"Greetings, Coriakin," said Farder Coram, his voice unwavering.
The Star Consul nodded at him, then looked over at the other people in the room, focusing the longest-it seemed-on Lucy and Lyra.
Lucy took him in as he appeared to be 'summing up' her and her half sister; he was reasonably tall, stout but not fat, and his silvery-brown hair and beard were short and neatly trimmed. There was a graveness about Coriakin, but within a few glances nearly everyone was fairly certain he was not all seriousness-a merry enough person in his core.
"Farder Coram," Coriakin answered, finally and in a low tone, "welcome. Tell me, are these the daughters of Lord Asriel?"
Lyra nodded and blurted out, "Yeah" before Farder Coram could admit to this. Lucy, who didn't see having a father like Lord Asriel and a birth mother she'd never even known as anything at all to be proud of, and hadn't quite had the experiences Lyra had had in being prideful in regards to her 'Uncle Asriel' growing up, said nothing. As deeply and surely and passionately as Edmund knew he was Edmund Belacqua and not Edmund Coulter, so Lucy knew-felt in the very marrow of her most inward bones-that she was a Pevensie. Perhaps, she thought, reflecting on all this sometime later, a Silvertongue is separate from such things-separate enough to admit unashamedly to her identity-she may simply be free through her own new surname, unattached to it all.
Leaning to whisper in the old Gyptian's ear, Coriakin murmured, "They have symbol readers? Alethiometers?"
"Yes," he replied, more tightly than would have been expected.
"Would you like to see them?" Lyra felt she could trust this star, and so gestured at her pocket as if to pull the golden compass out of it.
"Yes, I would," he said. "Lucy's, too, if she wouldn't mind."
By this point, in spite of herself, Lucy was finding Coriakin less and less alarming, and so she took out both the silver pocket watch the Lord Professor had given her when she was eight and the alethiometer she was keeping safe for Edmund. Somehow she knew the Star Consul would not take them from her. Besides, if he was under punishment bad enough to saddle him down with Dufflepuds for servants, maybe he was paying a penance, and it wouldn't be in line with any penance to steal something valuable from two young ladies. And Farder Coram was right there anyways; he would never let anything bad happen.
"Do you have the book of meanings?" the Star Consul wanted to know.
"No," admited Farder Coram, "we've no way of telling what the different symbols mean without it, of course."
"Edmund used to have a book sort of like that," Lucy confessed. "He…his sister got it from Norroway a long time ago. The Ruling Powers took it away when they arrested him."
"Edmund?" repeated Coriakin, as if slightly puzzled.
"Edmund Belacqua," Farder Coram explained, "an alethiometrist. And a particular friend of Lucy's as well."
"He isn't…by any chance…Edmund Coulter the second by birth, is he?"
"Yes," said Farder Coram. "The late Lady Marisa Coulter was his mother."
And the Star Consul looked very thoughtful, though he said nothing in way of explanation for his pensiveness.
After a bit, Caspian cleared his throat awkwardly, and Lyra said, to Coriakin, "Actually, I can read the alethiometer, even without knowing what the symbols mean and all."
"Can you now?" The star looked very interested, but his expression gave away not any hint of whether he was already aware of this by some mysterious means through the others stars, or else the fairies.
This uncertainty hovering in the air of the room impelled Lucy to say, "I can read mine, too, Sir."
The startling confessions, while not bothering either of the girls who gave up their 'secret' so readily, unnerved their dæmons a bit-especially Pantalaimon, who was less brave than Reepicheep. They would not settle down (if they had still been able to change, likely they would have been shape-shifting to no end out of anxiety) until Coriakin spoke again and his kind, undemanding tone soothed them into a state of calmness at last.
"That is a very admirable-not to mention, useful-skill, my dears," said the Star Consul graciously, making a motion as if almost to bow to them but not quite doing so. "Would you mind terribly if I asked for a demonstration?" He went to the other side of the room, took two somethings out of a wooden chest filled with countless small items that appeared to be none of their concern (not even Lyra would have dared to ask about them), then returned and held out, in his palms, two bracelets.
And what bracelets! They were utterly exquisite pieces of work; silver thread strung with the daintiest of milky-white pearls. A single diamond quarter-moon pendant, glittering like unbreakable glass, dangled from each of them.
