Author's note: I've rediscovered this in recent weeks and been inspired to start working on it again. Be warned: there are some nasty things going to be happening to Our Hero in this fic: they start here. There's no direct depiction of violence - but its aftermath is (I hope!) a bit grim.

TWO

Hazy autumnal sunshine caught specks of floating dust before the bare attic schoolroom's window. Engrossed in scratching a schooner's hull into a page with the dry end of his quill, Drinian did not hear the quack of approaching voices, shooting to attention only at the ominous screech of the iron-studded door.

Fortunately for him his elderly tutor had been equally inattentive, dozing behind his desk until the sound brought him upright with creaking knees and the clattering of an overturned chair. The Lord Tinian spared him a brief smile that widened at the impressive courtly reverence offered by his heir.

"Sir; Mother; Katharina." Discreetly brushing paper dust from his book, Drinian composed his features into a suitably blank expression. At a nod from his employer, Schoolmaster Mallian scuttled like a startled crab into the corridor, closing the door with its familiar wail behind him.

"Your mother rides for Greenglade directly." Tirian, so said His Majesty, addressed even his dearest as he would a recalcitrant mariner aboard his fledgling fleet. "What's this you have? The Lives of the Renowned Rulers, eh? And whom do you study today?"

"King Erimon the First, Sir." Beyond the name he remembered nothing of the famous king's existence. "Has grandmamma sickened again, Mamma?"

As he hoped, the mournful sympathy of his look diverted both parents from inconvenient musings on his education. "Your uncle summons me with all speed," Elizabetha affirmed, the birdlike black eyes she had bequeathed both her dark, long-limbed Etinsmeres brimming. "Which means I must be away at once if I'm to be beyond the Black Woods by nightfall."

"Who will read my bedtime story?" Katharina pulled her mother's soft plum velvet sleeve. Tirian swept her up to perch high on his shoulders, her glossy ringlets swinging into his face.

"Papa can read tolerably well for an evening or two," he boomed. "And what of the young master here? Does he require a story?"

"Thank you, Sir, but I'm grown beyond such silliness." As his sister lashed from her high perch, pudgy fingers grazing his unruly crown, their father's laughter rebounded from the low roof beams until the very walls seemed to thrum with the sound. Casting his eyes down, Drinian snatched at a sentence in the Life of Erimon that, uniquely among the facts listed in a dry tome, had intrigued him. "Sir – why do we name our coins as Lions and Trees, not the Pestas and Shillons of Telmar as they did in King Erimon's time? I was about to ask it of Master Mallian. The Lord Sopespian says our coins named for a barbaric folly."

He observed a storm gathering in the creases about his father's eyes; just as swiftly it dissipated, though the effort it cost was apparent in the twitch of a muscle at his temple. "The Lord Sopespian speaks less sense than the Hobbled Hermit of the Southern Hills. Those are Telmarine coins, and we of Narnia long ceased to consider ourselves to be sons of Telmar – or those of us with our wits did!"

"Tirian, enough!" his wife protested automatically.

"The lad deserves answer, Elizabetha; as bosom ally to the Prince he'll play his part in the governance of the realm one day." Papa was sombre, and that unnerved him more than Drinian cared to admit. "Our coins take their name from Narnian myth and fable, and it ill behoves any race to trample the myths of their motherland. Did His Highness repeat the old wom – Sopespian's words?"

"He heard that the Lady Prunaprismia told them to Lord Miraz, Sir."

Elizabetha tutted. "Did I not tell His Majesty that female he calls the Prince's nurse ought to learn discretion? Fills the child's head with nonsense and permits that he eavesdrops on his elders!"

"There's no need to eavesdrop: that harridan can be heard from the farther side of the kingdom." Brother and sister shared a gleeful smirk, cut short by their father's frown. "Enough of these trifles! My lady's escort awaits, we must see her safe away. A fair gallop will see you safe to your brother's house before moonrise."

* * *

For two days life continued tranquilly. Drinian attended his lessons with all the diligence he could muster, suffered the visit of dancing master Hofian with no more than a roll of the eyes, and divided his leisure time between teasing his unfortunate sister and daydreaming of the ships Papa declared would one day make Narnia queen of the sea. Grandmother Greenglade was not so dangerously sick as had been believed; Mamma would be home on the morning of the third day with her escort of household men. And soon the family would ride south and inland again, to visit Caspian at the Palace.

* * *

The manor was silent, all the servants in their beds. The large nursery lay in darkness, rocking horse and miniature galleon casting frightful shapes across the floor to shift in the dappling light of a pallid half-moon. Curled beneath heavy woollens on a low pallet in his small room to the east, Drinian shifted in his sleep, the bass whisper of a voice in the opposing bedchamber barely tickling his ear.

In the window of that little room a lantern glowed, its feeble light useful only where it struck polished window glass. Beyond in the encircling woods, had anyone been about to hear it, a strange sound broke the midnight spell: the fretful whinny of a nervous horse.

