Ed,
The Bellmaker hasn't figured out the casting process yet. Don't worry, though; it'll be ready by spring.
--Lucy
Chapter 10: Jadis
The Just King was not enjoying his vacation. Edmund had sent the fleet to Terebinthia for the winter, which left him alone with a small Narnian garrison and Felimath firmly under Fyren's control. Fyren's surviving brother still held the other islands, and Edmund would have to wait until spring to dislodge him.
Two days after the storm, a body had washed up on shore. She had been naked and pale, and a dagger had protruded from her back. Edmund's dagger. Water must have washed the oils from her skin that allowed her to keep her cat form. Fyren had taken one look at the corpse and sent a request to Galma for Sigerite Inquisitors. Edmund had resisted. Unfortunately, the Just King had few troops and little leverage in Felimath, and Fyren's ship had sailed. In a few weeks, I would be able to watch a witch-hunt in all its entertaining glory.
Edmund had sat next to the body for a long time as the waves washed in.
...But that was real life.
At the moment, I cared more about a game.
I took another look at the board. Edmund's pawn phalanx had deteriorated in the center, and his king hid from mine behind the only pawn that hadn't advanced. My faras—you'd probably call it a knight—waited on the board's right edge. It threatened a pawn on Edmund's flank. I took it. In another turn, I could drive his al-fil away from the king. The Just King grumbled about what he called "the incomprehensible rules of medieval chess".
"Any news from Susan?" I said.
Edmund rested his cheek on his hand. He slipped his al-fil to the side of the board. He'd saved the piece, but paralyzed it. If it moved, I could take it.
"She's still marrying Fyren, if that's what you mean," he said.
I advanced my second knight. It reinforced the barrier that I'd formed around Edmund's king. Soon, the fers—you'd probably call it the queen, although it only moved a space at a time in any direction—could move in and finish him off.
"You're talkative today," I said.
Edmund held the neck of his king and rolled it on the board like a dropped coin in slow motion.
"Good move last week," he said.
"Oh?"
"You told me the price of your 'gift' after I used it," he said.
I smiled.
"And you think I'll ignore your obligation if you humor me?" I said.
Edmund knocked one of my knights off the board. Knight takes knight. The ivory pieces clicked.
Drat.
"Actually…" Edmund said.
"What?"
"I'm humoring you so that I won't feel bad when I refuse to give you whatever I 'owe' you," he said.
No choice now; I moved my fers toward the center. Without the knight, it seemed open. Vulnerable.
"You said that Charnians only care about violence," I said.
He shrugged. His al-fil scuttled backward toward my king.
"Yeah…sorry about that," he said.
I scoffed and moved my own al-fil into his path.
"You're laying it on a bit thick, little king."
"Eh?"
His pawn advanced. In two moves, he could retrieve his rook.
"Apologizing to me," I said.
Again, Edmund shrugged.
"Look," he said. "You had a tiny shred of humanity that I didn't know about and I stomped on it. Believe what you want. I am sorry."
Al-fil takes pawn. Knight takes al-fil. Fers—queen—advances.
"Aslan's little paladin," I muttered.
"Eh?"
"I don't believe you," I said. "But I'll give you this much, Edmund: You're more manipulative than I thought."
We exchanged pawns on the left flank. The survivors stood face-to-face, deadlocked. I focused on the center again. Edmund's blather about my 'humanity' had irked me for some reason, so...
"Do you know why you haven't murdered your brother and sisters yet, Edmund?"
"Huh?"
His hand hovered over his king.
"Careful," I said. "Once you touch a piece, you have to move it."
Edmund ran his fingers through his hair and moved his pawn toward my side of the board instead. A blunder. I snatched it with my al-fil.
"Because I love them," he said.
Now he moved his king. Too late. My pawn was only a square away from promotion. I grinned and shook my finger at him.
"Wrong," I said.
Edmund rolled his eyes. I took his al-fil.
"Enlighten me, then."
"Plant toxicity," I said.
Edmund's king hobbled toward the pawn even though it would arrive too late. Useless bravery.
"You're joking," he said.
"No," I said. "I'm not."
The thought had first struck me in Charn when I lay down beside my sister's body on the Last Battlefield. The stars still twinkled; that was the peculiar thing. They had guided the destinies of millions of dead Charnians, and yet there they were. They had outlasted us. But the stars had seemed suddenly empty. Their heavenly dance didn't foreshadow wars or births or plagues or anything. They just were.
I'd remembered my childhood. Iaida's death had meant a lot to me when I was a girl: Growing up. New responsibilities as an only child. Loss. A new room…
…And of course, my mother's death. Someone—I'd never learned who--had slipped a cursed extract of jugiza into her meat at breakfast. My mother lost her energy. Once upon a time, she had driven me ragged, fussing with my hair and tightening my corsets until I could barely breathe. Now she crawled into bed and slept. She missed appointments, broke promises. When we buried the year's Grain King alive to convince Zardeenah to renew the harvest, my mother remained in her room. Mother once allowed me to sleep beside her, but I distanced myself from her soon afterward.
