![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardSex in this part.
Part One | Part Two
*
The next morning, Caspian nearly trips over the High Queen when he’s going down the stairs to the lower levels of the How.
“Watch it, Caspian,” Peta says wryly, turning her head back to grin at him as he picks himself up for his undignified sprawl on the stairs. He hasn’t quite fallen, but it’s close enough; he hadn’t expected anyone to be sitting on the stairs. “Someone could get hurt.”
There are bags beneath her eyes and her nose is just slightly crooked, but otherwise she appears unhurt, if a little tired. She’s in trousers and an unlaced white shirt, wearing her sword-belt but not her sword, her hair drawn up in a long golden tail at the back of her head.
“I didn’t see you, your majesty,” Caspian apologizes. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Peta says. “New scars, but that’s the worst of it. Thank you, by the way; things could have gone very badly if you hadn’t been there. Ed told you the raid was a success?”
“He did, yes,” Caspian says. “May I?” He gestures at the step beside her, and Peta scoots over to make room.
“Now we just have to figure out where to put all of it,” she says, “and figure out if there’s anything else we can do to hurt Miraz without hurting ourselves at the same time. Any ideas?”
“Not that I can think of, your majesty,” Caspian says, hearing the faint note of apology in his voice, and Peta shrugs.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s all that much this far south and east,” she says. “Why is that?”
“My people hate and fear the sea,” Caspian says. “There are supposed to be wild creatures in the woods, demons and ghosts – and the ancient castle of Narnia, Cair Paravel, is supposed to be home to the damned.”
Peta’s mouth twists a little in amusement. “It isn’t,” she says. “I spent most of my life there, and I can definitively say that if there’s anything damned in that place, it’s a new development. It’s where we arrived, you know. It’s all ruins now, but it used to be…” She hesitates, and finally says, “It used to be magnificent. Beautiful. All white walls and scarlet banners, and we thought it would never fall, or crumble away, or change – not in a thousand years. Well, it’s been a thousand years, and all of that’s happened. I suppose we were wrong, after all, but we were young and Narnia was rich and happy and beautiful, Lion’s mane…”
Caspian reaches for her hand without thinking about it, and Peta curls her fingers around his and turns her head toward him, smiling softly. “I wish you could have seen it,” she says. “I wish everyone here could see it.”
“I wish I could have,” Caspian agrees, and bends his head to kiss her before he can think about it.
Peta’s mouth is slow and lazily beneath his and he feels rather than hears the soft sound she makes in the back of her throat as her tongue presses velvet-smooth against his. Her free hand rises to tangle in the hair at the back of his neck.
“Peta,” Edmund says suddenly from in front of them, and Caspian stiffens in panic as Peta breaks away from him.
Edmund glares at him, and only Peta’s grip on his hand keeps him from rising to his feet and apologizing profusely. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, he shouldn’t have presumed – he shouldn’t have, straight out, because Peta is higher ranked than he is and an unmarried woman –
“See something interesting, little brother?” Peta drawls.
“Not yet,” Edmund says dryly, and Peta laughs, letting go of Caspian’s hand to get up and go over to her brother.
Caspian rests his elbows on his knees and blinks in surprise to see Peta kiss Edmund on the mouth, brief but nowhere near chaste, and Edmund’s slight smirk afterwards.
Peta leans against the wall and crosses her arms over her chest. “What’s the news, Ed?” she asks. “I’m assuming something’s happened, since you’re here. Unless of course you just wanted the pleasure of my company.”
“Always a pleasure, I assure you,” Edmund says, grinning. “Word just came back from our spies; Miraz is gathering his levies, and he’s pissed. Farsight says he’s riding to Beruna himself, fast as his horse can carry him.”
Peta looks thoughtful. “What are the chances –” she begins, and Edmund shakes his head.
“You and I both know they’re going to be on high alert,” he says.
“Of course they are. Is their high alert something we can get through?”
“Not with this lot,” Edmund says, his voice flat. “You and I both know that.”
“Ignore my optimism,” Peta says.
“One of us has to have common sense,” Edmund says lightly, and Peta laughs again.
“Well, it’s certainly not you,” she says, and curls her fingers around his before she looks back over her shoulder. “Coming, Caspian? There’s breakfast.”
He gets himself up, wincing a little at the pull of sore muscles – nights spent in cold, wet forests with the threat of imminent capture or death hanging over his head don’t do much for him, apparently, though he can’t think if they’d actually be good for anyone – and goes to join Peta and Edmund.
-
-
“Does anyone know how long the How’s been here?” Peta asks him, raising the torch above her head. In this tunnel the ceiling is high enough that it’s no trouble, and Caspian wonders about that too, because this is one of the lower levels, and it seems unlikely that any Narnian would be down here; this is one of the many unexplored portions of the How. Peta wants all of them searched and mapped out, because somewhere there might be a passage that’s helpful to them somehow. (“We know there’s at least one passage that leads out into the western woods,” Edmund had snapped when Caspian had asked what Peta meant. “Maybe there’s more. Hell, maybe there’s a sleeping dragon beneath the How; we could use one of those.” “Oh, and who exactly do you expect to talk it into helping us?” Susan had demanded archly, and Edmund had grinned at her. “Lu, of course. She’s much better at talking people into doing what she wants than any of the rest of us are.”)
“Not that I know of,” he says, sweeping his own torch to either side in front of him. Beyond them, the tunnel extends blackly onward; there are no caves that branch off from it down here. “I know that Aslan’s How is mentioned in some of the oldest accounts of the Telmarine migration, and in some of the literature that survives from those that came before Emmeran the Wanderer led his people over the mountains far to the south of here – there were Telmarines living in Narnia for a hundred years before Caspian the Conqueror’s time – but –”
“What do you mean?” Peta interrupts. “Narnian writings, you mean? Some of that still survives?”
“Narnian writings?” Caspian repeats, surprised. “No; I have never heard of such things. I mean those humans that occupied Narnia for some five hundred years before they finally died out, or were conquered, or left. I don’t know much,” he adds, practically stumbling over the words in his hurry to get them out, because Peta’s expression is suddenly furious, a killing glare, and he doesn’t want to have to bear up the ruthless questioning she extends to those who come back from the Narnians’ frequent patrols with no news or bad news – or worse yet, casualties. “No one knows much of those times, and my uncle didn’t think it was appropriate study for me, but my professor made it an especial field of study, so he’d talk about it sometimes –”
“When did the Telmarines come to Narnia?” Peta asks, her voice flat.
“Some four hundred years ago,” Caspian says immediately.
“Then it wasn’t your people who destroyed Cair Paravel.”
“I had never heard of it, no,” Caspian says, watching her warily.
Peta runs her free hand over her face. “I should have known,” she murmurs. “I should have known – Narnia’s too rich a prize; the west wouldn’t leave her untouched for long. I’d still hoped –” She shakes her head. “I should have known. But that’s at least four hundred years, then?”
“At least a thousand,” Caspian corrects. “Or so the oldest of Professor Cornelius’ books says. He always wanted to find it,” he adds wistfully. “But my uncle would never let him; it was too dangerous to wander around the wilds of Narnia looking for something that might not even exist anymore…or so my uncle said, at least. I hope he’s all right.”
“Your uncle?” Peta says, her brows drawing together in disbelief. “Because that mad mouse’s efforts to the contrary aside, I’m afraid he’s probably definitely in one piece. Unfortunately.”
“My professor,” Caspian says, with a sharp pang of worry. “He’s the one who got me out of the castle when my uncle tried to have me killed. I could care less about my uncle, but Professor Cornelius – I hope my uncle didn’t do anything to him.”
Peta is silent for a moment, and then she says, “If he’s smart and keeps his head down and doesn’t give Miraz any reason to think he betrayed him, then I’m sure that he won’t endure anything worse than a few rough days while Miraz tries to figure out if you had help or not.”
“Do you know from experience?” Caspian asks a little curiously as they advance further down the tunnel. Around them, the walls are black and bare; there aren’t even wall-sconces here like there are in the majority of the How. This tunnel, it seems, was never meant to be traversed or lived in – or perhaps it simply hasn’t been for a very, very long time.
Peta laughs. “A little bit. The circumstances weren’t exactly the same, but they were close enough. And not in Narnia, either; it was in a country called Lasci, to the northwest of Narnia. I was playing diplomat, and the king had grand plans that involved forced marriage. His younger sister found out and warned me. Jorunn was furious, but Nerissa knew how to keep her mouth shut, and he never found out that her new handmaid was actually the High Queen of Narnia. He was a little startled when I showed up at the negotiating table three days later, right on schedule.”
“I can imagine,” Caspian says, amused.
Peta smiles a little in memory and stops to press her fingers to the wall next to her. “This is dirt,” she says, raising her hand to the light and letting the thick brown earth fall to the floor as she rubs her fingers together. “The rest of the How is stone. How far down do you think we’ve gone?”
Caspian glances around and shudders a little; the walls seem to be closing in. Professor Cornelius had always said that the stories about there being a second world beneath Narnia’s surface were ridiculous, but the stories have persisted for generations. Brought over from Telmar, maybe. “Far enough,” he says. “Maybe we should turn around.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peta mutters absently. “It’s just earth. We know exactly what’s above us.”
“It’s not what’s above us I’m worried about,” Caspian says uneasily.
Peta glances at him. “Do you know something I don’t?” she asks, and he shakes his head.
“Just stories.”
She gives him another thin smile. “We’ll keep going,” she says. “It can’t go on forever.”
“As you say, your majesty,” Caspian says, but he can’t help but touch the hilt of his sword for reassurance.
Peta sees the movement and smiles ruefully. “I don’t like being underground either,” she says. “There was a cave-in about fifteen years ago – well, more than that, but you know what I mean. I had my army below ground, and I lost over five hundred people in a matter of days. We were trapped beneath the mountain for almost three days, and there were things down there, creatures left over from the White Witch’s reign – goblins. Man-eaters. They tracked us through the tunnels, picking us off whenever we stopped to rest. It was –” She shudders.
“It sounds horrible,” Caspian says, shuddering himself at the thought. Three days – being tracked, being hunted, and as prey – he can’t imagine what it must have been like. He would have gone mad, he thinks.
“Yes,” Peta says simply. “But I got over it. I had to; I can’t jump at shadows every time the wind blows or someone shuts the windows. It was worse than this,” she adds, waving her torch around. “You could hear them, coming out of the walls – goblins move through earth like it’s air, or maybe water; solid stone doesn’t even slow them down. It just makes sure that you don’t have anything to put your back against.”
Caspian glances around uneasily. “There aren’t any here, are there?” he asks.
“No,” Peta says. “We killed them all off – Edmund did; he burnt out the tunnels to nothing more than ash and bare stone. Nothing survived it. We couldn’t pull all our dead out, so we lit the mountain on fire and gave them a funeral pyre like nothing Narnia had ever seen before. It’s one of the few times we burned our own dead, usually that’s…not done.”
“Why not?” Caspian asks, curious. “Telmarines inter their dead.”
“It’s a disgrace,” Peta says simply. “Usually. Burning leaves nothing but ash behind; it doesn’t enrich the earth, and it separates the soul from the body. Narnians won’t bury their dead either, not if they can help it. They’ll lay them out on the earth, open to the sky, and let time do what it can; that will return them to the earth, to Narnia, and the next season the grass will grow greener and thicker there, the flowers stronger and brighter, the trees taller. But at Angrisla we couldn’t do that; the bodies had been too badly mutilated, and there were too many of them; the caves were too damn dangerous to go back into, not with most of the horde still in there. Ed and Su barely got me out; they were too late for the rest of my people. Burning was the only option.” She closes her left fist, thumb stroking up the length of her smallest finger as she opens it again, looking down with surprise, like there’s something there she hadn’t expected.
Caspian reaches out for her with his free hand, stopping with his fingers hovering over her shoulder, and Peta glances up and grins ruefully.
“It’s all right,” she says. “It was a long time ago, and I’m long over it. I was just thinking about it, being down here.” She touches the wall again, crumbles the dirt between her fingers, and then turns back towards Caspian, tangling her dirty fingers with his as she pulls him against her. “Careful of the torches,” she warns as he bends his head to kiss her.
It’s a slow, lazy kiss like the one they’d shared this past morning, and Peta makes a soft sound in the back of her throat as she hooks one foot around the back of his ankle and pulls him closer, so Caspian can feel the warmth of her body against his, the softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. He’s aware of the heat of her as he nudges her legs apart, insinuating a knee between her thighs, and feels her smile against his mouth.
“Now that’s nice,” she says, pulling away for a moment. She rubs herself against him like none of Caspian’s women have ever done before; no Telmarine would do such a thing, like a bitch in heat eager to be mounted.
The thought makes him blush, and Peta grins at him knowingly before tilting her head up to capture his mouth with hers again. She twists her hips against his, and his hard cock nudges at her thigh.
“Torch,” Peta says roughly. “Wait –”
Caspian pulls away immediately, separating himself from her and standing far back, holding the torch before him the same way he might a sword or shield. He can feel his flush spread across his face. “I –”
Peta reaches up to brush a strand of hair from her face. “That’s not,” she says, “what I meant. I just thought that we weren’t going to get very far if we couldn’t even touch each other. Come back here,” she beckons, and Caspian shakes his head.
“I would not want to dishonor you,” he says, and she glares at him fiercely.
“You’re hardly going to dishonor me, Caspian,” she says. “No offense, but you wouldn’t be the first man – or woman – I’ve had, and chances are good you won’t be the last. And no one in Narnia has ever dared question my honor.”
