The house was far too quiet. Cedric walked through the passages of his home, looking for somebody. Even the servants seemed to be missing. It was peculiar...

He walked into his study and stopped dead. Peter was sitting at his desk, Edmund by his right shoulder and Lucy sitting on the desk itself. Susan stood by the window with Haidee, her slim white hand on the younger girl's arm. Haidee began to tremble as soon as her father entered the room but Susan's presence gave her strength.

"Is there a problem?" the Governor asked with icy politeness. Lucy gave him a radiant smile.

"My siblings and I have been in discussion for the past few days and we believe that you may have motives beyond the joining of our families when it comes to the union of Haidee and myself," Peter said. "Motives that involve independence for the Islands and it seems to me that you've been planting false impressions into the heads of the Islanders."

Cedric blustered and raged but the Kings and Queens didn't move. Haidee would have bolted if not for Susan's hand. Lucy kept her wide smile trained on Cedric until he faltered, a vein throbbing in his forehead.

"This is preposterous, your Majesty!" he growled.

"I am Emperor of the Lone Islands, Cedric. They fall under my dominion and you are my subject; until you come to realise that there can be no marriage between your girls and either myself or Edmund," Peter told him.

"We also feel that the power is too concentrated on the Islands, a Governor holds his position for life after all, and so we are decreeing that a council must be formed to spread the control and give the people back some of their rights and freedoms as citizens of Narnia," Edmund added. Peter looked round at his brother with surprise. They exchanged a look, humour dancing in Edmund's eyes,

"We'd also like a tribute," Lucy pitched in brightly.

Cedric blinked. "A tribute, my Queen?"

"Yes, a tribute! A tribute in gold from the Islanders to us to show their allegiance," she said. "To be delivered once a year on this date to the gates of Cair Paravel. Starting today."

"And if the tribute is in anyway late or unable to be gathered then the Governor will have to match it using his own gold," Edmund said. "And I don't think you are going to make that first payment."

Cedric's face turned an ugly colour and he turned on his daughter, his breath coming in small snorts. Haidee lifted her eyes from the rug and met his gaze.

"At least you can stay here on the Islands forever now, you little copy of your mother," he snarled and stormed from the room. Haidee wilted and sagged against the window sill.

Peter turned to his two younger siblings, his eyebrows raised. "A tribute of gold?" he said. "You didn't think to maybe run that by me or Su?"

"It worked, didn't it?" Lucy said, jumping neatly off the desk. "Some old fisherman down at the docks suggested it to us. He said people would be willing to do it."

There was a strange choking noise and they all looked around. Haidee's shoulders were shaking uncontrollably as she laughed. Susan caught her as her legs buckled.

"Oh, in the name of all the sweet Island grasses and the salt of the Sea, what have you done?" she giggled. "We are never going to hear the end of this one."

"...which takes us neatly onto Point Twelve; the maintenance of the shepherding huts on Felimath. It has been noted that the Eastern huts in particular are in a state of disrepair..."

Alain's droning voice floated through the doorway as Peter and Lucy walked past.

"I didn't know you could be so cruel, Lu," Peter said. "Haidee's uncles are wasted as fisherman; I swear they must have been lawyers or politicians in a previous life."

"I was getting a little annoyed with the way Cedric was treating me and Susan," she replied. "Like all women are incompetent or something. No wonder Haidee felt so boxed in."

"Well, hopefully both Haidee and Anya will have more freedom now," Peter said.

Edmund moved a bishop. Haidee surveyed the chessboard disparagingly, gazing in dismay at the remnants of her army. They had carried the board down to the point overlooking the bay. It was balanced on the wall between them; they sitting on either side. Edmund slightly uncomfortably so.

"I'm going to miss playing this game when you have gone," she said suddenly. "I suppose I could teach Anya to play." She moved a rook.

He smiled and took her last knight. "Maybe we could come up with a way to keep playing."

Seven Years Later

The Islanders always presented the tribute on time, much to the Kings and Queens' disappointment. A tiny part of them longed to see Cedric dig in his pocket again.

Lucy and Haidee exchanged letters over the years. Lucy's were always full of news and things they had done; Haidee's were more sparse. From her replies Lucy gleaned that the Islands were run far more efficiently since their intervention and there were no more notions of independence among the Islanders.

She enjoyed opening her mail at the breakfast table and she would either discuss the contents with her siblings or keep it private depending on her nature. One morning, the faun waiting on them handed her her usual bundle and she recognised Haidee's elegant script on the top envelope.

She slit it open with her knife and furrowed her brow as a second note fell out of the main parchment.

"It's for Edmund," she said, holding it up.

There was a pause and then Edmund lunged across the table in a frenzy and scrabbled to snatch the note from his sister's hand. He unfurled it, his face burning with anticipation, and then grinned horribly as he read the contents.

"I have her now!" he cried triumphantly and ran from the table, leaving behind some very confused siblings.

"Does anyone know what that was about?" Peter asked in the silence following his sudden departure.

Lucy exchanged looks with her brother and sister and then went to find her wayward brother. She found him eventually, standing over his chessboard and chuckling fiendishly.

This chessboard in particular was something of an irregularity. Edmund refused to let anybody ever touch it; if he played a game with one of the others then he fetched a different one. Yet gradually, the pieces moved back and forth across the squares as if a game was being played.

Edmund looked over his shoulder as his sister approached and then pointed at the board.

"She's made a mistake! I've got her now!" he crowed.

"You are playing chess with Haidee?" she said disbelievingly. He nodded.

"We devised a way to tell each other our moves," he said, showing her the note that had been enclosed in the letter. It made no sense at all to Lucy; it was merely some numbers and letters scrawled on a torn off bit of parchment. "Seven years and she is yet to beat me," he added with relish.

"Well, soon you should be able to play her properly again," Lucy said. She waved the letter at him. "She's accompanying the yearly tribute."

So, we are back into Narnia! Time for the home stretch, where it will unfortunately all get a bit sad.

Also, I've been plugging away at my other fic Destiny's Instrument and I've been thinking of a possible sequel to it. If I was to write it, would you like to see Haidee in it? Without giving too much away, she would be quite different from the Haidee here but the essence of the character would still be the same. Leave a review telling me what you think and I'd appreciate it if you went and had a look at Destiny's Instrument too. :3

Till next time!