Chapter Text
“Sire. Your Majesty. Edmund.”
Edmund awoke with a start and the worst sort of disorientation. His neck was at a painful angle and he was suddenly aware of the smell and sensation of wet ink against the side of his hand. Blinking the sleep away, he was also aware of Lord Peridan’s reproachful expression as he leaned over the back of his seat, one hand on the desk in front of him where he had just picked up the overturned ink bottle.
“I thought you slept last night, Sire,” came Peridan’s reproach.
Edmund reached up to rub his eyes instead, then realized with a curse just how close he had been to spreading black ink all over his face. “It wasn’t that late,” he replied, taking the handkerchief proffered to him. “I just haven’t recovered from all the other late nights.”
It was a grey day outside, which made it feel even more like the crack of dawn or the evening, even though Edmund knew, logically, that it was mid-morning—and he was late to the audience hall. He was reminded of this fact by Sallowpad’s sharp clack from the windowsill, where the Raven was keeping watch on the steady stream of Narnians. “Ten minutes, Sire,” he called out—rather unhelpfully, Edmund thought, as he had too much ink on his hand and sleeve to proceed directly to the hall.
“I will be there at once,” he said instead, rising and rolling his neck with a wince. He had awoken early that morning to try and get ahead of incoming correspondence, which he still did not feel he had caught up on since leaving for Tashbaan some months ago. Instead, his exhaustion had caught up with him precisely at his desk, which was made all the more embarrassing by the fact that Peridan had predicted this very outcome last night when Edmund had waved him off close to midnight.
Still, Peridan had enough sense to keep his mouth shut; a quality Edmund had never appreciated more than now, as he scrubbed his hands clean in a basin in the corner of his study and replaced his stained shirt with a clean one. He had no patience for being fussed over, whether to help or to gloat. Whoever would have to replace Peridan in this role soon, he hoped, would have to follow his example.
He willed that thought to stay behind in the warm study with the inky water and the stained shirt, and tried to avoid noticing how he and Peridan fell into perfect step with one another, leaving for the audience hall.
As summer left Narnia and the clouds grew greyer and rainier, the Four were finally all in Cair Paravel—but a heavy blanket of exhaustion fell upon each of them. Peter had returned from raids in Ettinsmoor with a broken shoulder that took far too long to heal. What he lacked in arm strength he now had to supplement with strategy in meetings with various military agents to ensure the northern border was secured ahead of the winter—which was naturally a greater nuisance to Narnians than to Giants. Susan, after a few weeks of relative seclusion in her rooms, now seemed to never be in her rooms; she was constantly occupied with reviewing the Cair’s coffers and meeting with various merchants. Although she did not say it, Edmund knew that this was her way of attempting to mitigate the damage done by Rabadash and predict fluctuations in trade with Calormen—a battle he would gladly let her fight, given her excellent maths acumen.
Out of the three of them, it was Lucy who Edmund saw the least, given that the two of them took opposite shifts hearing the various grievances or requests. And while he worked on their never-ending pile of correspondence, she was busy with palace arrangements for the coming winter: setting aside hibernation areas, making arrangements for ill or disabled young who would need warmer areas to heal, and ensuring that those affected by a recent blight could receive enough food to fill their winter stores.
Whatever Lucy was doing without him, Edmund was sure, was a lot more meaningful than listening to twenty straight minutes of people arguing over golden laced wyandotte and welsummer chickens’ feather patterns.
“The difference is around the eyes!” exclaimed a red-faced Faun, retaining just enough of his temper to remain before Edmund’s throne, a single dappled chick in the palm of his hand.
Beside him, a deeply annoyed Dwarf looked like she might bite the Faun’s head off. At their feet, two groups of dumb chicken offspring cheeped loudly in two crates. “The chicks did not mix. These are mine,” she gestured brusquely at one of the crates. “And those are yours.”
“They mixed,” the Faun snapped at her and turned to Edmund. “Your Majesty, I swear by the Tree who gave me life that the chick in my hand is not mine, as is obvious from her feather patterns; if she grows she will not give the eggs I am looking for. I am being robbed!”
For not the first time in the last two months, Edmund wondered, briefly, if he ought to have allowed himself to be kept captive in Tashbaan all those months ago in order to escape the sheer ridiculousness of the tasks before him. Narnia had narrowly escaped two wars, an injured High King, a Queen forced into marriage, wrangling an unruly Archen Prince in foreign territory… and here he was now, mediating between two warring chicken coops.
It would be funny if he was not so damn tired.
“Hold your peace, friends,” he said, gentle but firm. The Faun and the Dwarf did indeed fall silent, but the chicks only cheeped louder. “You are both to go home and reinforce the barriers around your property to prevent more mixing between your coops. You are also to trust in your chickens’ judgement—if a swap did indeed happen, perhaps there was some affinity between your chicken and her newly-adopted egg. However,” he raised a hand before the protest that was forming on the Faun’s lips. “To resolve this matter once and for all, I am allocating you each a chicken from Cair Paravel’s own coop. Each is of the species you profess your chicks to be, meaning that you will now have an even better yield than before. I expect this to put an end to this matter and restore peaceful relations between your household.”
