Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (31)

[bedlamsbard]

Title: Dust in the Air (31)
Author: bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: language, implied past child abuse
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Author's Notes: Dust in the Air uses Warsverse backstory as a general rule of thumb. All chapters of Dust are posted on both LJ and DW. Dust in the Air does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).



Elizar had passed the word that his uncle wasn’t to be harassed when he entered the city, but that didn’t mean that anyone will actually pay attention to it. Cheilem Triptide isn’t a popular man in Cair Paravel; he hadn’t been seven years earlier and the most that Elizar can hope for now is that maybe people have forgotten what a bastard he really is. Technically he isn’t even permitted into the city until tomorrow, but given what a mess Cair Paravel is on festival days Elizar’s suspended the banishment for this one day.

He doesn’t trust either his uncle or the other members of the Long Table as far as he can throw them, so he goes down to wait for him in the Court of the White Faun as soon as a bird comes from the Lion’s Gate to tell him that Cheilem has passed into the city. He settles himself on one of the bench’s that circle the Court’s eponymous statue and rolls a cigarette while he waits. Symeon passes the time stalking angrily around the courtyard and glaring at the various bully-boys from at least three other capos that Elizar recognizes, all of them lounging around trying to look as if they belong in the Pearl. He could have them chased out, but the capos would only send someone else – maybe someone Elizar doesn’t recognize. Better to know who’s watching him, and for whom.

Cheilem’s charcoal-wagon rolls into the Court just before noon, the hired pony’s hooves clopping on the battered cobblestones. Elizar stands up as soon as he sees his uncle, dropping the stub of his cigarette and grinding it out with the heel of his boot. He crosses the courtyard as Cheilem maneuvers the wagon into position near the doors of the warehouse that backs up onto the Court. A dark young man who seems faintly familiar hops down from the back of the wagon, calling a cheerful greeting to the warehouse-master when the centaur emerges. Together they drag open the loading doors as Cheilem clambers down from the wagon, swaying slightly. Elizar can smell the wine on his breath as he approaches.

“Uncle,” he says.

Cheilem stops, bracing himself with hand on the wagon. His gaze sweeps Elizar up and down. “Nephew,” he says. “Should I be honored?”

“I’d hate to find that our guest had been killed just because someone took exception to you,” Elizar says. He reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a small leather purse heavy with coin, tossing it at Cheilem.

His uncle just barely catches it before it strikes him. “Your friend’s already paid me. Though not with the fee I asked for.”

The dark-haired stranger turns from where he’d been helping to unload the charcoal. “Your niece and her guardian both refused to see you. I paid you extra.”

Elizar barely hears the last, because he grabs Cheilem by the front of his filthy tunic and shoves him back against the wagon, making the pony whinny in alarm. “You asked for Beka?” he snarls. “You bastard, uncle or not, if you ever, ever come near my sister, I swear I’ll kill you myself.”

His uncle shoves at him ineffectually. “She’s my own niece! You think I’d lay a hand on her?”

“I don’t know what you’d do!” Elizar snaps, one of his wrist-knives suddenly in his right fist. He presses the tip of the slender blade against the base of his uncle’s throat. His uncle goes still as soon as he feels the knife. “I know what you’ve done, you pervert. Don’t make me wish I’d had you killed.”

“She’s family!” Cheilem says. “I haven’t seen her since she was a little girl –”

“And you won’t!”

He hadn’t seen the stranger move, but suddenly he’s right beside them, laying a hand on Elizar’s arm. “Let him go, Master Confesor,” he says. “Beka and Mayor both refused to see him. There was no harm done.”

“No harm?” Elizar spits. “I’m still considering whether or not to do harm to him!”

“Master Confesor –” the stranger says again.

“She didn’t come!” Cheilem snarls. “That Witch-damned hellcat of yours wouldn’t let her. So take your hands off me, nephew, or your mother will hear –”

“My mother won’t hear anything from you,” Elizar says, releasing Cheilem so abruptly that his uncle stumbles. He leans down and scoops up the fallen purse, shoving it against his uncle’s chest. Cheilem gets one hand up to catch it, staring at him. “That’s for leaving my mother alone this festival season. As usual. If I hear you’ve come near her –”

“Never fear, little nephew,” says Cheilem, straightening his dirty shirt as if it needs it. “I know the drill. And I’ve no desire to find myself missing a few useful appendages.”

“You’ll find yourself missing more than that, this year,” Elizar snaps, sliding the knife back into its sheath. “You’ll find that I haven’t been in a very forgiving mood lately.”

“The gods themselves forbid that I bring down the wrath of the capo del’perla e strada,” Cheilem sneers. “I wish you two joy of each other,” he adds, and stomps away – though not before Elizar sees him slip the purse into his pocket.

“Well,” says the stranger, “that was – unexpected.” He holds out his hand to Elizar. “I’m Edmund.”

Elizar takes his hand. He’s got a strong grip, a swordsman’s grip. “Elizar Confesor,” he says. “And this is Symeon.”

Symeon looks torn between surprise at being introduced and awe at being in the presence in, presumably, the King of Evening. His mouth works silently for a few seconds before he manages to squeak out, “It’s an honor to meet you, your majesty.”

“The honor is mine,” says the man who some claim is the patron god of spies, thieves, and all those who dwell in the dark spaces of the world. Symeon looks like he might fall over, star-struck. Elizar rolls his eyes.

“I’m sure you want a change of clothes,” he says, since Edmund is in nothing more than a laborer’s trousers and roughspun shirt. “And a drink.”

“Both would be appreciated,” Edmund says, grinning at him. “Just let me get my things.” He turns back to the wagon, lifting a bundle out of the back. Cheilem, watching the warehouse workers unload the coal, glowers at him.

Edmund nods back, smiling pleasantly, and tucks the bundle under his arm. Most of it seems to be shapeless cloth, but there’s no good way to disguise the long, familiar length of a sword, even wrapped in what appears to be a leather coat.

“That’s legal to carry here,” Elizar says, looking at it.

“I think it might look a bit above my current means,” Edmund says cheerfully.

Elizar looks him over, considering, but Edmund has a point. Swords are a weapon like any other; some men and women even in the Black Pearl carry them, but it’s far more common to see rapiers or sabers on the hip of a knight or some well-off merchant’s son than on that of a common day-laborer in the wretched parts of Cair Paravel. Most of those who carry them in the Pearl are Elizar’s people, and most of those who’d rather carry something a bit more inconspicuous and better in close quarters. Wearing a sword won’t raise eyebrows, but it does send a certain sort of message that doesn’t at all correspond to the sort Edmund is clearly sending now. The fact that he’s carrying one under his arm will be politely ignored if he’s in Elizar’s or Symeon’s company.

