Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (24)
Apr. 14th, 2011 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air (24)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Possibly skeevy situations involving children
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: Dust in the Air uses Warsverse backstory as a general rule of thumb. All chapters of Dust are posted on both LJ and DW. Dust in the Air does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
Edmund smells the charcoal-burner’s clearing before he sees it, the faintly bitter scent of slowly charring wood that curls warm around his face like a friendly greeting. He stops while he’s still amongst the trees and dismounts, a twig bending but not snapping beneath his boot. The storm has been over for more than a week now, but everything’s still damp, the rain well-soaked into the earth and root of Narnia. At least the charcoal-burner won’t have to worry about accidentally burning down one of the few thick patches of forest that still remains in eastern Narnia.
The Calormenes hadn’t destroyed every tree in the region they control. That would have been impractical, let alone stupid and genocidal, all adjectives that Edmund has to reluctantly concede don’t generally belong in Calormene vocabulary. Instead, they’d – pruned is probably a good word to use. Even a single tree can do quite a lot of harm in Narnia, but the worst kind of damage comes from whole groves or forests rising up. The Calormenes have cut down trees as strategically as they can, leaving wide swathes of empty land between the groves that remain, making sure that those are far away from cultivated land, where they could do the most damage if they ever tried to rebel. Narnia can’t survive without trees; they can’t destroy every forest in the country. Edmund has to admit that his first confused impression, during that frantic day and night between the railroad platform and the three arrows to the torso, had been that they had. He’s seldom been so glad to find that he was wrong.
It’s the silence that strikes him now, and Edmund pauses, his fist tight around his horse’s reins. There had been birds singing just minutes ago, gladdened by the arrival of spring, but now there’s nothing at all, except for a crow chattering madly in the distance. He looks up as a sparrow lights on a nearby branch, turning its head from side to side as it eyes him dubiously, then takes to the air again before Edmund has a chance to call a greeting.
Curiouser and curiouser, as the man said. He ties his horse loosely to a thin sapling with enough slack that it can graze and strides forward towards the clearing, where he can just see the top of the wood-pile behind some newly-leafing huckleberry bushes. Edmund dodges around those and takes one step forward, treading on a stray piece of kindling. It snaps, and he stops dead, his left hand falling to his sword. He doesn’t quite draw it, just lets his thumb stroke lightly across the crossbars and linger there as he looks around.
The clamp is at the center of the clearing, an earthen mound a man-height tall and twice that across. Beneath the layers of earth are stacks of hardwood built up around a central stake, which would have been removed and the space left behind filled with hot coals before being capped off with more earth. On one side of the mound are two withy windbreaks to deter the breeze that was fluttering the new leaves on the trees around the clearing, keeping it from forcing the clamp from a slow burn to a fast one. There are two full pails of water on either side of the clamp, to damp it down quickly in case the fire breaks through at any point. Not far away, using the high arching roots of a homewood tree as its foundation and canvas for walls and roof, is the charcoal-burner’s hut. The remains of a small cookfire are still smoking in front of the door. It looks exactly like every other charcoal-burner’s camp that Edmund’s ever seen, except for one thing: there’s no one here. No charcoal-burner will leave his clamp; the danger of the fire breaking through is too great.
Edmund looks down casually at the stick he’s just stepped on. It’s nothing more than the scraps left behind by the woodcutters the charcoal-burner follows, the sort of thing that goes into the clamp for kindling. Nothing odd to find in a charcoal-burner’s camp.
He steps back, hopping a little in his haste, and still only barely misses the crossbow bolt that whistles through the air where his chest used to be, triggered by the cord that had jerked when he’d released the stick. It skitters across the wood chips that litter the new grass as he kicks it aside, drawing his sword. Not that a sword is much help against booby traps.
“That was uncalled for,” Edmund says, his gaze flickering quickly once more across the clearing before he settles on the treetops. Everything’s leafy with spring growth; anything could be up there. This isn’t Calormen’s style, though.
There’s no reply.
“No wonder you don’t get many visitors if that’s how you greet them,” he goes on. “Unless you’re expecting someone else. You should be expecting me.”
“Are you the High King’s man, then?”
None of the branches quiver, but Edmund settles his attention on the homewood tree next to the hut. “More or less.”
“Which one is it? More or less?”
“I’m my own man,” Edmund says, taking a step forward into the clearing, “and the High King’s my brother.” When there’s no reply, he prods at the clamp with the tip of his sword, knocking aside a bit of the earthen covering. He’s warm just standing near it; the little avalanche of earth releases a blast of heat that makes him draw in his breath.
“Don’t touch that!” the charcoal-burner snarls, setting the leaves to fluttering on one tree. “You’ll kill both of us!”
Edmund turns, using his sword to point up at the tree the charcoal-burner is hiding in. “Then come down here,” he says in his most reasonable voice. “So you can fix your clamp before we all get incinerated, and then we can have a conversation like normal people.” He considers. “For differing definitions of the word.”
For a moment, fire in danger of breaking through or not, Edmund doesn’t think the bloke’s going to come down, but eventually the leaves quiver on one of the homewood tree’s big branches and a skinny man with black hair and a crossbow comes scrambling down. He shoves past Edmund and drops the crossbow in favor of snatching up one of the pails, pouring water on the clamp’s thin spot before discarding that in favor of a shovel. Edmund stands back to let the man do his work, watching curiously as he repairs the wound Edmund had nearly opened in the clamp. Patchwork done, he pours on more water, then stands back, leaning on his shovel as he glares at Edmund.
“Sorry about the mess,” Edmund drawls, sheathing his sword.
The charcoal-burner’s mouth twists. “Just like a damned noble.”
“Royal, actually,” Edmund points out kindly. “King Edmund. Some people call me just.”
“I call you an ass!”
“Some people call me that,” Edmund agrees, and looks around. “You have any other booby traps set up, or can I sit down somewhere?”
“If you’re really the King of Evening, you should know that without me saying,” the charcoal-burner says. He cants a worried look back over the clamp, then straightens and picks the pail up again, going around to the other side to damp down a patch of earth that looks like it’s drying out. Edmund follows him, not particularly wanting to let the man out of his sight.
“Confesor never passed on your name,” he says.
“It’s Cheilem,” said the charcoal-burner, holding the bucket like he expected flames to shoot out the sides of the clamp at any moment. “Cheilem Triptide.”
“You’re Terebinthian,” Edmund says, surprised.
“Narnian,” snaps Triptide. “My great-grandparents came over from Terebinthia. I have the name; it doesn’t make me an islander. I was born in Cair Paravel.”
Edmund spreads his hands, soothing. “Just making conversation.” He eyes Triptide, who’s fingering the handle of his pail like he’s thinking of throwing it at Edmund. “I’m going to go get my horse. Try not to shoot me on my way back.”
“My sweet nephew would be irritated with me,” Triptide allows after a moment. “Try not to give me an excuse.”
Edmund rolls his eyes, but leaves the clearing the way he’d come in. If there’s one booby trap, there’s more. It’s not worth setting up just one when you only have one chance to get it right. No land mines in Narnia.
His horse slobbers on his ear while he unties it, and Edmund pushes its head away, good-natured. He’d come alone because it’s the fastest way to travel; he and Peter had gambled that one man on a horse could make it through Calormene-occupied territory without being caught. The charcoal-burner is well within Calormene borders, and Prince Bahadur’s men are on high alert after Peter and Susan’s little stunt a few weeks ago. Edmund’s fairly sure that he even wouldn’t be able to repeat his brother’s trick of strolling in the front gates of Cair Paravel; thus the necessity of the charcoal-burner.
Said charcoal-burner looks exceedingly unhappy to see him when Edmund comes back. “I’m just here to make a business arrangement,” Edmund says soothingly. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as we’ve finalized it.”
“And back in it again as soon as the charcoal’s ready,” Triptide grumps. “I’m only allowed in the city four times a year and it’s going to be ruined by some dead king who wants to save the world.”
Edmund sighs. “Mostly just Narnia. And I’m reasonably certain I’m not dead.”
The charcoal-burner jerks his head a little in acknowledgment. “Mad or not, you’d think the dead would stop speaking. Even in Narnia.” He stares at Edmund for a moment, his gaze hard. “You’d best stay the night. It’s late, and there will be Calormene patrols about. We can discuss your terms after dinner.”
“Thank you,” Edmund says, with a silent prayer of relief. This could have gone rather poorly if the charcoal-burner had decided that siding with the Long Table and the rebels against the Calormenes was a bad idea.
“You can tie up your horse over there,” Triptide adds, jerking his thumb at a pine tree near the windbreaks. He picks up his crossbow and walks past Edmund, bracing one foot on a protruding root for leverage as he yanks the bolt from the booby trap out of the tree trunk it had stuck in, the head shedding little splinters of bark and gobbets of sap as it comes free.
