I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies.
Valin waved off the guards, who roughly pulled Danya to her feet and cast her down beside Roche, out of the way. She wrapped her arms about him defensively and Lucy could see her lips moving, and though she was too far away to catch the words, whatever was said seemed to bring both of them a great deal of peace. With a final embrace – the implications of the word threw a chill down Lucy's spine – they turned their attention back into the room, as did she.
"Boscowe," Valin said, turning to one of the nearby guards, a decorated officer who stood to attention. "Inform the guests who've already arrived that they may assemble for the ceremony now. The others should be arriving soon."
Lucy tried to move back into the crowd of maids as he spoke, only to find that most of them had gone – the gifts were apparently all present now. She tried instead to blend in with the few who had stayed behind to arrange the boxes in pleasing patterns, though her eyes stayed glued to the dais, where Valin was moving to address the army once more.
"No doubt you're all wondering where this came from," he said, lifting up the cordial again. "I have answers for you, but I plan to share them with our guests as well. You shall now align by rank along the walls to give them a place to sit. When the final guests arrive, you will be dismissed for a special task of which you will soon learn."
He touched the hilt of his sword, bloody in the sheath, and the guard stood as one and began to file out of the benches towards the walls. The last few maids dropped the packages to scurry out of the room, leaving Lucy standing awkwardly by herself – hurriedly, she stepped out of the way, edging around the table to resume the task they'd abandoned. She was still at a loss as to what to do – she decided to wait and see what Valin was planning. He would not have summoned her brothers if he did not intend to somehow use them for his own ends and she was anxious to see just what he might have in store, to prevent it if she could.
"Clean this up," Valin barked to a magician nearby, gesturing to the blood that spattered the ground in front of the altar, the remnants of Roche's defiance. The command was amplified even over the stomping of metal-tipped boots as the army began to form ranks by the walls. The woman scurried to obey; Lucy saw her pull a few odd items from her pocket and utter a few words; she drew a line around the stains with half a charcoal stick and suddenly the stones were spotless. Lucy looked down at the gifts on the table and moved a few, trying to remain inconspicuous.
When she looked back up, the scene was changing yet again. Roche and Danya had been pulled to the far side of the room, off the dais entirely, and three guards stood behind them, though no one had bothered to bind the maid's hands. Where they had been, at the front and center of the dais, now Peter and Edmund stood, the latter freed of his gag. Lucy could see that the corners of his mouth were bleeding slightly, but he stood straight and grim beside his elder brother. Susan's arrival seemed to have awakened in them some last reserve of strength, and even dressed in the plainest of clothes and stripped of their crowns, they looked every inch like kings. In contrast, despite all Valin's finery and the weight of the gold on his brow, he looked to Lucy like a bully playing dress-up in a game that had apparently turned deadly.
People were now strickling into the room from all its main entrances, men and women in lavish clothes who took up seats once more in the benches and cast curious looks at the strangers on the dais and at the gathered magicians. Whispered flitted through the air, but now Valin was simply standing, watching as the hall filled little by little. Lucy saw Peter's eyes meet Susan's across the room and read the desperate apology in them. For a moment, she wondered if this could really be it – the end of their quest, the last cruel twist of fate that would end their reign and their lives, far from their beloved Narnia, unknown and unmourned. She had made the mistake of trusting the wrong people – Timothy, Danya, Vareth – not bad people, but people whose own troubles weighted them beyond being able to aid four strangers from a foreign country, and it had come to this: she alone, of all who had ever been a part of their band, was free in any sense of the word, and even she was sorely limited by that very fact.
At last, Valin seemed satisfied that his audience had grown large enough, and stepped out in front of the two Narnian kings.
"Before I am to be wed, I thought my subjects might like to know a few things about my lovely bride-to-be," he announced, lifting a hand to gesture at Susan, whose cold expression remained despite his patronizing smile. A few necks craned to stare back at her, but the scene at the front still held most everyone's attention. Valin continued. "Some of you may be wondering why, when so very many fair maidens have sought my attentions, I have selected this mysterious young woman as the lucky one. The answer is simple, but incredible, and it lies with the extraordinary group of people behind me." He turned to the magicians, several of whom cringed back. One young wizard began to weep. Then Valin nodded to the man who had spoken before, the Head Sorcerer, Lucy recalled, who stepped away from the group to stand beside the king.