“Point taken,” Elizar agrees. “Come with me.”

Edmund calls a farewell to Cheilem, who just snorts. “We would have made better time if the boy hadn’t run off,” he grumbles, turning his back on them and heaving a load of charcoal in through the warehouse’s door.

“The boy?” Elizar asks as they leave the Court of the White Faun, Symeon pacing along beside them with an attempt at nonchalance. It isn’t particularly working.

Edmund’s handsome face darkens. “He had a marsh-wiggle girl with him, just a child – twelve or thirteen, at a guess. A Calormene tarkaan found out about her and took her away; I think she’s at White Bear Hall now.”

Elizar clenches his fists hard enough to hurt. “I never thought I’d be grateful for Calormene meddling,” he says, trying to keep his tone light and not succeeding. Symeon, who had still been in the orphanage when Cheilem was banished, looks up at him in alarm but is wise enough not to speak.

Edmund gives him a thoughtful look. His eyes are bright, interested, and seem to see straight into Elizar’s soul, so that he staggers a little at the intensity of it, briefly overwhelmed and incapable of cogent thought until Edmund glances away. “It has its uses,” he agrees.

He has the same accent as Peter and Susan, Elizar thinks, wishing he dared dunk his head into the nearest fountain to clear the sudden fog from his brain. Nothing that anyone in Narnia would identify as obviously foreign, but not quite familiar either, and certainly not the tooth-breaking dryness that the Telmarine upper classes and those that aspire to that status have nurtured for centuries. It’s like nothing he has ever heard before.

There are questions Elizar could ask, starting with why in all the names of the Lion Edmund wants to get onto the nameless isle, but none of them are really suitable for asking in public. The other capos’ people are still following them, ghosting through the thin crowd as casually as possible: hunters stalking their prey. They won’t make a move, though: not here in Elizar’s territory. Making a move on a capo in his own territory would be tantamount to war and none of the others are stupid enough to try that, not now.

Edmund spends the short walk looking around with interest. It’s a clear day, just a few fluffy clouds hanging in the sky, and most areas in the city are busy with preparations for Winter’s End tomorrow. The nobles in the Garden District will celebrate with polite dinner parties, but down here in the lower city the streets will be filled with bonfires and parades, the crowds thick and joyous with the knowledge that spring has come again, as it has every year since the Kings and Queens of Summer brought down the White Witch. The Calormenes hate festival days, but even Prince Bahadur doesn’t dare stop them. There haven’t been riots in the city in almost two years, but Cair Paravel will riot for that. There have been extra Calormene patrols on the streets for the past few days; tomorrow there will be even more. If Edmund wants to do something without the Calormenes seeing, now is the time.

At this hour of the day, the Poison Well is almost deserted. Custom has been a bit scarce since the Calormenes had raided, but there are a few regulars at the bar or the tables, brooding over drinks or noon meals. They glance up as Elizar passes, nodding their respects. He notes with interest that their gazes seem to slide right past Edmund, as if Symeon (not worth noticing) is his only companion. Elizar watches Edmund take in everything, his eyes constantly darting around the room, to the minotaur and the woman behind the bar, to the empty fighting pit, to the balconies above. He doesn’t seem the sort to miss anything.

Elizar leads him up to the third floor, where he keeps a few attic rooms – one for his own use and several that are rented out to prostitutes from Amirandy’s guild. All of them are empty. He shows Edmund into his own room, poking through the few changes of clothes he keeps there. “We should be about the same size,” he says, stepping back. “I’ll see about some food. I’m sure Cheilem was fairly miserly about that.”

Edmund’s mouth quirks slightly as he puts his bundle on the narrow bed and sits down to pull his boots off. “He wasn’t that bad.”

Elizar just shakes his head. “Symeon will be outside if you need anything,” he says, then shuts the door behind him, hefting the key in his hand. For a moment he hesitates on the step and looks down at it. He could lock Edmund in, send for the Calormenes or the Provost’s Guard, get his life back. They’re not his gods, after all; he doesn’t have Eternal Winter to fear.

But there’s Beka and Mayor to think of, and a free Narnia again, and Elizar never thought that he’d believe in such things, but he’d swear on his own life that he felt magic stir that night beneath the High King’s Arms, so he tosses the key up, catches it, and slides it back into his pocket. “Stay here,” he tells Symeon, and clops down the stairs again.

“Anything interesting?” he asks Octar, who he’d asked to take over Starla’s job when she was arrested.

Octar pours him a cup of watered wine and pushes it across the counter towards him. “Barely a whisper,” he says, lisping a little because of his broken teeth. “We should do well enough tomorrow, though.”

“Good,” Elizar says. “Did you order those extra barrels I asked for?”

“Arrived this morning,” Octor says promptly. “We’re well-stocked and ready to go. Can I get you something?”

The larder’s not as scarce as it had been before Bahadur finally, grudgingly opened the ports again. By the time that Edmund comes down the stairs, chatting with an obviously adoring Symeon, Elizar has a table of freshly-made Narnian small plates to share – grape leaves stuffed with minced lamb and preserved lemons, bowls of chickpea-and-sesame spread, codfish roe mixed with shallots and coriander, and sweet courgette pickle to spread on rounds of flatbread from the bakery down the street, wine-marinated mushrooms, roasted lamb’s liver, and fans of fried fish. Edmund makes an appreciative sound as he sits down, then passes a few sheets of folded paper he’s been holding to Elizar.

“These are for you from your sister and Mayor,” he says.

Elizar glances at them, then tucks them away to read later. “Nothing from your brother?”

“Pete’s busy right now,” Edmund says, pouring himself a cup of wine. He tilts the jug towards Elizar inquisitively.

Elizar waves him off, raising his eyebrows. “Recruiting more allies?”

“You could say that,” Edmund says, scooping codfish roe onto a torn piece of flatbread. “He’s in the High Reaches.”

Elizar almost drops his cup. “With those barbarians? The Long Table won’t even trade with them!”

“Contrary to popular opinion, Pete can be very persuasive when he wants to be,” Edmund says calmly, stabbing a mushroom with his fork. “And when he doesn’t, at least he’s very good at bashing heads. Besides, he didn’t need to send a letter. He sent me.”