Sliding from her shelter of cloud, the moon brushed beams across something hard and shiny, lancing icy shafts through the gloom. Drinian rolled onto his side, nose wrinkled against an imagined stench. Beneath his window gravel crunched, but he heard nothing beyond the whistle of the sea storm in his dream.

Then came the crack and crunch of breaking timber.

The mainmast! He shot bolt upright with the covers clutched to his throat, fog dissipating from his head as his landlocked surroundings came into focus. Rough voices echoed in the hall; the outraged bellow of Papa and then another, shrilling with defiance; then a third, deep and toneless, with a note that made Drinian's blood run cold, all of them sliced through with Katharina's frightened mew. Metallic footsteps clanged on the old wooden stair and he buried himself under the covers, trembling less with cold than fear as the clamour grew and the voices and the thudding melded into a great chaotic ringing that threatened to burst through his skull.

Someone groaned; someone staggered, a stout bulk making the walls shudder as it slumped. Katharina's scream tore through Drinian's brain, snapping the invisible cords that held his limbs and sending him tripping, nightgown coiling like a malevolent serpent around his ankles, across the floor. "Treason!"

He snatched up a miniature wooden cudgel that lay just inside the nursery door and staggered across the spacious playroom, panic deadening his wits. Katharina's shrieks rose another octave; the low rumble of a stranger's voice bade her stop her tongue.

And as his hand curled around the doorknob, the shiny brass sending a chill through his damp palm, her crying ceased.

"No, my lord!" His turn to yell – or try to as he was spun from his mission into the muffling softness of a familiar embrace. Irina, the plump dame who had cared for Etinsmere's heir since the cradle, rocked her chick as if he belonged there still, soaking his disordered hair with tears and efficiently preventing all his feeble attempts at escape. "There's naught you can do, m'lord, save protect yourself!"

He stilled, sensing that to struggle was useless, until the clang of metal soles had ceased to ring and the manor was plunged back into awful silence. Only when shock struck and loosed her muscle and bowel to water could he slip free, swift as an eel out of her hold and through the connecting door to Katharina's chamber.

His legs gave way. A ghastly gurgling sound ripped from his throat and he sank to the floor, the room blurring around him. Blood. He was surrounded by blood.

She lay sprawled across her dainty white-curtained bed, her head slewed weirdly, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. Across her waxen throat a dark ribbon ebbed and oozed. Barely aware of what he did, Drinian stretched to grasp one tiny foot, his hand jerking back, burned by the icy contact. Dead. Katharina. Dead.

His chest was hollow. He could neither breathe or move, only kneel at the foot of her bed and stare. If tears fell, he did not feel them; if Irina, or Ellena, or any of the household women gathered sobbing at his back, he had no knowledge of it. "Katharina!"

Her name was no more than a whisper, yet it roused their nurse from her stupor. Gentle hands raised him, a shaky voice crooned meaningless words into his ear. From a great distance he heard another voice, raw and harsh: Ellena, mustering the household in her mistress's stead. "Ariana, fetch the master a cup o' something strong, and you, Sulia, pack all you can afore the mistress comes home. M'lord, you're Master of Etinsmere now, you must do what his Lordship would've wished."

Master? Numb as he was the word wormed into his mind, ticklish and unwelcome. On an animal wail he flung himself at the unmoving bulk that blocked entry to the main stairway. "Papa! No, Papa!"

Though frantic hands plucked and voices shrilled around him, they could not pry him from Tirian's lifeless body. He pummelled the yielding flesh, careless of the sticky gore that coated his nightshirt and hands. Sobs tore through his lean frame, emerging in rough, ragged grunts. The world had closed in until only he and the corpse beneath his hands remained, engulfed in a deep black chasm of despair.

At length his strength began to fail and the women could prise him loose to lay, panting, against Irina's shoulder. Gentle fingers pried his mouth open, a cool glass touched his bottom lip and he retched, shuddering from the pit of his empty stomach as raw, pungent spirit seared his throat. A spasm tore his gut, bringing half the liquid back as it had gone. "I – apologise," he tried to sputter, the word ending on a high giggle as the absurdity of his courtly training struck home. "They've killed my father – Kathi…"

"Hush, my lord, we'll get you dressed – Janina, fetch biscuit, and fruit and all the wine and water you can carry; take it down to the mooring as my lord instructed." Ellena left the shaking child to his nurse, her strident practicality keen as a swordsman's blade through the cloudy haze around him. Drinian roused himself and, though he staggered, stood tall as his years would allow. I'm Master of Etinsmere, he told himself groggily. And the Master of Etinsmere did not wail in the corner while his servants – his women servants – decided what was to be done.

Bold thoughts could not translate into decisive speech, however: when he opened him mouth, the broken squeak of a terrified child came out. "Ellena, wha'…"

"The master gave orders Master Dri – my Lord." The façade of assurance cracked, and instantly he reached out to snatch her trembling hand. "My lady'll be home in the morning, and you'd best be ready. If only he'd not commanded her take such an escort to Greenglade! Run along, dress and be ready, your poor mother shan't be needing more than a wash and a bite o' bread. Hurry, 'tis what the master would wish!"