Edmund ties his horse, leaving enough slack in the lead-line that it will be able to graze, and starts to untack it. He slips a hand into his saddlebags, closing his eyes slightly in relief when his fingers brush what he’d expected to be there. Things can always go wrong so very quickly.
“You said you were only allowed in the city four times a year,” he says over his shoulder. “Why is that?”
“Exiled,” says Triptide shortly. He slings his crossbow over his back, leaning down to gather up the tripwire that had set off the booby trap. “Amnesty on festival days. Whenever it is the augurs decide they are, of course.”
“I didn’t think exile was the Calormenes’ style. Or is it left over from King Tirian’s time?”
“The government doesn’t give a damn about me.”
Edmund turns around, saddle draped over his arms. Triptide is halfway up a tree, perched on a wide branch like a bird as he resets the crossbow that had nearly killed Edmund the first time. “Who gave the order then?”
“Who do you think?” Triptide calls down. He fixes the crossbow to its former place, then starts to climb back down, trailing the thin cord behind him. Edmund frowns, watching its path. Even though he’s looking for it now, it’s hard to see.
“The Long Table?”
“The Table couldn’t agree on the color of the sky if the High King himself was standing over them with a flaming sword. No, the capo del’strada gave in to family feeling and banned me from the city walls, which I’ll admit is a nice step up from dropping my head in the Fountain of the Three Queens.” He drops lightly back down to the ground and picks up a suitable stick, tying the cord around it before placing it carefully back down on the ground, nudging at it with the toe of his boot until he’s satisfied with its position. Edmund fixes the location carefully in his head, just in case he has to make a quick exit. Doubtless there are other booby traps around the camp as well, but at least he knows where this one is.
Edmund drops the saddle on the ground. “Dare I ask what you did?”
Triptide’s mouth quirks slightly. “Robbed the wrong house. Before I was a collier, I was a second-story man, and I was good at it. If you’ve never been told off by your sixteen-year-old nephew, I don’t recommend it.”
“I can only imagine,” Edmund sympathizes, thinking of Eustace with a slight mental wince. He thinks being accused of madness by your eleven-year-old cousin is probably just as bad. He focuses on the other hints Triptide’s been dropping. “Elizar Confesor is your nephew?”
“You ask a lot of questions for an omnipotent demigod,” Triptide says abruptly.
“Well, I’m not really that omnipotent,” Edmund says, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against a tree. “Or a demigod, as it happens.”
The ex-thief narrows his eyes, and Edmund tenses, not liking his expression. He has a bad feeling about where this might be going. “Really,” says Cheilem Triptide, turning away. His hand falls to the butt of the crossbow slung across his back; Edmund pushes himself off the tree trunk with one foot, grabbing for his sword.
Triptide is fast. He’s damned fast, and the crossbow bolt is in the air before Edmund’s sword has cleared the scabbard. Edmund’s still faster, and the crossbow bolt falls to the ground before him in three equal pieces.
He stares down at them, panting like he’s just run a marathon. His sword hangs limply from his hand. Edmund isn’t this fast. He’s fast, but he’s not this fast; Peter is. And even if he was – he’s not supposed to be that fucking exhausted after three seconds of blank terror and impossible speed.
“You fucking shot me,” he finally manages to say, looking up at Triptide, whose face is utterly blank. The man is fingering his crossbow a little nervously.
“I shot at you,” he says. “There’s a difference. And you’re obviously fine –”
“Except for how I don’t like getting fucking shot at!” Edmund sheathes his sword, which takes more effort than it really should. He puts one hand out to brace himself on the tree, the bark cold and rough against his bare hand. “And that’s twice today,” he adds, grumpily. “You really need to think about how you greet your visitors.”
“I don’t like visitors,” Triptide says, moving his crossbow back across his back.
“Somehow I understood that,” Edmund says. He closes his eyes for a moment, decides he’s not going to fall over, and opens them again, crouching down to pick up the severed pieces of the crossbow bolt. He rubs his thumb over the clean cuts, trying not to think about it. He’s not that fast. Nobody’s that fast; he didn’t even have his sword out of the scabbard when Triptide pulled the trigger. “Dare I even ask why you did that?”
Triptide shrugs. “Curiosity.”
“Curiosity,” Edmund repeats, disbelieving. “You’re lucky I’m not actually a god.”
The charcoal-burner gives him an odd look. “We’ll eat when the boy comes back,” he says, abruptly changing tack. “Then we’ll talk about your…proposal.”
At this rate Edmund’s going to grow old in Narnia before he ever makes it to Cair Paravel he decides, and flops onto the ground next to his horse, leaning back against his saddle, shoving his sword out of the way. “Just,” he says, and sighs, “try not to shoot me again.”
The boy, when he finally appears about an hour later, turns out to be a girl. She’s a marsh-wiggle, scrawny and gangly in the way that nearly every wiggle Edmund’s met has been, with dirty greenish-brown hair in three braids and a bandage around her left thumb. She gives him a curious look, but doesn’t say anything, just pets his horse on the nose as she goes past to Cheilem Triptide, proffering up the day’s catch – one limp duck and a brace of catfish, their whiskers dragging on the ground and gathering dirt.
“There’s more fish in the river lately,” she remarks as Triptide inspects the catfish. “They say the river god’s back.”
“Who’ve you been talking to?” he snaps, slapping the catfish down on a wooden rack and turning his attention to the duck. It’s a scrawny thing too.
The girl sulks. “Just some folks,” she says, sounding defensive. “River people.”
“Well, don’t!” He snatches the catfish back up and shoves them at her. “Go and cook those. We’ve a guest tonight.”
She takes the catfish, glaring at Triptide’s back as he walks away with the duck. Edmund eyes her with curiosity. It’s not common to see a marsh-wiggle so far from the northern marsh and the River Shribble; by and large they tend towards insular loners who are more concerned with their own feud with the Bog People than they are about the rest of Narnia. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen one this far south, and from what he’s heard, they’ve gotten even more clannish now than they had been in his time.
The wiggle girl crouches down by a large rock on the far side of the clamp, pulling a skinny knife from her belt. She braces the fish on the rock and drags the knife across it from head to tail, scales flying in all directions. Scales gone, she makes the first slice to gut it, then puts the knife aside to reach inside and pull out the innards, which she sets aside. She repeats the process with the second fish, then carries them back over to the cookfire, setting them on the wooden rack Triptide had used as she scrapes dirt off from over the coals with one webbed foot. She builds the fire back up, then arranges the fish to her liking, adding a sprinkle of salt from a pouch on her belt. This complete, she turns and glares at Edmund.
“What’re you looking at?”
“I’m just curious,” he says, as mildly as he can. “I’m not used to seeing marsh-wiggles in this part of Narnia.”
“I bet you aren’t,” she snaps, cleaning her knife on the knee of her breeches and sheathing it. She picks up the guts in one bare hand and carries them out of the camp, glaring at Edmund the entire time.
“Well, that was unexpected,” he says to no one in particular and goes back to reading the reports Vespasian and Tirian had written up for them before Edmund had left Arn Abedin. Vespasian’s handwriting is large and sprawling, Tirian’s small and neat, ruler-straight across the page. He’s read it before; there’s nothing new here, but Edmund keeps hoping that he’ll find something unexpected, something useful they can exploit. Some weakness.
The girl comes back eventually and goes immediately to the cookfire, flipping the fish over so they cook evenly. Edmund watches her over the top of his papers, frowning. It’s always hard to guess a marsh-wiggle’s age because they don’t show it very well, especially the grown ones, but he doesn’t think she’s reached that yet. She can’t be more than thirteen, if that.
“I didn’t get your name,” he says eventually.
She scowls at him, poking at the fish with one finger. “It’s Sullycloud,” she says. “He just calls me Sully.”
“‘He’?”
“Cheilem.”
“How did you meet him?”
“None of your damned business,” she says, and lifts the fish off the makeshift grill onto a battered clay plate.
Edmund tucks his papers away into a waxed-silk pouch and stands up. “What can I do to help?”
Sully gives him a disbelieving look. “Stay out of my way,” she says, propping the plate up between two rocks by the fire so that the fish stays warm.
“I’ve brought wine,” Edmund says after a moment.
“Good!” says Triptide, emerging from behind a tree. The duck he’d left with is nowhere in sight. “Girl, go and get the cups.”
The wiggle ducks back into the hut, wordless, and emerges with a cracked clay cup in each hand. Edmund produces a skin of sweet Shoushani red, a gift from their guests – or allies, he hasn’t decided which yet – at Arn Abedin, and pours.
“Don’t you want any?” he asks Sullycloud.
“She doesn’t,” Triptide says.
“I don’t,” she agrees, sullen.