“In your Narnia, perhaps,” Caspian says, although for a moment his mind catches on woman and circles it warily, torn between sharp jealousy and incredible arousal. “Here, I fear things would be different. Either you would be challenged, or I would be.”
“If you think I’d let someone,” Peta begins, then shakes her head. “Never mind. Come back here,” she says again, and when he hesitates, she says, “I promise I won’t give you any reason to ‘dishonor’ me, and I can show you how incredibly stupid that assumption is later. Come here.”
Caspian goes, and Peta cups a hand around the back of his neck and pulls his head down to hers, and little gods, there’s so much passion, so much want and so much desire, in that kiss that by the time Peta breaks away, panting, his head is spinning.
“There,” she says, her voice heavy, and pats his cheek with her free hand. “On account. Come on; I can’t see how much farther this tunnel can go; we’re already more than a mile from the How.”
“Are we?” Caspian asks, dazed, and then shakes his head and gets some of his thoughts back together and says, “Ah, yes, of course,” and looks around blankly.
Peta laughs and raises her torch, starting forward without waiting for him, and Caspian follows belatedly.
They go on in silence until they finally come to a dead end; the tunnel ends abruptly in a wall of rough-packed black dirt.
“Well,” Peta says, staring at it. “That was anticlimactic. I was really expecting an exit, at the very least, or maybe a cache of something. Weapons, maybe.” She reaches out to touch the wall, digging her fingers into the dirt, and says, “I wonder how far from the surface we are? Maybe it won’t be too hard to break through. We don’t have very many moles with us, but we do have a few, and almost anyone can swing a shovel or a pickaxe. I wonder if we’re anywhere convenient.”
Caspian, sweeping his torch from side to side to get a complete view of the wall, sees something white catch the light a few feet away. He reaches for it, gets his fingers around it, pulls it out of the wall – and drops it.
“What?” Peta says, at his shoulder immediately. She kneels down, holding her torch closely in one hand, and then curses. “That’s a fucking dryad bone,” she says. “But we’re so far below ground –”
She stands up abruptly and hands her torch to Caspian before turning to the wall again. She claws at it without care for her hands, soft dirt falling to the floor before her, and unearths bone after bone.
“Aslan’s mane,” she spits viciously. “How – why – I don’t understand. Narnians don’t bury their dead, so why –”
She strikes another bone from the wall, this one unfamiliar and oddly-shaped, and around them, the earth rumbles. Peta freezes. “Caspian –” she whispers, her eyes wide and her face pale, and then the world comes tumbling down around them.
Caspian drops both torches and throws himself at her, knocking her down and covering her with his body. Peta curls beneath him, clutching at his shirt, and Caspian bends his head over hers, breathing hard and feeling her breath mist his throat.
He doesn’t know how long it lasts; he hates earthquakes, and Narnia has them far too often for his comfort. He should probably be used to them after twenty years, but – but this one is worse, because this time he was underground, not aboveground, where the worst that could happen involved the castle collapsing, and the castle had withstood three hundred years of frequent earthquakes; it was unlikely that one more would be the last grain in the barrel. This – here – beneath Narnia –
“Caspian,” Peta whispers. “Caspian, get off me. Caspian. Cave-in’s over.” She doesn’t sound entirely certain though, and Caspian swallows hard before he rolls sideways. He touches clear ground, and struggles to his feet, blinking into uncompromising darkness. Their torches have gone out.
“Peta?” he asks, hearing the roughness in his voice, and Peta says shakily, “Here. I’m here.” Her fingers catch his sleeve and he turns toward her, reaching out to touch her face.
“Oh, gods,” she whispers, running her fingers down from his sleeve to wrap around his hand, hard and crushing. “Slight possibility I lied when I said I was over my claustrophobia.”
Caspian reaches out and wraps his arms around her, feeling Peta shudder against him as she puts her face into his shoulder, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. He rests his chin on top of her skull, feeling her fine hair brush his face, and offers after a moment, “The tunnel’s – probably not blocked. It could just be that the torches have gone out.”
“Right,” Peta says, voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “You’re right. We should find them.” She lets go of him, fingers lingering on his before she lets go, and then the blackness around them is all-encompassing again; Caspian draws in a sharp breath, almost expecting to smother as all that blackness rushes down his throat to fill his lungs.
“Help me look for them,” Peta orders, and Caspian kneels down on the rough dirt, groping around blindly and knocking his head into Peta’s shoulder once, his hand curving briefly over her calf as they feel around on hands and knees.
“I’ve got one,” she says after a moment. “Do you have a light?”
“Yes.” There’s a tinderbox in the pouch on his belt, a gift from Professor Cornelius when he’d fled the castle of Telmar, and he fumbles it out and strikes a spark. For a moment he sees Peta’s face before him – pale, scared, smeared with dirt – and then the spark goes out. He strikes a second one, and this time the torch catches light, flickering uncertainly before the flame strengthens and Caspian lowers the tinderbox.
Peta lets out a great sigh of relief. “Thank Aslan,” she says fervently, and scrambles up to her feet.
Caspian straightens as well, looking around. The tunnel looks to be mostly undamaged, and he sends up a silent prayer of thanks to the little gods for that. Peta sweeps the torch around and he sees the second one, lying near the pile of white bones. He goes over to pick it up, his fingers knocking the bones as he does so, and the earth rumbles again over their heads, ominous. Peta’s eyes go wide in stark terror.
“I don’t understand,” she mutters. “Why – those shouldn’t be here.” She lowers her torch to light the one Caspian’s holding, and then her free hand falls to her sword-hilt.
“I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” Caspian says reassuringly, and Peta arches her eyebrows for a moment, her expression faintly sardonic.
“There damn well better be,” she says. “That goes against everything I’ve ever known about Narnia. Come on,” she adds, her voice strengthening. “Su’s got to be worried sick. I hope the rest of the How is all right.”
“There have been worse earthquakes in Narnia,” Caspian says, still trying to be reassuring as they start down the tunnel.
“And by that do you mean recently or sometime in recent history?” Peta asks. Their booted feet scuff the loose dirt beneath them; some of the ceiling has fallen, but not enough to hinder their path.
Caspian shrugs. “There are always earthquakes,” he says. “A few every year, of varying severity. The last bad one started a fire that destroyed almost all of the town beneath the castle, some sixty years ago, during my father’s father’s reign.”
Peta is silent for a moment, and then she says, “There was only one earthquake in the entire fifteen years we reigned,” she says. “And that one wasn’t really an earthquake. The cave-in at Angrisla, I mean. I told you about that.”
“There have been earthquakes in Narnia as far back as our records stretch,” Caspian says.
“Damnation,” Peta mutters. “I’m just going to take that as a bad sign. And what, is this a wet summer?”
“Wetter than any I’ve ever seen,” Caspian says, surprised. “Is it not by your Narnia’s standards?”
“Dry as the Great Southern Desert,” Peta assures him. “It’s a bloody drought by our standards.” She glances around, away from him, her gaze flickering quickly over the walls.
“What are you looking for?” Caspian asks quietly.
She gives him a thin, nervous smile. “My blatant paranoia,” she says. “Getting trapped belowground tends to make me nervous, and hell, for all I know, there might still be goblins here. Although I’m sincerely hoping not, because any more shocks that remind me of Angrisla and I might just snap.”
“Do you really think –” he begins, and she shakes her head.
“No, I don’t. It’s been too long, and that was the one and only time we ever had them in Narnia. It’s just my paranoia talking.”
They keep talking as they walk down the tunnel, their words and voices echoing faintly, but it’s better than silence and the ragged, scared sound of Peta’s breaths every time they stop for more than a few minutes. By the time they’ve nearly reached the point where the tunnel split off from the main body of the How, Caspian’s voice is hoarse and his feet tired; he can’t think how many miles they’ve walked since this morning. The torches are beginning to burn low as the floor begins to slope up, and then the tunnel ends in a solid wall of fallen earth and tumbled stone.
“No,” Peta says, her voice desperate. “No, Aslan, no.” She slams her fist into the wall. “NO!”
“Peta!” Caspian exclaims sharply, reaching for her wrist, but she pulls away from him and hits the wall again and again, the torch falling from her hand to gutter out on the floor.
“No,” she says again, “No, no, no…please, gods, no.” She crumbles to the floor by the wall, head down by her knees and her hands curved over the back of her skull, and Caspian kneels down beside her and puts his arms awkwardly around her, planting the torch between two fallen rocks. After a moment, Peta uncurls and lets him hold her, shaking badly. She seems very young, for the first time in the scant days he’s known her.
“It’s all right,” Caspian says. “King Edmund and Queen Susan know where we are. They’ll get us out.”
Peta is silent.
-
-
“Why?” Peta says abruptly out of the darkness, some hours later. Both torches have burned down to nothing, and Caspian’s long since given up trying to shift the weight of the earth and stone blocking the entrance to the tunnel with his bare hands; they’re sitting together now, Peta a warm, steady weight against his shoulder.
“Why what?” Caspian asks, glad for the sound of her voice, for the sound of his. The darkness seems to close in on them, threatens to devour them, every time they’re silent, and it’s all encompassing, terrifying, like they’re in danger of disappearing into thin air and leaving no trace behind.
“Why would you run?” Peta asks. “Why not stay and fight? You’re the crown prince; surely there are Telmarine loyalists within your castle, within Narnia. You have the right to hold the throne in your own name.”
“My uncle tried to kill me,” Caspian points out.
She shrugs. “Use it against him,” she says. “Or you could have, I mean. You could still do so, probably. I’ll put Susan on that,” she adds, thoughtful, and then shakes her head. “Once it became public knowledge that that Miraz had tried to have you killed – and from what you’ve said, it wasn’t exactly the most subtle royal assassination in history; I should know, I’ve carried out a few myself and they never once came back to Narnia – then surely the people of Telmar would have risen up against him.”
“He has the army,” Caspian points out matter-of-factly. “What can commonfolk do against that?”
Peta laughs, soft and bemused. “You might be surprised,” she says. “But does he really have all the army? General Glozelle seemed fond enough of you that he killed his own men rather than turn you over, and he let you go.”
“He let us go,” Caspian feels compelled to point out. “And he headed up the assassins that came to slaughter me in my bed.”
“But they didn’t,” Peta points out. “Surely there are those on council that don’t agree with Miraz seizing power the way he has been, especially if he’s just the regent and you’re of age.”
“I’m not of age,” Caspian says.
“What?” Peta says, sounding startled. “You must be – how old are you?”
Caspian blinks in surprise. “I’m twenty-one,” he says. “But members of the royal family don’t come of age until they’re twenty-five; I can’t hold the throne in my own name until then.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Peta says flatly. “Where did that come from?”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure. It’s always been that way.”
“It’s still ridiculous,” she declares. “I was fifteen when I was crowned, and no one told me that I couldn’t hold the throne in my own name, not even the Telmarines – and believe me, Narnia and Telmar used to go at each other all the time; King Marroquin was always trying to come over our border. People used to tell me I was too young, and that I was a woman, but never that I had no right to the throne. Well – not because of my age, at least. A few other reasons, though.”
Caspian doesn’t say anything. Maybe it is ridiculous, but he’s never known anything else; Telmarine Narnia has always been this way.
After a moment, Peta says, “What exactly was your plan when you came out here?”
“I’m – not exactly sure,” Caspian admits. “I’m not entirely sure I had a plan.”
“Mmm,” Peta says, a little grimly. “So it wasn’t to win the Narnians here over to your side in order to start a war and take back your throne, then?”
“The Narnians have only been myths as long as I’ve been alive,” Caspian says. “My professor used to tell me stories, but those are only stories. I never thought – I thought they’d all been killed off generations ago.”
“So when you blew Su’s horn –”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
Peta laughs. “Now that’s funny,” she says. “I suppose you weren’t expecting us to show up, then.”
“Not until Trufflehunter and Nikabrik began dragging me all over the western wood to meet creatures I’d never even heard of,” Caspian says. “After that, well – at least you were supposed to be human, by every legend I’d ever heard, Narnian or Telmarine.”
“Yes,” Peta says. “There is that, at least.” She sounds amused rather than offended, and puts her head back down on Caspian’s shoulder, reaching out with one hand to wrap her fingers around his. “Did I say thank you for what you did the night we attacked the Telmarine camp?”
“I think it was implied,” Caspian says.
“Thank you, then,” Peta says, and then lets go of his hand. Caspian doesn’t understand why until she curls her fingers in his hair and turns his face towards hers.
She kisses him for a long time, shifting until she’s straddling his lap, and Caspian hears himself make an inordinate sound of want as he drags his hands up Peta’s back, feeling the knobs of her spine beneath the fabric of her shirt. “Yes,” she whispers against his mouth. “Like that, do that –” and then lets go of him to pull her shirt off over her head, unbuckling her sword-belt and tossing it aside before settling back against him to kiss him again.
Caspian splays his hands out across her back, her skin warm and smooth beneath his palms, and Peta twists in his lap, making him gasp. “I always did think darkness was overrated,” she murmurs, reaching for the laces on his shirt. “I’d love to see your face right now.”
“May I –” Caspian begins, not even sure what he’s asking, and Peta says, “Yes, god, yes,” and drags his shirt up over his head.
He cups her breasts in his hands, pinioned by soft, unfamiliar fabric, and Peta says, “There’s a catch at the back –” her breath hitching as he rubs his thumb over her left nipple.
He finds the catch and unhooks it after a moment’s fumbling, tossing the bit of fabric aside, and kisses his way from Peta’s mouth down her neck to the slope of her breasts, sucking a nipple into his mouth.