"One of these bracelets," the Star Consul informed them, "was once given by the daughter of Ramandu to Caspian the first." He nodded at Caspian and his seagull dæmon as if to silently add, "Yes, your ancestor." Then, aloud, "The other belonged to a completely different star of no relation to Ramandu or Serafina Pekkala Le Fay and was never given to anyone as a present. The best I can figure is that, while in the sky, that star dropped it, lost it, and cared not enough for it to come down and fetch it. One of the Dufflepud's, a foolish girl by the name of Clipsie, came across it and appeared to be trying to eat it, and so I had to take it from her and keep it here. Can you, Lyra Silvertongue and Lucy Pevensie, tell me which one was the token of love from Ramandu's daughter?"
Drinian whispered something to Caspian about how it might be easier to for Lucy and Lyra to check the bracelets for teeth-marks than to bother with the alethiometers, and the young Telmarine Gyptian lord had to bite his lower lip to hold back an improper chuckle. (There weren't, by the way, any actual teeth-marks on either bracelet.)
Lucy tucked away the alethiometer she was protecting for Edmund's sake, leaving the silver pocket watch out to use for Coriakin's challenge. For she-and Lyra-had chosen (after an 'it's all right, go ahead and do as he asks' nod from Farder Coram let them know they ought to) to take it up.
Reaching behind himself, Coriakin unrolled a large placemat decorated in the style and pattern of a map of many shockingly realistic-looking islands on a very cornflower-blue sea onto a small table-stand which magically expanded to fit the mat on its surface and admit the two chairs Emeth had wordlessly pulled out for the girls to sit on while they poured over their alethiometers and the bracelets.
"Farder Coram, I would speak with you alone." Coriakin beckoned for the old Gyptian to come nearer to him.
When they were standing in a corner alone together, everyone else more or less twiddling their thumbs or whispering amongst themselves (being dead-silent and standing straight as a poker as he had always been taught from an early age that servants ought to, in Emeth's case) while the girls asked their alethiometers which bracelet was given to Caspian the first and which was not, the Star Consul said, "Are you aware of exactly who these girls are?"
"Well, now," said Farder Coram unsurely, "I knew theys the daughters of Lord Asriel and all. And something about a prophecy, though none of the stars seem willing-or else able-in the way of telling me or the other Gyptians much in regards to it."
"Hmm," said the Star Consul.
"I'd not be a letting them come to any harm for the world," warned the crippled Gyptian. "For their own sake, mind you, not because of any prophecy." He motioned at Lucy. "And that one there, I suppose, will want to marry her alethiometrist one of these days. She loves him even more'n she hates the Ruling Powers and the mistreatment of us Gyptians, and that's sayn' a lot. And I promised Serafina I was bound to protect him as well."
"Be very careful," said the Star Consul warily. "In protecting those girls you will bring danger upon yourself and all close to you. Of course, all the same, protecting them is what you ought to be doing, and I would-in fact-have scorned you and thought the less of you for answering differently than you have.
"I don't have any doubts-not a single one, Farder Coram-that those girls can read their alethiometers, that in a few moments they'll come back over to us knowing which bracelet is which. They are meant to over-throw the Ruling Powers, to destroy them. It is they who will decide the war that is to come, you understand. As for Mrs. Coulter's son, I'm sure you've been told this plenty of times already, my good Gyptian friend, but you will hear it once again: he is part of the solution. The Ruling Powers, even with their limited knowledge of this and their preoccupation with stopping the girls more than anyone else, will not lay down and let a young man who is in their eyes a heretic and a troublemaker, possessing his hard-learned abilities with the alethiometer's meanings and Dust, to live freely."
"He has escaped from Svalbard," Farder Coram protested weakly, fearing for the poor lad.
"For all we know at this stage, it may simply be a case of one prison sentence down and a million more to go." Coriakin shook his head sadly. "Another thing: do you remember how in Bolvangar they were cutting children apart from their dæmons?"
"I'm not likely to be forgetting it, a good deal of those children were Gyptian kids-some of them are dead now. One of those dead, a non-Gyptian, was Lyra's best friend, Roger."
"Are you aware of why they rarely, if ever, preformed the operation on adults?"
Farder Coram shrugged his shoulders. "I think-I don't know, but I do think-that it was because their dæmons can't change shape anymore at any rate so…" He let his voice trail off, having-he felt-made his point already.
