Narnia fic: Dust in the Air (Interlude)
Aug. 8th, 2011 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air (Interlude)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG
Content Notes: None
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).
Someone has thrown a newspaper down on the back table of the Compass Room, the one placed by the door so that the peers entering the chamber can unburden themselves of the weapons they aren’t allowed to bear within Assembly. No one carries much weaponry these days, or at least isn’t foolish enough to display it so openly, so the table is usually ostentatiously littered with eating knives, pen knives, letter openers, and the odd rapier that someone’s forgotten about until the last minute. All of those are here today – but piled up around the newspaper, framing it so that no one who walks by will be able to miss it.
The Calormenes must be having a fit, but no one has removed it yet. Even though everyone and their uncle knows that the votes are being decided by Prince Bahadur no one wants to risk a conflagration by interfering with the very nominal freedom the Assembly of Lords had been given by the Prince’s predecessor. It’s an illusion, of course, but at least it’s a comforting one. Most of the Lords don’t want to admit that they’re under the Tisroc’s thumb.
It’s been a long time since the Compass Room was filled to capacity – probably before the Calormene occupation, since some of the peers have always been more occupied with their own lands or the gaming table or any of the other myriad distractions Narnia offers than they are with running the country, even with a weak king on the throne. It makes the gaps in the room less obvious than they should be – all those empty holes, Glasswater and Beruna and Northfall and the seat reserved for the king, who is expected to sit in Assembly but who hasn’t had a vote for a hundred years. The gaps are somewhat countered by the places filled by men who would rather be elsewhere than in Assembly, but who haven’t been given a choice by the Calormenes. The two representatives from the universities seem especially unhappy; they’d probably rather be back in their home institutions bickering over obscure historical documents. Lady Marcia Bracken can’t exactly blame them; Assembly these days is a joke. She’s holding out the vague hope that the challenge of the newspaper might make today interesting.
It starts when the Whip, running rather late, enters the chamber and fumbles in his pockets for his pen knife. He’s about to drop it on the table when he sees the newspaper and puts his head to one side, studying it the same way he might a particularly interesting manuscript. When he looks around the room the Whip looks rather like a stork peering into the water in search of a crawfish, only he’s looking for the person who threw the newspaper down like a gauntlet. No one responds, leaving him staring at the paper and fingering the small knife he’s still holding, before he finally places it gingerly at the very edge of the newspaper and scrambles away for his seat at the front of the room, his long legs covering the distance in half the time anyone else would need. Marcia glances around, but whoever had left the newspaper doesn’t acknowledge their triumph. Instead the peers mostly look bored, a few of them talking to each other about the planting season or their plans for Winter’s End. Marcia pours herself a cup of tea from the pot provided and leans back in her hard wooden seat, balancing the saucer on her knee. Her brother Crispus, who speaks for Marcia in Assembly because the Calormenes won’t allow her to speak for herself, looks intrigued.
The clock in the tower above them strikes noon, making the Whip straighten up defiantly, holding the arms of his chair with white-knuckled hands. Marcia takes another sip of her tea, watching more out of amusement than anything else. It’s not like her voice means much in Assembly right now, and Confesor’s demands have her more interested in the situation outside the city and the Bracken lands than she really should be. These days trying to play politics in Narnia is a dangerous game.
Marcia has never thought the Whip is capable of it. Lord Curui of Owlswood is another one of the previous governor’s legacies. Prince Bahadur prefers malleable young Narnian bucks, but the last one of those had died in a duel over some woman and the position had defaulted to his predecessor’s appointee after a quick interchange of letters with Tashbaan. Curui is a thin, white-haired man old enough to be Marcia’s father, if not her grandfather; he walks too fast and he’s constantly peering through round spectacles at piles of yellowing papers. Before the conquest he had been master of a college at The University – Marcia had gone up there and she remembers seeing him stalking across the college grounds, trailed by an adoring crowd of undergraduates – but since then he’s been chained to Cair Paravel. As far as Marcia knows the only time he’s been allowed back to his own lands has been the brief period between Bahadur dismissing him from his position as Whip and the Tisroc returning him to it. Someone in the Assembly had wondered then why he hadn’t fought the appointment. He’s an old, tired man. Marcia suspects he doesn’t have any fight left in him.