“Caspian,” she says, sharp and desperate, with a keening note in her voice. Her breath hitches. “God –” She cups the back of his skull in one hand, and Caspian moves his mouth to her other breast, curling his fingers in the back of her breeches.
Peta, her hands wrapped in his hair, pulls his head up so she can kiss him again. Caspian gets one hand around her braid, hissing a little as their teeth knock together messily.
“Is this a bad time?” King Edmund asks suddenly as a chunk of the wall vanishes behind them, replaced by the sudden gleam of torchlight. “Because we can come back.”
Caspian hears the panicked sound he makes in the back of his hand as Peta grabs for her shirt and pulls it on, her voice muffled through the fabric as she says, “No, now is good. Now is excellent.”
“Really?” Edmund says blandly. “Because really, we can come back.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Peta snaps, bundling up her sword-belt around the scabbard as Caspian finds his shirt and pulls it on, hoping it’s still sufficiently dark enough to hide his blush.
Edmund steps back to give them room to climb out, grinning unashamedly at his sister as Peta hits him upside the head. “What took you so long?” she gripes. “Really, I think you could have come sooner.”
“Yeah, I was working on that,” Edmund says, then pulls Peta into a tight hug with his good arm. “Sorry,” he whispers into her hair as Caspian stands awkwardly still, trying to ignore the knowing looks of the moles and dwarves standing around. “Came as fast as I could. Though,” he adds as she pulls away, “it did look like you might have been happy to wait a little longer –”
“Oh, shut up,” Peta says, and turns to the watching Narnians. “Thank you,” she says, and her smile is blinding. “As for you,” she adds, turning to Caspian and catching the front of his shirt in her fist. “You can come with me.”
He can’t hide his grin.
-
-
They keep their hands off each other – more or less – until they’re back in the hallway of their living quarters, where Peta backs him up against the door of her room and kisses him, sword banging against the door as Caspian wraps an arm around her waist. She fumbles for the knob on the door, and Caspian stumbles backwards as it opens behind him, Peta kicking the door shut and tossing her sword aside, pushing him back down onto her bedroll as she straddles him. He pulls his shirt off, she tosses hers aside, and then she leans down to kiss him again, hands nimble on the laces of his breeches as he palms the expanse of her back.
“Let me –” he says, and feels Peta’s grin against his mouth before she scrambles off him, kicking her boots off and squirming out of her breeches. Caspian nearly falls over himself trying to get the rest of his own clothes off.
“Graceful,” she laughs, and he looks up to see her standing still, smiling at him as she pulls her hair free of her braid and lets it settle around her shoulders, loose and golden. “Come here,” she invites, and Caspian goes, tangling a hand in her hair as he kisses her, letting her walk him backwards and back down onto the bedroll. She settles on top of him, rolling her hips against his, and he lets his hands follow the line of her spine down to her waist.
“Little gods, you’re beautiful,” he murmurs, kissing her neck, and Peta laughs again.
“Yeah,” she says, “I guess. Come on –” and before he has a chance to reply, she’s flipped them, Caspian settling between her thighs as she curls one leg around his waist.
He feels his breath stop in his throat, cups her breast briefly in his hand as he drops a kiss on her creamy skin. Little gods, he can’t take his eyes off her, and says as much, earning a slap to the back of his head and one of Peta’s bemused laughs as she says, “Come on, then, what are you waiting for? Do you know how long it’s been since –”
“Did you have somewhere you needed to be?” Caspian asks, the words humming against her skin before he takes a nipple into his mouth again.
Peta arches against him, hissing a little as she says, “I’m sure I can make other arrangements,” her voice breathless as she scrapes her blunt nails up his back.
“I think not,” Caspian says firmly after giving her nipple one last lick, his cock twitching against her thigh. He’s so hard it hurts.
She laughs again, throaty and pleased, and settles one hand on his head, fingers curling in his hair. “Then you’d better show me why,” she orders before he kisses her again.
He braces his hands on her hips, hears her little gasp and his own groan as he pushes into her. “Caspian,” she says. “Caspian.”
She’s tight around him, and so gods-damned hot that he could be on fire and still feel cool. Caspian puts his face down against her shoulder, kisses her neck as Peta wraps both her long legs around his waist and says, voice breathy and shaken, “Deeper, Caspian, fuck –” rocking her hips up against his and digging her heels into his buttocks as he starts to move. She moves against him, with him, gasping as her hands press bruises into his skin and he muffles his shout on her neck, his mouth open against her soft skin, salty with sweat.
He comes with the taste of her skin on his tongue, and Peta scrapes her nails down his back, letting him ride it out with a soft hum in the back of her throat that he can feel, faintly, but when he’d gladly put his head down on her magnificent breasts and go to sleep, she tugs sharply on his hair and demands, “Do you think you’re done, Caspian?” still throaty and amused, a hint of affection that he hadn’t at all expected.
“What?” he hears himself say, the words blurry and smeared. He can’t quite seem to focus on anything.
“I’m not done,” she says pointedly as he rolls off her, dropping another kiss on her neck, “which means you’re not done.” She shoves at his shoulder with one hand, then runs her palm down his arm to tangle her fingers with his, guiding him down the slope of her belly to press between her legs. “Here,” she says, “like this.”
She’s shockingly slick against him, wet as waterweed, and so hot. “Like this,” she says again, but he’s been here before with other women, and he slides his thumb against her clit, hearing her broken little gasp like honey in his ear. “Please –” she says, and then something else he doesn’t understand, some other language, and then his name.
Caspian kisses her, their teeth knocking together as they kiss messy and fast, and Peta comes bucking against his hand, cursing into his mouth as her fingers tighten in his hair. “Lion’s mane,” she murmurs blearily, hand falling to the back of his neck. This time her kiss is slow, lazy, a little languorous, and Caspian rolls onto his side and runs his hand up against her back, smooth and sweat-slick.
“Stay,” Peta murmurs sleepily, dragging the blankets out from under them, and Caspian wraps an arm around her waist and rests his chin on top her shoulder as she curls against him, tangling briefly before they settle against each other.
-
-
He wakes up hours later to the warm weight of Peta against him, one leg thrown over his hip and her cheek on his chest, her hand flat against his side. There’s a dim gleam of light that illuminates the fall of her hair; Caspian can’t figure out where it’s coming from until he sees the dark-lantern in the corner of the room. Peta had been utterly honest when she’d said she was afraid of the dark, he realizes abruptly, and there are no arrow-slits in this part of the How that would otherwise provide light.
He reaches out to touch her hair. It’s damp and lank against his fingers, and he runs his hand down the curve of her shoulder, wondering at the feel of her skin. Little gods, but she’s gorgeous.
“Time’s it?” Peta murmurs sleepily, stirring.
“Early yet,” Caspian replies as she squirms up to kiss him, breasts soft against his chest. It’s a warm, lazy kind of kiss and he opens his mouth to it, letting Peta roll him onto his back and splay herself out on top of him, running her hand down his chest to his cock.
He’s half-hard already and he arches a little against her slim hand, hissing into her mouth as her grip tightens and she finds a rhythm she likes, kissing him in counterpoint to the flick of her wrist. “That just means we have time,” she whispers.
“Peta –” Caspian gasps, and she covers her mouth with his hand.
“Shh,” she murmurs. “We wouldn’t want to wake anyone up.”
“Of course not,” he says faintly, and then hears the sound she makes as she takes her hand off him like it’s someone else, pleading and incoherent and broken.
Peta cups his face between her palms and kisses him, then raises herself up and straddles his lap, her face twisted a little in concentration as she lowers herself down onto him, and Caspian gasps again, grasping her hips with his hands as she makes minute adjustments with her hips and Caspian tries not to die. Evidently satisfied with whatever it is she’s done, she raises herself up, then sinks down, and Caspian hears the sound he makes. Gods, but she’s hot and tight around him, and beautiful, the flicker of light from the dark-lantern silvering her skin as he rocks up into her and she moves with him, riding him.
“Beautiful,” he says, or thinks he does, because he’s not thinking anything except Peta and little gods and please, please, please.
He feels her come, clenching tight around him as she lets her head loll back, gasping harshly, and he follows a moment later, her name the only thing he can think of as she digs her fingers into his biceps and kisses him again, sharp and desperate.
“Peta,” he hears himself say, and she doesn’t say anything at all, just keeps kissing him.
-
-
The good news is that the damage from the earthquake hadn’t been extensive. The bad news is that there was damage from the earthquake at all.
“Say that again,” Peta orders, massaging a hand over her face, and Caspian leans forward with his elbows on his knees, watching her in silence.
“There’s structural damage to the east wall,” Lucy says, and her voice is deadly serious, in odd contrast to her heart-shaped face and sweet expression. It seems bizarre that anyone so young – any girl so young – should know so much or be so well-regarded, but Peta gives her the same solemn consideration that she shares with her brother and other sister, and the Narnians seem to take it in the same vaguely shocked stride with which they take Peta herself.
“It’s still standing,” Lucy continues, “but one more quake – or anything Miraz’s siege machines might throw at it – is going to send it tumbling down.”
“Aslan’s How has never fallen –” Galan the faun begins.
“Never,” Edmund snaps, “is just another word for ‘not yet.’”
“Can we fix it?” Peta asks, ignoring them both, and Lucy taps her fingers against her chin.
“Well –”
“We do rather need to have the How in one piece,” Susan points out dryly, leaning her shoulder into her sister’s. “Otherwise this will be a very short siege.”
“One would note that I’m still hoping not to get into a siege in the first place,” Peta says, but she doesn’t sound entirely convinced on the probability of that.
“One would note that being properly prepared for all possibilities is the second rule of battle,” Susan says.
Peta nods. “Fix it,” she orders. “You can do that, can’t you?”
The dwarves, led not by Trumpkin or Nikabrik, but by a dwarf that Caspian knows only vaguely called Godilas, look around at each other. Godilas finally nods. “We can do that,” he says.
“Good,” Peta says. “Fix it. Or make it better; we all know that if Miraz makes it to the Red Plain, he’s going to be throwing everything he has at us, and that includes fireballs and very, very large stones. Any one of those could be the one that sends the How crashing down, and I would rather us not get trapped inside when something goes wrong. And something will go wrong.”
“Surely your majesty –” Shadehoern begins.
“The first rule of battle is that something will always go wrong,” Peta says, and there’s a sharp edge to her smile. “Food stores untouched? Weapons caches safe? Minimal injuries?”
“All of the above,” Edmund says. “The worst injuries were a couple of broken bones, and you and Prince Caspian weren’t the only ones to get trapped, but no one’s dead and everyone will be able to fight again, so long as they’ve got the time to heal up.”
“I could –” Lucy says, looking at Peta, and she shakes her head.
“Leave it,” she orders. “Broken bones will heal, and if we find out we don’t have the time, you can fix them then.”
Lucy nods, her mouth thin and tight with reluctance, and Peta gives her a faint smile, without its earlier edge.
“Any other structural damage?”
“Nothing major. The earthquake did open a couple of caves and tunnels we hadn’t known about beforehand, though.” Edmund looks at her with his gaze sharp and direct, then his eyes fall to the red marks on her neck and flicker to Caspian.
Caspian looks away, feeling his blush heat his cheeks, but Peta doesn’t appear to notice.
“I still want it all mapped,” Peta says. “I want to know every single inch of the How. I want to know every cave, every tunnel, every bolt-hole. That knowledge may save every one of our lives some day, and we have to have it.”
“Of course, your majesty,” Glenstorm declares. “Consider it done.”
“I won’t consider it done until it’s done,” Peta says. “Repairs to the How take precedence over everything else, but I want everyone here in arms practice every day. You all aren’t warriors or professional soldiers, but we’re in a war and you’re going to be fighting it. Every single one of you is going to have to know how.”
“Arms practice?” Nikabrik demands, his face twisting in sharp distaste. “We aren’t raw recruits, Queen Peta. We know our ways around weapons.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Peta says dryly. “Weapons aren’t the problem, although those could certainly use improvement; I wouldn’t have dared put you in the battlefield if this was my time, considering the fact you’d all be slaughtered by the first army that came at you. Hell, by the first group of rebels that came calling, human or otherwise. It’s your discipline that’s lacking, as I think our friend Reepicheep showed. I want that taken care of, and it’s going to end. I don’t care how tired all of you are, we’re drilling every day. That’s weapons practice and drills, so I won’t go into battle thinking I’m going to get three-quarters of my army killed. Your hit and run tactics aren’t going to work in an open battle, and that’s what Miraz wants to force us into. Oh, I’m going to try not to let it come to that, but we have to be prepared for that eventuality. Understand?”
Nikabrik glares at her, but doesn’t say anything. Glenstorm and Asterius exchange looks, then Glenstorm stamps one foot and says, “We will do what you order, your majesty.”
“Good,” Peta says brightly. “I want a roster of everyone in the How by dusk tonight. See that it happens.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Caspian sees Lucy lean over to say something to Edmund, who’s sitting beside her on the edge of the Stone Table, and Edmund grins a little. Peta sees the exchange and rolls her eyes, then her gaze flickers to Caspian and softens.
“Anything else?” she asks. “Lu, you said you’d see about getting a report on what damage the quake did Miraz, didn’t you?”
“The news will be in your hands as soon as I have it,” Lucy assures her, and Peta nods.
“Good. You’re dismissed. Get it done.”
The Narnian leaders disperse with some grumbling, and once the last of them has gone, Edmund flops back on the Stone Table and puts an arm over his eyes. “Lion, what I wouldn’t give for Oreius or Tumnus right now,” he groans. “Someone who’ll get things done without having to be talked into it. Did common sense die out at some point over the centuries?”