“And what great favor does the High King’s Shadowmaster want from me?” Elizar says, with only a hint of sarcasm. He dips a fish fan – three small fish held together at the tails and fried – into olive oil and bites one of the heads off.

Edmund raises an eyebrow. “Nothing much. I shouldn’t be here for long. I need to get something from Cair Paravel – our Cair Paravel, that is – and then I need to rendezvous with the Black Fleet.”

The bloody Black Fleet, Elizar thinks. Of course it would be Casmyn Wavewalker’s lot. “I can’t help you with the Black Fleet,” he says. “You’ll have to get out to the Lone Isles to meet with the Grand Admiral for that.”

“I know,” Edmund says calmly. “Arrangements have been made.”

Elizar frowns. “By who? I didn’t hear anything about that.”

“Well,” Edmund says, taking a drink of wine, “you don’t control the ports, do you?”

“Onahoua Malukai,” Elizar says, disgusted.

Edmund smiles, all teeth and no charm. “Play nice,” he says. “There are bigger things at stake than your pride.”

Elizar snorts.

“I assure you,” Edmund says, his voice still light, “my brother did not go to the trouble of making a blood oath with every member of your Long Table – which is not, I may add, a pleasant experience for anyone involved – not to take every advantage that not inconsiderable oath offers. You don’t control the ports, Master Confesor. She does.”

And Elizar had been so certain that the High King was targeting him for special favors in Cair Paravel, too. He feels his mouth twist – though into a smile or a scowl he’s not sure. Edmund looks back, one eyebrow arched, and even though he’s in an old shirt of Elizar’s, with a scruff of day-old beard on his chin and a smear of grease at the corner of his mouth, he has a certain – Elizar can’t even put his finger on it, but Peter had it and Susan had it, a way of looking straight into his soul. There’s a kind of age behind his sharp hazel eyes that stretches back, endless, until Elizar thinks that he might drown in it. He can’t look away; it’s Edmund that breaks that gaze, glancing down and mopping a scrap of flatbread through the chickpea paste.

“It’s nice, this,” he says. “My compliments to your cook.”

Elizar shrugs, his appetite gone. He spears a slice of liver and barely tastes it as he chews. “I’ll pass that along.”

They’re silent for a few more minutes as Edmund eats and Elizar sips his wine and eats the codfish roe, which Edmund doesn’t appear to have much taste for. “Your sister sends her love,” Edmund says finally, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “She was well the last I saw her.”

“A damn sight better than she’d be if Cheilem had had his way,” Elizar says, with a sharp stab of anger at his uncle. How dare that bastard. Elizar may have him killed himself, kinsman or not.

“She refused. We paid extra so that he’d still bring me. There was no harm done,” Edmund repeats.

“I don’t care,” Elizar says, and is a little surprised to realize that he means it. Well, if Cheilem is still in Cair Paravel – and still alive – so much as a minute past midnight tomorrow, he’ll put a price on his own uncle’s head. Narnia will be better off without him anyway. “Are you done? We’ve got to get over to the Garden District. Lucky for us the Cortes isn’t in session today.”

“The Cortes?” Edmund asks, piling the remainder of the mushrooms and lamb’s liver onto a piece of flatbread before rolling it up and eating the whole thing neatly in three bites.

“Just the Assembly of Lords now, since Bahadur got rid of the Chamber of Commons,” Elizar scowls. Not that he’d ever had anything to do with either of them, save that he’d had a representative or two in his pocket, but it’s the principle of the thing that smarts. That Bahadur thinks he can remake Narnia in Calormen’s image.

“Oh, like Parliament,” Edmund says, nodding, because that apparently makes sense to him. “That’s right, Tirian and Lord Vespasian mentioned it. I’m done,” he adds, wiping his hands clean on a handkerchief after looking around for a napkin and not finding one.

“Good,” Elizar says, draining the last of his wine. “We’ll cut through the Theatre District, there won’t be so many people there.”

“There’s a theatre district?” Edmund asks, his eyebrows going up.

Elizar surveys him as he stands. He’d been right, he and Edmund are almost the same size, and his spare trousers and slightly wrinkled blue shirt fit like they were made for him. The only thing that stands out is the old-fashioned sword-harness he’s wearing, slung over his back and buckling across his chest. No one in Narnia carries the kind of sword he’s wearing, not for a thousand years; Elizar carries a saber when he has to, and most nobles use rapiers. But this sword, a hand-and-a-half broadsword with a tapering blade and slightly tarnished silver pommel and crossbars, is a killing sword: nothing made for honor duels or for play.

Edmund, seeing him looking, raises an eyebrow. “Shall I turn so you can see the rest?”

“You’ll do,” Elizar says. “No worse than your brother or sister, anyway.”

“Well, I’d hope,” Edmund says, sounding rather severe, and scoops up the leather coat he’d draped over the back of his chair when he sat down. He shrugs it on, running a hand through his rumpled hair; Elizar is relieved to see that it almost completely covers the sword, though he suspects Edmund could get at it without delay if needed

Nobody so much as looks at them as they leave the Poison Well, though Octar and the waitress – Sybbi, Elizar thinks her name is – go automatically to clear the table. Elizar’s not used to being ignored, not by his own people, and he shoots a sharp look at Edmund, wondering if it’s something that the other man is doing. If Edmund is aware of the effect he’s having, he doesn’t appear to notice it, shoving his hands into his pockets as they make their way down the street, turning into the near-deserted theatre district.

One or two of the buildings have been taken over by local gangs, but most are privately owned by nobles rather than the companies that had previously operated out of them. They pass doors chained shut, signs tacked up that announce their indefinite closure at the order of Prince Bahadur. On a few buildings notices of the productions that had been playing when the theatres had been shut still remain, the paint weathered and peeling, nearly indistinguishable.

Edmund eyes them curiously. “Why did Prince Bahadur close the theatres?”

“Playwrights aren’t terribly subtle. Nor are most actors,” Elizar admits. “So he might have had a point. It didn’t make him very popular, though – well, not that anything would have.”

“Can’t say that I’d disagree, considering everything that I’ve heard about him,” Edmund remarks.

Neither Elizar nor Symeon have anything to say to that.