He always looks like he’s about to give a lecture when he steps up to the podium with its two great clawed paws grasping the stand. He’s a tall man, and he has to bend a little over it, shuffling his notes with a dry whisper of papers. The Assembly waits with irritation and curiosity and today, some hint of suspense.
“It has been suggested,” says Lord Curui eventually in his scratchy voice, “that a thorough survey of the tunnel system beneath the city be conducted. The Crown has offered a budget of five thousand crescents for this project, to be carried out by skilled surveyors from Tashbaan –”
“I’ll see Cair Paravel burn before I’ll see a damned Callie surveyor beneath my city,” rumbles Lord Vela of Greatford, with a sound like an angry bull. Marcia knows for a fact that he smuggles wine into the city via the tunnels.
Upright Lady Ayelen Plumm whispers to her husband, who stands up and says, “A survey of the tunnels is likely to significantly lessen the amount of crime in the city, especially with the Long Table on the rise.”
Lord Morayta stands up to rebut him, followed by Lord Jocerlin Parry, whose now-dead father had been one of the first to bow and scrape to the Calormenes. Crispus looks at Marcia to see if she has anything she wants to add to the discussion, but she shakes her head; her main thought on the subject is that she’s surprised that Prince Bahadur even thought to put it to a vote. It’s five to one that even if the Assembly votes against the measure Bahadur will see it through anyway.
The discussion is cut short by the arrival of the Lord Provost, late as usual. He drops his sword of office onto the back table with a crash, then spots the newspaper and bellows, “What the blazes is this?” so loudly that Marcia half-fancies she sees the roof tiles shudder.
“Do you have an opinion to offer, Lord Prejun?” says Lord Curui, in the same prim voice he’d used on students who fell asleep in class.
Prejun of Newisle storms onto the floor with the newspaper clenched in his good fist, his face contorted in outrage. “Who brought these lies into Assembly?” he demands, waving the newspaper like a banner. “Who dares?”
Nobody confesses, unsurprisingly. Newisle rips the newspaper in two pieces, then four, then as many as he can manage. The pieces flutter down to the burnished wood floor like the first snows of winter, but the damage is already done. Everyone has read the piece already – Marcia had read it over breakfast this morning, then passed it on to Crispus so that he could know the truth as well. “These are lies,” he says again, as if repetition can make the words true. “I’ll have Rannva Longhallow’s bloody tongue ripped out.”
Rannva Longhallow is the editor of the Cair Paravel Chronicle, who has managed to keep her newspaper by means of bribes, bullheadedness, and blackmail when so many of Cair Paravel’s once numerous newspapers have been shut down by the Calormenes. Marcia hardly thinks that the dwarf is going to let herself be stopped by such a little thing as Lord Prejun of Newisle.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” says Lord Curui, straightening up behind the podium. His wrinkled hands grasp the sides of the stand, with his signet ring on one and his class ring from the university on the other.
“I will not have these lies repeated in my city!” Newisle shouts. “There is no bloody King of Summer and the only throne Tirian of Narnia will ever have again is a grave!”
“Coward!” Eleven-year-old Jacopa Fenn starts up, bristling like a hedgehog. Her guardian and spokesman catches her wrist to draw her down, but she shakes him off. “Lying coward! The kings and queens of summer are in Narnia again, and when they come here, you’ll pay for bedding down with the Callies! You and the rest of the traitors in Cair Paravel!”
“Someone silence that child,” Joserlin Parry snarls out the side of his mouth, standing. “Rannva Longhallow ought to be punished for printing such treason, I agree – why should we not take the Chronicle for our own? The lower city complains enough about never knowing what is spoken in the upper city, let us give them an outlet for it –”
“A public newspaper is prohibited by King Florian’s edict,” Lord Curui says, tilting his chin up. “Nor can the content of a private newspaper be limited by either Crown or Assembly.”
“Bugger King Florian! That was a different time and a different place. If Longhallow or any of her inkstained cronies want to print the kind of shite that starts riots in the lower city, they’ve got another think coming to them.”
“You bloody traitors!” Lord Vela snarls, on his feet. “Deny our laws and deny your own titles, you bastards. We’ve broken enough of the common law already; this one we’ll keep. Anyone who harms a hair on a newsie’s head will deal with me.” He’s not wearing a sword, not in Assembly, but his hand strays to the place where one would be.
“Anyone who wishes to publish their opinion in the paper should at least write under their own name,” says Lord Morayta in his soft voice. He doesn’t rise. “This – Publius – may write what he likes, so long as he does it under his own name.”