“Kindly stop grumbling and get something done for me,” Peta says, grinning a little. It has a fixed quality to it, and all Caspian can think about is kissing the lines away from the corners of her eyes; she’s too young to look so worried.
Edmund sits up and snaps a lazy kind of salute. “Well, if the other alternative is just lying here –”
“Go supervise,” Peta says. “Lu –”
“I know,” she says, hopping down off the edge of the table. She doesn’t stumble when she drops the foot or so to the dirt floor and turns to grin mischievously at her sister. “Spies, intelligence, same old. Someone has to get it done.”
“Good girl.”
Lucy grins at her and skips off, humming under her breath. Caspian doesn’t recognize the tune. Edmund follows.
“I’d better get going,” Susan says, slipping off the edge of the Stone Table. “It’s still early, and I want as much as daylight as I can get.” She moves to kiss Peta on the cheek, and Peta turns her head to kiss her sister on the mouth.
Caspian stares as one of Susan’s hands comes up to thread through Peta’s hair, then she pulls away, smiling a little sadly. “I’ll take that as ‘good luck’,” she says, and reaches past Peta to pick up her bow.
“Take it as ‘don’t get caught and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’,” Peta says.
Susan laughs. “Well, then,” she says. “That doesn’t narrow down the options much, does it? I’ll see you.”
“And good luck,” Peta says as she leaves. As soon as Susan’s gone, her smile fades away and she draws one leg up to her chest, wrapping her arms around it and resting her chin on her knee.
Caspian straightens, sees her eyes flicker over towards him.
“Come here,” Peta says, beckoning to him with her free hand.
He steps over towards her, and as soon as he’s close enough Peta catches the front of his shirt in his fist and pulls him in, her mouth hard against his. Caspian puts his hands on her shoulders to brace himself, feeling the muscle there beneath the leather of her surcoat and the fabric beneath. It’s unfeminine; he’s surprised to find that he likes it in her.
Peta pulls away at last, letting go of him, and her lips quirk in a slight smile as Caspian lets his hands fall to his sides. “I’ve been wanting to do that all morning,” she says.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Caspian tells her breathlessly, and she laughs. “May I?”
She pats the stone beside her and he sits down, shifting to accommodate his sword.
“They’re not ready,” she says softly. “They think they are, but they have no idea what they’ll be up against if Miraz brings the whole of his army to bear. You’ve told me how many people he can call up in his levies, and after what we did he’s likely to bring up every damn one of them.”
“Perhaps not,” Caspian ventures. “There’s no reason he won’t think that the raid on the camp consisted of the entirety of our army, and we didn’t have very many people. It was just a small fraction of our people, after all.”
Peta smiles. “‘Our’?” she repeats. “Have you thrown in your lot with us, then?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Caspian points out.
“You assume that means something other than just the chance to regain your throne,” Peta says. “Or the right to your throne, rather. No,” she adds as he stiffens indignantly, “don’t look so hurt; I was there, I heard what General Glozelle said to you. And you could have given me up for dead and left Narnia; I think you do care.”
“These Narnians,” Caspian says, and feels absurdly guilty admitting it. “They aren’t my people.”
“No,” Peta agrees. “But they are mine. And you are here.”
“Yes,” he says.
She reaches out with one hand and tips up his chin with two fingers, looking at him with her expression a little sad, a little bemused, and something searching in her eyes. “You’re not ready either,” she says. “But I don’t think I was the first time I picked up a sword, and I know I wasn’t the first time I had a crown on my head, and I don’t think anybody’s ever ready to fight their first battle.”
“How do you know –”
Peta laughs softly. “Caspian,” she says, “I’ve sat my throne for fifteen years, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot of soldiers and noblemen, most of whom have never spilled real blood in their lives. And I know you have – I’ve seen you do so – but you’re not a soldier, not yet. You could get there, though. But for now,” she says, and lets her hand drop, “now I’m going to try and beat you to death with a quarterstaff, and you can return the favor, and later I’ll try and extend the skill to someone of the Narnians here who could dearly use it.”
“Oh,” Caspian says, absurdly disappointed, and leans in to kiss her again.
Peta pushes him away, a slight smile on her face. “Now’s not really the best time,” she says. “But I promise I’ll make it up to you, if you’re very good.” She slides off the Stone Table, feet silent on the bare stone of the dais, and Caspian follows her.
“Where has Queen Susan gone?” he asks.
Peta turns toward him, both hands raised as she bundles her hair back behind her head. “Susan’s gone into Telmarine Narnia,” she says. “I want to know exactly what Miraz is doing, and it’s the sort of thing only a human on the ground can really find out, since your Telmarines aren’t exactly the type to talk to a milk cow or a faun, and I haven’t seen any of the human-form Narnians since arriving here. She has a surprising knack for that sort of thing; I don’t think you’d expect it.”
“That’s dangerous,” Caspian says, alarmed. “If my uncle finds her –”
“Su can take care of herself,” Peta says. “And it has to be her; Edmund and I have been seen, you’re probably fairly recognizable –”
“You might be surprised,” Caspian interjects. “I know Telmarine Narnia, I should be the one –”
“No,” Peta says flatly. “Miraz is looking for you. You think he’s not going to have your face up on fliers in every village from Beruna to the High Reaches? However well-known or not you were before you left your castle a week ago, you’re famous now. Lucky you.”
He follows her out into the hall and down it, nodding at the Narnians she greets by name. Most of them look at him warily; a few others smirk at them knowingly and Peta just grins. Her surcoat is high-collared, but Caspian can still see the shadow of a kiss on the underside of her jaw; he remembers the taste of her skin, the feel of her body, the sound of her breathy gasps –
“Your mind, your highness,” Peta says lightly without turning around, “is in the gutter, I think.”
Caspian feels the blush rise to his cheeks. “Your majesty, I would never –”
“I appreciate the thought,” she says, amusement sharp in her voice, and then enters the big cavern used for arms-training.
It’s empty now, and Peta’s mouth twists a little before she sheds surcoat and sword-belt and picks up a quarterstaff. Caspian does likewise.
“Are you well enough?” he asks anxiously as Peta flips the staff between her palms. “Your wound –”
She pulls up the edge of her shirt to her breasts and turns her side to him. “Healed,” she says. “Are you honestly saying you didn’t notice that I didn’t have a hole in my side last night?”
“I was – a little preoccupied,” Caspian admits, and she leans her staff against her shoulder and reaches out to catch his wrist, pressing his fingers against the ridge of scar tissue on her waist. His breath stops in his throat, because her skin is soft and warm and not ten hours ago he had his hands on it, Peta gasping her desire into his mouth as he pushed into her, her legs wrapped around his hips, her hands splayed out across his back –
“Good as new,” Peta says, tilting her head back, and she’s looking straight at his mouth. She runs her tongue absently across the top of her teeth, and Caspian blushes, lets his hand drop away.
“I had heard stories –” he prevaricates, and Peta makes an amused sound in the back of her throat as she grips her staff again.
“Stories,” she says, stepping back and raising the staff in a guard position, “very seldom have anything at all to do with reality, or hadn’t you figured that out yet?”
“Perhaps I need more proof,” Caspian suggests, and she grins.
“Well,” she says. “Come on then.”
And then the only sounds in the cavern are the crack of wood on wood as they go at each other.
-
-
“You’re weak on your left flank, Peta,” Edmund says sometime later, and Caspian barely avoids getting brained by Peta’s quarterstaff as he turns to goggle at the king; he hadn’t heard him approach.
“Am I?” Peta says, swinging towards Caspian’s right foot. There’s a sharp crack of wood as he blocks it, muscles screaming protest.
“Weak is one way to put it,” Edmund says. “The other way to put it would be to say that if Caspian had a little more experience and a sword in his hand, you’d have a big gaping hole in your side right now. Oh, wait.”
“Oh, shut up,” Peta says, easily blocking Caspian’s attack. “I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to practice sneaking up on someone in bed.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of opportunities to practice that –”
“Oh, shut up,” Peta says again, “little brother, or it might be you who wakes up with a sword to your throat. Just for practice, you know. After all, I know you won’t put a dagger in my side.”
“Well, if you’re going to be waking me up with blades to the throat…”
“Don’t tempt me, or I may find myself inspired. After all, we can’t have you getting soft either.”
“Me, get soft?” Edmund says, his eyes going wide in faint, bemused surprise. “Why, Peta, I’m hurt. And wounded. You can’t possibly expect me to –”
“Ed,” Peta says, and knocks Caspian on his arse when her staff sweeps behind his ankles, “you aren’t going to let a little flesh wound like that slow you down, are you? Because that would be a crying shame, and I’d be forced to beat some proper sense into you.”
“Well,” Edmund says, grinning in a bemused sort of way, “I’d hate to have to go in there one-handed, even after you’ve let Caspian tire you out –”
“What exactly are you planning to do if the Telmarines come calling, then?” Peta asks, leaning down to give Caspian a hand up. There are blisters on her hands; he’d expected calluses, and he tries not to put too much weight on her grip as she hauls him upright.
“Lie,” Edmund says, and his grin widens.
“You couldn’t lie if your life depended on it,” Peta snorts, letting go of Caspian’s hand. She passes her staff to him and lifts the bottom of her shirt to wipe the sweat off her face. “And even if you could, you wouldn’t. You forget how well I know you, little brother.”
Caspian glances at her bare stomach, at the new scar between the lines of her ribcage, and then away, turning to rack the two quarterstaffs.
“Fine,” Edmund says cheerfully. “I’ll scream really loudly for my big sister to come rescue me, will that work?”
“Admirably,” Peta says. “Granted, I’m not going to try and defend your reputation to anyone who wants to know why big brave King Edmund the Just has to be rescued by his pretty sister, but hey, maybe you can try talking your way out of that without lying.”
“I’m sure I’d come up with something,” Edmund says. “Speaking of which, do you realize how many people we’re missing?”
Peta’s eyebrows go up. “We’re losing people?” she says disbelievingly. “You can’t be serious.”
“We were losing people before you came,” Caspian interjects quietly. “People would come to the How, and then leave once they realized that the kings and queens of old – you – had not come after all, and that the one who had summoned them was a Telmarine prince. They were not comfortable with that, or content.”
“Ridiculous,” Peta hisses. She snaps her fingers at her brother. “Send out a notice. Get them back here.”
“Right,” Edmund says, sounding a little dubious. “A notice?”
“You know what I mean,” she says, waving one hand.
“Right,” Edmund says again, “but that’s not actually what I meant. I was actually talking about the composition of the army –”
“Please don’t call it that,” Peta interrupts. “It’s not an army. It’s a band of rebels hiding beneath a rock in the middle of a forest trying to figure out a way to get revenge for things that happened three hundred years ago. It’s not an army, not yet.”
Edmund rolls his eyes. “Fine, then,” he says. “The composition of the Narnians at the How, then. Do you realize how many people we’re missing, compared to what we used to have in Narnia?”
“I have been trying not to think about it,” Peta says. “Because thinking about it depresses me far too much, and thinking about it makes me wonder what the hell happened to Narnia, and then I get distracted from the conflict at hand, which –”
“Heaven forbid,” Edmund says. “That you get distracted, I mean.” And he grins at Caspian.
Caspian flushes, and Peta punches Edmund in his good arm. “Now that’s hardly appropriate, little brother,” she says, a faint blush of color rising to her cheeks. “Shouldn’t you have a little more respect for your high queen?”
“I have plenty of respect for my high queen,” Edmund says amiably. “It’s my sister I’m mocking. But,” he adds, “to get back to the subject at hand, we’ve only got a handful of the troops we should have. I hope to high heaven that the reason we don’t have the people we should isn’t that the Telmarines killed them all off, but otherwise it’s just weird. We’ve got none of the freshwater or saltwater Narnians –”
“Possibly because we’re about twenty leagues inland,” Peta points out reasonably.
“Right,” Edmund says, “that would explain us not having any of the saltwater Narnians, but no one here had a clue what I was talking about when I mentioned them, only some muttering about some legends of cannibals or something on the seaboard. We’ve got a water source, and there are enough rivers and streams in Narnia that I’d expect us to have some of the freshwater Narnians, but there’s nothing at all, not even a whisper of a naiad or a banshee. And we could use those; Miraz is going to have to cross the Rush to come to us, but we can’t put up as much of a fight as I’d like without having freshwater help. Which we certainly don’t have.”
Peta’s eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “What do the Narnians here say? Glenstorm, Trumpkin, Trufflehunter –”
Edmund shakes his head. “They don’t know anything,” he says. “I’d buy the naiads sleeping, because it’s certain we don’t have any dryads here –”
“Forced inside their trees,” Peta says. “Sleeping for a thousand years, may Aslan help them and us –”
“– and anything that happened to them might have – must have – happened to the naiads and the limnaids – all the water nymphs – as well. That I can buy. But for the rest –”
“Banshees, rusalki, kelpies, nix, doyarchu, undines,” Peta recites, her face growing grimmer with each unfamiliar word. “Nothing? None of them here?”
“Not a one,” Edmund says. “No dryland Narnians, either. We’ve got flesh-and-bone Narnians, but that’s it – not that that’s insignificant at all, considering that’s what the majority of our armies were made up of back in our day, but having the rest of them here would have been nice, to say the least.”
“To say the least,” Peta agrees. “Damnation,” she says, and then curses again in some other language.
“Your accent’s horrible,” Edmund says.
“Well, I haven’t exactly had much chance to practice,” Peta points out, her voice exceptionally dry. “Find out what’s going on, Ed.”
“Of course,” he says.