Triptide drinks half his wine in one gulp, making a satisfied sound, and crouches down next to the fire to prod at the fish with the tip of his knife. He slices one fillet in half, picks it up, and hands it to the girl, who accepts it wordlessly and retreats to the far side of the camp, hidden behind the bulk of the clamp.
Edmund fills Triptide’s cup back up, silent, and accepts the plate after Triptide’s transferred his portion to the more-or-less flat surface of the rock in front of him. The next few moments are spent in silence as they pick the bones out of the meat, Triptide cursing whenever he misses one.
“How did you two meet?” he says eventually, as delicately as he can manage.
“What, me and the boy? Picked her up on the riverbank about a year ago.”
“She’s a bit young, isn’t she?”
“Old enough,” Triptide says, and laughs.
Edmund looks down at his fish, concentrating on deboning it so as to resist the urge to punch Triptide in the head. When he’s finished, all the bones pushed off into a neat pile on the edge of the plate, he puts it down and looks at Triptide. As an afterthought, he pours them both more wine.
“Our bargain,” he says.
“Bargain. Mmm.” The charcoal-burner drinks. “My nephew said that you could pay me.”
“I can,” Edmund agrees. “What will you do with the money, since you can’t go into the city?”
“I can go into the city four times a year,” Triptide says. He rolls his shoulders; Edmund hears his vertebrae crack. “Let’s see that gold, then.”
“You can see it,” Edmund warns. “But you won’t get paid till the deal’s worked out. Half then, half when I get inside the city gates.”
“And I won’t work out any deal until I’ve seen your gold.” He drinks; his fourth cup of the evening. Edmund’s only on his second; it’s strong stuff and he wants to keep his wits about him, since he can’t hold his liquor nearly as well as he’d like. “Don’t try to pull one over on me, either. I’m a second-story man and I know the real stuff when I see it.”
“It’s not gold,” Edmund says in his mildest voice, then reaches inside his shirt, fumbling with the tie on the wallet for a moment before he gets it open. The stones are warm against his fingertips when he feels for one of an appropriate size. He puts the diamond down on the rock in front of Triptide and waits.
The charcoal-burner looks at it, then picks it up, rolls it between the pad of his thumb and forefinger, scratches it across the surface of the rock and raises an eyebrow at the mark it leaves behind. “That’s a very small stone,” he says.
Edmund puts another one of the same size down, watching Triptide test that one too.
“Still a bit small.”
“I see we’re not calling on your sense of patriotism,” Edmund drawls, putting down a third stone. “Or family loyalty.”
“Little Elizar made a fairly good display of family loyalty when he exiled me out here,” Triptide says. “I don’t even get to vote anymore, so don’t tell me about patriotism.”
“I’ve heard nobody gets to vote anymore,” Edmund remarks. Saying Narnia is a bit different than the way it was in his time is a bit like saying it’s a bit warm on the surface of the sun. He pulls another diamond out of the wallet, but doesn’t put it down this time, just holds it up between his fingers. “There are more where these come from. We took the diamond mine on the edge of the High Reaches a few days ago. I think it’s safe to say that we’re in funds. And you’ll get your money as long as I get what I want.”
“Why can’t you just go in through the front gates like everyone else?”
“I will,” Edmund says. “In your charcoal wagon.” He reaches for the diamonds Triptide is still holding. “Though, if you’re going to chicken out, you won’t be needing those anymore –”
Triptide snatches his hand back. “I’ll keep these,” he agrees abruptly. “I’ll take my charcoal up to the city on Winter’s End eve. You’d best be here then.”
“I thought you couldn’t go into the city except on feast days,” Edmund says.
“I won’t be going in until the next day. I’ve got friends, you know. And my product’s already bought and paid for, in case you were wondering about seizing that for the glorious revolution too.” He rubs his fingers over the diamonds again, smirking to himself.
Edmund puts his head to one side, curious. “To whom?”
“Forty-five percent goes to the Calormenes, twenty to the city.”
“And the other thirty-five percent?”
“Private buyer,” Triptide says.
“The Long Table?”
“Like I said. Private buyer,” he repeats. “How about that other diamond, then?”
“Do all the other charcoal-burners make the same bargain you do?” Edmund presses, holding onto it.
“I get paid more. I’m family.”
“Really,” Edmund says, not believing it for a moment. He holds the diamond up, watching the way it picks up sparks from the fire even in its rough, uncut form, then puts it back inside his shirt. “You get it when I get inside the city, along with two others. Half now, half then,” he repeats. “Do we have a bargain?”
“A bargain,” Triptide says, staring down at the stones in his hand. “You know, this isn’t all that much to see. Naiads used to pull these out of the river all the time.”
Edmund bites the side of his mouth in frustration. “If you’d rather, I can pay you in gold, but you’ll have to wait.” And it won’t nearly cover the price of the diamonds. These aren’t cheap yellows or browns, or even the rarer pinks or blues. These ones are clear and colorless – or they will be, once they’ve been cleaned up a bit and cut. None of them is bigger than his smallest fingernail; none of them need to be. They’re worth enough on their own.
“I’ll keep the diamonds,” Triptide says abruptly. “And one more thing – I’ve heard you have my niece with you.”
“Well, I don’t have her tucked away in one of my saddle bags, but yes, Beka Confesor is at Arn Abedin. She’s in good company, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She’s sharing living quarters with the Lord Provost’s wife, but Edmund thinks that that’s really not worth mentioning to an ex-criminal.
“I want to see her. Or there won’t be any deal, and you can keep your diamonds.” He says this like it causes him physical pain; Edmund smiles anyway.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he says. “I don’t expect there to be any difficulty.”
He retires to sleep not long afterwards, spreading his bedroll on the bare ground next to his saddle and using his rolled-up cloak as a pillow. He puts his sword on the ground next to him, so close that he could sleep with his hand on it, if he wanted. That would probably send entirely the wrong impression, though.
The slow pace of the charcoal-burner’s camp, on the very edge of the wild, is a relief compared to Arn Abedin, which is filled to the brim with more people than it was meant to hold even when it had been a fully-staffed castle and not just a ruin. Edmund’s spent the last ten years of his life in boarding school and, following that, the army. Neither of them had really allowed for much peace and quiet, and that was when he wasn’t living at home, which was usually taken up by Susan and Lucy screaming at each other, or in his and Peter’s flat in London, about which the less said the better. It’s not that he’d lived anything vaguely resembling a contemplative life before that, but – the pace is different. He’s missed Narnia. It’s not quiet, exactly, it’s just – more alive.
His horse whickers softly; Triptide barks at the wiggle girl to watch the clamp and ducks into his hut. Sullycload retreats to the opposite side of the clamp, glaring at Edmund until he rolls over, staring into the shadowed woods. Spring is here; it’s a warm night, probably one of the warmest since they’ve arrived. He falls asleep within minutes.
Edmund dreams an old dream, of a white winter and a path in the woods, of a woman in a sleigh and a boy who should have known better. He wakes discomfited, and rolls onto his back, staring up at the stars peeking out from between the tree cover. The constellations are all old friends; he’s missed them. They haven’t shifted much since Caspian’s time, at least. He’d like to think that the stars are eternal, but meeting Coriakin and Ramandu had disabused him of that idea; there are a handful of stars missing from the heavens that had been there in his own time. Two must be Coriakin and Ramandu; where the others are…well, he hopes they’re happy, at least.
There’s a sound from the hut, a kind of grunting noise than no one in their right mind would mistake for a snore; Edmund turns his head automatically, reaching for his sword. He doesn’t draw it, just lays his hand on the hilt, waiting. The cookfire has been reduced to coals and covered with earth to keep them warm, so there’s nothing much to see. With just a thin sliver of a crescent moon to see by, everything is shadows. He half-expects the clamp to glow like a furnace, lit from the inside, but instead it’s merely a big dark lump breaking up the clearing. The wiggle girl is nowhere in sight.
He lies tense for a few minutes, but the only noises he hears are the normal passage of night life – an owl in the distance, a squirrel scampering through a tree on a late-night mission, the rustle of the breeze in the trees. Edmund closes his eyes again. This time he doesn’t dream.
He leaves early the next morning. Cheilem Triptide seems relieved to see him go, reminding Edmund that he wants to see his niece before he considers their deal finalized, despite the fact that he’s hung onto the three diamonds Edmund had shown him the night before. Sullycloud is nowhere in sight.
“Damn boy,” is what Triptide says when Edmund asks about her. “Probably ran off to the river again – you know how wiggles are.”
“Mmm,” Edmund says, neutrally, setting his left foot into the stirrup and swinging himself into his horse’s saddle. “I’ll send you word about seeing your niece.”
“Make sure you do,” says Triptide. He points. “Go out between those two trees – no traps there.”
Edmund can’t say he trusts Triptide’s word absolutely on that particular note, but he goes out between the two trees anyway, and is glad to find that he doesn’t end up with an arrow through the neck.