They make their way out of the theatre district and across the neutral ground between the Pearl and the Garden District. Elizar supposes he could have done this the politic way, by sending a messenger to the Bracken house and waiting for Marcia Bracken or one of her lackeys to meet the at the High King’s Arms, but he’s feeling a little contrary today. He doesn’t like running around at someone else’s beck and call; he might as well get what little amusement he can out of it. He compromises by going in through the back gate, treading through the big, well-kept garden with its fountains and gazebo up to the wide porch at the back of the house. He sets his hand to the back door, opening it and startling a serving maid arranging the flowers in a vase just inside the hall.

She presses a hand to her heart, her eyes gone wide. “Who in the Spring Queen’s name are you?”

“Here to see your mistress,” Elizar says. “Be a good girl and let her know she has company, won’t you?”

“If you’re trying to rob us –” the girl threatens, backing up a few paces. Her eyes are fixed on Symeon, peering curiously at her from down by Edmund’s hip.

“I wouldn’t have come in the middle of the day, you bloody woman!” Elizar says, as Edmund pushes the door shut behind them.

“It’s all right,” he says, and Elizar turns a little to see him smile, bright and friendly. The maid relaxes a little, the fear in her face easing away. “We don’t mean your lady any harm.”

“Well –” the girl says doubtfully, all her attention of Elizar now and focused on Edmund. Her eyelashes flutter a little. “Just the once, mayhap,” she says, and darts off, glancing over her shoulder at them before she slips through one of the double-doors.

Elizar scowls. “Bloody women,” he says again.

“She seemed sweet,” Edmund says nonchalantly, jamming his hands into his pockets and studying the circular atrium they’re standing in. The curtains are open, letting light stream in through the numerous windows, all the way up to an arched glass roof that Elizar bites his lip to keep from commenting on. He’s never seen anything like it. He’d known that the Brackens were wealthy, but even he hadn’t imagined something like this, and he’s robbed his fair share of noble houses in Cair Paravel.

Somewhere in the distance he can hear Marcia Bracken’s voice. “The sheer cheek of that bastard! As if I have nothing better to do than fetch and carry to some man’s every whim; first the Temple of Tash, then they take my house and no doubt beggar my people, and now Newisle thinks that I’m such a cruel-hearted bitch I’ll hand over his wife merely on his say-so. If I didn’t know that Yasruddin Tarkaan wouldn’t stand for Newisle’s nonsense I’d send my own men to guard the girl, bloody fool – what now, Maris?” And then, an instant later, “He what? And you just let him in? Little idiot!”

Elizar hears her footsteps approaching, tapping fast and furious on the hardwood floors, then she jerks both doors open and appears, a vision in red linen and indignation. Her brother, a young knight with wild blonde hair, is just behind her.

“How dare you come to my house!” Marcia Bracken snaps, her voice shrill with outrage. “A common criminal, by the Lion! Anyone could have seen you!” She storms across the atrium; Elizar takes a prudent step backwards, remembering the blackjack that she’d had up her sleeve the last time that they had met.

She stops just short of striking distance, her hands clenched at her sides. “I hope that you are aware, Master Confesor,” she adds, her voice gone soft and dangerous, “that I would be well within my rights to kill you and your friends here and claim self-defense. The law would be on my side.”

Crispus Kingbarrow lays his hand on his rapier hilt, presumably in the expectation that it makes him look dangerous. Elizar has dealt with cutthroats, murderers, and rapists from the worst parts of Cair Paravel; there’s nothing that an overbred gently-born knight can do to make himself look anything other than ridiculous, especially with a sword like that. Especially standing beside Edmund.

Elizar doesn’t even know where that thought had come from.

He crosses his arms over his chest. “I got you your contract, Lady Bracken,” he says. “You, and not Lord Isambro. Time to pay up.”

“I shan’t have this conversation here in the open where anyone can see,” Lady Marcia sniffs. “Bad enough that you drag your filth into my house, Confessor. Crispus, show them into Orichan’s study. I have business to see to.”

Doubt passes quickly across Sir Crispus’s handsome face. “Are you sure, Marcia? I can have them shown off –”

“I’m certain,” Lady Marcia says, though she looks at Elizar like he’s something she’d wipe off her shoe. “Do it yourself. I’ll make sure that Aroex and Ysdreth keep the servants away; I’m certain that some of them are in the Prince’s pay.”

And one of the footmen is in Elizar’s pay, though it would be foolishness to tell Lady Marcia as much. He’d arranged it before he’d spoken to her the first time; too many of the nobles go running to Prince Bahadur at the first sign of trouble. Everything that he’s learned about Lady Marcia suggests that she’s not the sort – and if she is, Elizar supposes that he’ll soon find out.

“Symeon, go with Her Ladyship,” he says, to her obvious astonishment. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

Symeon pads forward, his claws clicking slightly on the marble floor. “My lady,” he says, bowing slightly to Lady Marcia.

“You don’t think that a hyena in my house will be remarked upon?” she sniffs. “I don’t need a nursemaid, Master Confesor.”

Elizar runs his tongue over his teeth. “I don’t doubt it, Lady Marcia,” he says, letting his gaze travel over her. “You’re quite the picture of a well-grown woman.”

“You dare –” Sir Crispus snarls, drawing a handspan of his blade.

“I wouldn’t,” Elizar drawls. “Your sister gave me her word. I’m just seeing that she doesn’t break it.”

Lady Marcia gives him a withering look. “Very well, your little pet can accompany me. Do try and stay out of sight,” she adds to Symeon before stalking off, thrusting the doors open. The hyena follows meekly in her wake, glancing back over his shoulder at Elizar.

Sir Crispus frowns at Elizar and Edmund. “If this is some kind of trick so that Prince Bahadur can get my sister’s money,” he threatens, “then I’ll –”

“You’ll what?” Elizar says. “I’d like to see you down in my city. Down in the pit. Maybe you’d get some of that shine wiped right off you.”

“You’re a common criminal. Nothing more that sewer scum.”

“Oh, I’m a bit more than that,” Elizar grins. He lets his gaze travel over Sir Crispus, the same searching, too intimate way he’d looked at Lady Marcia. “Come down to the Poison Well or the Blackfire Club some time and I’ll prove it to you.”

“I’d rather choke on ash,” Sir Crispus snaps. “I don’t know what you said to my sister to force her into making deals with you, but I swear –”

“Gentlemen,” Edmund breaks in. “I’m sure that you can take this feud up another time, but this is actually a matter of some urgency.”

Sir Crispus switches his gaze from Elizar to him, scowling, and opens his mouth to say something – then stops, blinks, and says, “Come with me,” instead of whatever insult he’d been planning. He turns abruptly on his heel and goes to the double doors, cracking one open and peering out into the hallway before going out. Elizar and Edmund follow as he leads them through empty halls and up a set of narrow back stairs to the third floor.