*
tbc
go on to part four
Part One | Part Two
*
The next morning, Caspian nearly trips over the High Queen when he’s going down the stairs to the lower levels of the How.
“Watch it, Caspian,” Peta says wryly, turning her head back to grin at him as he picks himself up for his undignified sprawl on the stairs. He hasn’t quite fallen, but it’s close enough; he hadn’t expected anyone to be sitting on the stairs. “Someone could get hurt.”
There are bags beneath her eyes and her nose is just slightly crooked, but otherwise she appears unhurt, if a little tired. She’s in trousers and an unlaced white shirt, wearing her sword-belt but not her sword, her hair drawn up in a long golden tail at the back of her head.
“I didn’t see you, your majesty,” Caspian apologizes. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Peta says. “New scars, but that’s the worst of it. Thank you, by the way; things could have gone very badly if you hadn’t been there. Ed told you the raid was a success?”
“He did, yes,” Caspian says. “May I?” He gestures at the step beside her, and Peta scoots over to make room.
“Now we just have to figure out where to put all of it,” she says, “and figure out if there’s anything else we can do to hurt Miraz without hurting ourselves at the same time. Any ideas?”
“Not that I can think of, your majesty,” Caspian says, hearing the faint note of apology in his voice, and Peta shrugs.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s all that much this far south and east,” she says. “Why is that?”
“My people hate and fear the sea,” Caspian says. “There are supposed to be wild creatures in the woods, demons and ghosts – and the ancient castle of Narnia, Cair Paravel, is supposed to be home to the damned.”
Peta’s mouth twists a little in amusement. “It isn’t,” she says. “I spent most of my life there, and I can definitively say that if there’s anything damned in that place, it’s a new development. It’s where we arrived, you know. It’s all ruins now, but it used to be…” She hesitates, and finally says, “It used to be magnificent. Beautiful. All white walls and scarlet banners, and we thought it would never fall, or crumble away, or change – not in a thousand years. Well, it’s been a thousand years, and all of that’s happened. I suppose we were wrong, after all, but we were young and Narnia was rich and happy and beautiful, Lion’s mane…”
Caspian reaches for her hand without thinking about it, and Peta curls her fingers around his and turns her head toward him, smiling softly. “I wish you could have seen it,” she says. “I wish everyone here could see it.”
“I wish I could have,” Caspian agrees, and bends his head to kiss her before he can think about it.
Peta’s mouth is slow and lazily beneath his and he feels rather than hears the soft sound she makes in the back of her throat as her tongue presses velvet-smooth against his. Her free hand rises to tangle in the hair at the back of his neck.
“Peta,” Edmund says suddenly from in front of them, and Caspian stiffens in panic as Peta breaks away from him.
Edmund glares at him, and only Peta’s grip on his hand keeps him from rising to his feet and apologizing profusely. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, he shouldn’t have presumed – he shouldn’t have, straight out, because Peta is higher ranked than he is and an unmarried woman –
“See something interesting, little brother?” Peta drawls.
“Not yet,” Edmund says dryly, and Peta laughs, letting go of Caspian’s hand to get up and go over to her brother.
Caspian rests his elbows on his knees and blinks in surprise to see Peta kiss Edmund on the mouth, brief but nowhere near chaste, and Edmund’s slight smirk afterwards.
Peta leans against the wall and crosses her arms over her chest. “What’s the news, Ed?” she asks. “I’m assuming something’s happened, since you’re here. Unless of course you just wanted the pleasure of my company.”
“Always a pleasure, I assure you,” Edmund says, grinning. “Word just came back from our spies; Miraz is gathering his levies, and he’s pissed. Farsight says he’s riding to Beruna himself, fast as his horse can carry him.”
Peta looks thoughtful. “What are the chances –” she begins, and Edmund shakes his head.
“You and I both know they’re going to be on high alert,” he says.
“Of course they are. Is their high alert something we can get through?”
“Not with this lot,” Edmund says, his voice flat. “You and I both know that.”
“Ignore my optimism,” Peta says.
“One of us has to have common sense,” Edmund says lightly, and Peta laughs again.
“Well, it’s certainly not you,” she says, and curls her fingers around his before she looks back over her shoulder. “Coming, Caspian? There’s breakfast.”
He gets himself up, wincing a little at the pull of sore muscles – nights spent in cold, wet forests with the threat of imminent capture or death hanging over his head don’t do much for him, apparently, though he can’t think if they’d actually be good for anyone – and goes to join Peta and Edmund.
-
-
“Does anyone know how long the How’s been here?” Peta asks him, raising the torch above her head. In this tunnel the ceiling is high enough that it’s no trouble, and Caspian wonders about that too, because this is one of the lower levels, and it seems unlikely that any Narnian would be down here; this is one of the many unexplored portions of the How. Peta wants all of them searched and mapped out, because somewhere there might be a passage that’s helpful to them somehow. (“We know there’s at least one passage that leads out into the western woods,” Edmund had snapped when Caspian had asked what Peta meant. “Maybe there’s more. Hell, maybe there’s a sleeping dragon beneath the How; we could use one of those.” “Oh, and who exactly do you expect to talk it into helping us?” Susan had demanded archly, and Edmund had grinned at her. “Lu, of course. She’s much better at talking people into doing what she wants than any of the rest of us are.”)
“Not that I know of,” he says, sweeping his own torch to either side in front of him. Beyond them, the tunnel extends blackly onward; there are no caves that branch off from it down here. “I know that Aslan’s How is mentioned in some of the oldest accounts of the Telmarine migration, and in some of the literature that survives from those that came before Emmeran the Wanderer led his people over the mountains far to the south of here – there were Telmarines living in Narnia for a hundred years before Caspian the Conqueror’s time – but –”
“What do you mean?” Peta interrupts. “Narnian writings, you mean? Some of that still survives?”
“Narnian writings?” Caspian repeats, surprised. “No; I have never heard of such things. I mean those humans that occupied Narnia for some five hundred years before they finally died out, or were conquered, or left. I don’t know much,” he adds, practically stumbling over the words in his hurry to get them out, because Peta’s expression is suddenly furious, a killing glare, and he doesn’t want to have to bear up the ruthless questioning she extends to those who come back from the Narnians’ frequent patrols with no news or bad news – or worse yet, casualties. “No one knows much of those times, and my uncle didn’t think it was appropriate study for me, but my professor made it an especial field of study, so he’d talk about it sometimes –”
“When did the Telmarines come to Narnia?” Peta asks, her voice flat.
“Some four hundred years ago,” Caspian says immediately.
“Then it wasn’t your people who destroyed Cair Paravel.”
“I had never heard of it, no,” Caspian says, watching her warily.
Peta runs her free hand over her face. “I should have known,” she murmurs. “I should have known – Narnia’s too rich a prize; the west wouldn’t leave her untouched for long. I’d still hoped –” She shakes her head. “I should have known. But that’s at least four hundred years, then?”
“At least a thousand,” Caspian corrects. “Or so the oldest of Professor Cornelius’ books says. He always wanted to find it,” he adds wistfully. “But my uncle would never let him; it was too dangerous to wander around the wilds of Narnia looking for something that might not even exist anymore…or so my uncle said, at least. I hope he’s all right.”
“Your uncle?” Peta says, her brows drawing together in disbelief. “Because that mad mouse’s efforts to the contrary aside, I’m afraid he’s probably definitely in one piece. Unfortunately.”
“My professor,” Caspian says, with a sharp pang of worry. “He’s the one who got me out of the castle when my uncle tried to have me killed. I could care less about my uncle, but Professor Cornelius – I hope my uncle didn’t do anything to him.”
Peta is silent for a moment, and then she says, “If he’s smart and keeps his head down and doesn’t give Miraz any reason to think he betrayed him, then I’m sure that he won’t endure anything worse than a few rough days while Miraz tries to figure out if you had help or not.”
“Do you know from experience?” Caspian asks a little curiously as they advance further down the tunnel. Around them, the walls are black and bare; there aren’t even wall-sconces here like there are in the majority of the How. This tunnel, it seems, was never meant to be traversed or lived in – or perhaps it simply hasn’t been for a very, very long time.
Peta laughs. “A little bit. The circumstances weren’t exactly the same, but they were close enough. And not in Narnia, either; it was in a country called Lasci, to the northwest of Narnia. I was playing diplomat, and the king had grand plans that involved forced marriage. His younger sister found out and warned me. Jorunn was furious, but Nerissa knew how to keep her mouth shut, and he never found out that her new handmaid was actually the High Queen of Narnia. He was a little startled when I showed up at the negotiating table three days later, right on schedule.”
“I can imagine,” Caspian says, amused.
Peta smiles a little in memory and stops to press her fingers to the wall next to her. “This is dirt,” she says, raising her hand to the light and letting the thick brown earth fall to the floor as she rubs her fingers together. “The rest of the How is stone. How far down do you think we’ve gone?”
Caspian glances around and shudders a little; the walls seem to be closing in. Professor Cornelius had always said that the stories about there being a second world beneath Narnia’s surface were ridiculous, but the stories have persisted for generations. Brought over from Telmar, maybe. “Far enough,” he says. “Maybe we should turn around.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peta mutters absently. “It’s just earth. We know exactly what’s above us.”
“It’s not what’s above us I’m worried about,” Caspian says uneasily.
Peta glances at him. “Do you know something I don’t?” she asks, and he shakes his head.
“Just stories.”
She gives him another thin smile. “We’ll keep going,” she says. “It can’t go on forever.”
“As you say, your majesty,” Caspian says, but he can’t help but touch the hilt of his sword for reassurance.
Peta sees the movement and smiles ruefully. “I don’t like being underground either,” she says. “There was a cave-in about fifteen years ago – well, more than that, but you know what I mean. I had my army below ground, and I lost over five hundred people in a matter of days. We were trapped beneath the mountain for almost three days, and there were things down there, creatures left over from the White Witch’s reign – goblins. Man-eaters. They tracked us through the tunnels, picking us off whenever we stopped to rest. It was –” She shudders.
“It sounds horrible,” Caspian says, shuddering himself at the thought. Three days – being tracked, being hunted, and as prey – he can’t imagine what it must have been like. He would have gone mad, he thinks.
“Yes,” Peta says simply. “But I got over it. I had to; I can’t jump at shadows every time the wind blows or someone shuts the windows. It was worse than this,” she adds, waving her torch around. “You could hear them, coming out of the walls – goblins move through earth like it’s air, or maybe water; solid stone doesn’t even slow them down. It just makes sure that you don’t have anything to put your back against.”
Caspian glances around uneasily. “There aren’t any here, are there?” he asks.
“No,” Peta says. “We killed them all off – Edmund did; he burnt out the tunnels to nothing more than ash and bare stone. Nothing survived it. We couldn’t pull all our dead out, so we lit the mountain on fire and gave them a funeral pyre like nothing Narnia had ever seen before. It’s one of the few times we burned our own dead, usually that’s…not done.”
“Why not?” Caspian asks, curious. “Telmarines inter their dead.”
“It’s a disgrace,” Peta says simply. “Usually. Burning leaves nothing but ash behind; it doesn’t enrich the earth, and it separates the soul from the body. Narnians won’t bury their dead either, not if they can help it. They’ll lay them out on the earth, open to the sky, and let time do what it can; that will return them to the earth, to Narnia, and the next season the grass will grow greener and thicker there, the flowers stronger and brighter, the trees taller. But at Angrisla we couldn’t do that; the bodies had been too badly mutilated, and there were too many of them; the caves were too damn dangerous to go back into, not with most of the horde still in there. Ed and Su barely got me out; they were too late for the rest of my people. Burning was the only option.” She closes her left fist, thumb stroking up the length of her smallest finger as she opens it again, looking down with surprise, like there’s something there she hadn’t expected.
Caspian reaches out for her with his free hand, stopping with his fingers hovering over her shoulder, and Peta glances up and grins ruefully.
“It’s all right,” she says. “It was a long time ago, and I’m long over it. I was just thinking about it, being down here.” She touches the wall again, crumbles the dirt between her fingers, and then turns back towards Caspian, tangling her dirty fingers with his as she pulls him against her. “Careful of the torches,” she warns as he bends his head to kiss her.
It’s a slow, lazy kiss like the one they’d shared this past morning, and Peta makes a soft sound in the back of her throat as she hooks one foot around the back of his ankle and pulls him closer, so Caspian can feel the warmth of her body against his, the softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. He’s aware of the heat of her as he nudges her legs apart, insinuating a knee between her thighs, and feels her smile against his mouth.
“Now that’s nice,” she says, pulling away for a moment. She rubs herself against him like none of Caspian’s women have ever done before; no Telmarine would do such a thing, like a bitch in heat eager to be mounted.
The thought makes him blush, and Peta grins at him knowingly before tilting her head up to capture his mouth with hers again. She twists her hips against his, and his hard cock nudges at her thigh.
“Torch,” Peta says roughly. “Wait –”
Caspian pulls away immediately, separating himself from her and standing far back, holding the torch before him the same way he might a sword or shield. He can feel his flush spread across his face. “I –”
Peta reaches up to brush a strand of hair from her face. “That’s not,” she says, “what I meant. I just thought that we weren’t going to get very far if we couldn’t even touch each other. Come back here,” she beckons, and Caspian shakes his head.
“I would not want to dishonor you,” he says, and she glares at him fiercely.
“You’re hardly going to dishonor me, Caspian,” she says. “No offense, but you wouldn’t be the first man – or woman – I’ve had, and chances are good you won’t be the last. And no one in Narnia has ever dared question my honor.”