The Great River runs not far from the charcoal-burner’s camp. Charcoal-burners follow woodsmen and the Calormene logging crews float their timber down the river to Cair Paravel; it makes sense that Triptide would be so close to it, especially with a marsh-wiggle as a partner. Edmund rides down to a narrow stretch of beach at the water’s edge and dismounts, letting his horse drink as he looks around. The river is still running high, the way it always does in spring after the great floods which follow the spring thaw. In Edmund’s time it would have been full of life – doyarchu chasing fish, naiads playing tag or doing more serious work, perhaps even Achelous himself sitting on a rock overseeing the business of his river. Even if the river-god is back, and he doesn’t doubt Susan’s account, there doesn’t seem to be much sign of it. No fish, no doyarchu, no naiads, and certainly no Achelous. Well, if he was a river-god and Tash was rumored to be running around Narnia, Edmund can’t say he wouldn’t keep a quiet profile himself.
He kneels down on the riverbank and cups his hands, dipping up some of the water and lifting it to its mouth. It’s cold enough to shock him, snowmelt fresh off the in the Western Wild – the real Western Wild, not merely Lantern Waste, the area region they still call the Western Waste. There are stories about the Western Wild dating all the way back to the beginning of the world; according to the Professor’s and Miss Plummer’s stories, some of them may even be true. Maybe some of that virtue has come flowing down with the spring melt. Or maybe there’s no virtue at all up in those mountains, just the same curse that brought the White Witch down on Narnia. Edmund opens his cupped hands, letting the water splash back down into the fast-moving river, and sits back on his haunches.
It’s going to be a beautiful day. The sky is cloudless, bright with the thin light of early morning, before the sun has managed to wake himself up all the way. Any forestry that happened on the opposite side of the river, and there had to have been some because Edmund had walked this path himself in Caspian’s time, must have happened long enough ago that the damage is more or less gone, leaving behind rolling hills covered with fresh spring grass. Edmund smiles to himself, quiet and pleased and at peace.
It lasts only a few minutes. Someone clears their throat, in that polite way that means they’re trying to get your attention. Edmund sighs and stands up, a curse forming on his lips when he sees that the stranger is a Calormene tarkaan. The man’s warhorse is standing at his back, docile as a kitten.
“Hello!” Edmund says cheerfully, glad that his automatic grab for his sword was masked by his horse’s bulk. The mare flicks one ear at the newcomer, bored and disinterested; the warhorse doesn’t even appear to notice her existence. “Dreadfully sorry, am I somewhere I shouldn’t be? If I am, I’ll get out of your way as quick as wink.”
“No trouble,” says the Calormene, looking at Edmund curiously. He’s a small man, shorter than Edmund by half a hand or so, with dark skin and his curly hair tied back from his face. He isn’t wearing armor, or at least not that Edmund can see beneath the open folds of his caftan; he casts a discreet look at the knots on his sword hilt to guess at the man’s rank. Red, with black beads at the bottom. The lower end of the middle rank of tarkaans.
The Calormene goes on, “I saw you come out of the woods, and I wondered if you had been to see the charcoal-burner?”
His Narnian is very good. Strongly accented, but painfully correct despite that. Edmund throws one arm over his horse’s neck and smiles at him. “I did indeed. I hoped the old chap might have some of his product that wasn’t yet spoken for, but he was quite clear that that wasn’t so. Ah, well, better luck next time!”
“Cheilem Triptide does business in the city,” says the Calormene carefully. “He is, mm, a person of interest for the Tisroc (may he live forever).”
Edmund puts on an expression of shock. “Is he really now? No wonder he wasn’t interested then! Perhaps I’ll try the other collier, the wer-wolf, though I’m damned if I can remember her name –”
“Gunwar Longclaw,” the Calormene fills in for him. “She is in the Shuddering Wood now, following the logging crews, and I cannot see that she would not be amenable. Last I spoke to her, she had not filled her commission entirely. Do you object if I ask you about Cheilem Triptide?”
“Not at all!” Edmund says. “Glad to help. Though I must warn you, I only spoke to the chap for a few minutes, not long enough to learn anything of interest about him. Except that he wouldn’t sell me his coal, of course.” He smiles in a friendly kind of way, wondering what a lone tarkaan is doing all the way out here, and what it means that he’s asking about Cheilem Triptide. Nothing good, no doubt.
The tarkaan nods, raising one hand to pat his horse’s cheek absently as the mare nuzzles his shoulder. “Did he speak at all of whom his clients were?”
Edmund shrugs. “Some to you lads, some to the city, the rest to a private buyer.”
“Did he say who that was?”
“If I’d asked, I might have gone to find the man and bargain him out of a share of it!” Edmund says, in true merchant style. “But no, he never said. Say, what’s all this about, then? Is he in some kind of trouble? Is this about that girl he has with him?”
“What girl?”
“That wiggle girl. Scrawny little thing. Too young to be out on her own, away from her clan. Especially with a man like that.” He draws out the description and the imprecations, looking solemnly at the tarkaan as he waits for a response.
When he gets one, it’s concerned. “I was not told of any girl,” says the Calormene, his expression worried. “I have sisters myself – I will ask after her. Now, Cheilem Triptide – did he say anything else to you? Anything about his connections in the city?”
“Only that he’d been exiled,” Edmund says. “But that must have been you lot, yes? So you don’t need me to tell you of it –”
“Mmm,” says the Calormene. He pats his horse again as the animal slobbers on his ear, then looks at Edmund with surprisingly intelligent eyes. Edmund wonders suddenly if it’s really a warhorse born and bred, or if it’s a Narnian Talking Horse like the two that had come across the Great Southern Desert with Prince Cor and Lady Aravis. There have been stories that date back even before the Long Winter about kidnappers from the south and the west, men who came over the mountains to steal talking horses and break them to saddle before selling them in the fleshmarkets of Calormen, or even further from Narnia. Even broken, Narnian horses are better than any dumb one on the continent – and they nearly always breed true. The flesh trade can only have increased since the Calormenes took Narnia.
“Dare I ask what this is all about?” says Edmund. He catches movement out of the corner of his eye, and turns his head slightly to look, as calmly as if he was just admiring the view. Sullycloud the marsh-wiggle is in the deep water on the near side of the river, just her eyes showing above the water. “Triptide hasn’t done something wrong, has he?”
“As I said, he is a person of interest, though not directly my concern.”
Edmund shrugs, a layman’s easy disappointment about not getting the dirt he’d like. “Mind if I ask where you’re headed? Just so I know to ride the other direction.”
The tarkaan hesitates a moment. “Into the Western Waste,” he says at last. “I think that you will not have a problem avoiding the army.”
“Army?” Edmund says. “I certainly will be headed the other way, then! The Shuddering Wood, you said?”
After the Calormene has gone, Edmund loosens his grip on the knife hilt he’d been grasping, the thin stiletto tucked into an invisible sheathe that hugs the pommel of his saddle. He pats his horse’s neck and looks at the river.
“You can come out now. He’s gone.”
Sullycloud emerges from the water, pulling herself up onto the side of the overhang along the sandy beach. She perches on the edge of it, letting her bare feet dangle down into the water. “Why were you talking to that Darkie?”
“He was talking to me,” Edmund says, smiling at her. “I was just being polite.”
“Cheilem won’t like knowing you’ve been talking to them.” She pulls up a handful of grass, discarding all but one stem, and begins to peel it into strips.
“He won’t know if you don’t tell him,” Edmund says. He goes around the side of his horse to crouch down next to her. She scowls at him, automatic. “If you’re in some kind of trouble,” he says carefully. “Or if you need help –”
“I can take care of myself!” she snaps, and leaps back down into the river, sending water splashing over Edmund’s face and clothes. He straightens up and steps back, frowning.
“You just have to ask,” he says, turning away. He swings himself up into the saddle, pulling his horse around, and goes after the Calormene.
This part of Narnia is all rolling hills and hidden valleys, patches of forest running up and down the sides. The tarkaan has enough of a head start on him that Edmund nudges his horse into a gallop, trying to catch up and stay hidden at the same time. One he catches sight of the man he ducks into the trees where there’s more cover, keeping several horselengths behind him. They’re mounting the rise of one of the hills now, not so steep that Edmund’s horse has to work at it, but not slight that he doesn’t notice it either. He stops when he sees unobstructed daylight before him, the forest cut short by the loggers’ axes sometime in the past few years, and swings off his horse, tying it loosely to a branch as he slinks forward.
Beyond the edge of the woods the hill dips down again; Edmund drops to his belly when he leaves the cover of the trees, watching the trail of dust the tarkaan leaves in his wake as he goes down the hill. Beneath him, laid out in orderly lines, are the colorful tents of a Calormene army.
----------
The slave trade in Narnian Talking Horses first appears in The Mare Who Gambled and Lost (LJ).