“Why?” says Lord Plumm without prompting from his wife. “So fools like you can hunt them down and rip them limb from limb?”
“We will do nothing,” the Whip declares, his voice carrying through the Compass Room. Lord Curui stands tall as the statue of the High King in the Lionscourt. “These are words, and free ones at that. Are we Calormene slaves that we seek to limit them? We are free Narnians yet. We will do nothing.” He locks eyes with Lord Joserlin, who stares back only for an instant before he drops his head and sinks back into his seat.
“You cowards might do nothing, but I am Lord Provost of Cair Paravel, and I say that Longhallow and her precious Chronicle can both burn –” Newisle asserts.
Lord Odilon from The University stands up, exchanging a significant look with Lord Curui. “Any member of the Assembly who acts against the Assembly in an official capacity is subject to investigation and removal from his position. I can name several precedents, beginning with Lord Ildefonso of Heartscrown –”
“Spare us, scholar,” Lord Morayta says hastily.
Newisle stares around the Compass Room like a trapped beast, the remains of the newspaper scattered on the floor around him. Whoever put it on the back table with the pen knives and letter openers was right: it’s as much a weapon as any of the cutlery.
“We shall put the matter to a vote,” announces the Whip, though his expression suggests that there is nothing to vote on. “Those who would uphold the law of Florian the Faithful and those who would break it.”
“Control the papers,” Morayta insists, irritated.
Marcia nods at Crispus, and her little brother stands up for the first time. “Bracken upholds the law,” he says, and sits back down.
“Fenn does as well,” says Lady Jacopa’s uncle hastily, before his niece can speak again. The girl raises her chin, her expression defiant, and nods once.
“Greatford,” snaps Lord Vela.
“The University,” says Lord Odilon. His fellow from Glasswater echoes him, the two universities in agreement for once.
The vote is a closer thing than Marcia had expected. The Whip gets his way despite Newisle’s bellowing, but the line between lions and scorpions is drawn more starkly than it has been in years. There will be trouble in Cair Paravel because of what passed in Assembly this day.
Too late. There’s been trouble in Narnia for five years now. Elizar Confesor is wrong: there’s still some patriotism left among the nobles.
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
Content Notes: None
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).
Someone has thrown a newspaper down on the back table of the Compass Room, the one placed by the door so that the peers entering the chamber can unburden themselves of the weapons they aren’t allowed to bear within Assembly. No one carries much weaponry these days, or at least isn’t foolish enough to display it so openly, so the table is usually ostentatiously littered with eating knives, pen knives, letter openers, and the odd rapier that someone’s forgotten about until the last minute. All of those are here today – but piled up around the newspaper, framing it so that no one who walks by will be able to miss it.
The Calormenes must be having a fit, but no one has removed it yet. Even though everyone and their uncle knows that the votes are being decided by Prince Bahadur no one wants to risk a conflagration by interfering with the very nominal freedom the Assembly of Lords had been given by the Prince’s predecessor. It’s an illusion, of course, but at least it’s a comforting one. Most of the Lords don’t want to admit that they’re under the Tisroc’s thumb.
It’s been a long time since the Compass Room was filled to capacity – probably before the Calormene occupation, since some of the peers have always been more occupied with their own lands or the gaming table or any of the other myriad distractions Narnia offers than they are with running the country, even with a weak king on the throne. It makes the gaps in the room less obvious than they should be – all those empty holes, Glasswater and Beruna and Northfall and the seat reserved for the king, who is expected to sit in Assembly but who hasn’t had a vote for a hundred years. The gaps are somewhat countered by the places filled by men who would rather be elsewhere than in Assembly, but who haven’t been given a choice by the Calormenes. The two representatives from the universities seem especially unhappy; they’d probably rather be back in their home institutions bickering over obscure historical documents. Lady Marcia Bracken can’t exactly blame them; Assembly these days is a joke. She’s holding out the vague hope that the challenge of the newspaper might make today interesting.