“In your Narnia, perhaps,” Caspian says, although for a moment his mind catches on woman and circles it warily, torn between sharp jealousy and incredible arousal. “Here, I fear things would be different. Either you would be challenged, or I would be.”
“If you think I’d let someone,” Peta begins, then shakes her head. “Never mind. Come back here,” she says again, and when he hesitates, she says, “I promise I won’t give you any reason to ‘dishonor’ me, and I can show you how incredibly stupid that assumption is later. Come here.”
Caspian goes, and Peta cups a hand around the back of his neck and pulls his head down to hers, and little gods, there’s so much passion, so much want and so much desire, in that kiss that by the time Peta breaks away, panting, his head is spinning.
“There,” she says, her voice heavy, and pats his cheek with her free hand. “On account. Come on; I can’t see how much farther this tunnel can go; we’re already more than a mile from the How.”
“Are we?” Caspian asks, dazed, and then shakes his head and gets some of his thoughts back together and says, “Ah, yes, of course,” and looks around blankly.
Peta laughs and raises her torch, starting forward without waiting for him, and Caspian follows belatedly.
They go on in silence until they finally come to a dead end; the tunnel ends abruptly in a wall of rough-packed black dirt.
“Well,” Peta says, staring at it. “That was anticlimactic. I was really expecting an exit, at the very least, or maybe a cache of something. Weapons, maybe.” She reaches out to touch the wall, digging her fingers into the dirt, and says, “I wonder how far from the surface we are? Maybe it won’t be too hard to break through. We don’t have very many moles with us, but we do have a few, and almost anyone can swing a shovel or a pickaxe. I wonder if we’re anywhere convenient.”
Caspian, sweeping his torch from side to side to get a complete view of the wall, sees something white catch the light a few feet away. He reaches for it, gets his fingers around it, pulls it out of the wall – and drops it.
“What?” Peta says, at his shoulder immediately. She kneels down, holding her torch closely in one hand, and then curses. “That’s a fucking dryad bone,” she says. “But we’re so far below ground –”
She stands up abruptly and hands her torch to Caspian before turning to the wall again. She claws at it without care for her hands, soft dirt falling to the floor before her, and unearths bone after bone.
“Aslan’s mane,” she spits viciously. “How – why – I don’t understand. Narnians don’t bury their dead, so why –”
She strikes another bone from the wall, this one unfamiliar and oddly-shaped, and around them, the earth rumbles. Peta freezes. “Caspian –” she whispers, her eyes wide and her face pale, and then the world comes tumbling down around them.
Caspian drops both torches and throws himself at her, knocking her down and covering her with his body. Peta curls beneath him, clutching at his shirt, and Caspian bends his head over hers, breathing hard and feeling her breath mist his throat.
He doesn’t know how long it lasts; he hates earthquakes, and Narnia has them far too often for his comfort. He should probably be used to them after twenty years, but – but this one is worse, because this time he was underground, not aboveground, where the worst that could happen involved the castle collapsing, and the castle had withstood three hundred years of frequent earthquakes; it was unlikely that one more would be the last grain in the barrel. This – here – beneath Narnia –
“Caspian,” Peta whispers. “Caspian, get off me. Caspian. Cave-in’s over.” She doesn’t sound entirely certain though, and Caspian swallows hard before he rolls sideways. He touches clear ground, and struggles to his feet, blinking into uncompromising darkness. Their torches have gone out.
“Peta?” he asks, hearing the roughness in his voice, and Peta says shakily, “Here. I’m here.” Her fingers catch his sleeve and he turns toward her, reaching out to touch her face.
“Oh, gods,” she whispers, running her fingers down from his sleeve to wrap around his hand, hard and crushing. “Slight possibility I lied when I said I was over my claustrophobia.”
Caspian reaches out and wraps his arms around her, feeling Peta shudder against him as she puts her face into his shoulder, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. He rests his chin on top of her skull, feeling her fine hair brush his face, and offers after a moment, “The tunnel’s – probably not blocked. It could just be that the torches have gone out.”
“Right,” Peta says, voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “You’re right. We should find them.” She lets go of him, fingers lingering on his before she lets go, and then the blackness around them is all-encompassing again; Caspian draws in a sharp breath, almost expecting to smother as all that blackness rushes down his throat to fill his lungs.
“Help me look for them,” Peta orders, and Caspian kneels down on the rough dirt, groping around blindly and knocking his head into Peta’s shoulder once, his hand curving briefly over her calf as they feel around on hands and knees.
“I’ve got one,” she says after a moment. “Do you have a light?”
“Yes.” There’s a tinderbox in the pouch on his belt, a gift from Professor Cornelius when he’d fled the castle of Telmar, and he fumbles it out and strikes a spark. For a moment he sees Peta’s face before him – pale, scared, smeared with dirt – and then the spark goes out. He strikes a second one, and this time the torch catches light, flickering uncertainly before the flame strengthens and Caspian lowers the tinderbox.
Peta lets out a great sigh of relief. “Thank Aslan,” she says fervently, and scrambles up to her feet.
Caspian straightens as well, looking around. The tunnel looks to be mostly undamaged, and he sends up a silent prayer of thanks to the little gods for that. Peta sweeps the torch around and he sees the second one, lying near the pile of white bones. He goes over to pick it up, his fingers knocking the bones as he does so, and the earth rumbles again over their heads, ominous. Peta’s eyes go wide in stark terror.
“I don’t understand,” she mutters. “Why – those shouldn’t be here.” She lowers her torch to light the one Caspian’s holding, and then her free hand falls to her sword-hilt.
“I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” Caspian says reassuringly, and Peta arches her eyebrows for a moment, her expression faintly sardonic.
“There damn well better be,” she says. “That goes against everything I’ve ever known about Narnia. Come on,” she adds, her voice strengthening. “Su’s got to be worried sick. I hope the rest of the How is all right.”
“There have been worse earthquakes in Narnia,” Caspian says, still trying to be reassuring as they start down the tunnel.
“And by that do you mean recently or sometime in recent history?” Peta asks. Their booted feet scuff the loose dirt beneath them; some of the ceiling has fallen, but not enough to hinder their path.
Caspian shrugs. “There are always earthquakes,” he says. “A few every year, of varying severity. The last bad one started a fire that destroyed almost all of the town beneath the castle, some sixty years ago, during my father’s father’s reign.”
Peta is silent for a moment, and then she says, “There was only one earthquake in the entire fifteen years we reigned,” she says. “And that one wasn’t really an earthquake. The cave-in at Angrisla, I mean. I told you about that.”
“There have been earthquakes in Narnia as far back as our records stretch,” Caspian says.
“Damnation,” Peta mutters. “I’m just going to take that as a bad sign. And what, is this a wet summer?”
“Wetter than any I’ve ever seen,” Caspian says, surprised. “Is it not by your Narnia’s standards?”
“Dry as the Great Southern Desert,” Peta assures him. “It’s a bloody drought by our standards.” She glances around, away from him, her gaze flickering quickly over the walls.
“What are you looking for?” Caspian asks quietly.
She gives him a thin, nervous smile. “My blatant paranoia,” she says. “Getting trapped belowground tends to make me nervous, and hell, for all I know, there might still be goblins here. Although I’m sincerely hoping not, because any more shocks that remind me of Angrisla and I might just snap.”
“Do you really think –” he begins, and she shakes her head.
“No, I don’t. It’s been too long, and that was the one and only time we ever had them in Narnia. It’s just my paranoia talking.”
They keep talking as they walk down the tunnel, their words and voices echoing faintly, but it’s better than silence and the ragged, scared sound of Peta’s breaths every time they stop for more than a few minutes. By the time they’ve nearly reached the point where the tunnel split off from the main body of the How, Caspian’s voice is hoarse and his feet tired; he can’t think how many miles they’ve walked since this morning. The torches are beginning to burn low as the floor begins to slope up, and then the tunnel ends in a solid wall of fallen earth and tumbled stone.
“No,” Peta says, her voice desperate. “No, Aslan, no.” She slams her fist into the wall. “NO!”
“Peta!” Caspian exclaims sharply, reaching for her wrist, but she pulls away from him and hits the wall again and again, the torch falling from her hand to gutter out on the floor.
“No,” she says again, “No, no, no…please, gods, no.” She crumbles to the floor by the wall, head down by her knees and her hands curved over the back of her skull, and Caspian kneels down beside her and puts his arms awkwardly around her, planting the torch between two fallen rocks. After a moment, Peta uncurls and lets him hold her, shaking badly. She seems very young, for the first time in the scant days he’s known her.
“It’s all right,” Caspian says. “King Edmund and Queen Susan know where we are. They’ll get us out.”
Peta is silent.
-
-
“Why?” Peta says abruptly out of the darkness, some hours later. Both torches have burned down to nothing, and Caspian’s long since given up trying to shift the weight of the earth and stone blocking the entrance to the tunnel with his bare hands; they’re sitting together now, Peta a warm, steady weight against his shoulder.
“Why what?” Caspian asks, glad for the sound of her voice, for the sound of his. The darkness seems to close in on them, threatens to devour them, every time they’re silent, and it’s all encompassing, terrifying, like they’re in danger of disappearing into thin air and leaving no trace behind.
“Why would you run?” Peta asks. “Why not stay and fight? You’re the crown prince; surely there are Telmarine loyalists within your castle, within Narnia. You have the right to hold the throne in your own name.”
“My uncle tried to kill me,” Caspian points out.
She shrugs. “Use it against him,” she says. “Or you could have, I mean. You could still do so, probably. I’ll put Susan on that,” she adds, thoughtful, and then shakes her head. “Once it became public knowledge that that Miraz had tried to have you killed – and from what you’ve said, it wasn’t exactly the most subtle royal assassination in history; I should know, I’ve carried out a few myself and they never once came back to Narnia – then surely the people of Telmar would have risen up against him.”
“He has the army,” Caspian points out matter-of-factly. “What can commonfolk do against that?”
Peta laughs, soft and bemused. “You might be surprised,” she says. “But does he really have all the army? General Glozelle seemed fond enough of you that he killed his own men rather than turn you over, and he let you go.”
“He let us go,” Caspian feels compelled to point out. “And he headed up the assassins that came to slaughter me in my bed.”
“But they didn’t,” Peta points out. “Surely there are those on council that don’t agree with Miraz seizing power the way he has been, especially if he’s just the regent and you’re of age.”
“I’m not of age,” Caspian says.
“What?” Peta says, sounding startled. “You must be – how old are you?”
Caspian blinks in surprise. “I’m twenty-one,” he says. “But members of the royal family don’t come of age until they’re twenty-five; I can’t hold the throne in my own name until then.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Peta says flatly. “Where did that come from?”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure. It’s always been that way.”
“It’s still ridiculous,” she declares. “I was fifteen when I was crowned, and no one told me that I couldn’t hold the throne in my own name, not even the Telmarines – and believe me, Narnia and Telmar used to go at each other all the time; King Marroquin was always trying to come over our border. People used to tell me I was too young, and that I was a woman, but never that I had no right to the throne. Well – not because of my age, at least. A few other reasons, though.”
Caspian doesn’t say anything. Maybe it is ridiculous, but he’s never known anything else; Telmarine Narnia has always been this way.
After a moment, Peta says, “What exactly was your plan when you came out here?”
“I’m – not exactly sure,” Caspian admits. “I’m not entirely sure I had a plan.”
“Mmm,” Peta says, a little grimly. “So it wasn’t to win the Narnians here over to your side in order to start a war and take back your throne, then?”
“The Narnians have only been myths as long as I’ve been alive,” Caspian says. “My professor used to tell me stories, but those are only stories. I never thought – I thought they’d all been killed off generations ago.”
“So when you blew Su’s horn –”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
Peta laughs. “Now that’s funny,” she says. “I suppose you weren’t expecting us to show up, then.”
“Not until Trufflehunter and Nikabrik began dragging me all over the western wood to meet creatures I’d never even heard of,” Caspian says. “After that, well – at least you were supposed to be human, by every legend I’d ever heard, Narnian or Telmarine.”
“Yes,” Peta says. “There is that, at least.” She sounds amused rather than offended, and puts her head back down on Caspian’s shoulder, reaching out with one hand to wrap her fingers around his. “Did I say thank you for what you did the night we attacked the Telmarine camp?”
“I think it was implied,” Caspian says.
“Thank you, then,” Peta says, and then lets go of his hand. Caspian doesn’t understand why until she curls her fingers in his hair and turns his face towards hers.
She kisses him for a long time, shifting until she’s straddling his lap, and Caspian hears himself make an inordinate sound of want as he drags his hands up Peta’s back, feeling the knobs of her spine beneath the fabric of her shirt. “Yes,” she whispers against his mouth. “Like that, do that –” and then lets go of him to pull her shirt off over her head, unbuckling her sword-belt and tossing it aside before settling back against him to kiss him again.
Caspian splays his hands out across her back, her skin warm and smooth beneath his palms, and Peta twists in his lap, making him gasp. “I always did think darkness was overrated,” she murmurs, reaching for the laces on his shirt. “I’d love to see your face right now.”
“May I –” Caspian begins, not even sure what he’s asking, and Peta says, “Yes, god, yes,” and drags his shirt up over his head.
He cups her breasts in his hands, pinioned by soft, unfamiliar fabric, and Peta says, “There’s a catch at the back –” her breath hitching as he rubs his thumb over her left nipple.
He finds the catch and unhooks it after a moment’s fumbling, tossing the bit of fabric aside, and kisses his way from Peta’s mouth down her neck to the slope of her breasts, sucking a nipple into his mouth.
