Chapter Text
Stars had fallen from the sky, to great catastrophe. In Edmund’s memory, it had only occurred once in their reign, when the celestial dance of the great Lady Hemara and her eternal paramour, the Wolf of the North, had been interrupted by a falling firebird from the sun. The firebird, in all its glory, had threatened to blaze a trail of wildfires through the low trees of Ettinsmoor and drift southwards to catch alight the brilliant forests of the Lantern Waste.
As always, though, the movement of the celestial bodies was out of the mortal purview, out of their august Narnian reign. The most traditional of the centaur clans could predict the movements of the stars with stellar accuracy, but much of their astronomical methods were lost on the Four.
“This makes no sense,” Peter growled. He looked at the sheaf of parchment littered with more letters than numbers like it had personally offended him — which in this case, it had. Unfortunately, high-level astronomical mathematics was not a foe that a particularly stab-happy High King could hack apart with Rhindon, even as much as he wanted it.
“It makes enough sense that the centaurs thought it prudent for us to learn,” Susan said. “For them to teach outsiders their clan secrets is an honor.” Even this, in Edmund’s very confused opinion, felt forced.
“Sister, I swear, how is this the same mathematics that you keep accounts with? Are they even the same? Do they have any familial resemblance at all?!”
“Just because I said it was an honor to learn doesn’t mean I wish to be bestowed with that honor.”
“Then tell us, dear Lucy, how you managed this!” Peter lurched across the table and snatched up Lucy’s scratch paper. He sounded near tears as he held up the paper for all to see, Lucy leaning back on her chair looking rather uncharacteristically smug.
She was the only one out of all of them that had not only managed to parse out the correct calculations, but also did it the quickest with the minimal amount of work. In fact, with the illegible charcoal calculations, it looked like she had done it all in her head, and had the time afterward to sketch out a doodle of a lion attacking an enemy… with mathematical notation.
“It’s rather simple,” she said gleefully.
“Sister, I know where you sleep at night.”
“You’re just angry that this isn’t an enemy you can fight,” Lucy said. She made a valid point. “Since I’ve finished this problem set, I’ll be in the training yard!”
“And I’ll join you!”
“Oh, but brother dear, you’re barely halfway—”
Peter pulled out a dagger and stabbed the problem set. Edmund and Susan didn’t even flinch. “That is mahogany!” Susan frowned. “If you want to stab something, save it for those poor training dummies. They can take it, with all that stuffing, but—”
“Oh, maybe I will, sister dear!”
The door to their shared parlor slammed behind him.
Two seconds later, the door swung open again. Peter, red-faced and avoiding eye contact, hurried in to pull the dagger out of the table and stiffly turned heel and left as quickly as it had appeared.
“Well, that’s my cue to join him,” Lucy said cheerfully. “I wanted to try the new sword that the Weapons Master commissioned for me. I’ll see you later!”
She bounced out of her chair with surprising energy, no doubt gleeful at how she managed to knock their eldest brother down a few pegs, and skipped out of the parlor to follow Peter.
“If we wanted, we could watch,” Susan said dryly. The training yard was right under their parlor windows.
“As much as that would be great entertainment,” Edmund began, “that doesn’t explain this problem set.”
“You know that Torius does not expect us to solve it, correct?” she asked curiously. “This is the unsolvable riddle of the Glasswater Clan is thus: unsolvable. Even—”
“—before the Winter, yes, I am aware. But we could predict celestial patterns in the Other Place,” Edmund said, frustrated. His fingers were covered in charcoal dust. “Haley’s Comet came every seventy years like clockwork and we did that through maths like this. What’s Narnia’s version of it?”
Susan sighed. “The stars in England are giant floating balls of gas, and planets are spheres of ice and rock. Here, the celestial bodies are bodies. Lady Hemara’s dance is because she is a real star that is dancing, and you cannot predict her twirls with numbers. Or” — she tapped Edmund’s charcoal-covered mess — “maths that is so otherworldly that there aren’t any numbers in them.”
“This is why your accounts are pristine, sister, and I lose my mind over centaurish proof notation,”
“And only one is good for the upkeep of this kingdom,” Susan said snippily. “I shall try the mango lemonade that one of my lady dryads tells me is all the rage in the Lone Islands, and enjoy my glass as I watch Lucy pummel our dear brother and High King. Shall I be graced with the pleasure of your company, or shall I close the curtains to allow you to slave away at deciphering the undecipherable?”