The room that he shows them into is large but dark, with shuttered windows that take up most of one wall. Sir Crispus ducks out into the corridor to strike a taper, then lights the wall-sconces and the desk-light. “My late brother-in-law’s study,” he says. “The housekeeper airs it from time to time, but the fact the door is closed and the windows covered won’t raise any eyebrows.”

Elizar looks around the room, evaluating it with an expert eye. Most of the walls that aren’t window or hearth are taken up by glass-fronted bookshelves, some of them containing what he recognizes as very expensive volumes. Several small statues of various Narnian creatures are being used as bookends, including one of a dryad half in and half out of her tree displayed pride of place over the hearth. Between that and the two Mantegna oils on the walls, Elizar could probably buy himself a minor lordship, if he wanted such things.

Sir Crispus sees him looking. “Don’t even think about it,” he says. “My sister brought most of her guardsmen from the Vale. You’d be gutted even before you made it into the house.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Elizar says, picking up a paperweight with a miniature of White Bear Hall perfectly rendered in silver inside the glass. Sir Crispus snatches it from his hand and shoves it into a drawer.

“And don’t touch anything!”

Edmund prudently tucks his hands into his pockets. Elizar just grins at Sir Crispus, and when he glances suspiciously at Edmund, pockets an enameled silver cigarette case off the big rosewood desk. He’s never been so hard up that he’s had to be a working thief, but he likes to keep his hand in, just for luck’s sake.

“When did your brother-in-law pass?” Edmund asks politely.

Sir Crispus frowns at him. “Orichan died four years ago,” he says.

“The Calormenes?”

“He was ill.” His voice is reluctant. “He was dying for years before the Calormenes came. After that he held on as long as he could, for Marcia’s sake, but he was too sick. It was almost lucky,” he adds bitterly. “He was too sick to do anything, really. If everyone hadn’t known it, Ramazan Tarkaan or Rahim Tarkaan would have found an excuse to arrest him and confiscate his property.”

“Prince Bahadur’s predecessors,” Elizar explains to Edmund when he realizes that the other man doesn’t know the names. “Ramazan Tarkaan led the invasion force from the sea, then Rahim Tarkaan came in as governor. The Tisroc recalled him to Tashbaan after the Terebinthian incident.”

“I see,” Edmund says, his eyes narrowing.

Sir Crispus’s frown deepens. “Everyone in Narnia knows that,” he begins. “Where’ve you been hiding?”

The door opens, letting in Lady Marcia, Symeon, and the hag that Elizar had seen with her at the High King’s Arms. Ysdreth, presumably. She’s pushing a tray with a pot of tea, four cups, and a plate of small cakes on it.

“Not,” Lady Marcia says, apparently having heard this last, “in Narnia, I suspect. Am I correct?” she adds to Edmund.

He inclines his head slightly. “You are.”

“Fascinating,” Lady Marcia says, stalking around Edmund like a lioness after her prey. “I’ve seen Sarapammon’s murals in the palace chapel, of course. I don’t think I’ve ever given him enough credit – though I suppose he was there the last time that you were in Narnia, King Edmund.”

Elizar blinks.

“I don’t believe I’m familiar with the name,” Edmund says mildly.

“He’s a famous painter from Caspian’s time,” Sir Crispus says, frowning at his sister. “King Edmund? As in –”

Edmund smiles. “Yes.”

The hag is pouring the tea, including some into a saucer for Symeon. She passes it around, moving silently between each of them and holding cups and saucers up – hags only coming to about waist-height on a grown man, of course. Once that’s done, she curtsies to Edmund and Lady Marcia and slips out of the room.

“You knew?” Elizar says to Lady Marcia, cradling cup and saucer in his hands and trying not to look impressed. He could easily get six crescents for the saucer alone, let alone the rest of it. From the smell of the tea – and he does know tea – it’s Galman White Harvest, ten silver crescents an ounce. Even if the candy shop could afford to keep it in stock, no one in the Black Pearl could afford to drink it.

“I did not.” She gave him a sharp look. “But we happen to have Sarapammon’s The King in Judgment in the study. I was struck by the resemblance.”

Elizar whistles, while Symeon’s jaw actually drops. A genuine Sarapammon painting is worth more than the entirety of the Black Pearl. “The Callies didn’t take that?”

“It used to be in the front hall,” Lady Marcia snaps. “I thought it was prudent to move it somewhere less visible.”

“I didn’t realize that there was artwork lying around with my face on it,” Edmund says mildly. “That could be, ah, unfortunate.”

“It’s hardly lying about anymore,” says Sir Crispus unexpectedly. “You, um, you look different in person than most of the statues in the city, and Bahadur had a lot of the contemporary and Caspianic work seized when he had his snit a few a years ago.” In response to Elizar’s disbelieving look, he flushes slightly and mumbles, “I went up at The University for art.”

“What my brother means to say,” says Lady Marcia, “is that unless you have the misfortune – or the fortune, I suppose – of visiting someone with one of the few pieces of genuine art that manages the near-impossible feat of also being accurate, you ought to be safe. I hadn’t thought that someone like you would need my help.” She casts a disdainful look at Elizar. “Or that of someone like our Master Confesor.”

“It’s complicated,” Edmund says, sipping his tea.

“So it would seem,” she observes, then switches her steady blue gaze to Elizar. “I assume that this is to do with our…understanding.”

“‘Understanding’,” he echoes. “If you want to call it that. I fulfilled my end of our bargain; now it’s your turn.”

“You can’t do it yourself?” she asks Edmund.

He shrugs. “As I said. It’s complicated.”

“Hmmph.” She taps one manicured nail against the delicate china of her teacup. “To get onto the nameless isle without being caught by the Calormenes – and I suppose that you want to come back as well?”

“It would be helpful,” Elizar says dryly.

“Hmmph,” she says again. “Can’t this wait until after Winter’s End? There won’t be any civilians working tomorrow; a boat in the Bay of Heroes will be noted and remarked upon.”

“I’m afraid it can’t,” Edmund says. “The sooner the better – and the closer to Winter’s End the better as well, I think.”

“Why?” asks Sir Crispus.