It starts when the Whip, running rather late, enters the chamber and fumbles in his pockets for his pen knife. He’s about to drop it on the table when he sees the newspaper and puts his head to one side, studying it the same way he might a particularly interesting manuscript. When he looks around the room the Whip looks rather like a stork peering into the water in search of a crawfish, only he’s looking for the person who threw the newspaper down like a gauntlet. No one responds, leaving him staring at the paper and fingering the small knife he’s still holding, before he finally places it gingerly at the very edge of the newspaper and scrambles away for his seat at the front of the room, his long legs covering the distance in half the time anyone else would need. Marcia glances around, but whoever had left the newspaper doesn’t acknowledge their triumph. Instead the peers mostly look bored, a few of them talking to each other about the planting season or their plans for Winter’s End. Marcia pours herself a cup of tea from the pot provided and leans back in her hard wooden seat, balancing the saucer on her knee. Her brother Crispus, who speaks for Marcia in Assembly because the Calormenes won’t allow her to speak for herself, looks intrigued.
The clock in the tower above them strikes noon, making the Whip straighten up defiantly, holding the arms of his chair with white-knuckled hands. Marcia takes another sip of her tea, watching more out of amusement than anything else. It’s not like her voice means much in Assembly right now, and Confesor’s demands have her more interested in the situation outside the city and the Bracken lands than she really should be. These days trying to play politics in Narnia is a dangerous game.
Marcia has never thought the Whip is capable of it. Lord Curui of Owlswood is another one of the previous governor’s legacies. Prince Bahadur prefers malleable young Narnian bucks, but the last one of those had died in a duel over some woman and the position had defaulted to his predecessor’s appointee after a quick interchange of letters with Tashbaan. Curui is a thin, white-haired man old enough to be Marcia’s father, if not her grandfather; he walks too fast and he’s constantly peering through round spectacles at piles of yellowing papers. Before the conquest he had been master of a college at The University – Marcia had gone up there and she remembers seeing him stalking across the college grounds, trailed by an adoring crowd of undergraduates – but since then he’s been chained to Cair Paravel. As far as Marcia knows the only time he’s been allowed back to his own lands has been the brief period between Bahadur dismissing him from his position as Whip and the Tisroc returning him to it. Someone in the Assembly had wondered then why he hadn’t fought the appointment. He’s an old, tired man. Marcia suspects he doesn’t have any fight left in him.
He always looks like he’s about to give a lecture when he steps up to the podium with its two great clawed paws grasping the stand. He’s a tall man, and he has to bend a little over it, shuffling his notes with a dry whisper of papers. The Assembly waits with irritation and curiosity and today, some hint of suspense.
“It has been suggested,” says Lord Curui eventually in his scratchy voice, “that a thorough survey of the tunnel system beneath the city be conducted. The Crown has offered a budget of five thousand crescents for this project, to be carried out by skilled surveyors from Tashbaan –”
“I’ll see Cair Paravel burn before I’ll see a damned Callie surveyor beneath my city,” rumbles Lord Vela of Greatford, with a sound like an angry bull. Marcia knows for a fact that he smuggles wine into the city via the tunnels.
Upright Lady Ayelen Plumm whispers to her husband, who stands up and says, “A survey of the tunnels is likely to significantly lessen the amount of crime in the city, especially with the Long Table on the rise.”
Lord Morayta stands up to rebut him, followed by Lord Jocerlin Parry, whose now-dead father had been one of the first to bow and scrape to the Calormenes. Crispus looks at Marcia to see if she has anything she wants to add to the discussion, but she shakes her head; her main thought on the subject is that she’s surprised that Prince Bahadur even thought to put it to a vote. It’s five to one that even if the Assembly votes against the measure Bahadur will see it through anyway.
The discussion is cut short by the arrival of the Lord Provost, late as usual. He drops his sword of office onto the back table with a crash, then spots the newspaper and bellows, “What the blazes is this?” so loudly that Marcia half-fancies she sees the roof tiles shudder.
“Do you have an opinion to offer, Lord Prejun?” says Lord Curui, in the same prim voice he’d used on students who fell asleep in class.
Prejun of Newisle storms onto the floor with the newspaper clenched in his good fist, his face contorted in outrage. “Who brought these lies into Assembly?” he demands, waving the newspaper like a banner. “Who dares?”
Nobody confesses, unsurprisingly. Newisle rips the newspaper in two pieces, then four, then as many as he can manage. The pieces flutter down to the burnished wood floor like the first snows of winter, but the damage is already done. Everyone has read the piece already – Marcia had read it over breakfast this morning, then passed it on to Crispus so that he could know the truth as well. “These are lies,” he says again, as if repetition can make the words true. “I’ll have Rannva Longhallow’s bloody tongue ripped out.”