“Trust me, dear sister, when I crack the code of Hemara’s Dance — and I shall, you shall see me do it! — you’ll have to live your life knowing you could have been a thank you in my footnotes, but you shall be consigned to academic obscurity!”
“And I shall eagerly await that day!” Susan laughed as she closed the curtains on her way out, letting him stew in the darkness of the parlor.
Hemara, Lady of Day, the Huntress. Forever engaged in her eternal hunt with her lover, the Wolf. As much as he wanted to figure out the solution that had scholars trapped for centuries by himself, he knew when something was beyond his own expertise.
He needed to call in reinforcements.
*
Edmund dragged himself from Cair Paravel and his lovely bed, piled high with even lovelier pillows and blankets, at a time he would personally describe as the ass-crack of dawn. He would endure the true Narnian vestiges of travelling — riding by day, suppering with whichever local family insisted on taking him in, and sleeping under the stars — in search of the pure mathematical truth.
“You’re insane for this, Ed,” Peter said, meeting him by the doors. “Why by any sort of sanity would you need — this? We can move on with our lives! We are kings of Narnia!”
“It’s not that simple,” Edmund said as a stablehand passed him the reins of his horse and he attempted to throw on his riding cloak at the same time. “Lucy used the formulas, but it doesn’t seem this simple.”
He was aware he sounded like a madman, repeating the same things with no end, with no logical explanation for this pull he felt so strongly in his gut. It was as if Narnia bordered on catastrophe if he did not figure this out and put the puzzle pieces together.
Peter let out a deep sigh. “You’ll have to be the one to explain to Susan why you missed her charity gala… again. Once is a coincidence, but twice is a pattern.”
And he took that as his cue to leave.
*
“One thousand and change,” Edmund muttered angrily. It was like the centaurish proof notation was insulting him, mocking him, pummelling him in the tourney ring, and simply being ink on a rather ratty old scroll.
“Indeed, Majesty,” said Torius, the Old Master of the Glasswater Archives and the one who presented them with the example problem set. “As much as we cannot predict the movement of the stars, Centauress Briarsmith’s formulas are the closest we have to an approximation. Your royal sister was able to deduce the figure that we have also arrived at, but that is the closest we have arrived at the true answer since — well. Since my scholar brethren and our predecessors formed the School of Celestial Bodies. There is good reasoning to assume that—”
His voice began to adopt a droning, academic-like quality to it that would be suitable as a lullaby, talking about flight and aerodynamics and extraneous variables and Briarsmith’s formula, compared to the Torian Treatise (named after his distant ancestor, of course), and the series of refutation articles published by the Calormene School of Astronomy based in Calavar. Which, according to Torius’s rant, had been founded by a few traitor centaurs five hundred years before the Winter, and Calavar’s horse economy was founded by half-human, half-horses.
“—And thus, though I am loathe to admit, I concur with Emre of Tashbaan’s treatise. We can calculate an approximation of when Lady Hemara will catch the Wolf of the North, but we have no true estimation of the catastrophe that is prophesized to occur.”
“Out of the old Cair archives, I read that five centuries hence — and change — there was great disaster that befell across the land,” Edmund said darkly.
Torius twitched, looking up from his scroll. “A disaster?” he asked, half curious. “Your Majesty, if you do pardon my curiosity…”
Fishing for information, and not even subtle about it. Edmund hid a smile as he looped around the edge of the table, ostensibly to lower his volume and speak to Torius in confidence; in actuality, to block the doorway as he signaled behind his back for his Royal Guard to get into position.
“Master Torius, I tell you this in confidence. I fear a Calormene invasion across the lands. They have placed their agents within the Archen court and in the Cair under the guise of good faith, but now—” He hesitated dramatically. Behind him, with near-silent footfalls, he could hear the Big Cats of his Guard prowling in the corridor.
“Yes, your Majesty?” Torius asked, concerned. He looked like he had just stumbled upon the jackpot of all jackpots. His Calormene handlers would be ecstatic. Never mind that his family had been curators and caretakers of the Glasswater Archives for nearly five centuries.