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Possibly skeevy situations involving children
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: Dust in the Air uses Warsverse backstory as a general rule of thumb. All chapters of Dust are posted on both LJ and DW. Dust in the Air does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
Edmund smells the charcoal-burner’s clearing before he sees it, the faintly bitter scent of slowly charring wood that curls warm around his face like a friendly greeting. He stops while he’s still amongst the trees and dismounts, a twig bending but not snapping beneath his boot. The storm has been over for more than a week now, but everything’s still damp, the rain well-soaked into the earth and root of Narnia. At least the charcoal-burner won’t have to worry about accidentally burning down one of the few thick patches of forest that still remains in eastern Narnia.
The Calormenes hadn’t destroyed every tree in the region they control. That would have been impractical, let alone stupid and genocidal, all adjectives that Edmund has to reluctantly concede don’t generally belong in Calormene vocabulary. Instead, they’d – pruned is probably a good word to use. Even a single tree can do quite a lot of harm in Narnia, but the worst kind of damage comes from whole groves or forests rising up. The Calormenes have cut down trees as strategically as they can, leaving wide swathes of empty land between the groves that remain, making sure that those are far away from cultivated land, where they could do the most damage if they ever tried to rebel. Narnia can’t survive without trees; they can’t destroy every forest in the country. Edmund has to admit that his first confused impression, during that frantic day and night between the railroad platform and the three arrows to the torso, had been that they had. He’s seldom been so glad to find that he was wrong.
It’s the silence that strikes him now, and Edmund pauses, his fist tight around his horse’s reins. There had been birds singing just minutes ago, gladdened by the arrival of spring, but now there’s nothing at all, except for a crow chattering madly in the distance. He looks up as a sparrow lights on a nearby branch, turning its head from side to side as it eyes him dubiously, then takes to the air again before Edmund has a chance to call a greeting.
Curiouser and curiouser, as the man said. He ties his horse loosely to a thin sapling with enough slack that it can graze and strides forward towards the clearing, where he can just see the top of the wood-pile behind some newly-leafing huckleberry bushes. Edmund dodges around those and takes one step forward, treading on a stray piece of kindling. It snaps, and he stops dead, his left hand falling to his sword. He doesn’t quite draw it, just lets his thumb stroke lightly across the crossbars and linger there as he looks around.
The clamp is at the center of the clearing, an earthen mound a man-height tall and twice that across. Beneath the layers of earth are stacks of hardwood built up around a central stake, which would have been removed and the space left behind filled with hot coals before being capped off with more earth. On one side of the mound are two withy windbreaks to deter the breeze that was fluttering the new leaves on the trees around the clearing, keeping it from forcing the clamp from a slow burn to a fast one. There are two full pails of water on either side of the clamp, to damp it down quickly in case the fire breaks through at any point. Not far away, using the high arching roots of a homewood tree as its foundation and canvas for walls and roof, is the charcoal-burner’s hut. The remains of a small cookfire are still smoking in front of the door. It looks exactly like every other charcoal-burner’s camp that Edmund’s ever seen, except for one thing: there’s no one here. No charcoal-burner will leave his clamp; the danger of the fire breaking through is too great.
Edmund looks down casually at the stick he’s just stepped on. It’s nothing more than the scraps left behind by the woodcutters the charcoal-burner follows, the sort of thing that goes into the clamp for kindling. Nothing odd to find in a charcoal-burner’s camp.
He steps back, hopping a little in his haste, and still only barely misses the crossbow bolt that whistles through the air where his chest used to be, triggered by the cord that had jerked when he’d released the stick. It skitters across the wood chips that litter the new grass as he kicks it aside, drawing his sword. Not that a sword is much help against booby traps.
“That was uncalled for,” Edmund says, his gaze flickering quickly once more across the clearing before he settles on the treetops. Everything’s leafy with spring growth; anything could be up there. This isn’t Calormen’s style, though.
There’s no reply.
“No wonder you don’t get many visitors if that’s how you greet them,” he goes on. “Unless you’re expecting someone else. You should be expecting me.”
“Are you the High King’s man, then?”
None of the branches quiver, but Edmund settles his attention on the homewood tree next to the hut. “More or less.”
“Which one is it? More or less?”
“I’m my own man,” Edmund says, taking a step forward into the clearing, “and the High King’s my brother.” When there’s no reply, he prods at the clamp with the tip of his sword, knocking aside a bit of the earthen covering. He’s warm just standing near it; the little avalanche of earth releases a blast of heat that makes him draw in his breath.
“Don’t touch that!” the charcoal-burner snarls, setting the leaves to fluttering on one tree. “You’ll kill both of us!”
Edmund turns, using his sword to point up at the tree the charcoal-burner is hiding in. “Then come down here,” he says in his most reasonable voice. “So you can fix your clamp before we all get incinerated, and then we can have a conversation like normal people.” He considers. “For differing definitions of the word.”
For a moment, fire in danger of breaking through or not, Edmund doesn’t think the bloke’s going to come down, but eventually the leaves quiver on one of the homewood tree’s big branches and a skinny man with black hair and a crossbow comes scrambling down. He shoves past Edmund and drops the crossbow in favor of snatching up one of the pails, pouring water on the clamp’s thin spot before discarding that in favor of a shovel. Edmund stands back to let the man do his work, watching curiously as he repairs the wound Edmund had nearly opened in the clamp. Patchwork done, he pours on more water, then stands back, leaning on his shovel as he glares at Edmund.
“Sorry about the mess,” Edmund drawls, sheathing his sword.
The charcoal-burner’s mouth twists. “Just like a damned noble.”
“Royal, actually,” Edmund points out kindly. “King Edmund. Some people call me just.”
“I call you an ass!”
“Some people call me that,” Edmund agrees, and looks around. “You have any other booby traps set up, or can I sit down somewhere?”
“If you’re really the King of Evening, you should know that without me saying,” the charcoal-burner says. He cants a worried look back over the clamp, then straightens and picks the pail up again, going around to the other side to damp down a patch of earth that looks like it’s drying out. Edmund follows him, not particularly wanting to let the man out of his sight.
“Confesor never passed on your name,” he says.
“It’s Cheilem,” said the charcoal-burner, holding the bucket like he expected flames to shoot out the sides of the clamp at any moment. “Cheilem Triptide.”
“You’re Terebinthian,” Edmund says, surprised.
“Narnian,” snaps Triptide. “My great-grandparents came over from Terebinthia. I have the name; it doesn’t make me an islander. I was born in Cair Paravel.”
Edmund spreads his hands, soothing. “Just making conversation.” He eyes Triptide, who’s fingering the handle of his pail like he’s thinking of throwing it at Edmund. “I’m going to go get my horse. Try not to shoot me on my way back.”
“My sweet nephew would be irritated with me,” Triptide allows after a moment. “Try not to give me an excuse.”
Edmund rolls his eyes, but leaves the clearing the way he’d come in. If there’s one booby trap, there’s more. It’s not worth setting up just one when you only have one chance to get it right. No land mines in Narnia.
His horse slobbers on his ear while he unties it, and Edmund pushes its head away, good-natured. He’d come alone because it’s the fastest way to travel; he and Peter had gambled that one man on a horse could make it through Calormene-occupied territory without being caught. The charcoal-burner is well within Calormene borders, and Prince Bahadur’s men are on high alert after Peter and Susan’s little stunt a few weeks ago. Edmund’s fairly sure that he even wouldn’t be able to repeat his brother’s trick of strolling in the front gates of Cair Paravel; thus the necessity of the charcoal-burner.
Said charcoal-burner looks exceedingly unhappy to see him when Edmund comes back. “I’m just here to make a business arrangement,” Edmund says soothingly. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as we’ve finalized it.”
“And back in it again as soon as the charcoal’s ready,” Triptide grumps. “I’m only allowed in the city four times a year and it’s going to be ruined by some dead king who wants to save the world.”
Edmund sighs. “Mostly just Narnia. And I’m reasonably certain I’m not dead.”
The charcoal-burner jerks his head a little in acknowledgment. “Mad or not, you’d think the dead would stop speaking. Even in Narnia.” He stares at Edmund for a moment, his gaze hard. “You’d best stay the night. It’s late, and there will be Calormene patrols about. We can discuss your terms after dinner.”
“Thank you,” Edmund says, with a silent prayer of relief. This could have gone rather poorly if the charcoal-burner had decided that siding with the Long Table and the rebels against the Calormenes was a bad idea.
“You can tie up your horse over there,” Triptide adds, jerking his thumb at a pine tree near the windbreaks. He picks up his crossbow and walks past Edmund, bracing one foot on a protruding root for leverage as he yanks the bolt from the booby trap out of the tree trunk it had stuck in, the head shedding little splinters of bark and gobbets of sap as it comes free.