Rannva Longhallow is the editor of the Cair Paravel Chronicle, who has managed to keep her newspaper by means of bribes, bullheadedness, and blackmail when so many of Cair Paravel’s once numerous newspapers have been shut down by the Calormenes. Marcia hardly thinks that the dwarf is going to let herself be stopped by such a little thing as Lord Prejun of Newisle.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” says Lord Curui, straightening up behind the podium. His wrinkled hands grasp the sides of the stand, with his signet ring on one and his class ring from the university on the other.
“I will not have these lies repeated in my city!” Newisle shouts. “There is no bloody King of Summer and the only throne Tirian of Narnia will ever have again is a grave!”
“Coward!” Eleven-year-old Jacopa Fenn starts up, bristling like a hedgehog. Her guardian and spokesman catches her wrist to draw her down, but she shakes him off. “Lying coward! The kings and queens of summer are in Narnia again, and when they come here, you’ll pay for bedding down with the Callies! You and the rest of the traitors in Cair Paravel!”
“Someone silence that child,” Joserlin Parry snarls out the side of his mouth, standing. “Rannva Longhallow ought to be punished for printing such treason, I agree – why should we not take the Chronicle for our own? The lower city complains enough about never knowing what is spoken in the upper city, let us give them an outlet for it –”
“A public newspaper is prohibited by King Florian’s edict,” Lord Curui says, tilting his chin up. “Nor can the content of a private newspaper be limited by either Crown or Assembly.”
“Bugger King Florian! That was a different time and a different place. If Longhallow or any of her inkstained cronies want to print the kind of shite that starts riots in the lower city, they’ve got another think coming to them.”
“You bloody traitors!” Lord Vela snarls, on his feet. “Deny our laws and deny your own titles, you bastards. We’ve broken enough of the common law already; this one we’ll keep. Anyone who harms a hair on a newsie’s head will deal with me.” He’s not wearing a sword, not in Assembly, but his hand strays to the place where one would be.
“Anyone who wishes to publish their opinion in the paper should at least write under their own name,” says Lord Morayta in his soft voice. He doesn’t rise. “This – Publius – may write what he likes, so long as he does it under his own name.”
“Why?” says Lord Plumm without prompting from his wife. “So fools like you can hunt them down and rip them limb from limb?”
“We will do nothing,” the Whip declares, his voice carrying through the Compass Room. Lord Curui stands tall as the statue of the High King in the Lionscourt. “These are words, and free ones at that. Are we Calormene slaves that we seek to limit them? We are free Narnians yet. We will do nothing.” He locks eyes with Lord Joserlin, who stares back only for an instant before he drops his head and sinks back into his seat.
“You cowards might do nothing, but I am Lord Provost of Cair Paravel, and I say that Longhallow and her precious Chronicle can both burn –” Newisle asserts.
Lord Odilon from The University stands up, exchanging a significant look with Lord Curui. “Any member of the Assembly who acts against the Assembly in an official capacity is subject to investigation and removal from his position. I can name several precedents, beginning with Lord Ildefonso of Heartscrown –”
“Spare us, scholar,” Lord Morayta says hastily.
Newisle stares around the Compass Room like a trapped beast, the remains of the newspaper scattered on the floor around him. Whoever put it on the back table with the pen knives and letter openers was right: it’s as much a weapon as any of the cutlery.
“We shall put the matter to a vote,” announces the Whip, though his expression suggests that there is nothing to vote on. “Those who would uphold the law of Florian the Faithful and those who would break it.”
“Control the papers,” Morayta insists, irritated.
Marcia nods at Crispus, and her little brother stands up for the first time. “Bracken upholds the law,” he says, and sits back down.
“Fenn does as well,” says Lady Jacopa’s uncle hastily, before his niece can speak again. The girl raises her chin, her expression defiant, and nods once.
“Greatford,” snaps Lord Vela.
“The University,” says Lord Odilon. His fellow from Glasswater echoes him, the two universities in agreement for once.
The vote is a closer thing than Marcia had expected. The Whip gets his way despite Newisle’s bellowing, but the line between lions and scorpions is drawn more starkly than it has been in years. There will be trouble in Cair Paravel because of what passed in Assembly this day.
Too late. There’s been trouble in Narnia for five years now. Elizar Confesor is wrong: there’s still some patriotism left among the nobles.
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