"How long have you known!" Edmund was up and pacing, and, had there been anything in the parlor lighter than a couch, he might have thrown it. "Were you going to keep it to yourselves forever!"

"Only until this Moonsong." Peter had finally dropped to the edge of the firm couch, still nearly standing, as if his brother's anxious energy was running through him like a spark. "You needed the sleep, Ed. I won't see you kill yourself."

Susan shuddered, so slightly that even Lucy did not notice, and the fourteen-year-old wondered again just what she had seen. How close, exactly, would Edmund come to that very feat before they were through?

"No." The dark haired boy was calming already, everything in him steeling into a fiery resolve. "You would see them killed instead, while I slept. What precisely, Peter, do you know?"

"Peter knows nothing." Lucy sprang to their eldest brother's defense, the fresh fire sparking in her gold brown hair, stance as fierce and firm as a lioness. "I spoke to the dryads, and I decided that you were not to be told."

Edmund whirled on her suddenly. "You had no right."

"I am queen." The eight-year-old stared at him without flinching, heedless of bare feet on the cold flagstones and old straw. "And, I am coming with you. I had every right."

"Again." He brought all the weight that he could bear into the simple words, his fury boiling and barely controlled beneath the surface. "What, precisely, do you know?"

"There are saplings leaving the grove in the morning to find sun and never returning in the evening." She ticked off the facts with a cool resolve, the water to his fire, creating an evenly tempered steel. "Their mothers search for them but never find them. Days or weeks later, their empty Trees disappear out of thin air, and the mothers feel their saplings scream once, and then nothing."

"And, we've found no idols?"

"We've hardly had a sky dance, Ed." Peter was standing again, agitated at being left to the side of the conversation, blond hair flying as he gestured with his hands. "We've barely begun looking for idols."

"Did you check in your bedchamber, Brother Mine?" Edmund's voice was harsh, raw as if the other boy had rubbed salt into an open wound. "Have we begun looking that far? As best I can tell, we have yet to leave this room."

"I've sent the satyrs to take stock of everything that comes in or out of the port cities," Susan stood and pressed Peter down to his place on the couch, feeling the tenuous relationship between the two boys begin to spit and strain, "in preparation for the coming season's taxes. The order was given just after Sunsong. If anything is amiss, I will hear of it."

"Aslan's blessings." The ten-year-old flashed his sister a look of pure gratitude, knowing better than to ask about the sorrow that was in her eyes as well. "At times I think you could run the kingdom without us."

"No." Susan settled back down into her place, gesturing for the younger boy and Lucy to sit as well. "I am far too old and sensible to impersonate a dryad sapling in order to get myself kidnapped. Now, when do you leave, and what provisions do you bring with you? You will need food and messengers."

"Nothing that speaks." Edmund almost stood back to his feet, memory flashing against the dark eyes as he leaned closer to Susan, pressing his point. "That last bat nearly got Lucy killed."

"Juice beetles, then." It was Lucy who offered the suggestion, eight-year-old eyes bright at the idea of having thought of something the older children had not. "Send a murder of crows after us, and they're sure to notice the beetles within a day."

"You're sure that juice beetles only live in the Cair?" Peter, as usual, objected, doing his best to swallow down his pride as he watched his younger siblings plot and scheme without him. "You won't be taken to the one other place where they happen to live?"

"I spoke with a magpie just last night." Lithe little fingers twined their way into his, squeezing just hard enough to be comforting. "They are practically a myth outside of the Cair. Some of the birds don't even believe they exist."

"They didn't believe in humans either." The blond boy shook his head. "And, the word is Sunrest, Lu, 'last Sunrest.'"

"I still don't understand how we are meant to know that it is a Sun and not a sun." Susan intervened on the younger girl's behalf, granting Peter the mercy of a distraction. "It certainly looks enough like our sun."

"It's a Sun because it is a Star." Lucy straightened in her best imitation of a centaur, and Edmund snorted in spite of himself. "Your sun is likely a star, just as your world is round and not flat."

"And, this world is likely a madhouse." The Susan glanced around the room at her siblings and grew suddenly sober, returning to the task at hand with all of the efficiency of clock work. "Because, it seems that all worlds are."