I pictured mother's exhaustion as a disease and worried about catching it, so I busied myself with the things that my mother would have wanted when she was still my mother. I learned my poetry, music, and magic, and wasted a lot of time crying. When my friends asked, I told them that she was busy. They didn't believe me, but I wasn't a very good liar yet.
If I could do it all over again, I would cut the link even sooner.
And Father, and Linshiol, and Affa…
In short, I'd seen many deaths, and all of those deaths had meant different things to me. But meanings seemed too romantic for a world without people. I thought about their roots. The pun is intentional: the answer lay in the Charnian materia medica.
I didn't tell Edmund any of this, of course.
"Think about it," I said.
I promoted my pawn to a rook. Edmund's king hesitated between my knight the new piece. It scrambled to an unoccupied square in the board's left corner.
"I don't get it," he said.
King takes pawn. Knight threatens king. King retreats. Fers advances.
I sighed.
"If you wanted to poison someone in Narnia, what would you use?" I said.
"I dunno…hemlock?"
"Exactly," I said. "It tastes bitter and you'd need a lot of it. Not an ideal assassination weapon."
King retreats. Knight takes pawn. King retreats. Knight threatens king…
"Now take jugiza, for instance," I said. "Tasteless. Magical. Best of all, it lingers. The victim takes months to die, but she falls into depression first. The family structure collapses."
"Charming," he said.
King retreats. Rook threatens king. King retreats. Knight threatens king.
"Imagine a world," I said, "where anyone can kill anyone else easily, and nobody knows who did it."
"…and a single family owns the world," he finished. "High stakes."
"You see?" I said.
"I'm beginning to," he replied.
"Checkmate, by the way."
Edmund stood up and slowly exhaled. He pushed his king over.
"Let me show you something," he said.
"What?" I said.
"One of my games."
We arrived at a field on the edge of Felimath's harbor. Dwarves scurried through trenches that they had apparently dug at random while human overseers shouted orders. Sometimes, Dwarven heads disappeared as they walked through the trenches, but I followed their movements by the plumes of smoke that rose above them. They clenched long-necked pipes in their mouths. The length was a necessity, since their oversized pipe bowls burned hot, and they sucked their tobacco in greedy gulps. Good workers, as always. They'd served me zealously during the war against Aslan, and replied to their new overlords with gnashed teeth and grumbles. Still loyal to their deceased queen. Fools.
"Slaves?" I asked.
I laughed when Edmund shot me a horrified look.
"Of course not," he said. "Don't let the whining fool you. We pay them more than human laborers."
"Why?"
"Because they work faster and better," he said.
"What a quaint notion."
"Speaking of quaint…" he said.
Edmund pointed to a section that the Dwarves had carved out of the hill. They'd piled bits of rubbish a short distance away—a brooch, a piece of carved ivory, a barbed spearpoint, and a few broken pots.
"Explain," I said.
"This was once a tavern," he said. "The whalers came here a thousand years ago after driving schools of blackfish ashore."
"You learned this from the locals?"
Edmund shook his head.
"We learned it from the stuff we dug up," he said. "They built this place before Felimath converted."
He showed me a basement that had once held barrels of whale oil, and a few copper coins that had oxidized into green flakes. A grave plot with death's heads on the stones stood perhaps fifty paces from the ruins. ("From King Olvin's time. We found a gold hairpin that corresponds with the Pire excavations in Narnia…") The graves were in a glade. Grass grew where bramble should have been, and a willow hung over the headstones.
A short distance from that, the surf swoshed onto shore. Edmund swept his hand along the wall of the trench. He stopped at a point where the dirt changed from black to nutmeg brown.
"See this?" he said.
"Dirt," I said.
"Layers," he replied. "Each one comes from a different time, and the older stuff is deeper. I read about it before I came to Narnia."
"What's the point?" I said.
Edmund gave me an odd look that I couldn't quite place.
"You never wondered about Narnia's past?" he said. "Who built the Stone Table? Cair Paravel? The barrows in Galma?"
The light was fading. A dwarf snatched a jade bead from the dirt. It sparkled in the sunset for a moment before he stuffed it into a pocket when the foreman wasn't looking.
"No," I said. "I saw Narnia when it was built and I understand how it operates. Anything else is for philosophers and fools."
Edmund leaned against the trench wall. His foreman bickered with the Dwarf, who denied everything in a high-pitched screech.
"What you said earlier about poison and siblings…" Edmund said.
"What?" I said.
"You killed your family, didn't you?"
A blinking white spot fluttered a short distance away. I realized that it was a moth. I met Edmund's eyes and gave him an offhand wave.
"Oh, most of them," I said. "No great loss."
For once, Edmund didn't look away.
"Then I feel sorry for you," he said.
My shoulders tightened. I tried to slap him, but I'd forgotten to solidify myself in time, and the open palm passed through his face. And he just stood there with that smug, sanctimonious look on his face. I took a breath and lowered my voice until it sounded calm—the way a Charnian queen should sound.
"Edmund?"
"What?"
"You will regret saying that."