Mercifully, the Faun and the Dwarf neighbors retreated with their respective cheeping families and no complaints, each with a hen under one arm. Behind them, the hall hummed with murmurs from other Narnians in the crowd. While autumn was beautiful in Narnia, its inhabitants were also profoundly aware of its risks. After the festive summer period, they often began to brace themselves for a painful winter—a frenzy and tension that more often than not resulted in ruffled feathers, hurt feelings, or painful memories from a time when winters lasted much longer than a few months.
Peridan’s tall and slender figure made its way through the crowd back towards the dais where Edmund sat. He seemed so Narnian himself that it was difficult to remember he had once been a young lord from Archenland, just past his teenage years and new to everything Narnian other than the stories he had been told. He moved with a command of the room that was truly remarkable, his eyes frequently meeting Edmunds’ over the various furred, horned, leafy or bearded heads of the spectators.
After a few quick words with one of the guards, he was again at Edmund’s side. “The next matter is a bit more delicate, Sire,” he said. “Something about property where the river is concerned.”
“Excellent,” Edmund replied—and he meant it. Anything other than chickens.
The Dwarf who approached had a braided autumn beard and wore the tall boots of someone who waded in water often. He bowed. “Your Majesty, I am most grateful for the opportunity to be before you. I am Rorakin of the Glasswater ridge forge.”
“Well met, Rorakin,” said Edmund. “Many of the precious pieces in this very building have been crafted by your kin.”
“We are honored, Your Majesty,” Rorakin said with another gruff bow. “As you well know, Sire, our forges lie south of here, on the southern side of the Great River. This is a crossing we must make multiple times a week to deliver our goods to the port of Cair Paravel—some of Narnia’s finest exports. Problem is, the Great River is much too rough and narrow; we have had to set up a rope system to get coracles across, but this is fraught with risks and much too cold when winter comes. As demand for our jewels increases, this crossing has become even more difficult.”
“Have you any alternatives to crossing at this point in the river?”
“The alternative is the fords of Beruna, which lie too far west, and the tides north of Glasswater make the passage too rocky by boat without taking a longer way around to the port. In the winter this too will become a much more challenging crossing.” He took a breath. “We seek permission to build a small bridge across the Great River, Your Majesty. We have the hands for it and family that can source the stone. If permission is granted, construction would be complete within a week—just in time ahead of the autumn storms.”
It was indeed a more complicated situation than that of the chickens. Edmund frowned. “The river-god has command of the Great River and its flow. A stone bridge would be considered a violation of his sovereignty over those waters.”
Rorakin grimaced. “It was our hope that Your Majesty could intercede on our behalf. We have already tried to negotiate with the naiads, but they do not care for our affairs.”
“The Talking Beasts might also take issue with disruption to the riverbank in that area and the flow of fish,” Edmund added. “But we understand that there are risks to operating in the way you currently are. We will give it some thought. Thank you for approaching us.”
As Rorakin bowed and made his way back to the crowd, Edmund turned to Peridan, who stood at his elbow. The man had parchment in hand and was taking quick notes.
Edmund suppressed a smile. “You do know there is no need for you to act as scribe for each of these inquiries.”
“You will need the notes later,” Peridan replied, hand flying across the page. “And the scribes never capture them in the way you like.”
“You paint me a very fastidious man.”
“Not at all, Sire,” came the reply—perhaps more wry than Edmund would have hoped.
He was about to wave for the next individual to step forward when there was a sudden commotion by the entrance to the hall. He spotted Sallowpad perched on a chandelier, and one of the Ravens in his command alighted just by the King’s feet.
“Sire, the delegation from Archenland is arriving. They made much better time than we anticipated.”
It was a rather sudden end to the King’s audience, but there was no way around it—Edmund was fairly sure he was the only monarch currently in the palace and the Prince of Archenland deserved no less than a royal welcome. And the recently-discovered Prince Cor of Archenland had not yet visited Narnia—unless one counted the time he got lost in the southern border and was rescued by a group of Dwarfs and Talking Beasts.
“Shall we ride out to meet them?”
***
It was, of course, his luck that he would receive the Prince himself—and most likely be the one to take the boy under his wing. King Lune had thought it suitable for Cor to spend a few weeks with the Narnian monarchs, so as to become familiar with the reality in the North. And although Edmund knew the workload would be a significant burden—and, to be honest, he was not yet quite recovered from a summer of playing glorified nursemaid to the former Crown Prince of Archenland—he had found it in himself to agree to the arrangement.