Edmund ties his horse, leaving enough slack in the lead-line that it will be able to graze, and starts to untack it. He slips a hand into his saddlebags, closing his eyes slightly in relief when his fingers brush what he’d expected to be there. Things can always go wrong so very quickly.
“You said you were only allowed in the city four times a year,” he says over his shoulder. “Why is that?”
“Exiled,” says Triptide shortly. He slings his crossbow over his back, leaning down to gather up the tripwire that had set off the booby trap. “Amnesty on festival days. Whenever it is the augurs decide they are, of course.”
“I didn’t think exile was the Calormenes’ style. Or is it left over from King Tirian’s time?”
“The government doesn’t give a damn about me.”
Edmund turns around, saddle draped over his arms. Triptide is halfway up a tree, perched on a wide branch like a bird as he resets the crossbow that had nearly killed Edmund the first time. “Who gave the order then?”
“Who do you think?” Triptide calls down. He fixes the crossbow to its former place, then starts to climb back down, trailing the thin cord behind him. Edmund frowns, watching its path. Even though he’s looking for it now, it’s hard to see.
“The Long Table?”
“The Table couldn’t agree on the color of the sky if the High King himself was standing over them with a flaming sword. No, the capo del’strada gave in to family feeling and banned me from the city walls, which I’ll admit is a nice step up from dropping my head in the Fountain of the Three Queens.” He drops lightly back down to the ground and picks up a suitable stick, tying the cord around it before placing it carefully back down on the ground, nudging at it with the toe of his boot until he’s satisfied with its position. Edmund fixes the location carefully in his head, just in case he has to make a quick exit. Doubtless there are other booby traps around the camp as well, but at least he knows where this one is.
Edmund drops the saddle on the ground. “Dare I ask what you did?”
Triptide’s mouth quirks slightly. “Robbed the wrong house. Before I was a collier, I was a second-story man, and I was good at it. If you’ve never been told off by your sixteen-year-old nephew, I don’t recommend it.”
“I can only imagine,” Edmund sympathizes, thinking of Eustace with a slight mental wince. He thinks being accused of madness by your eleven-year-old cousin is probably just as bad. He focuses on the other hints Triptide’s been dropping. “Elizar Confesor is your nephew?”
“You ask a lot of questions for an omnipotent demigod,” Triptide says abruptly.
“Well, I’m not really that omnipotent,” Edmund says, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against a tree. “Or a demigod, as it happens.”
The ex-thief narrows his eyes, and Edmund tenses, not liking his expression. He has a bad feeling about where this might be going. “Really,” says Cheilem Triptide, turning away. His hand falls to the butt of the crossbow slung across his back; Edmund pushes himself off the tree trunk with one foot, grabbing for his sword.
Triptide is fast. He’s damned fast, and the crossbow bolt is in the air before Edmund’s sword has cleared the scabbard. Edmund’s still faster, and the crossbow bolt falls to the ground before him in three equal pieces.
He stares down at them, panting like he’s just run a marathon. His sword hangs limply from his hand. Edmund isn’t this fast. He’s fast, but he’s not this fast; Peter is. And even if he was – he’s not supposed to be that fucking exhausted after three seconds of blank terror and impossible speed.
“You fucking shot me,” he finally manages to say, looking up at Triptide, whose face is utterly blank. The man is fingering his crossbow a little nervously.
“I shot at you,” he says. “There’s a difference. And you’re obviously fine –”
“Except for how I don’t like getting fucking shot at!” Edmund sheathes his sword, which takes more effort than it really should. He puts one hand out to brace himself on the tree, the bark cold and rough against his bare hand. “And that’s twice today,” he adds, grumpily. “You really need to think about how you greet your visitors.”
“I don’t like visitors,” Triptide says, moving his crossbow back across his back.
“Somehow I understood that,” Edmund says. He closes his eyes for a moment, decides he’s not going to fall over, and opens them again, crouching down to pick up the severed pieces of the crossbow bolt. He rubs his thumb over the clean cuts, trying not to think about it. He’s not that fast. Nobody’s that fast; he didn’t even have his sword out of the scabbard when Triptide pulled the trigger. “Dare I even ask why you did that?”
Triptide shrugs. “Curiosity.”
“Curiosity,” Edmund repeats, disbelieving. “You’re lucky I’m not actually a god.”
The charcoal-burner gives him an odd look. “We’ll eat when the boy comes back,” he says, abruptly changing tack. “Then we’ll talk about your…proposal.”
At this rate Edmund’s going to grow old in Narnia before he ever makes it to Cair Paravel he decides, and flops onto the ground next to his horse, leaning back against his saddle, shoving his sword out of the way. “Just,” he says, and sighs, “try not to shoot me again.”
The boy, when he finally appears about an hour later, turns out to be a girl. She’s a marsh-wiggle, scrawny and gangly in the way that nearly every wiggle Edmund’s met has been, with dirty greenish-brown hair in three braids and a bandage around her left thumb. She gives him a curious look, but doesn’t say anything, just pets his horse on the nose as she goes past to Cheilem Triptide, proffering up the day’s catch – one limp duck and a brace of catfish, their whiskers dragging on the ground and gathering dirt.
“There’s more fish in the river lately,” she remarks as Triptide inspects the catfish. “They say the river god’s back.”
“Who’ve you been talking to?” he snaps, slapping the catfish down on a wooden rack and turning his attention to the duck. It’s a scrawny thing too.
The girl sulks. “Just some folks,” she says, sounding defensive. “River people.”
“Well, don’t!” He snatches the catfish back up and shoves them at her. “Go and cook those. We’ve a guest tonight.”
She takes the catfish, glaring at Triptide’s back as he walks away with the duck. Edmund eyes her with curiosity. It’s not common to see a marsh-wiggle so far from the northern marsh and the River Shribble; by and large they tend towards insular loners who are more concerned with their own feud with the Bog People than they are about the rest of Narnia. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen one this far south, and from what he’s heard, they’ve gotten even more clannish now than they had been in his time.
The wiggle girl crouches down by a large rock on the far side of the clamp, pulling a skinny knife from her belt. She braces the fish on the rock and drags the knife across it from head to tail, scales flying in all directions. Scales gone, she makes the first slice to gut it, then puts the knife aside to reach inside and pull out the innards, which she sets aside. She repeats the process with the second fish, then carries them back over to the cookfire, setting them on the wooden rack Triptide had used as she scrapes dirt off from over the coals with one webbed foot. She builds the fire back up, then arranges the fish to her liking, adding a sprinkle of salt from a pouch on her belt. This complete, she turns and glares at Edmund.
“What’re you looking at?”
“I’m just curious,” he says, as mildly as he can. “I’m not used to seeing marsh-wiggles in this part of Narnia.”
“I bet you aren’t,” she snaps, cleaning her knife on the knee of her breeches and sheathing it. She picks up the guts in one bare hand and carries them out of the camp, glaring at Edmund the entire time.
“Well, that was unexpected,” he says to no one in particular and goes back to reading the reports Vespasian and Tirian had written up for them before Edmund had left Arn Abedin. Vespasian’s handwriting is large and sprawling, Tirian’s small and neat, ruler-straight across the page. He’s read it before; there’s nothing new here, but Edmund keeps hoping that he’ll find something unexpected, something useful they can exploit. Some weakness.
The girl comes back eventually and goes immediately to the cookfire, flipping the fish over so they cook evenly. Edmund watches her over the top of his papers, frowning. It’s always hard to guess a marsh-wiggle’s age because they don’t show it very well, especially the grown ones, but he doesn’t think she’s reached that yet. She can’t be more than thirteen, if that.
“I didn’t get your name,” he says eventually.
She scowls at him, poking at the fish with one finger. “It’s Sullycloud,” she says. “He just calls me Sully.”
“‘He’?”
“Cheilem.”
“How did you meet him?”
“None of your damned business,” she says, and lifts the fish off the makeshift grill onto a battered clay plate.
Edmund tucks his papers away into a waxed-silk pouch and stands up. “What can I do to help?”
Sully gives him a disbelieving look. “Stay out of my way,” she says, propping the plate up between two rocks by the fire so that the fish stays warm.
“I’ve brought wine,” Edmund says after a moment.
“Good!” says Triptide, emerging from behind a tree. The duck he’d left with is nowhere in sight. “Girl, go and get the cups.”
The wiggle ducks back into the hut, wordless, and emerges with a cracked clay cup in each hand. Edmund produces a skin of sweet Shoushani red, a gift from their guests – or allies, he hasn’t decided which yet – at Arn Abedin, and pours.
“Don’t you want any?” he asks Sullycloud.
“She doesn’t,” Triptide says.
“I don’t,” she agrees, sullen.