This faun had been granted the true honor of overseeing generations of Narnian knowledge, ones that their rivals would kill to access, and had — what? Thrown it all away in favor of a few material comforts? An advantage in publishing his next proof? He had just admitted that Briarsmith’s formulas from a full century before the winter remained the most dominant literature on the subject and wasn’t keen on deeply contemplating the answer. The true answer. The one that was still undiscovered.
“I apologize, Master Faun. Have there no clearer answers than the belated Centauress’s formulas? Has there been no clearer effort in deciphering a larger picture? Your family has been honor-bound to complete this task that has been upon your leisure for many a century now, but what of your progress? How far have you gone, Torius the Sixth?”
Edmund was stepping forward, slowly, until suddenly he was nearly nose-to-nose with Torius.
“How many secrets have you sold to the Calormenes, Master Torius?” he asked dangerously. “How much have you allowed yourself to be strung by your beard only to realize they have looped a noose over your neck?”
Whip-quick, there was a flash of silver. Very calmly, Edmund had, in less than the span of the blink of an eye, unsheathed the dagger sheathed under his sleeve, the tip flashing dangerously against Torius’s neck. With a gesture of his hand, Ciana, the pure-black Pantheress that served as head of his personal guard, dropped a packet of files onto the table with a snarl. With the dramatic sweep of a paw and a snarl, the incriminating letters fanned out onto the table, addressed to a variety of Calormene intermediaries in the Cair Paravel embassy or the Archen mission, or even merchants from the ports of the borderlands.
Torius trembled.
Really, it was all for dramatics. No doubt the traitorous faun could guess that he’d had the entirety of the Archive buildings surrounded, for his operation to go smoothly; the Guard prowled all entrances, with Cats and centaurs among them. And he’d probably heard the rumors and fables and tall tales of the fearsome Royal Guard, who eats traitors alive and only leaves the bones for the Just King to render judgement posthumously.
Those rumors were there for a reason. They did the heavy lifting, while Edmund could sit back, relax, and watch as his reputation did the heavy lifting for him.
“What will you do, Torius?” Edmund asked carefully, his blade still carefully pressed against his throat. “Mercy? Will you run, or will you surrender yourself to the judgement of Us, the Crown of Narnia?”
“I—I—!”
Really, these traitors would need to get more creative. Everything that came out of their mouth during the confrontation could be boiled down to:
Case 1: The Denialist. “You’ve got the wrong person, your Majesty!” Commence a lot of grovelling, a lot of pleading, and a severe case of denial — despite whichever way the facts would point.
Case 2: The Rationalizer. “Please, please, please! I swear I meant it—” And then they would try to negotiate out of the fact that they had betrayed their entire damn kingdom, by justifying it in the most absurd of ways. One of the Archen lords caught selling secrets to some Calormene Guildsmen had tried to lie his way out by saying how his daughter had been kidnapped by pirates, and he needed to pay his ransom. Never mind how his coffers were filled to the brim from his merchant business in the Archen foothills, and how his daughter was safe and happy in the bedchamber above (with Peter).
Case 3: The Pleader/Negotiator. “I know I’ve done you wrong, but can we please—!” These were the most intolerable, in Edmund’s opinion. They were the most spineless of spies, willing to sell their allegiance to the highest bidder. At least they were the easiest to deal with, but the hardest to get rid of.
Somehow, Torius did not fall into any of these three cases.
“King, I really did think you were here for the purposes of pure knowledge that you purported yourself to be.” If Edmund could describe his voice, it would be… disappointed. “But you really are like all the others. You don’t understand. You could never understand! The Calormene schools are so far ahead of what we have — they have optimized Briarsmith’s formulas! They have developed whole proof notation that outstrips our centaurish notation! They have an advantage, and please, forgive me if I was trying to catch up!”
“I was unaware that there was such a competition,” Edmund said dryly. “Faun Torius, you are accused of espionage and high treason against the Crown. Come willingly, or suffer the consequences.”
“You are like all the others. Can’t understand the wisdom behind our numbers, our letters, our variables! Do you even know how this leads to the Torian Treatise on hyperspace-based Deep Magic? Do you even understand what an integral is?! Are you even smart enough to understand?!” He didn’t seem like he was having a breakdown because he was caught. He seemed like he was having a breakdown because Edmund couldn’t solve the treatise. “Fie upon you, and all your blasphemous behavior! Aslan speaks to me in my variables and formulas! This is the purest form of magic, the purest form of creation — you cannot possibly fathom the unfathomable! I do wish for the prophesized destruction to befall upon Narnia, because I curse you! You will not be the one to solve the treatise. You will be the first victim! You will —”
BONK. Mid-rant, Torius seized up and crumpled to the ground.