Edmund touches the tip of his tongue to his teeth, obviously searching for the words. “On your festival days,” he says slowly, “the – the veil, you might call it, between worlds is thinner than at other times. Tirian – your King Tirian – told me that people often have visions then, true visions. If it’s possible, then there’s someone that I want to talk to in Cair Paravel – sorry, what you call the nameless isle.”

Elizar is somewhat relieved to see that both Lady Marcia and Sir Crispus look as alarmed as he feels. It’s Symeon who speaks, though. “You want to summon the dead?” he squeaks, his voice breaking and shooting up in the middle of the sentence.

Edmund shakes his head slightly. “It’s complicated,” he says again. “Well, Lady Bracken? Can you get me there?”

“Us,” Elizar says, because he’s damned if he’s going to let Edmund out of his sight, ghosts or gods or demons or anything. The moment he looks away from him it’s almost a surety that Bencivenni Maresti or Onahoua Malukai or another capo will snatch him.

Edmund raises an eyebrow at him, but corrects gamely, “Us.”

Lady Marcia looks at him for a long time, while Elizar eats a cake and Sir Crispus fidgets. “You spoke to Tirian?” she says finally. “Is he well?”

“He was the last I saw him,” Edmund says. “He went with my brother Peter and my cousin Eustace to the High Reaches.”

“The High Reaches,” Lady Marcia repeats. “Lion’s Mane, are we that desperate now? Don’t answer that, of your courtesy.”

Edmund and Elizar wait. Lady Marcia finishes her tea and sets the cup and saucer down on her late husband’s desk. “I might do,” she says.

She is, somewhat to Elizar’s surprise, as good as her word. Not even an hour later he and Edmund are ensconced on a small boat halfway across the Bay of Heroes. “Don’t talk to them and they won’t talk to you,” Sir Crispus had said when he’d been escorting them to the docks, past the watching eyes of a line of Onahoua’s bullyboys. Both of them had garnered a few curious looks from the crew and the other passengers – apparently Lady Marcia had come up with some legitimate business on the nameless isle for her own people – but no one had said anything. Hopefully no one says anything to the Calormenes either.

Edmund spends the entire trip looking keenly around, though his gaze always goes back to the approaching bulk of the island before them, like a hound on point or a compass fixed on true north. Elizar himself swipes his sweating palms across the knees of his breeches, trying to force away his growing feeling of unease. When he’d been a boy, before everything had gone pear-shaped, children in Land’s End had dared each other to row out to the nameless isle, see how far inland they could get before retreating. For sixteen hundred years Narnians have believed that the isle is haunted. It’s only the Calormenes who think it isn’t.

Eventually the dock the Calormenes had built comes into view. Lady Marcia’s men bring the boat up beside it, tossing the rope to the Calormene guard on duty to tie up.

“Careful,” says one of the sailors, the first thing that anyone has spoken since they left the harbor, “this bloody thing has already collapsed twice in the last month.” She hops out, a little gingerly, and holds out her hand to help first Elizar, then Edmund out.

“Surveyors,” says another of Lady Marcia’s men to the Calormene officer who’s come over to question him. “For the priests’ quarters. You know old Foxtooth, when he gets an idea in his head he can’t shake it, Winter’s End eve or not. Listen, boys,” he adds to Elizar and Edmund, who has a bag that may or may not actually contain surveying equipment slung over his shoulder, “we won’t stay here past nightfall, so if you’re not back on the boat by then, you’ll be stuck here until after Winter’s End. You understand?”

“Understood,” Elizar says.

“The island is safe enough,” says the Calormene officer stiffly, in surprisingly good Narnian. Apparently he’s had similar conversations before, because he goes on, “I cannot provide a guard.”

“We’ll be fine,” Edmund says. Elizar almost falls over himself in surprise, because he’s roughened out his voice, copying Elizar’s own accent so flawlessly that he’d never guess that Edmund isn’t from the Pearl.

“Very good,” says the officer, then turns and walks back up the dock. Conversation over, apparently. Marcia’s men settle down with a deck of cards and several flagons of cheap wine as Edmund and Elizar head to shore.

Being here makes Elizar’s skin prickle; he’s already beginning to wish he’d stayed in Cair Paravel. It’s not merely the Calormenes – though there aren’t many of them, just a trio of soldiers and the officer – or the sounds of shouting he can hear from somewhere nearby, the sound of the chain-gangs of Narnian prisoners put to work on Bahadur’s masterpiece. It’s something else, something about the island itself. It feels…old. Older than anything else in Narnia he’s ever seen.

He glances up as soon as they set foot on solid ground, remembering the sailor’s warning about the dock being unstable. Up above them the land rises steeply up from the shore, already a verdant green from the spring rains. Ruined pillars of stone and tumbled walls spill down the hill towards them, white as bone; not even moss grows there. He’s seen sketches of the Cair Paravel of old, the white marble palace that the kings and queens of summer had lived in during the Golden Age, but he can’t reconcile the pictures with what he’s looking at now: nothing but shards of a broken, shattered skeleton. The Calormenes have been trying to pull what’s left of it to pieces for years now, without much success. Rumors vary from the palace building itself back up each night to the stone resisting all attempts at human intervention. Elizar’s not sure he believes either: something clearly happened here, a very long time ago, though even he can’t imagine anything the hand of man can do destroying this.

Edmund’s fingers brush along the outside of his wrist. “Come on,” he says, and Elizar drags his gaze from a tumble of fallen bricks to follow him. Edmund walks like he knows where he’s going, ignoring the path that leads up the hill to the so-called throne room. Even though he knows he shouldn’t, Elizar glances back over his shoulder at the Calormenes, expecting to see them watching them. They aren’t, their attention elsewhere. Edmund leads him across a stretch of sandy beach, their footprints lost amidst the many already there, and hesitates for a heartbeat outside a sea-arch before ducking inside. Elizar doesn’t know why he hesitates; he can see the opening on the other side from here.

“This is where we came through the last time,” Edmund says softly. He’s left off the Cair Paravel accent. “When Caspian called us through with Su’s horn. We were standing on the platform at the railway station, watching the train come in, and all of a sudden it was like hands were snatching at us, pulling us away from England. It – flickered, there’s no other word for it. And when it stopped, we were here.” He stops and turns suddenly, looking back at the beach. “Right here. And everything had changed.”

Elizar doesn’t have anything to say to that. He doesn’t even know what anyone could say to that.