Triptide drinks half his wine in one gulp, making a satisfied sound, and crouches down next to the fire to prod at the fish with the tip of his knife. He slices one fillet in half, picks it up, and hands it to the girl, who accepts it wordlessly and retreats to the far side of the camp, hidden behind the bulk of the clamp.
Edmund fills Triptide’s cup back up, silent, and accepts the plate after Triptide’s transferred his portion to the more-or-less flat surface of the rock in front of him. The next few moments are spent in silence as they pick the bones out of the meat, Triptide cursing whenever he misses one.
“How did you two meet?” he says eventually, as delicately as he can manage.
“What, me and the boy? Picked her up on the riverbank about a year ago.”
“She’s a bit young, isn’t she?”
“Old enough,” Triptide says, and laughs.
Edmund looks down at his fish, concentrating on deboning it so as to resist the urge to punch Triptide in the head. When he’s finished, all the bones pushed off into a neat pile on the edge of the plate, he puts it down and looks at Triptide. As an afterthought, he pours them both more wine.
“Our bargain,” he says.
“Bargain. Mmm.” The charcoal-burner drinks. “My nephew said that you could pay me.”
“I can,” Edmund agrees. “What will you do with the money, since you can’t go into the city?”
“I can go into the city four times a year,” Triptide says. He rolls his shoulders; Edmund hears his vertebrae crack. “Let’s see that gold, then.”
“You can see it,” Edmund warns. “But you won’t get paid till the deal’s worked out. Half then, half when I get inside the city gates.”
“And I won’t work out any deal until I’ve seen your gold.” He drinks; his fourth cup of the evening. Edmund’s only on his second; it’s strong stuff and he wants to keep his wits about him, since he can’t hold his liquor nearly as well as he’d like. “Don’t try to pull one over on me, either. I’m a second-story man and I know the real stuff when I see it.”
“It’s not gold,” Edmund says in his mildest voice, then reaches inside his shirt, fumbling with the tie on the wallet for a moment before he gets it open. The stones are warm against his fingertips when he feels for one of an appropriate size. He puts the diamond down on the rock in front of Triptide and waits.
The charcoal-burner looks at it, then picks it up, rolls it between the pad of his thumb and forefinger, scratches it across the surface of the rock and raises an eyebrow at the mark it leaves behind. “That’s a very small stone,” he says.
Edmund puts another one of the same size down, watching Triptide test that one too.
“Still a bit small.”
“I see we’re not calling on your sense of patriotism,” Edmund drawls, putting down a third stone. “Or family loyalty.”
“Little Elizar made a fairly good display of family loyalty when he exiled me out here,” Triptide says. “I don’t even get to vote anymore, so don’t tell me about patriotism.”
“I’ve heard nobody gets to vote anymore,” Edmund remarks. Saying Narnia is a bit different than the way it was in his time is a bit like saying it’s a bit warm on the surface of the sun. He pulls another diamond out of the wallet, but doesn’t put it down this time, just holds it up between his fingers. “There are more where these come from. We took the diamond mine on the edge of the High Reaches a few days ago. I think it’s safe to say that we’re in funds. And you’ll get your money as long as I get what I want.”
“Why can’t you just go in through the front gates like everyone else?”
“I will,” Edmund says. “In your charcoal wagon.” He reaches for the diamonds Triptide is still holding. “Though, if you’re going to chicken out, you won’t be needing those anymore –”
Triptide snatches his hand back. “I’ll keep these,” he agrees abruptly. “I’ll take my charcoal up to the city on Winter’s End eve. You’d best be here then.”
“I thought you couldn’t go into the city except on feast days,” Edmund says.
“I won’t be going in until the next day. I’ve got friends, you know. And my product’s already bought and paid for, in case you were wondering about seizing that for the glorious revolution too.” He rubs his fingers over the diamonds again, smirking to himself.
Edmund puts his head to one side, curious. “To whom?”
“Forty-five percent goes to the Calormenes, twenty to the city.”
“And the other thirty-five percent?”
“Private buyer,” Triptide says.
“The Long Table?”
“Like I said. Private buyer,” he repeats. “How about that other diamond, then?”
“Do all the other charcoal-burners make the same bargain you do?” Edmund presses, holding onto it.
“I get paid more. I’m family.”
“Really,” Edmund says, not believing it for a moment. He holds the diamond up, watching the way it picks up sparks from the fire even in its rough, uncut form, then puts it back inside his shirt. “You get it when I get inside the city, along with two others. Half now, half then,” he repeats. “Do we have a bargain?”
“A bargain,” Triptide says, staring down at the stones in his hand. “You know, this isn’t all that much to see. Naiads used to pull these out of the river all the time.”
Edmund bites the side of his mouth in frustration. “If you’d rather, I can pay you in gold, but you’ll have to wait.” And it won’t nearly cover the price of the diamonds. These aren’t cheap yellows or browns, or even the rarer pinks or blues. These ones are clear and colorless – or they will be, once they’ve been cleaned up a bit and cut. None of them is bigger than his smallest fingernail; none of them need to be. They’re worth enough on their own.
“I’ll keep the diamonds,” Triptide says abruptly. “And one more thing – I’ve heard you have my niece with you.”
“Well, I don’t have her tucked away in one of my saddle bags, but yes, Beka Confesor is at Arn Abedin. She’s in good company, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She’s sharing living quarters with the Lord Provost’s wife, but Edmund thinks that that’s really not worth mentioning to an ex-criminal.
“I want to see her. Or there won’t be any deal, and you can keep your diamonds.” He says this like it causes him physical pain; Edmund smiles anyway.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he says. “I don’t expect there to be any difficulty.”
He retires to sleep not long afterwards, spreading his bedroll on the bare ground next to his saddle and using his rolled-up cloak as a pillow. He puts his sword on the ground next to him, so close that he could sleep with his hand on it, if he wanted. That would probably send entirely the wrong impression, though.
The slow pace of the charcoal-burner’s camp, on the very edge of the wild, is a relief compared to Arn Abedin, which is filled to the brim with more people than it was meant to hold even when it had been a fully-staffed castle and not just a ruin. Edmund’s spent the last ten years of his life in boarding school and, following that, the army. Neither of them had really allowed for much peace and quiet, and that was when he wasn’t living at home, which was usually taken up by Susan and Lucy screaming at each other, or in his and Peter’s flat in London, about which the less said the better. It’s not that he’d lived anything vaguely resembling a contemplative life before that, but – the pace is different. He’s missed Narnia. It’s not quiet, exactly, it’s just – more alive.
His horse whickers softly; Triptide barks at the wiggle girl to watch the clamp and ducks into his hut. Sullycload retreats to the opposite side of the clamp, glaring at Edmund until he rolls over, staring into the shadowed woods. Spring is here; it’s a warm night, probably one of the warmest since they’ve arrived. He falls asleep within minutes.
Edmund dreams an old dream, of a white winter and a path in the woods, of a woman in a sleigh and a boy who should have known better. He wakes discomfited, and rolls onto his back, staring up at the stars peeking out from between the tree cover. The constellations are all old friends; he’s missed them. They haven’t shifted much since Caspian’s time, at least. He’d like to think that the stars are eternal, but meeting Coriakin and Ramandu had disabused him of that idea; there are a handful of stars missing from the heavens that had been there in his own time. Two must be Coriakin and Ramandu; where the others are…well, he hopes they’re happy, at least.
There’s a sound from the hut, a kind of grunting noise than no one in their right mind would mistake for a snore; Edmund turns his head automatically, reaching for his sword. He doesn’t draw it, just lays his hand on the hilt, waiting. The cookfire has been reduced to coals and covered with earth to keep them warm, so there’s nothing much to see. With just a thin sliver of a crescent moon to see by, everything is shadows. He half-expects the clamp to glow like a furnace, lit from the inside, but instead it’s merely a big dark lump breaking up the clearing. The wiggle girl is nowhere in sight.
He lies tense for a few minutes, but the only noises he hears are the normal passage of night life – an owl in the distance, a squirrel scampering through a tree on a late-night mission, the rustle of the breeze in the trees. Edmund closes his eyes again. This time he doesn’t dream.
He leaves early the next morning. Cheilem Triptide seems relieved to see him go, reminding Edmund that he wants to see his niece before he considers their deal finalized, despite the fact that he’s hung onto the three diamonds Edmund had shown him the night before. Sullycloud is nowhere in sight.
“Damn boy,” is what Triptide says when Edmund asks about her. “Probably ran off to the river again – you know how wiggles are.”
“Mmm,” Edmund says, neutrally, setting his left foot into the stirrup and swinging himself into his horse’s saddle. “I’ll send you word about seeing your niece.”
“Make sure you do,” says Triptide. He points. “Go out between those two trees – no traps there.”
Edmund can’t say he trusts Triptide’s word absolutely on that particular note, but he goes out between the two trees anyway, and is glad to find that he doesn’t end up with an arrow through the neck.