"All right. Let me ask it this way then: do you know what happens to someone with a settled dæmon who has the operation?"
"They'd die, wouldn't they?"
Coriakin snorted bitterly with contempt for those horrible scientists who created such a horrible procedure. "Not if it's done right," he replied darkly.
"Begging your pardon, but…" Farder Coram looked a bit puzzled. "…I mean, if Susan Pevensie had been torn apart from Maugrim by Lord Asriel…wouldn't she have died? And her dæmon was settled, no doubt about it."
"She had an unborn child growing in her at the time; so her results would likely have been just the same as a child being torn from its dæmon, which was just what Lord Asriel wanted, you will recall. I am speaking, not of that sort of situation, but of…say, a young man torn from his settled dæmon. Let us suppose now that the man was reasonably healthy and strong and there was no childish burst of energy in the link between himself and his dæmon…that he had Dust and was fully grown in spite of being youngish still. Do you know what would happen to him then?"
Farder Coram felt a shiver run up and down his spine and his tabby whimpered briefly. "No, I don't, I'm afraid."
"Potentially, if its done right, not death, but bland servitude. They might even keep the severed dæmon with its human for the look of the thing; but they would not be one. They would be blank-eyed; the shock alone, something death-dealing to a child, would likely only take away their memories and will of life…they wouldn't be interested in anything. A tragedy to be sure. To be able to do as they're told well enough, but never to think for themselves, or love anything or anybody, or even tell the simplest of stories. Can you even imagine such a disgrace? Truly, something worse than death, even."
"They wouldn't do it to Edmund, though," Farder Coram said with a confidence he did not entirely feel.
The Star Consul's brow shot up. "Oh? And who is standing in their way now? Not Marisa Coulter, I believe. The dead have no authority."
"She wasn't meant to die saving her daughter," Farder Coram realized with a sickening thud in his chest. "Her part in all this, much harm as she caused 'im to suffer through in his childhood, was to protect the man who was once her son from that being done to him…wasn't it?"
"What happened, happened. Destiny has too much to do, sometimes life gives it a show-down and the world is rocked. Fate is thwarted, which is even a good thing…sometimes. It saved Susan's life at least."
"We don't need Lady Marisa," said Farder Coram after a pause of deep thought. "The Gyptians will stand in the way."
"Certainly!" exclaim-murmured Coriakin encouragingly. "But I thought you might want the warning in advance."
"Yes," Farder Coram agreed. "But don't say anything about it to the girls; Lucy has enough to worry about as it is, and Lyra-if she knew-wouldn't hesitate to tell her half sister. She's an odd girl in her own way. Lyra would've proudly kept it a secret if her 'Uncle Asriel' had told her as a small child that he was really her father. She would've kept her mouth shut 'bout Dust, too, if he'd bothered to explain it to her years ago. But this…no, Coriakin, take pity, have a care, and don't tell them that."
"Of course, Farder Coram." He nodded. "If you so wish it, I won't breath a single word of my fears for the alethiometrist to either of the girls."
"Thank you." The old Gyptian breathed a sigh of mild relief. "Now, we a came here in the first place to come up with what we oughter do next…"
"I'm sure you must be weary of waiting," sighed Coriakin, "yet that is what I would suggest for the time being. Go back to the Dawn Treader, wait there."
"For what?" Farder Coram's dæmon let out a low hiss, showing her master's reluctance. "No disrespect, but those girls aren't the sort to just sit and wait when their companions-those they care about-are in danger."
"Trust the stars," he said. "Lyra and Lucy will have such a big part in what is to come-if they could know and truly understand, as even we stars and fairies can't, at least not fully anyway-I should think they would welcome the rest. Lion knows they'll need it, poor lasses."
Perhaps their conversation would have gone on a while longer, but it did not as they were interrupted by Lyra, holding onto Lucy's wrist and pulling her half sister along just behind her, running towards them, the bracelet that had been a gift to Caspian the first dangling from the clenched palm of her free hand.
"This is the one!" she announced proudly. "Lucy and me checked both alethiometers; it's this one alright."
Panting slightly, Lucy smiled at the Star Consul and Farder Coram. Lyra beamed at them both, eager to see Coriakin's reaction to their correct reading of the alethiometers.