Edmund turns away. “We didn’t even know where we were at first. Narnia, of course, where else could we be – but it didn’t look like any place we’d known in our own time. We went up to the ruins to explore, and first Su found one of my chess pieces and then Lu found the throne room. And then – we knew. We didn’t even have a home to come back to.” He trails his fingers along the water-smoothed wall of the sea-arch, his voice low and soft as he murmurs, “Thirteen hundred years. Unimaginable lifetimes of men. All gone. All of it, with just ruins and legends to show that it had ever existed. I’ve never understood why.”

“Is there a reason that there should be a why?” Elizar asks.

Edmund glances at him. “I don’t know,” he says simply. “The Wardrobe – the thing that brought us to Narnia the first time – it brought us to defeat the White Witch, but then Aslan crowned us and we reigned here for years. We were kings and queens, do you understand? It wasn’t like it is in stories; this was our home. We fought for it, bled for it, worked for it, made Narnia great. There were people here that we loved.” His voice hitches briefly, and he looks down, kicking at the sand before going on. “And then the Wardrobe brought us back to England. The next time it was something else – Su’s horn. But it was Aslan who sent us back. He told Pete and Su that they could never come back – they were too old. As if that was a real reason. The third time, with the Dawn Treader – there was no reason. Caspian didn’t need us. We weren’t even in Narnia. After that it wasn’t even us anymore. We were never supposed to come back after that. Aslan told us that and Aslan never lies.” He shakes his head as they pass out of the sea-arch and back into the sunlight. “But we’re here now. None of it makes any sense.”

“Maybe,” Elizar says, “Aslan can’t keep you out anymore.”

Edmund gives him a sharp look, but he’s saved from answering by a cry from above. “You can’t be here!”

The man who comes scrambling down the hill into the little patch of green clearing they’ve walked into is another Calormene, about Elizar’s age, with black skin and tribal markings picked out on cheeks and forehead. No scimitar; he isn’t a tarkaan or a soldier, despite his robes. Elizar eyes him with fascination. “This is restricted land, not a place for tourists to go walking about!” he protests. A faun with a long-suffering expression on her face follows him down the hill with somewhat more grace, carrying a leather case and a thick pad of paper.

Edmund shows him the pass that Sir Crispus had given them, signed both by Lady Marcia and the head of her contracting company, Jorial Foxtooth. “Surveyors, from Lady Bracken. Sorry, and you are –”

“Bennat Haer,” says the Calormene, staring wild-eyed from the pass to Edmund’s calm face. “Chief architect. Foxtooth didn’t mention any surveyors!”

“Foxtooth never mentions anything, beiha Haer,” says the faun practically, using a Calormene word that more or less means “professor” or “master craftsman.” “You know he gets those whims.”

Haer actually wrings his hands, to Elizar’s fascination. “But we aren’t supposed to discuss the priests’ quarters until next week!”

Edmund shrugs. “Maybe he wanted to have something to discuss. I don’t ask, I just do my job. We’re not going to make any trouble, we won’t get in your way. You won’t even know we’re here.”

“This is so typical of beiha Foxtooth!” Haer says, sounding distressed.

“They won’t do any harm, beiha,” the faun coaxes, giving them an apologetic shrug behind Haer’s back.

“We won’t,” Elizar assures the architect. “We don’t have to go by the temple site, after all – do we?” he has to ask Edmund quickly.

“We probably won’t have time,” Edmund says.

Haer eyes them unhappily, then gives in and says, “Oh, very well,” before letting the faun take him back up the hill to the building site.

Edmund waits until he’s out of sight until he starts walking again. “Well, that could have been awkward. I would like a look at the temple site, I think. Though not right now.”

“There’s not much to see,” Elizar says. “You can see it from some parts of the mainland. There are a lot of accidents on site; I’ve heard everything from ghosts to vandalism claimed. Last year Bahadur threw a snit and had every slave that worked on it executed.”

Edmund swings around to stare at him, his hazel eyes going wide. “He did what?”

Elizar shrugs. “No one ever said that Bahadur wasn’t a son of a bitch. There were riots in Beruna; that’s where a lot of them were from. He sent one of his tarkaans out there with his army and burned half the city to the ground.”

“Lion’s mane,” Edmund mutters, quickening his pace. “If Pete doesn’t get there first I’ll kill the bastard myself.”

Elizar gives him a sharp look, but doesn’t say anything more. They work their way inland, on what even Elizar, child of a city, can tell is a circuitous route. There are ruins tumbled around him – nothing particularly large, just fallen stones and the occasional bit of wall or broken column. It takes him the better part of half an hour to realize that it’s all part of the same building – that they must be walking inside what had once been the great palace of Cair Paravel. He knows that they’re circling the temple site, because he can hear the sound of the chain-gangs and the overseers, fading in and out depending on where they are. Aslan’s teeth, he hopes that Edmund knows where he’s going.

“Changed a bit since the last time I was here,” Edmund says at one point, looking at him sheepishly. “For one thing, this used to be the baths.” He scuffs a foot at a bit of marble protruding from the ground. “Which means that we ought to be going – that way.”

He sets off without looking behind him for Elizar, muttering softly to himself – things like, “Lu used to love this window!” and, “This is the spot where we caught Pete and Osumare Seaworth with their trousers down!” and, “Wasn’t the wine cellar here? Other way, then.” Eventually he gives a grunt of satisfaction and ducks into a tangle of apple trees, half-skidding down a steep slope next a flight of stone steps to nowhere. Elizar follows him, casting an uneasy glance at the place where the frame of the temple is just barely visible over a copse of trees. The voices of the slave-overseers are uncomfortably close, shouting something at the dwarves working on the chain-gang. Elizar shakes a knife loose from its wrist-sheath into his hand, visions of joining them dancing in his head. He’d hoped that whatever Edmund wanted wouldn’t be anywhere near the temple site, especially given how large the palace apparently is, but no such luck apparently.

He finds Edmund staring at what appears to be a surprisingly intact piece of solid wall, that, frankly, Elizar is surprised hasn’t already been pulled down for use in the temple. “Aren’t we in the right spot?” Elizar says wearily, swiping his sleeve over his forehead. He’s not used to hiking around in the country.

“We are,” Edmund says. “Put that knife away and give me a hand. If I remember correctly, it’s heavy.”

“What’s heavy?” Elizar asks, sliding his knife back into its wrist-sheath. He steps up beside Edmund, putting his fingers in the exact places that Edmund directs, and pulls when Edmund tells him to. The wall rumbles sluggishly back as he tugs on the one end and Edmund pushes on the other, eventually managing to get it far enough open that Elizar can see the battered wooden door on the other side, with a hole knocked in just above the handle. Somebody had broken in here before.