"For years, our noble country has grappled with internal issues of seemingly unsolvable magnitude," he began. "Overpopulation. Famine. Disease. All this time, our great king has endeavored to find a way to overcome all these challenges for his people. And at last a solution has been found. At last, we have discovered a way to deliver beloved Caelan from the noose of her twin prisons and the Void betwixt them. With the combined power of the Superiorly Talented, we have discovered something so incredible, you may not believe until we prove its existence to you. We have discovered something that has the potential to eliminate all the hunger and poverty of our people. We have discovered a supply of unlimited resources, waiting only for us to take them. We have discovered a second world."
The declaration visibly shocked everyone in the room but the magicians, the assorted royalty, and a few of the highest-ranking military officers. Immediately, an explosion of murmurs blossomed in the crowd, with a few disbelieving laughs, but mostly the response was one of excitement and wonder. Lucy, knowing the catch, found her stomach churching. The wedding guests quieted once more as the Head Sorcerer stepped back into place and Valin raised his hand to settle them.
"It is true," he boomed with uncontained pleasure at their reaction. "And therein lies key to unlocking the mysteries of my bride-to-be. I present to you Queen Susan…of Narnia."
The named echoed off hundreds of pairs of lips as every eye turned to her. Lucy froze where she was. Valin continued talking as they gawked, stroking the horn on his belt.
"When we made our third venture into this second world, called Narnia by those who inhabit it, we were most savagely attacked by a band of soldiers headed by this same young woman and one other. Luckily, we were able to overcome the rogues with minimal damage to our own persons, and slay several of the beasts that accompanied them. One of their number escaped. And the last of them stands behind you now, soon to become my wife and an invaluable asset to our cause. With Narnia's queen at my side, its people will much more easily come to see things our way. With a little extra leverage, they will bow to our will unconditionally. And it just so happens that I have that extra leverage."
Lucy began to search for the box that contained her sister's bow and quiver under the pretense of rearranging the packages. No one noticed. They were too busy whispering to one another about what Valin could possibly mean – extra leverage? As he stepped to the side to clear the room's view of Peter and Edmund, their confusion only seemed to grow. But the king of Caelan just smiled.
"I present to you a spy captured in our own castle, a coward who attacked my royal person, then ran when the battle turned from his favor, a pathetic pretender to his country's throne," he declared, leering, and as Lucy's head snapped up, she knew from the looks on Edmund's and Susan's faces that it wasn't just her own blood beginning to boil. Valin spat out the finale of his introduction with great contempt: "Peter, High King of Narnia."
"You speak slander and untruth," Susan declared from the back of the room, her profile noble and imperious and utterly wrathful. Her brother lifted his eyes to her in gratitude and uncertainty and Lucy's heart broke to see that Peter was not far from believing what was being said about him. For his family's sake, he would not give up without a fight, but the self-doubt that always underpinned his noble spirit was blossoming in the light of what seemed like his final failure, and if something did not change soon, she worried he might give in to it. Valin motioned him forward and he went willingly, his back straight and his eyes bright with a strange sadness, a readiness to accept whatever would come next.
At the side of the room, Lucy's hands closed over a familiar, long, silver box – Susan's gifts. Her skin did not burn. The spell had been lifted.
"The land of Narnia is a wild place," Valin told his excitable subjects, who were hanging onto his every word. "There, animals have learned to act as humans and strange beasts roam unchecked. Though with our superior strength and strategy we could easily win a war against such ilk, I am at heart a gentle man and would prefer to avoid the bloodshed such action would inevitably create. Therefore, King Peter, I would like to propose a compromise."
Lucy stacked several boxes on top of the silver one, then threw a glance sideways, to be sure no guards were looking before the drawing her dagger and slitting open the side.
"Narnia will not compromise while you hold her monarchs captive," Susan cut in. The guards around her shifted uncomfortably, unsettled by the nature of their task – were they there to keep a prisoner silent, or to keep a queen-to-be safe? Valin's lip curled.
"I was not asking you, my dear," he said. "I was asking your…brother, is it?"
"Yes," she replied. "My brother. And any proposition you have for Narnia may be addressed to both of us."
Lucy slid her hand into the package carefully, remembering that the tips of Susan's bow were capped with short metal blades for close-range fighting. Amputation avoided, she felt for the bowstring, so that she might get her sister's weapon as ready as possible without removing it from the box and revealing herself.
"In Caelan, Susan, dove, you will learn when to let men do the talking," Valin told her, turning back to Peter. "Tell me, little king, have you in your country heard of a Promise Potion?"