“Caspian,” she says, sharp and desperate, with a keening note in her voice. Her breath hitches. “God –” She cups the back of his skull in one hand, and Caspian moves his mouth to her other breast, curling his fingers in the back of her breeches.
Peta, her hands wrapped in his hair, pulls his head up so she can kiss him again. Caspian gets one hand around her braid, hissing a little as their teeth knock together messily.
“Is this a bad time?” King Edmund asks suddenly as a chunk of the wall vanishes behind them, replaced by the sudden gleam of torchlight. “Because we can come back.”
Caspian hears the panicked sound he makes in the back of his hand as Peta grabs for her shirt and pulls it on, her voice muffled through the fabric as she says, “No, now is good. Now is excellent.”
“Really?” Edmund says blandly. “Because really, we can come back.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Peta snaps, bundling up her sword-belt around the scabbard as Caspian finds his shirt and pulls it on, hoping it’s still sufficiently dark enough to hide his blush.
Edmund steps back to give them room to climb out, grinning unashamedly at his sister as Peta hits him upside the head. “What took you so long?” she gripes. “Really, I think you could have come sooner.”
“Yeah, I was working on that,” Edmund says, then pulls Peta into a tight hug with his good arm. “Sorry,” he whispers into her hair as Caspian stands awkwardly still, trying to ignore the knowing looks of the moles and dwarves standing around. “Came as fast as I could. Though,” he adds as she pulls away, “it did look like you might have been happy to wait a little longer –”
“Oh, shut up,” Peta says, and turns to the watching Narnians. “Thank you,” she says, and her smile is blinding. “As for you,” she adds, turning to Caspian and catching the front of his shirt in her fist. “You can come with me.”
He can’t hide his grin.
-
-
They keep their hands off each other – more or less – until they’re back in the hallway of their living quarters, where Peta backs him up against the door of her room and kisses him, sword banging against the door as Caspian wraps an arm around her waist. She fumbles for the knob on the door, and Caspian stumbles backwards as it opens behind him, Peta kicking the door shut and tossing her sword aside, pushing him back down onto her bedroll as she straddles him. He pulls his shirt off, she tosses hers aside, and then she leans down to kiss him again, hands nimble on the laces of his breeches as he palms the expanse of her back.
“Let me –” he says, and feels Peta’s grin against his mouth before she scrambles off him, kicking her boots off and squirming out of her breeches. Caspian nearly falls over himself trying to get the rest of his own clothes off.
“Graceful,” she laughs, and he looks up to see her standing still, smiling at him as she pulls her hair free of her braid and lets it settle around her shoulders, loose and golden. “Come here,” she invites, and Caspian goes, tangling a hand in her hair as he kisses her, letting her walk him backwards and back down onto the bedroll. She settles on top of him, rolling her hips against his, and he lets his hands follow the line of her spine down to her waist.
“Little gods, you’re beautiful,” he murmurs, kissing her neck, and Peta laughs again.
“Yeah,” she says, “I guess. Come on –” and before he has a chance to reply, she’s flipped them, Caspian settling between her thighs as she curls one leg around his waist.
He feels his breath stop in his throat, cups her breast briefly in his hand as he drops a kiss on her creamy skin. Little gods, he can’t take his eyes off her, and says as much, earning a slap to the back of his head and one of Peta’s bemused laughs as she says, “Come on, then, what are you waiting for? Do you know how long it’s been since –”
“Did you have somewhere you needed to be?” Caspian asks, the words humming against her skin before he takes a nipple into his mouth again.
Peta arches against him, hissing a little as she says, “I’m sure I can make other arrangements,” her voice breathless as she scrapes her blunt nails up his back.
“I think not,” Caspian says firmly after giving her nipple one last lick, his cock twitching against her thigh. He’s so hard it hurts.
She laughs again, throaty and pleased, and settles one hand on his head, fingers curling in his hair. “Then you’d better show me why,” she orders before he kisses her again.
He braces his hands on her hips, hears her little gasp and his own groan as he pushes into her. “Caspian,” she says. “Caspian.”
She’s tight around him, and so gods-damned hot that he could be on fire and still feel cool. Caspian puts his face down against her shoulder, kisses her neck as Peta wraps both her long legs around his waist and says, voice breathy and shaken, “Deeper, Caspian, fuck –” rocking her hips up against his and digging her heels into his buttocks as he starts to move. She moves against him, with him, gasping as her hands press bruises into his skin and he muffles his shout on her neck, his mouth open against her soft skin, salty with sweat.
He comes with the taste of her skin on his tongue, and Peta scrapes her nails down his back, letting him ride it out with a soft hum in the back of her throat that he can feel, faintly, but when he’d gladly put his head down on her magnificent breasts and go to sleep, she tugs sharply on his hair and demands, “Do you think you’re done, Caspian?” still throaty and amused, a hint of affection that he hadn’t at all expected.
“What?” he hears himself say, the words blurry and smeared. He can’t quite seem to focus on anything.
“I’m not done,” she says pointedly as he rolls off her, dropping another kiss on her neck, “which means you’re not done.” She shoves at his shoulder with one hand, then runs her palm down his arm to tangle her fingers with his, guiding him down the slope of her belly to press between her legs. “Here,” she says, “like this.”
She’s shockingly slick against him, wet as waterweed, and so hot. “Like this,” she says again, but he’s been here before with other women, and he slides his thumb against her clit, hearing her broken little gasp like honey in his ear. “Please –” she says, and then something else he doesn’t understand, some other language, and then his name.
Caspian kisses her, their teeth knocking together as they kiss messy and fast, and Peta comes bucking against his hand, cursing into his mouth as her fingers tighten in his hair. “Lion’s mane,” she murmurs blearily, hand falling to the back of his neck. This time her kiss is slow, lazy, a little languorous, and Caspian rolls onto his side and runs his hand up against her back, smooth and sweat-slick.
“Stay,” Peta murmurs sleepily, dragging the blankets out from under them, and Caspian wraps an arm around her waist and rests his chin on top her shoulder as she curls against him, tangling briefly before they settle against each other.
-
-
He wakes up hours later to the warm weight of Peta against him, one leg thrown over his hip and her cheek on his chest, her hand flat against his side. There’s a dim gleam of light that illuminates the fall of her hair; Caspian can’t figure out where it’s coming from until he sees the dark-lantern in the corner of the room. Peta had been utterly honest when she’d said she was afraid of the dark, he realizes abruptly, and there are no arrow-slits in this part of the How that would otherwise provide light.
He reaches out to touch her hair. It’s damp and lank against his fingers, and he runs his hand down the curve of her shoulder, wondering at the feel of her skin. Little gods, but she’s gorgeous.
“Time’s it?” Peta murmurs sleepily, stirring.
“Early yet,” Caspian replies as she squirms up to kiss him, breasts soft against his chest. It’s a warm, lazy kind of kiss and he opens his mouth to it, letting Peta roll him onto his back and splay herself out on top of him, running her hand down his chest to his cock.
He’s half-hard already and he arches a little against her slim hand, hissing into her mouth as her grip tightens and she finds a rhythm she likes, kissing him in counterpoint to the flick of her wrist. “That just means we have time,” she whispers.
“Peta –” Caspian gasps, and she covers her mouth with his hand.
“Shh,” she murmurs. “We wouldn’t want to wake anyone up.”
“Of course not,” he says faintly, and then hears the sound she makes as she takes her hand off him like it’s someone else, pleading and incoherent and broken.
Peta cups his face between her palms and kisses him, then raises herself up and straddles his lap, her face twisted a little in concentration as she lowers herself down onto him, and Caspian gasps again, grasping her hips with his hands as she makes minute adjustments with her hips and Caspian tries not to die. Evidently satisfied with whatever it is she’s done, she raises herself up, then sinks down, and Caspian hears the sound he makes. Gods, but she’s hot and tight around him, and beautiful, the flicker of light from the dark-lantern silvering her skin as he rocks up into her and she moves with him, riding him.
“Beautiful,” he says, or thinks he does, because he’s not thinking anything except Peta and little gods and please, please, please.
He feels her come, clenching tight around him as she lets her head loll back, gasping harshly, and he follows a moment later, her name the only thing he can think of as she digs her fingers into his biceps and kisses him again, sharp and desperate.
“Peta,” he hears himself say, and she doesn’t say anything at all, just keeps kissing him.
-
-
The good news is that the damage from the earthquake hadn’t been extensive. The bad news is that there was damage from the earthquake at all.
“Say that again,” Peta orders, massaging a hand over her face, and Caspian leans forward with his elbows on his knees, watching her in silence.
“There’s structural damage to the east wall,” Lucy says, and her voice is deadly serious, in odd contrast to her heart-shaped face and sweet expression. It seems bizarre that anyone so young – any girl so young – should know so much or be so well-regarded, but Peta gives her the same solemn consideration that she shares with her brother and other sister, and the Narnians seem to take it in the same vaguely shocked stride with which they take Peta herself.
“It’s still standing,” Lucy continues, “but one more quake – or anything Miraz’s siege machines might throw at it – is going to send it tumbling down.”
“Aslan’s How has never fallen –” Galan the faun begins.
“Never,” Edmund snaps, “is just another word for ‘not yet.’”
“Can we fix it?” Peta asks, ignoring them both, and Lucy taps her fingers against her chin.
“Well –”
“We do rather need to have the How in one piece,” Susan points out dryly, leaning her shoulder into her sister’s. “Otherwise this will be a very short siege.”
“One would note that I’m still hoping not to get into a siege in the first place,” Peta says, but she doesn’t sound entirely convinced on the probability of that.
“One would note that being properly prepared for all possibilities is the second rule of battle,” Susan says.
Peta nods. “Fix it,” she orders. “You can do that, can’t you?”
The dwarves, led not by Trumpkin or Nikabrik, but by a dwarf that Caspian knows only vaguely called Godilas, look around at each other. Godilas finally nods. “We can do that,” he says.
“Good,” Peta says. “Fix it. Or make it better; we all know that if Miraz makes it to the Red Plain, he’s going to be throwing everything he has at us, and that includes fireballs and very, very large stones. Any one of those could be the one that sends the How crashing down, and I would rather us not get trapped inside when something goes wrong. And something will go wrong.”
“Surely your majesty –” Shadehoern begins.
“The first rule of battle is that something will always go wrong,” Peta says, and there’s a sharp edge to her smile. “Food stores untouched? Weapons caches safe? Minimal injuries?”
“All of the above,” Edmund says. “The worst injuries were a couple of broken bones, and you and Prince Caspian weren’t the only ones to get trapped, but no one’s dead and everyone will be able to fight again, so long as they’ve got the time to heal up.”
“I could –” Lucy says, looking at Peta, and she shakes her head.
“Leave it,” she orders. “Broken bones will heal, and if we find out we don’t have the time, you can fix them then.”
Lucy nods, her mouth thin and tight with reluctance, and Peta gives her a faint smile, without its earlier edge.
“Any other structural damage?”
“Nothing major. The earthquake did open a couple of caves and tunnels we hadn’t known about beforehand, though.” Edmund looks at her with his gaze sharp and direct, then his eyes fall to the red marks on her neck and flicker to Caspian.
Caspian looks away, feeling his blush heat his cheeks, but Peta doesn’t appear to notice.
“I still want it all mapped,” Peta says. “I want to know every single inch of the How. I want to know every cave, every tunnel, every bolt-hole. That knowledge may save every one of our lives some day, and we have to have it.”
“Of course, your majesty,” Glenstorm declares. “Consider it done.”
“I won’t consider it done until it’s done,” Peta says. “Repairs to the How take precedence over everything else, but I want everyone here in arms practice every day. You all aren’t warriors or professional soldiers, but we’re in a war and you’re going to be fighting it. Every single one of you is going to have to know how.”
“Arms practice?” Nikabrik demands, his face twisting in sharp distaste. “We aren’t raw recruits, Queen Peta. We know our ways around weapons.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Peta says dryly. “Weapons aren’t the problem, although those could certainly use improvement; I wouldn’t have dared put you in the battlefield if this was my time, considering the fact you’d all be slaughtered by the first army that came at you. Hell, by the first group of rebels that came calling, human or otherwise. It’s your discipline that’s lacking, as I think our friend Reepicheep showed. I want that taken care of, and it’s going to end. I don’t care how tired all of you are, we’re drilling every day. That’s weapons practice and drills, so I won’t go into battle thinking I’m going to get three-quarters of my army killed. Your hit and run tactics aren’t going to work in an open battle, and that’s what Miraz wants to force us into. Oh, I’m going to try not to let it come to that, but we have to be prepared for that eventuality. Understand?”
Nikabrik glares at her, but doesn’t say anything. Glenstorm and Asterius exchange looks, then Glenstorm stamps one foot and says, “We will do what you order, your majesty.”
“Good,” Peta says brightly. “I want a roster of everyone in the How by dusk tonight. See that it happens.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Caspian sees Lucy lean over to say something to Edmund, who’s sitting beside her on the edge of the Stone Table, and Edmund grins a little. Peta sees the exchange and rolls her eyes, then her gaze flickers to Caspian and softens.
“Anything else?” she asks. “Lu, you said you’d see about getting a report on what damage the quake did Miraz, didn’t you?”
“The news will be in your hands as soon as I have it,” Lucy assures her, and Peta nods.
“Good. You’re dismissed. Get it done.”
The Narnian leaders disperse with some grumbling, and once the last of them has gone, Edmund flops back on the Stone Table and puts an arm over his eyes. “Lion, what I wouldn’t give for Oreius or Tumnus right now,” he groans. “Someone who’ll get things done without having to be talked into it. Did common sense die out at some point over the centuries?”