"Good work." The Star Consul smiled back, looking as if he meant to put a hand on the each of the girls' heads but not actually doing so. "That's the right one. You keep those alethiometers safe, you're very lucky to be able to read them so fluently."
Although usually proud of being able to do things others couldn't, Lyra blurted out, "But anyone could learn, couldn't they? I mean, Edmund did."
"Edmund isn't just 'anyone'," Lucy told her firmly, interjecting in his defense.
"That's not what I meant." Lyra pouted, letting go of Lucy's wrist.
"Nor is it what I meant, Lyra," said the Star Consul. "You're lucky to be able to read them without years of studying. And, Lucy, you're quite right; Edmund isn't just anyone. It didn't take him half so long as it would take most men to learn the alethiometers meanings. You're very fortunate to have so clever and studious a person for a friend."
Lyra wondered, rather amazed at Coriakin's way of smoothing things over so totally, and with such sincerity, how he had ever gotten punished so badly to have to live here as a consul instead of in the sky, watching over those stupid Dufflepuds. It was not her place, of course, to know a star's sins; somehow she knew that-inquisitive mind put aside-without being told. Still, she did wonder. He was so very diplomatic. Had he always been so? Or had his punishment simply taught him to be?
She was snapped out of her thoughts when Pantalaimon whispered that he'd just heard from Farder Coram's tabby that they were going back to the Dawn Treader. She'd sensed that the two dæmons-hers and Farder Coram's-had been talking a second or so ago, but, being focused on another line of thought herself, it had only sounded like the buzzing of a fly for the most part, and she'd only caught a word or two. Now she was annoyed. She didn't want to go back!
Neither, apparently, did Lucy. She wanted to go to meet Edmund at whatever place he made it into as he came out of the snowy wilderness. Coriakin was only able to calm her down marginally by saying that Edmund would come to her. He answered her questions; he assured her that Edmund, Peter, Lord Asriel, and a dwarf who was a former manservant of Edmund's were safe and that they had Iorek Byrnison guiding them.
"The stars will give them directions when Iorek no longer can," he promised; "no harm will come on this expedition. When you're all together again, then you can begin to plan your next move. The time is not now. Rest a while."
"But," protested Lucy, "I don't want to rest." Reepicheep looked very fierce…for a mouse, anyway.
"Lucy, he can be trusted," said Farder Coram kindly. "We'll do as he says. There's one more matter I wish to discuss with him; alone. Perhaps the rest of you might be willin' to wait by the door?"
"Before they do, I want to give them something." Coriakin picked up the bracelet that had not once belonged to Ramandu's daughter. "Better owned by one of you than eaten by a Dufflepud's imp of a child."
Lucy did not seem to care much about having it, pretty as it was, so Lyra took it and fastened it around her own wrist.
Next, the Star Consul picked up the other bracelet, somehow managed to pluck off a pearl without breaking or tearing the thread, and handed the pearl to Caspian the tenth. "I can't give you the whole thing. I may need to use it in way of contacting Ramandu's Daughter. But, I'd like you to have a piece of it; I'm sure she'd want you to."
Caspian thanked him under his breath in a short round of stammering, unsure, really, of what he ought to say.
To Drinian, he gave some charts and a book about the moon's influence on the sea-tides; it had been written by a star (what other creature could know the moon better?) and was unavailable in any human library, thus it was of inestimable value.
The Star Consul gestured at Emeth. "You don't say much."
"A servant should be seen only when needed and never heard, my lord."
"What rot," snorted Farder Coram, wishing he could break Emeth out of the habit of crawling in front of his so-called 'betters' like a beaten dog. He had improved over the passed couple of years, but not dramatically.
"Here." Corakin handed Emeth a book of the sort people write in. "You seem like you need a journal more than most."
"Thank you, my lord." He bowed and his dæmon cleared her throat respectfully.
"All right, you can wait by the door now," announced the Star Consul. "I will speak with Farder Coram."
"What you said about Edmund…" Farder Coram raised a brow unsurely.
"They won't catch him on this venture, that's for sure. He's under too much protection; Iorek, the stars…numerous fairies…no, they can't hurt him now. Mind that he stays protected, though-the girls, too."
"Yes, thank you, you've been very helpful."
"There is something else?" Coriakin discerned.
"Serafina?"
