?” Wyl asked.

“They were hard to miss.”

Sweet Wyl tapped a finger on the parchment. “They were using a copy of this to eel their way through the Labyrinth. Bastards were trying to get the goods without threading the Needle,” he added indignantly.

“Or paying customs taxes,” Osumare said dryly; some of them were exorbitantly high in Terebinthia, but merchants came nonetheless, because the quality of what they took away couldn’t be matched anywhere else on the continent or the Eastern Main.

“Is this accurate?” he added, because he’d sailed through the eel-holes that Whitetyde sailors used in his youth, but that had been nearly a quarter of a century ago, and he couldn’t have recognized them on paper – maybe once he was in the Labyrinth itself, but not on paper.

Sweet Wyl shrugged. “How would I know? They got caught, didn’t they? And I’m just the finder.” He eyed Osumare suspiciously for a moment, maybe trying to decide whether or not to ask what Osumare planned to do with the information, but his greed outweighed his patriotism and he took the pouch when Osumare pushed it towards him, then produced another and added that as well. The second one had more silver than gold, but it was good silver, and probably worth enough to buy most of the chandlery’s contents.

“My thanks, Wyl,” Osumare said, rolling the charts back up and stuffing them into their carrying case, capping it carefully and double-checking it once he’d done so. In this rain, and with prizes this valuable, he didn’t want to chance them getting wet. “May we meet again in happier times.”

“Clear seas and stiff winds,” said Wyl automatically. “And may Njord watch your tops and Tethys guide your path.”

“And yours as well, old friend,” Osumare told him gravely before he tucked the carrying case under his case and went out into the street, closing the door behind him.

11

The rain had lightened a little by the time Osumare got back to the Rising Sun, the ship’s deck empty in this weather, and he left his wet things to dry in his cabin before going to the officers wardroom to see who was onboard the Sun. Ensign Merryweather was there, studying for the lieutenant’s exam by the light of a lantern while Lieutenants Reisende and Marcolis played cards, occasionally offering Merryweather advice. They started to come to their feet as Osumare came in.

“Sit down,” he said, waving a hand at them. “Ilhazul, you have the ship until I or Lieutenant Greywater returns.”

Reisende nodded slowly. “Where are you going, sir?”

Osumare smiled at him. “It may be better if you don’t know, Lieutenant,” he said, which made Merryweather gape and Marcolis look inscrutable, but then again, Marcolis always looked inscrutable. He nodded to them and went out again, looking around until he found a ship’s cat, bored out of her mind with sitting in harbor, and sent her to go find the bosun and his boat crew and tell them to lower the captain’s gig into the harbor.

By the time he got back on deck the bosun and the four-person boat crew had done so, along with having the presence of mind to check and recheck the three days’ worth of provisions that were stowed away beneath one of the seats. The mast was down at the moment, canvas and lines bundled up tidily, and the crewmen made room as Osumare swung himself over the side of the Rising Sun and began to climb down.

The bosun, a rail-thin oceanid named Phineas, eyed Osumare speculatively and then said, sounding more or less cheerful, “Where are we going, skipper?”

“We’re going eel-hunting,” Osumare said, gesturing to the crew to untie the lines binding them to the Sun.

Phineas cast a dubious glance at the weapons boxes beneath the seats, long waterproof boxes that were wrapped in waxed canvas on the inside to protect the bows and axes inside from harm. “Eel-hunting, sir?”

Osumare tapped the map case beneath his cloak with one finger. “Eel-hunting,” he said, and glanced up at Waterside Hill, where the castle lights were visible through the gloom and the serpent banners had wrapped themselves around their poles. He thought about the thing in the water that had followed the Rising Sun through half the Labyrinth and the smugglers that had died on the Deadman’s yardarm. “Keep your eyes open, boys. Beware of fucking snakes.”

12

They were three days out and back, exploring the eel-hole marked on the map, hiding from the hookers that went in and out in the mornings and evenings, making notations and corrections on the chart about the depth of the water, the width of the passage, all the things Osumare would need to know to send a captain with a small sloop in, should the need occur. He supposed he could have gone looking for the other eel-holes in the area – there were at least two more – but he didn’t remember where they were, and making a misstep in the Labyrinth would be a fatal mistake. He thought it was slightly more of a miracle the minders hadn’t seen them, but evidently they were more interested in the Needle than the eel-holes, even one that had so lately been infiltrated.

They made it back to the Port of Paradise in the late hours of the morning to find a blue flag flying from the mainmast – come home, to any of the Sun’s sailors still out and about.

“Something’s up, skipper,” Phineas noted as the crew brought the gig in close to the Sun’s hull.

Osumare saw what the moment he swung himself over the rail and onto the deck. Queen Lucy was sitting at the waist, amidst a pile of the baggage that must have been brought over from Waterside Hill, and the rest of the crew was running about getting the Rising Sun ready to sail.

“It took you long enough,” Lucy said, getting up and coming over to him. “The farewell banquet was last night. His grace was quite sad to see that you were unable to attend due to your head cold.”

“Head cold?” Osumare said, amused.

“It was the best I could come up with on such short notice,” she told him. “Something large enough that you wouldn’t be able to attend and small enough that it would seem like a waste for me to use my cordial on it. Where have you been?”

“Gathering intelligence for the High King,” he said, and she sniffed, shaking her head slightly.

“We are, I think, somewhat less than welcome in Terebinthia now.” Lucy twirled a lock of her long hair around one finger. “It would be under my advisement to exit the premises as quickly as possible.”

“That bad, hmm?” Osumare asked.

She sniffed again, expression full of disdain. “Archenland is no friend of Narnia’s and Lord Tecan has been delighting in filling Prince Seabright’s ear full of stories, some of them even true, sadly. Three bloody months!” Lucy snaps suddenly. “I was here for three bloody months, and that Archenlander bastard undid all my work in a week. The prince won’t listen to me now – I think he believes we may have – hmm, how did he put it? – ulterior motives.”

Osumare glanced around. The crew was hoisting the gig back up into its usual place on the Rising Sun’s deck, Lucy’s luggage was being stowed away below, and Thorne was overseeing the fitting of the capstan bars into place. Chinyere was pacing back and forth, looking anxious and obviously trying to get his attention. He motioned her over and she came as if he’d cracked a whip.

“Sir?”

“Who’s still not onboard?”

“No one, sir,” she said. “We’ve been flying that banner since last night; you were the last to come in. I hope it was worth it, sir.”

“Yes,” Osumare said. “I hope it was, too. How soon will we be ready to put out?”

“Within the hour,” she said, looking certain, and he nodded in approval before dismissing her.

“I think they were about ready to chase us out,” Lucy said, tilting her head towards one of the Terebinthian naval ships riding at anchor on the other side of the harbor.

“I don’t plan to give them the opportunity,” Osumare said. “Yet.” He paused, watching her face, her calm blue eyes – so like her brother’s – and asked quietly, “Will it be war, then?”

She raised a hand to catch her hair as the wind pulled at it, spreading the Narnian flags above them and the serpent banners on the castle. “Yes,” she said. “I think it will.”


end


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Further author's notes: Although the Rising Sun isn't described much here, I picture her as a variant on an East Indiaman style of ship, most visible of which is the Black Pearl from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Paradise hookers are, of course, based on the Galway hooker, which does indeed come in a number of sizes. For some lovely visuals, there is a video here, featuring what I assume are the smallest type of hookers, some stunning Irish scenery, and some very dramatic music. The concept of the Labyrinth and the Needle were loosely inspired by the Parlor Passage in Scott Lynch's novel Red Seas Under Red Skies, which I highly recommend.