Ch 8 - Bad News All Around
Van stalked with the captain to the cook's closet. The lady trailed after, but both he and the captain asked her to wait at the door.
Once they were inside, Van muttered, "May I have your permission to talk plain. Sir."
The captain nodded once and gestured to a crate for Van to sit.
He didn't. "Look, I'll let pass a good bit, Captain. A ship that freezes even in southern waters. Running weapons for a lot who'll just as soon hang us, and with a crew that might do the same, if it weren't for the loot we haul in. I wouldn't even mind defending you if it happened. You're the damnedest sailor I ever met. But starting with that leddy out there, we've been pulling in trouble by the minute. I say we unload them in Selbaran, or at the Faeries' Gate—"
"Absolutely not."
Van pointed angrily at the door. "They. Are. Narnian. And she's allied with them. And now, it's not just a feather duster, a goat, and a talkin' tree. Those are centaurs. Warriors. They're more trouble to keep alive than if we drop them back overboard."
"I will not kill in cold blood," the captain said.
"And what happens when your moment of kindness gets our throats cut?"
The captain laughed, actually laughed. "We've been in danger of that from day one of our endeavors, Van." More seriously, he added, "Now they've seen The Phoenix and her crew, we can't risk word getting out. But neither will I suffer them dying on my watch. Is that clear?"
Van glared at him. He had enough authority, and enough rapport, with the captain to do that, but duty and respect forced him to respond with, "Yessir."
The captain smiled. "Easy, Van. I wouldn't put us in any danger I could otherwise avoid." He clapped Van on the shoulder. "Further danger."
After a moment, Van grinned back, acknowledging the joke. They had spent their first voyage outrunning cannon fire from Archenlander ships, and then ducking customs authorities from the Lone Islands. Van had scars on his back from sliding down roof tile on his escape from the governor's men on Doorn.
Captain bore a scar or two, himself. Van had barreled into his cabin in a fit of pique one evening to find the captain in the middle of changing his shirt. One side, near his waistline, bore a nasty stab scar from a pike or spear. The other side, almost in the same place, had a neat little knife slice.
That was one of the reasons Van sailed with him. A man who bore no scars had no experience, and no business on the ocean. A man who had lived to carry scars such as the captain wore ... What a story that must be.
But Van had learned not to ask. And, it seemed, the list of things he could ask about the captain and that lady outside was getting shorter every moment.
- # -
Peter sank heavily to a camp chair outside his tent, exhausted and sweating under his armor in spite of the deep snow. They had been chasing a band of trolls who had invaded Narnia for the past two days. He had lost two dwarf bowmen to the trolls' poisoned spears, and everyone was as tired as he.
Everyone except Onyx, the unicorn who had, years ago, appointed himself Peter's battle mount. "Are you sure you don't want me to keep going, sire?" the unicorn said. "I could be there and back overnight, with news on their movements."
Peter didn't need the intelligence. He knew the trolls were trying to get to the White Witch's abandoned castle, and he knew why. In it lay a hoard of treasure, the likes of which could end a war in favor of the side who claimed it.
If only he could touch it. The treasure was cursed. Anyone who laid hands on it would remain in that treasure room forever, fawning over his wealth, not realizing he was trapped there with it until he starved to death. Peter had narrowly escaped such a fate, and to this day he attributed that escape to Aslan.
He had hoped the Witch's allies would not have the means to break the spell that cursed the hoard. But he knew better. This may be harder than you think, he heard Aslan say in his memory.
True words indeed. His whole kingship had been harder than he'd thought. What he needed was a different angle, a strategy the Witch wouldn't expect, wherever she was. He needed Edmund. Damn his turncoat, dismissive, cunning, desperately needed brother. Damn him for not being there at Peter's side when he needed an ally he could trust.
Peter waved Onyx off, more to get the unicorn away than to gather information. When Onyx had gone, Peter rubbed his gloved, frost-numb hands across his bearded face. "Ed," he whispered, "where are you?"
The punch of running feet through snow reached his ears. Peter spied a streak of grey from the corner of his eye. Leina, a wolf—and until he abandoned them, Edmund's constant shadow. How prophetic.
And not good prophecy, by the look of it. He stared at her as she skidded to a stop before his chair, gasping. No greeting, which didn't shock him, but the concern on her face did. His hawk companion, Salvia, flew down from the finial of Peter's tent to perch on a crate. "Is Susan all right?" Peter asked. "Saris?"
"It's not them I've come for. Queen Lucy took ship for Selbaran."
"I know."
The wolf shook her head frantically. "No, no, the ship was attacked. Sunk by The Phoenix. I have it from an albatross who saw the wreck, and The Phoenix sailing away from the site."
Lucy. Oh, Lucy, Lucy.
A wave of nausea plowed over Peter. The little he'd eaten churned in his stomach and fought to come back up. "Does Susan know?" he croaked out.
Leina shook her shaggy head again. Even she looked remorseful—she, who had never allowed anything to dull her sharp tongue, even when throwing barbs at him about his knighted name, Wolf's-Bane. "Your news first," she panted. Her serious expression drove the truth home. The Phoenix never left anything to be mourned behind.
Lucy. The best of them. Unfaltering. Now dead.
His breath came short as he rose from his chair. His head swam with fatigue, pain, and fury. "I don't care how you do it, or whose help you get," he said, struggling to control his trembling even as his voice betrayed it. "Find that ship, and have it burned it into the ocean on sight."
- # -
Lucy paced back and forth, waiting for Van and Edmund to emerge from the cabin. When they did, a silent look from Ed conveyed all she needed to know. Van and the crew were unaware of Ed's identity, and would remain so. It would be Lucy's task, then, to be certain the centaurs didn't give him away.
Van stared hard at her for several moments. When Edmund departed, he wasn't so silent about the conversation. His mouth twisted into a snarl. He let loose a string of curses, only half-muffled in allowance of her presence.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I don't like it," Van said. "It's flat insane. Captain's not going to execute them."
"Of course not!" she exclaimed. "We don't even know what they want yet."
Van looked around with a cautious expression, then rounded on her and grabbed her by the arms so fast she yelped in shock. "I do. You. You're going to tell me who you are. I see an ax hanging over your head, and I don't want to be nearby when it falls."
"What?" she sputtered. "What are you ... Are you mad? Get your hands off me!" She wrestled with his grip, but he held on harder, his eyes blazing. He held her close enough that she saw startling flecks of near-black in the bronze of his irises. The bronze glittered like pyrite, a fascinating, changing array of rust to gold that had her staring even after they both stilled. From there, her gaze dropped to his mouth, twisted into that sneer. She wondered for a bewildering instant what his smile might look like at such close range.
Then he stopped sneering. His gaze flicked over her face and landed on her own mouth. His bruising grip on her arms tightened convulsively and he jerked closer.
Lucy listened to the wind whistle through the rigging, certain he could hear her thundering heartbeat over it.
Then he thrust her away.
"Wait!" she cried, still dazed. "How do you know ... The ax? What is that, what does it mean?"
But he swept out of sight without a word.