“Kindly stop grumbling and get something done for me,” Peta says, grinning a little. It has a fixed quality to it, and all Caspian can think about is kissing the lines away from the corners of her eyes; she’s too young to look so worried.
Edmund sits up and snaps a lazy kind of salute. “Well, if the other alternative is just lying here –”
“Go supervise,” Peta says. “Lu –”
“I know,” she says, hopping down off the edge of the table. She doesn’t stumble when she drops the foot or so to the dirt floor and turns to grin mischievously at her sister. “Spies, intelligence, same old. Someone has to get it done.”
“Good girl.”
Lucy grins at her and skips off, humming under her breath. Caspian doesn’t recognize the tune. Edmund follows.
“I’d better get going,” Susan says, slipping off the edge of the Stone Table. “It’s still early, and I want as much as daylight as I can get.” She moves to kiss Peta on the cheek, and Peta turns her head to kiss her sister on the mouth.
Caspian stares as one of Susan’s hands comes up to thread through Peta’s hair, then she pulls away, smiling a little sadly. “I’ll take that as ‘good luck’,” she says, and reaches past Peta to pick up her bow.
“Take it as ‘don’t get caught and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’,” Peta says.
Susan laughs. “Well, then,” she says. “That doesn’t narrow down the options much, does it? I’ll see you.”
“And good luck,” Peta says as she leaves. As soon as Susan’s gone, her smile fades away and she draws one leg up to her chest, wrapping her arms around it and resting her chin on her knee.
Caspian straightens, sees her eyes flicker over towards him.
“Come here,” Peta says, beckoning to him with her free hand.
He steps over towards her, and as soon as he’s close enough Peta catches the front of his shirt in his fist and pulls him in, her mouth hard against his. Caspian puts his hands on her shoulders to brace himself, feeling the muscle there beneath the leather of her surcoat and the fabric beneath. It’s unfeminine; he’s surprised to find that he likes it in her.
Peta pulls away at last, letting go of him, and her lips quirk in a slight smile as Caspian lets his hands fall to his sides. “I’ve been wanting to do that all morning,” she says.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Caspian tells her breathlessly, and she laughs. “May I?”
She pats the stone beside her and he sits down, shifting to accommodate his sword.
“They’re not ready,” she says softly. “They think they are, but they have no idea what they’ll be up against if Miraz brings the whole of his army to bear. You’ve told me how many people he can call up in his levies, and after what we did he’s likely to bring up every damn one of them.”
“Perhaps not,” Caspian ventures. “There’s no reason he won’t think that the raid on the camp consisted of the entirety of our army, and we didn’t have very many people. It was just a small fraction of our people, after all.”
Peta smiles. “‘Our’?” she repeats. “Have you thrown in your lot with us, then?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Caspian points out.
“You assume that means something other than just the chance to regain your throne,” Peta says. “Or the right to your throne, rather. No,” she adds as he stiffens indignantly, “don’t look so hurt; I was there, I heard what General Glozelle said to you. And you could have given me up for dead and left Narnia; I think you do care.”
“These Narnians,” Caspian says, and feels absurdly guilty admitting it. “They aren’t my people.”
“No,” Peta agrees. “But they are mine. And you are here.”
“Yes,” he says.
She reaches out with one hand and tips up his chin with two fingers, looking at him with her expression a little sad, a little bemused, and something searching in her eyes. “You’re not ready either,” she says. “But I don’t think I was the first time I picked up a sword, and I know I wasn’t the first time I had a crown on my head, and I don’t think anybody’s ever ready to fight their first battle.”
“How do you know –”
Peta laughs softly. “Caspian,” she says, “I’ve sat my throne for fifteen years, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot of soldiers and noblemen, most of whom have never spilled real blood in their lives. And I know you have – I’ve seen you do so – but you’re not a soldier, not yet. You could get there, though. But for now,” she says, and lets her hand drop, “now I’m going to try and beat you to death with a quarterstaff, and you can return the favor, and later I’ll try and extend the skill to someone of the Narnians here who could dearly use it.”
“Oh,” Caspian says, absurdly disappointed, and leans in to kiss her again.
Peta pushes him away, a slight smile on her face. “Now’s not really the best time,” she says. “But I promise I’ll make it up to you, if you’re very good.” She slides off the Stone Table, feet silent on the bare stone of the dais, and Caspian follows her.
“Where has Queen Susan gone?” he asks.
Peta turns toward him, both hands raised as she bundles her hair back behind her head. “Susan’s gone into Telmarine Narnia,” she says. “I want to know exactly what Miraz is doing, and it’s the sort of thing only a human on the ground can really find out, since your Telmarines aren’t exactly the type to talk to a milk cow or a faun, and I haven’t seen any of the human-form Narnians since arriving here. She has a surprising knack for that sort of thing; I don’t think you’d expect it.”
“That’s dangerous,” Caspian says, alarmed. “If my uncle finds her –”
“Su can take care of herself,” Peta says. “And it has to be her; Edmund and I have been seen, you’re probably fairly recognizable –”
“You might be surprised,” Caspian interjects. “I know Telmarine Narnia, I should be the one –”
“No,” Peta says flatly. “Miraz is looking for you. You think he’s not going to have your face up on fliers in every village from Beruna to the High Reaches? However well-known or not you were before you left your castle a week ago, you’re famous now. Lucky you.”
He follows her out into the hall and down it, nodding at the Narnians she greets by name. Most of them look at him warily; a few others smirk at them knowingly and Peta just grins. Her surcoat is high-collared, but Caspian can still see the shadow of a kiss on the underside of her jaw; he remembers the taste of her skin, the feel of her body, the sound of her breathy gasps –
“Your mind, your highness,” Peta says lightly without turning around, “is in the gutter, I think.”
Caspian feels the blush rise to his cheeks. “Your majesty, I would never –”
“I appreciate the thought,” she says, amusement sharp in her voice, and then enters the big cavern used for arms-training.
It’s empty now, and Peta’s mouth twists a little before she sheds surcoat and sword-belt and picks up a quarterstaff. Caspian does likewise.
“Are you well enough?” he asks anxiously as Peta flips the staff between her palms. “Your wound –”
She pulls up the edge of her shirt to her breasts and turns her side to him. “Healed,” she says. “Are you honestly saying you didn’t notice that I didn’t have a hole in my side last night?”
“I was – a little preoccupied,” Caspian admits, and she leans her staff against her shoulder and reaches out to catch his wrist, pressing his fingers against the ridge of scar tissue on her waist. His breath stops in his throat, because her skin is soft and warm and not ten hours ago he had his hands on it, Peta gasping her desire into his mouth as he pushed into her, her legs wrapped around his hips, her hands splayed out across his back –
“Good as new,” Peta says, tilting her head back, and she’s looking straight at his mouth. She runs her tongue absently across the top of her teeth, and Caspian blushes, lets his hand drop away.
“I had heard stories –” he prevaricates, and Peta makes an amused sound in the back of her throat as she grips her staff again.
“Stories,” she says, stepping back and raising the staff in a guard position, “very seldom have anything at all to do with reality, or hadn’t you figured that out yet?”
“Perhaps I need more proof,” Caspian suggests, and she grins.
“Well,” she says. “Come on then.”
And then the only sounds in the cavern are the crack of wood on wood as they go at each other.
-
-
“You’re weak on your left flank, Peta,” Edmund says sometime later, and Caspian barely avoids getting brained by Peta’s quarterstaff as he turns to goggle at the king; he hadn’t heard him approach.
“Am I?” Peta says, swinging towards Caspian’s right foot. There’s a sharp crack of wood as he blocks it, muscles screaming protest.
“Weak is one way to put it,” Edmund says. “The other way to put it would be to say that if Caspian had a little more experience and a sword in his hand, you’d have a big gaping hole in your side right now. Oh, wait.”
“Oh, shut up,” Peta says, easily blocking Caspian’s attack. “I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to practice sneaking up on someone in bed.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of opportunities to practice that –”
“Oh, shut up,” Peta says again, “little brother, or it might be you who wakes up with a sword to your throat. Just for practice, you know. After all, I know you won’t put a dagger in my side.”
“Well, if you’re going to be waking me up with blades to the throat…”
“Don’t tempt me, or I may find myself inspired. After all, we can’t have you getting soft either.”
“Me, get soft?” Edmund says, his eyes going wide in faint, bemused surprise. “Why, Peta, I’m hurt. And wounded. You can’t possibly expect me to –”
“Ed,” Peta says, and knocks Caspian on his arse when her staff sweeps behind his ankles, “you aren’t going to let a little flesh wound like that slow you down, are you? Because that would be a crying shame, and I’d be forced to beat some proper sense into you.”
“Well,” Edmund says, grinning in a bemused sort of way, “I’d hate to have to go in there one-handed, even after you’ve let Caspian tire you out –”
“What exactly are you planning to do if the Telmarines come calling, then?” Peta asks, leaning down to give Caspian a hand up. There are blisters on her hands; he’d expected calluses, and he tries not to put too much weight on her grip as she hauls him upright.
“Lie,” Edmund says, and his grin widens.
“You couldn’t lie if your life depended on it,” Peta snorts, letting go of Caspian’s hand. She passes her staff to him and lifts the bottom of her shirt to wipe the sweat off her face. “And even if you could, you wouldn’t. You forget how well I know you, little brother.”
Caspian glances at her bare stomach, at the new scar between the lines of her ribcage, and then away, turning to rack the two quarterstaffs.
“Fine,” Edmund says cheerfully. “I’ll scream really loudly for my big sister to come rescue me, will that work?”
“Admirably,” Peta says. “Granted, I’m not going to try and defend your reputation to anyone who wants to know why big brave King Edmund the Just has to be rescued by his pretty sister, but hey, maybe you can try talking your way out of that without lying.”
“I’m sure I’d come up with something,” Edmund says. “Speaking of which, do you realize how many people we’re missing?”
Peta’s eyebrows go up. “We’re losing people?” she says disbelievingly. “You can’t be serious.”
“We were losing people before you came,” Caspian interjects quietly. “People would come to the How, and then leave once they realized that the kings and queens of old – you – had not come after all, and that the one who had summoned them was a Telmarine prince. They were not comfortable with that, or content.”
“Ridiculous,” Peta hisses. She snaps her fingers at her brother. “Send out a notice. Get them back here.”
“Right,” Edmund says, sounding a little dubious. “A notice?”
“You know what I mean,” she says, waving one hand.
“Right,” Edmund says again, “but that’s not actually what I meant. I was actually talking about the composition of the army –”
“Please don’t call it that,” Peta interrupts. “It’s not an army. It’s a band of rebels hiding beneath a rock in the middle of a forest trying to figure out a way to get revenge for things that happened three hundred years ago. It’s not an army, not yet.”
Edmund rolls his eyes. “Fine, then,” he says. “The composition of the Narnians at the How, then. Do you realize how many people we’re missing, compared to what we used to have in Narnia?”
“I have been trying not to think about it,” Peta says. “Because thinking about it depresses me far too much, and thinking about it makes me wonder what the hell happened to Narnia, and then I get distracted from the conflict at hand, which –”
“Heaven forbid,” Edmund says. “That you get distracted, I mean.” And he grins at Caspian.
Caspian flushes, and Peta punches Edmund in his good arm. “Now that’s hardly appropriate, little brother,” she says, a faint blush of color rising to her cheeks. “Shouldn’t you have a little more respect for your high queen?”
“I have plenty of respect for my high queen,” Edmund says amiably. “It’s my sister I’m mocking. But,” he adds, “to get back to the subject at hand, we’ve only got a handful of the troops we should have. I hope to high heaven that the reason we don’t have the people we should isn’t that the Telmarines killed them all off, but otherwise it’s just weird. We’ve got none of the freshwater or saltwater Narnians –”
“Possibly because we’re about twenty leagues inland,” Peta points out reasonably.
“Right,” Edmund says, “that would explain us not having any of the saltwater Narnians, but no one here had a clue what I was talking about when I mentioned them, only some muttering about some legends of cannibals or something on the seaboard. We’ve got a water source, and there are enough rivers and streams in Narnia that I’d expect us to have some of the freshwater Narnians, but there’s nothing at all, not even a whisper of a naiad or a banshee. And we could use those; Miraz is going to have to cross the Rush to come to us, but we can’t put up as much of a fight as I’d like without having freshwater help. Which we certainly don’t have.”
Peta’s eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “What do the Narnians here say? Glenstorm, Trumpkin, Trufflehunter –”
Edmund shakes his head. “They don’t know anything,” he says. “I’d buy the naiads sleeping, because it’s certain we don’t have any dryads here –”
“Forced inside their trees,” Peta says. “Sleeping for a thousand years, may Aslan help them and us –”
“– and anything that happened to them might have – must have – happened to the naiads and the limnaids – all the water nymphs – as well. That I can buy. But for the rest –”
“Banshees, rusalki, kelpies, nix, doyarchu, undines,” Peta recites, her face growing grimmer with each unfamiliar word. “Nothing? None of them here?”
“Not a one,” Edmund says. “No dryland Narnians, either. We’ve got flesh-and-bone Narnians, but that’s it – not that that’s insignificant at all, considering that’s what the majority of our armies were made up of back in our day, but having the rest of them here would have been nice, to say the least.”
“To say the least,” Peta agrees. “Damnation,” she says, and then curses again in some other language.
“Your accent’s horrible,” Edmund says.
“Well, I haven’t exactly had much chance to practice,” Peta points out, her voice exceptionally dry. “Find out what’s going on, Ed.”
“Of course,” he says.
*
tbc
go on to part four
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-12 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-12 04:46 am (UTC)