“Bloody hell,” Elizar says, staring at it. He’s seen his share of secret doors, but he’d never even have guessed that this one was there. Even now, when he glances away to take a drink of water from the flagon he’d brought, out of the corner of his eye it just looks like more ruins.

“I think,” Edmund says, fumbling in his bag, “that if I hadn’t been here, you wouldn’t have seen it at all. Hopefully no one else has been poking around – aha!” He says this triumphantly, pulling something out of his bag.

Elizar stares at it. It looks like nothing more than a long metal cylinder with a flared end capped with a bit of glass. “What in the name of the Lion is that?”

“This,” Edmund says, “is a torch. And it’s a good thing I had one on me when we were brought here, too; you’d be surprised at how handy a torch is in Narnia. Susan was apparently doing the washing-up; she got here with soapsuds all over her hands.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Elizar says blankly, then flinches despite himself when Edmund does something and the end of the torch lights up, illuminating the dark depths behind the door as Edmund pushes it open.

“Watch your step,” Edmund says, stepping inside. “It’s a bit steep, and there’s a lot of rubble lying around. And if you steal anything, I’ll chop your fingers off.”

Elizar puts his hands in his pockets, fighting back a pang of regret. He follows Edmund down the narrow stone stairs out onto a platform overlooking a circular room, taking in the vaulted ceiling and the marble arches lining the circular walls as they near the bottom of the first set of stairs. Edmund makes a satisfied sound and leads the way down another set of stairs to a pair of iron-work doors, one of which is hanging crookedly open. It creaks and falls from rusted hinges as he tries to push it the rest of the way, crashing down onto the marble floor and making them both jump back. Elizar glances up the way they’d come, certain that the sound had been heard, but Edmund doesn’t appear to take any notice of it. He steps delicately around the fallen door, shining the torch up at the ceiling.

“There used to be some light there,” he says. “But I suppose it’s been covered up since. Well, that’s probably for the best.”

Elizar stands still just outside the still-standing door, taking everything in. It’s clearly a treasury of some sort, or had been once; there are several artfully arranged piles of gold and silver objects, along with elaborate sets of full armor, empty plinths where statues must once have stood, and a number of small, locked chests scattered across the floor, amidst the rubble of the partially collapsed walls and ceiling. The deans of both universities would sell their own mothers into slavery just to get a look at this place.

Opposite him there are four niches set into the wall, each one holding a massive chest covered in worked gold. The statues that stand behind them are seemingly untouched by the passage of time; Elizar swallows as he meets the cold marble eyes of a fully-grown Peter, crown and all. In the niches on either side he recognizes the forms of Edmund and Susan, while the fourth statue is a young woman with a distinct family resemblance. The Queen of Morning, Lucy the Valiant.

Elizar has never been Circle, like Mayor, and he’s never thought of the kings and queens of the Golden Age as anything other than abstract historical constructs, even after being directly confronted with them in Cair Paravel. He doesn’t even believe in Aslan anymore. But this – whatever this is – this makes it all feel…real.

He casts an uneasy glance at Edmund, who is picking his way through the rubble, picking up first one small chest, then another after fixing his torch on the lid and peering at it. Presumably they’re labeled. “Come on,” he mutters, “I know you have to be here, you bloody things –”

“Can I help?” Elizar makes himself ask.

“Not unless you can read Old Narnian,” Edmund says, then makes a satisfied as he apparently finds what he’s looking for. He carries the chest over to an empty plinth, then digs into his bag again and comes up with, to Elizar’s surprise, a set of lockpicks. “I did used to have a key,” he says, his mouth quirking slightly in amusement as he puts the torch down next to the chest and leans over it.

“I can do that,” Elizar says. “If you want.”

“I think I’ve got it,” Edmund says as the lock clips open. He pushes the lid back as Elizar finally ventures over for a closer look. He’s expecting piles of gold or gems, the sort of treasure that’s piled up elsewhere in the chamber, and is disappointed to see nothing more than piles of flat document cases.

“Not what you were expecting, eh?” Edmund says, lifting one out. He takes the flap and shakes the case over his lap, catching the folded up vellum that falls out. He unfolds it very gently, holding his breath. Elizar expects anything that old to fall to pieces in his hands, but the worst damage he can see is that the ink has faded a bit.

“Good as the day it was signed,” Edmund says with a sigh of relief. He pats the floor like it’s a living thing. “Thanks, darling. Knew I could count on you.”

“Who are you talking to?” Elizar asks, glancing around. He doesn’t know what he expects to see, but every ghost story about the nameless isle he’s ever heard is running through his head right now. He can practically hear the whispers coming from the walls.

“Cair Paravel, of course,” Edmund says absently, running his finger down the line of archaic looking text. “Yes, I thought so. I hope you’re right about this, Pete,” he mutters, folding the vellum back up and replacing it in the case.

“Cair Para – you mean the castle?”

“She’s a living thing, you know,” Edmund says, sorting through the cases in the chest. “Used to move her insides around when she wanted to. Peter used to swear that he’d have conversations with her. She’s not dead now, just…dormant. Hibernating.”

Elizar almost makes the Lion’s Tooth, the Old Narnian sign against evil, but stops himself just in time. Instead he wipes sweating hands on his trousers and looks around again. The light in the room seems to be getting dimmer, and it wasn’t terribly bright to start with. Even Edmund glances up, frowning, and picks up the torch, shaking it.

“Are you seeing this?” he says.

Elizar lets his wrist-knives slide down into his hands. “What else is down here?” he demands.

“Nothing!” Edmund says, switching the torch to his left hand as he reaches over his shoulder for his sword hilt. His gaze flickers quickly around the room. The shadows seem to be getting darker, the room closing in around them. Edmund draws his sword with a hiss of steel. “I am Edmund called Just, King of Narnia,” he says, and in that instant Elizar believes it, down deep in his bones, like he’s never believed anything before. “Whatever you are, man or beast or spirit of the distant past, show yourself. If you are a friend to Narnia I will do you no harm.”

Elizar feels the hair rise along the back of the neck. He tightens his grip on his knives. “Something’s here,” he breathes.

“I know,” Edmund says.

And the torch goes out, plunging them into darkness more complete than a living tomb.


----------
The painter Sarapammon first appears in Our Impudent Crimes. The first mention of the castle of Cair Paravel as a living thing is in The White City.


Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32