Foreigners in Creta

How quickly the amazing came to seem ordinary. Susan had learned that in Narnia, the country she had visited when she was a girl and had tried for so long to relegate to the realm of "childhood fantasies," successfully or so she had thought.

Then again, Creta wasn't Narnia. No talking animals, no magic.

In fact, the differences were more those of a foreign country than of an entirely different world. People drove cars that ran the same way, but on the wrong side of the road like the Americans. Most of the produce in the stores was absolutely ordinary and what she didn't recognize might just as well exist in her own world outside England. The language reminded her of Greek, but many people also spoke the German-sounding but recognizable English that appeared to be the language of Amestris, the country bordering Creta to the east. Clothes were either in the continental style or looked like a traditional fashion that could also be Greek for all she knew.

All in all, it was very easy to imagine that she was just spending time in southern Europe somewhere. Then, she would run into the differences.

Right next to the chemist's shop with its medicines was an alchemist's shop with a before and after picture of a glass vase transmuted from a pile of sand. On a street of eateries with people and food that looked Greek or French or Chinese there was one that could have been middle eastern except that the proprietors and much of their clientele had red eyes. And alongside the doctor's offices with the usual specialties of opthomology and pediatrics, there was one which specialized in automail, artifical limbs that far exceeded any prosthetics she'd ever seen before or even imagined.

That Aslan was involved, she had no doubt. Mr Courier had proven it with the solid gold chess piece decorated with rubies that looked like it was from Edmund's old chess set in Narnia. It wasn't a knight, like the piece she'd found in the ruins of Paravel when they'd been pulled back to help Caspian. No, this one was the queen and Mr Courier had told her that his Master had put her here to "save the queen."

It was too much to expect, of course, that Aslan's messenger would give her any practical information on exactly who this queen might be and how she, Susan Pevensie, a twenty-two year old Englishwoman who had lost her entire family only a year ago, using her skills as a typist and sometime archer, was supposed to go about saving her.

Because of course, Mr Courier had been sent by Aslan. She had enough experience with these things not to be put off by his appearance. He looked like a middle-aged, middle-class man in an old fashioned three-piece suit and bushy mutton-chop sideburns. She'd gotten into his car expecting to end up at a function at the Chamber of Commerce and had gotten out in the capital city of Creta. After which he'd told her he'd be around to help if she needed it and driven down the road and out of sight.

Edmund had been fond of saying that Aslan never did things the same way twice. So she was the lucky one who was thrown into another world with neither a relative nor a friend to help. Just a portly balding messenger who promised to "be around if she needed him" and then had disappeared.

It didn't seem very dangerous though, unless the plan was to bore her to death. She walked down the street to the Amestrian embassy, where her English had gotten her a job as a typist.

"Good morning, Mr Breda," she said, sitting down and putting the first clean white sheet of paper into the typewriter.

"Good morning, Miss Pevensie," he answered.

Roy Mustang paced back and forth in his office in the palace of King Leksi the XXIII of Creta. He was a citizen of Creta now and an advisor to the King. And unable to set foot in Amestris again on pain of death.

He'd made full general in Amestris, but never Fuhrer. Roy then promptly retired from the military and Grumman had made him the first civilian Secretary of State the military dictatorship had seen. By the time Grumman retired six years later, the country was able to hold elections. Roy hadn't run for office. He and Riza had visited with the friends they'd made among the Cretan royal family and just happened to be out of the country when the duly elected, civilian Fuhrer had started the trials for war criminals. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death in absentia.

His only full time staff was Riza, but he didn't even have her for the time being. She was pregnant for the third time in the six years they'd been married. The last two times, she had miscarried at around six months. She was at five months now and would soon be entering the dangerous period. So she was home, on bed rest, attended by the Drs Elric, Al and Mei.

To further complicate matters, the Queen Mother from Drachma had chosen this month to visit her daughter, King Leksi's wife, Queen Sophie of Creta. She would be accompanied by a retinue of almost a hundred people. King Leksi had asked him to arrange his own special kind of security for the visit. The Drachman party must be under constant surveillance without feeling like they were under constant surveillance.

Roy had his contacts. Of the soldiers who had worked for him when he was in the military, only Heymans Breda was no longer in Amestris. Now a civilian, he worked for the Amestrian ambassador to Creta. Vato Falman, a major now, was part of the contingent sent from the northern fortress of Briggs to keep an eye on the Drachman party for Amestris. Jean Havoc, also a civilian, was in Central City, working for Madame Christmas, Kain Fuery was a captain stationed at the new technical school at South HQ and George Miles was the Major General in charge of East HQ.

When Breda came into the office, Roy looked at his pocketwatch. "Seventeen minutes late," he said in greeting. For a man who was habitually late himself, there was a certain irony in such a greeting.

Breda meant to make a sarcastic reply, but Mustang had been pretty antsy lately. Not without reason, he had to admit.

"I'm here now," he said. "And Rebecca's holding a private room for us at the Amestris Lounge."

Roy grabbed his coat and followed Breda, who never took his off and went right back out of the room he'd just entered.

"How's your new secretary working out?" he asked as they walked down the street. "The one with the Wellesley accent?"

"It's not Wellesleyan," Breda said. "Similar but not the same. She does her work just fine but there's something strange about her."

"You had her checked out, right?" asked Roy.

Breda nodded. "Mei assures me she's human, at least. I just wish I knew where she was really from."

Rebecca had taken a page from Roy's mother. The establishment Breda's wife ran was part fancy restaurant, part hostess bar and 100% the best information gathering organization west of Central City. She showed them to their private room, secured by technology Fuery had developed, brought in their lunch and sat down with them.

"Do you have someone for me?" asked Roy.

Rebecca Catalina Breda put three files down on the table. "Take a look at these, Mustang."