25 - Leaders And Lawbreakers

Lucy and Arrow streaked through the sky toward Asha's ship. The dryad queen was already on deck, holding her bow. The moment they landed, Lucy opened her mouth to blurt out the news of Ed's danger.

"I know," Asha interrupted. "I've been watching the enemy ships since he left The Phoenix."

"You're—You're not going to go to him?" Lucy protested, wincing at how the outrage in her voice must sound to Edmund's wife.

The look Asha turned on her bore a humbling distress, but Asha just turned back to the grey water spanning the breach between her ship and that of the Witch. "He's not in pain."

Two dryads approached Asha and gave her nods of deference. "It's done, Your Majesty."

"Good," Asha said. "May Aslan's breath be swift." As the dryads left, she turned her attention back to the Witch's ship and whispered, so low Lucy didn't think she was meant to hear, "And may I be strong for you."

Lucy fisted her hands, fury and impatience and fear boiling up inside her and pushing the words out: "Tell me what's going on!"

Asha turned to her then, fixing the full weight of her vivid-green stare on her. "You must go back to The Phoenix and make it ready for full sail toward Narnia."

"Leave him to her? Are you mad?" Lucy screamed.

Asha pressed a hand to Lucy's trembling arm. "All is as it should be, Lucy. You must trust him."

Trust him? Trust her brother, who had spent his life wrestling his fear of the White Witch, and now had gone willingly into her hands? Trust him, whom she'd come on this mad journey to save in the first place? Near tears, she threw off Asha's hand. "What? He's going to be tortured, and all is as it should be?" She seized Asha's arms and shook her. Then she noticed the tears in Asha's eyes also, and loosened her grip.

Asha flung her hands off, panting. "Do you think I want this? He is doing what he can to buy us time!" Her voice shook, and tears tracked down her cheeks. "I have lost a daughter to this war, and I might lose a husband also." She jabbed a finger toward the anchored Phoenix. "The only way we're going to make it to Narnia before the whole of the Witch's fleet moves on it is by the wind that pushes that ship. So the least you can do, Lucy Pevensie, is captain it and guide us there."

Realization plowed through Lucy like a dash of frigid water. She stared at the Witch's ship, open-mouthed. "Oh, Edmund," she whispered sorrowfully.

Snapping out of it, she turned to Arrow. "Where did Van go after we left him?"

The griffin shook his head. "Disappeared like a mouse into a bolt-hole."

No time, no time! "We'll have to move without him," Lucy said, even as regret punched through her. She leaped onto Arrow's back again. "Fly, Arrow, and hope the wind stays with us. I'll have to send you looking for Van after I'm back at The Phoenix."

- # -

The odds were against Narnia. The Witch had amassed a staggering fleet of Calormene and Ettin ships, and based on everything Edmund knew of her movements, she was about to point them all at Cair Paravel and blow it off the map.

All now depended on how well he lied. And if you were to lie, it was best to stick as close as possible to the truth. So Edmund raised his head and stared Jadis in the eye, and said, "I can't fight you anymore."

She laughed. "Don't be silly. You haven't fought me at all. You've been avoiding me." She angled her head, looking for all the world like a courtier playing coy to a suitor. "How long have I spent in that head of yours, Edmund darling?" She fingered the hair at his temples, and he had to stiffen himself so as not to recoil from her chilly touch. "It seems to be wearing on you."

He held her gaze and allowed her to see what facing her cost him—the discomfort, the churning in his gut, the way his breath came fast as he remembered the still-vivid, terrifying night he'd spent as her captive, waiting to die. The grim knowledge that now, she would have the opportunity to finish the job and move on to the rest of his family. And he was totally unarmed and unequal to her power.

She studied him the way a collector studied odd bits of plant. "What do you want?"

"I want this over."

She smiled sweetly. "I don't believe you. Jorena!"

The door swung open, and with a sinking sensation, Edmund braced himself. A Dreadken stood, her face demure, in the doorframe. Her blood-red eyes lingered on Edmund before drifting to Jadis. "Your Majesty?"

"Read him."

The Dreadken spread her hands even as she entered the room and let the door close behind her. "My talents are at your service as always, my lady," she said with silken smoothness, "but my gift finds only fears, insecurities, negativities."

"I don't care!" Jadis whipped a small, sleek wand from the folds of her skirts and thrust the point of it into the Dreadken's throat until the other witch gagged and coughed. "You will do as I say, or you will find yourself trickling across the deck and into a wash bucket. And I will find another who is willing to do as she's told." Jadis turned her stare on Edmund once more. She stalked back to him and got right in his face, then scratched at his collarbone with the tip of her new wand. "I'm interested to find what frightens you, love." Leaning forward, she breathed across his lips. Even her breath smelled like ice. "Aside from me, of course."

- # -

Dripping and muttering curse words under his breath, Vandelar hoisted himself over a rail and onto the deck of the White Witch's ship. The last thing he'd wanted today was an unscheduled swim in ice-cold waters. Scratch that. The last thing he'd wanted today was to run headlong into a death trap. No luck on either count, it seemed. But no one was better than he at sneaking about undetected and stealing people blind.

Today's loot: one errant ship's captain. "I must like you or something, Edmund Pevensie," Van muttered. "I'm about to fashion my own bloody noose in your honor."

He scanned the deck carefully, but no one was approaching this dead-end spot. Bless those landlubbing Calormenes, he thought darkly. They wouldn't know a sensible ship's design if it bit them on the arse.

He turned around and held out his hand over the rail.

Yaré took his hand and slipped over the rail onto the deck, silent as a ghost. "He's here, sir. I smell him," she said. "They'll smell you, too. Rub yourself down."

Van curled his lip and took out a jar of some foul ointment the hag had provided him, then smeared it over his exposed skin. The hag gave an approving nod. Van took a deep breath and almost choked on the stink. Even his heightened senses couldn't detect his own scent underneath the concoction. "I smell like a pack of minotaurs who've been wrestling in week-old refuse."

"Good." Yaré gave him a beaky grin. "Goes with your temperament. Sir."

He sneered. "Why did I bring you again?"

"My sparkling wit, I should think." Her dark eyes twinkled.

He turned his attention back to their mission. "Will you need me?"

The hag shook her head. "They won't look twice at me, but you stand out like a battle flag. Keep low. And should you need it ..." She pressed a vial of something purple, with the consistency of glue, into his hand. "Poison. One drop will fell a giant at the blink of an eye." She nodded to his belt. "Use it on your weapons."

Which ones? Van thought with a wry look at the vial. He'd brought his entire arsenal on this mad mission. He raised an eyebrow at the hag.

She gave a short, hissing chuckle, but it was interrupted by a distant shout across the water. The Phoenix was raising anchor. "They're leaving us," Yaré said.

Van uncorked the vial of poison and dipped the points of his sai into it. "I'd leave us too, if us was going on a death march. How do you say 'hopeless cause' in Haggish?"

"Good luck," she said.

Van tilted his head and started around the corner of the dead end. "Sounds about right."