The Great River runs not far from the charcoal-burner’s camp. Charcoal-burners follow woodsmen and the Calormene logging crews float their timber down the river to Cair Paravel; it makes sense that Triptide would be so close to it, especially with a marsh-wiggle as a partner. Edmund rides down to a narrow stretch of beach at the water’s edge and dismounts, letting his horse drink as he looks around. The river is still running high, the way it always does in spring after the great floods which follow the spring thaw. In Edmund’s time it would have been full of life – doyarchu chasing fish, naiads playing tag or doing more serious work, perhaps even Achelous himself sitting on a rock overseeing the business of his river. Even if the river-god is back, and he doesn’t doubt Susan’s account, there doesn’t seem to be much sign of it. No fish, no doyarchu, no naiads, and certainly no Achelous. Well, if he was a river-god and Tash was rumored to be running around Narnia, Edmund can’t say he wouldn’t keep a quiet profile himself.
He kneels down on the riverbank and cups his hands, dipping up some of the water and lifting it to its mouth. It’s cold enough to shock him, snowmelt fresh off the in the Western Wild – the real Western Wild, not merely Lantern Waste, the area region they still call the Western Waste. There are stories about the Western Wild dating all the way back to the beginning of the world; according to the Professor’s and Miss Plummer’s stories, some of them may even be true. Maybe some of that virtue has come flowing down with the spring melt. Or maybe there’s no virtue at all up in those mountains, just the same curse that brought the White Witch down on Narnia. Edmund opens his cupped hands, letting the water splash back down into the fast-moving river, and sits back on his haunches.
It’s going to be a beautiful day. The sky is cloudless, bright with the thin light of early morning, before the sun has managed to wake himself up all the way. Any forestry that happened on the opposite side of the river, and there had to have been some because Edmund had walked this path himself in Caspian’s time, must have happened long enough ago that the damage is more or less gone, leaving behind rolling hills covered with fresh spring grass. Edmund smiles to himself, quiet and pleased and at peace.
It lasts only a few minutes. Someone clears their throat, in that polite way that means they’re trying to get your attention. Edmund sighs and stands up, a curse forming on his lips when he sees that the stranger is a Calormene tarkaan. The man’s warhorse is standing at his back, docile as a kitten.
“Hello!” Edmund says cheerfully, glad that his automatic grab for his sword was masked by his horse’s bulk. The mare flicks one ear at the newcomer, bored and disinterested; the warhorse doesn’t even appear to notice her existence. “Dreadfully sorry, am I somewhere I shouldn’t be? If I am, I’ll get out of your way as quick as wink.”
“No trouble,” says the Calormene, looking at Edmund curiously. He’s a small man, shorter than Edmund by half a hand or so, with dark skin and his curly hair tied back from his face. He isn’t wearing armor, or at least not that Edmund can see beneath the open folds of his caftan; he casts a discreet look at the knots on his sword hilt to guess at the man’s rank. Red, with black beads at the bottom. The lower end of the middle rank of tarkaans.
The Calormene goes on, “I saw you come out of the woods, and I wondered if you had been to see the charcoal-burner?”
His Narnian is very good. Strongly accented, but painfully correct despite that. Edmund throws one arm over his horse’s neck and smiles at him. “I did indeed. I hoped the old chap might have some of his product that wasn’t yet spoken for, but he was quite clear that that wasn’t so. Ah, well, better luck next time!”
“Cheilem Triptide does business in the city,” says the Calormene carefully. “He is, mm, a person of interest for the Tisroc (may he live forever).”
Edmund puts on an expression of shock. “Is he really now? No wonder he wasn’t interested then! Perhaps I’ll try the other collier, the wer-wolf, though I’m damned if I can remember her name –”
“Gunwar Longclaw,” the Calormene fills in for him. “She is in the Shuddering Wood now, following the logging crews, and I cannot see that she would not be amenable. Last I spoke to her, she had not filled her commission entirely. Do you object if I ask you about Cheilem Triptide?”
“Not at all!” Edmund says. “Glad to help. Though I must warn you, I only spoke to the chap for a few minutes, not long enough to learn anything of interest about him. Except that he wouldn’t sell me his coal, of course.” He smiles in a friendly kind of way, wondering what a lone tarkaan is doing all the way out here, and what it means that he’s asking about Cheilem Triptide. Nothing good, no doubt.
The tarkaan nods, raising one hand to pat his horse’s cheek absently as the mare nuzzles his shoulder. “Did he speak at all of whom his clients were?”
Edmund shrugs. “Some to you lads, some to the city, the rest to a private buyer.”
“Did he say who that was?”
“If I’d asked, I might have gone to find the man and bargain him out of a share of it!” Edmund says, in true merchant style. “But no, he never said. Say, what’s all this about, then? Is he in some kind of trouble? Is this about that girl he has with him?”
“What girl?”
“That wiggle girl. Scrawny little thing. Too young to be out on her own, away from her clan. Especially with a man like that.” He draws out the description and the imprecations, looking solemnly at the tarkaan as he waits for a response.
When he gets one, it’s concerned. “I was not told of any girl,” says the Calormene, his expression worried. “I have sisters myself – I will ask after her. Now, Cheilem Triptide – did he say anything else to you? Anything about his connections in the city?”
“Only that he’d been exiled,” Edmund says. “But that must have been you lot, yes? So you don’t need me to tell you of it –”
“Mmm,” says the Calormene. He pats his horse again as the animal slobbers on his ear, then looks at Edmund with surprisingly intelligent eyes. Edmund wonders suddenly if it’s really a warhorse born and bred, or if it’s a Narnian Talking Horse like the two that had come across the Great Southern Desert with Prince Cor and Lady Aravis. There have been stories that date back even before the Long Winter about kidnappers from the south and the west, men who came over the mountains to steal talking horses and break them to saddle before selling them in the fleshmarkets of Calormen, or even further from Narnia. Even broken, Narnian horses are better than any dumb one on the continent – and they nearly always breed true. The flesh trade can only have increased since the Calormenes took Narnia.
“Dare I ask what this is all about?” says Edmund. He catches movement out of the corner of his eye, and turns his head slightly to look, as calmly as if he was just admiring the view. Sullycloud the marsh-wiggle is in the deep water on the near side of the river, just her eyes showing above the water. “Triptide hasn’t done something wrong, has he?”
“As I said, he is a person of interest, though not directly my concern.”
Edmund shrugs, a layman’s easy disappointment about not getting the dirt he’d like. “Mind if I ask where you’re headed? Just so I know to ride the other direction.”
The tarkaan hesitates a moment. “Into the Western Waste,” he says at last. “I think that you will not have a problem avoiding the army.”
“Army?” Edmund says. “I certainly will be headed the other way, then! The Shuddering Wood, you said?”
After the Calormene has gone, Edmund loosens his grip on the knife hilt he’d been grasping, the thin stiletto tucked into an invisible sheathe that hugs the pommel of his saddle. He pats his horse’s neck and looks at the river.
“You can come out now. He’s gone.”
Sullycloud emerges from the water, pulling herself up onto the side of the overhang along the sandy beach. She perches on the edge of it, letting her bare feet dangle down into the water. “Why were you talking to that Darkie?”
“He was talking to me,” Edmund says, smiling at her. “I was just being polite.”
“Cheilem won’t like knowing you’ve been talking to them.” She pulls up a handful of grass, discarding all but one stem, and begins to peel it into strips.
“He won’t know if you don’t tell him,” Edmund says. He goes around the side of his horse to crouch down next to her. She scowls at him, automatic. “If you’re in some kind of trouble,” he says carefully. “Or if you need help –”
“I can take care of myself!” she snaps, and leaps back down into the river, sending water splashing over Edmund’s face and clothes. He straightens up and steps back, frowning.
“You just have to ask,” he says, turning away. He swings himself up into the saddle, pulling his horse around, and goes after the Calormene.
This part of Narnia is all rolling hills and hidden valleys, patches of forest running up and down the sides. The tarkaan has enough of a head start on him that Edmund nudges his horse into a gallop, trying to catch up and stay hidden at the same time. One he catches sight of the man he ducks into the trees where there’s more cover, keeping several horselengths behind him. They’re mounting the rise of one of the hills now, not so steep that Edmund’s horse has to work at it, but not slight that he doesn’t notice it either. He stops when he sees unobstructed daylight before him, the forest cut short by the loggers’ axes sometime in the past few years, and swings off his horse, tying it loosely to a branch as he slinks forward.
Beyond the edge of the woods the hill dips down again; Edmund drops to his belly when he leaves the cover of the trees, watching the trail of dust the tarkaan leaves in his wake as he goes down the hill. Beneath him, laid out in orderly lines, are the colorful tents of a Calormene army.
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The slave trade in Narnian Talking Horses first appears in The Mare Who Gambled and Lost (LJ).
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