He knew, privately, that Lune was more ill than he let on. Managing two teenage Princes, one with so much energy that he required far more attention than he should—as Edmund still painfully recalled from their summer in Tashbaan—and another who had to catch up on fourteen years worth of missed schooling was no small challenge, and the demands on the King’s time were great. In some ways, Edmund knew, Lune trusted them more than many of the courtiers in Anvard. And while Cor could be trained in riding, swordsmanship, and books from tutors in Anvard, Lune no longer rode out to meet his people as he once did; nor did he necessarily wish to expose his son, so young and naive, to the machinations of others unaccompanied. Narnia, then, would be a more than effective training ground.
The Archen delegation was four men in Archenland’s colors and the golden-haired Prince, who already looked more comfortable on a horse than Edmund remembered. The closer they got, the more Edmund had to remind himself not to be surprised that twins were, in fact, identical. The boy looked unsettlingly like Corin.
“Welcome to Cair Paravel, Your Highness,” he called out with as much warmth as he could in the wind.
“Why thank you, Your Majesty,” the boy said, bowing his head and looking almost bashful. “It is an honor to visit Narnia for the first time.”
And so polite, too. Edmund felt his irritable mood fade a bit. “I’m sure it was quite the scenic ride, although hopefully less exciting than the last time you ventured into Narnia. Come, let us get you off that horse and before a good meal.”
“I would love a Narnian meal!” Cor exclaimed. “Father says I need to eat more so I can gain as much muscle as Corin.”
There was such unbridled enthusiasm in the Prince’s tone that it gave Edmund pause. And indeed, when he met the boy’s gaze…
“Oh by the Lion’s Mane—”
“Sorry, sorry!” Corin burst into laughter, eyes shining with glee. For it was, indeed, Prince Corin—not the new Prince Cor—who was before him. “For what it’s worth, I considered keeping up the farce for the entirety of my visit. But I could not have done that to you, Your Majesty.”
Edmund knew he could not exactly hit the Prince of Archenland over the head in front of so many people, but by the Lion, he did not care to prevent his leg from jostling Corin’s stirrups quite roughly as he turned his own steed. “It might have served you well to attempt more gracious behavior for longer; maybe some of it would have rubbed off on you. Where’s Prince Cor?”
“My father, King Lune, sends his most sincere apologies,” Corin says, almost sounding princely as he said it. “The Crown Prince has suddenly fallen ill—he is still adjusting to new food and new weather, you see—and it was not deemed wise for him to travel in his condition. However, in view that Your Majesties had arranged for a Prince’s arrival, they sought to send the next best thing.” His expression sobered somewhat. “I know you were expecting to show a newcomer around, and I’m no longer going to be a King, but I will be the sibling of a King and you seem to still be the best from whom to learn such a role.”
“Indeed,” Edmund said tersely. “Although perhaps if your Royal Father had been made aware of the extent of your exploits during our last time together, he may have considered a trip like this differently.”
Corin bowed as graciously as he could from his saddle, utterly shameless. “And I am ever thankful for your discretion. I have matured, I assure you.”
Edmund snorted. Beside him, Peridan looked equally unimpressed. “I think I’m still pulling straw out of my hair from digging through stables to find him.”
“You’re still here, Lord Peridan?” the question was rudely phrased—but clearly was not meant rudely, given Corin’s bright grin. “I thought you were leaving this autumn.”
Edmund willed his shoulders not to tense. Naturally, the boy would arrive and immediately stick his foot in every topic that did not concern him. He did not look at Peridan, so he did not know if Peridan looked at him.
“All in good time, Your Highness,” was Peridan’s only reply.
Turning to one of Corin’s bannermen, Edmund changed the subject. “Were you under instruction to conceal the Prince’s identity?”
“Not at all, Your Majesty,” the man replied immediately, staring directly ahead, as if afraid to meet Edmund’s eyes. “We answer to King Lune, whose orders would never include deception.”
“They say that,” Corin said smugly, “but they only would have named me if prompted. Really, though, you should have realized Cor could never get here so fast on a dumb horse.” He urged his horse forward to join the King’s. “Do not worry, Sire—after years of playing the role of Crown Prince, I am loath to take on that role again. I do believe Narnia will be much more enjoyable as a Prince.”
Enjoyable to whom? Edmund thought, but did not say.
It was precisely at that moment that Queen Susan’s banner appeared on the horizon. She was making her way back to the palace at a brisk pace. In a few short moments, she had reached them and dismounted, her long black hair flying behind her as she rushed to meet the Prince—Corin, not Cor, Edmund muttered to her as she passed, for good measure.
“Corin! What a delightful surprise!”
“Well, two months can be quite transformative at his age,” Peridan muttered as they watched Corin be swept up in Susan’s embrace, although he didn’t sound like he believed it. “Perhaps he has matured.”
Edmund shook his head slowly. His neck still hurt from the unfortunate morning nap. “This may kill me.”