"Is well. You may tell the girls she has Susan Pevensie with her. She is to be an archer with the fairies."
"Thank you."
"If I am contacted by Serafina Pekkala," -he seemed to be reading his mind- "I will tell her you were here."
"Bolvangar," murmured the Gyptian, remembering his promise to John Faa. "Is there a chance…?"
"There is, but don't worry about it, not just yet."
And though it took nearly all their strength and will-power, the group left, going back the way they came, right into Narrowhaven, on their way to return to the ocean and to Caspian's ship, and then, ultimately, to the Dawn Treader.
As they were coming out of the alleyway, into the main streets of Narrowhaven, however, a scowling nobleman who-Lucy thought-didn't have a very nice face at all, noticed them and loudly shouted a rude slur against Gyptians.
Farder Coram, Drinian, and Caspian (however red in the face he'd gone) did their best to ignore it, but Billy Costa, insulted, shouted back, "Yeah? Well, yous ugly! At least we ain't scared of water and nature! You land-people always panic when a storm's a comin', we keep calm. And we en't never done nuffin to you-so there!" Ratter let out a low growling sound that would have been more suited to a tiger-dæmon than a rat.
"Billy," Farder Coram began under his breath. He knew that the people in Narrowhaven mightn't necessarily take kindly to being talked back to…especially by people they used to allow to be sold into slavery without flinching.
But he was not to finish his warning because, just then, despite the fact that it wasn't him that had said anything, the man reached out and shoved Farder Coram onto the ground.
"How dare you!" Lucy was beyond disgusted. To shove anyone, unprovoked, like that was wrong. To shove an old man with bad legs was even worse...it was unspeakable.
Lyra (Pantalaimon draped across her shoulders hissing with his fur all standing up on edge) started shrieking a number of curses that made your average sailor sound like a missionary by comparison.
The man, thinking they were Gyptians, too, because he couldn't see their light hair-still covered by the head scarves-kicked Farder Coram in his side just as the poor old man looked like he was rising back up. He felt onto the ground again with a heavy groan. His tabby let out a helpless mew.
It was that mew that infuriated Reepicheep more than anything prior; that sound of uselessness coming from the dæmon of a man who had once been young, handsome, brave, and had boldly fought in battles that would make men like the cruel one before them now wet their tights and breeches.
Lucy drew her dwarf-sword (the one she'd taken from the flat when she left) and, stepping in front of Farder Coram protectively, held it in front of the man with a threatening air. Reepicheep's sharply standing-out whiskers dared him to try and kick poor Farder Coram again.
Whatever would have happened next (likely, Lucy getting roughly shoved out of the way) did not, for two dæmons, one of them a grey goose and the other a beautiful silver-white falcon, came and flew down to attack the man's pit-bull dæmon. The falcon scratched at the dog dæmon's nose with her sharp claws and the goose appeared to be trying to peck her eyes out.
"It's Kaisa," Reepicheep whispered to his human, gesturing at the goose. "And I think the other one belongs to Coriakin."
Gone very white, the man muttered that they were 'dirty' and 'not worth it' and, shaking uncontrollably, walked away. His dæmon, blinking uncontrollably from the Kaisa's blows, followed right behind him, her short tail firmly between her legs.
The falcon let out a victorious bird-cry and flew away. Kaisa stayed behind a moment and nudged Farder Coram's back with his head, attempting to help him up.
Once Farder Coram was standing upright again, though stiffly and sort of hunched like his back was the top of a question mark hovering over the dot that his feet formed, Kaisa rubbed up against the tabby consolingly, then followed the falcon's lead and flew away himself.
"Farder Coram, I feel awful," said Billy, unable to look his elder in the eye. "Ma's gonna kill me for not keepn' my mouth a shut and getting you beaten like that."
"Billy," huffed Farder Coram, speaking through his teeth in a rough, yet obviously forgiving, voice, "why are yer trying to make this about you? I'm the one who got shoved onto the ground and kicked at." He winced, closed his eyes tightly, then opened them again. "Gawd, my legs are a killin' me!"
Thankfully, with Drinian helping him on one side, Caspian on the other, and Emeth in front, Farder Coram managed to make it to the harbor and the ship without too much additional pain.
Lucy, still clutching the hilt of her dwarf-sword, didn't say a word all the rest of that day.
AN: Review! (Please)