“What drivel,” Ciana sneered, dropping the stool that she had used to slam Torius’s head.
Edmund stared at her in bewilderment.
“He truly has gone insane, staring at these ratty scrolls for a hundred years. My King, don’t listen to any of the nonsense he’s spouting.”
Edmund stood there, frozen, until he felt the eyes shift to him. He composed himself, mentally shoving Torius’s rant into the mental cabinet of ‘for later’. “My thanks, Ciana,” he said, without a trace of irony. “Will you see that he is sent to the Cair for trial and judgement?”
“Of course, my King.” With a dip of her head, she bit onto the scruff of his neck and began to haul him out like a disobedient cub.
“And, Ciana.” Edmund carefully sheathed his knife, eyeing the spread of scrolls and treatises over the low table that Torius had used to explain Lady Hemara problem set. “Will you find someone — with hands — to package these carefully and bring them to the Cair?”
“Yes, my King,” Ciana said, her voice muffled from dragging Torius. “Though why you’d want ratty old tree carcass is beyond me,” she muttered under her breath, ostensibly out of hearing range for Edmund.
Unfortunately for her, Edmund had great hearing. “I’m sorry, Captain?”
She, with great effort, gave him a stink-eye. “You heard what I said, my King.”
Halfway up the corridor, he heard Torius’s scream, and then Ciana’s snarl, and then Torius shut up.
Finally alone, Edmund slumped against the low table. “‘I’m not smart enough to solve this’ my ass,” he muttered, glaring at the old loopy ink from Briarsmith’s original papers on her formulas. “Just you wait, you traitor faun. Just you wait.”
After all, how hard could it possibly be?
*
Very hard.
Edmund’s entourage arrived barely a week after his initial departure, a full ten days before his projected return, and in the middle of Susan’s charity ball. He heard the revelry and music even before he could see the Cair and Port Paravel in his eyeline, wincing at the crowds that would soon be in his future. Between him and Hemara's truth.
“You chose this day to return,” Ciana said, almost accusingly. Her tail lashed violently. She, too, had little tolerance for foolish humans.
“I will not tolerate this disrespect,” Edmund grumbled.
“My apologies, my King.” She sounded all but apologetic.
So, the Just King of Narnia rode into the Cair amidst celebration flanked by the Guard, a crowd of ravens, a wagon of musty scrolls, and a traitor.
“You’ve outdone yourself, brother!” Susan’s voice said cheerily. She waltzed down the entry stairs of the largest entrance hall, her heeled shoes clicking against the white marble. As she drew closer, she pinned him in place with a certain look to her eye. “Edmund, welcome home. May I ask why have you and your travel-worn entourage chosen to arrive at the main entrance?”
“I thought it fit to announce to our court and our honored visiting dignitaries that I was pre-occupied by the important errand of the sanctity of our realm,” Edmund said cheerfully, as fauns — loyal to Narnia — toted a bound-up and gagged Torius like a sack of rice to await trial. “My deepest apologies that I could not attend your ball for the honored cause of charity, but Our realm of justice and judgement awaits no one.” He pitched his voice to the slow trickle of guests who had come to see what the commotion was about. Susan gave him a bombastic side-eye. “Fear not, honored guests. You are safe from traitors tonight.” With a dramatic flourish and a bow, he handed off his horse’s reins to a stablehand and cheerfully strolled away to enter the royal wing of the Cair from a side entrance, where his sister wouldn’t judge him for tracking mud across the handspun Narnian carpets.
Halfway there, he took a shortcut through a side courtyard… and ran into a certain High King, with a bare head — so unusual for such a ceremonious occasion — his doublet askew and his shirt buttons undone. Wrapped around him, pressed disgustingly close for comfort and toying with his crown — the one that Susan had commissioned from Dwarvish gold that would always fit the size of his head no matter how big it got — was a lady.
“Little brother!” Peter called, pitching his voice as he saw Edmund trying to discreetly sneak across the courtyard.
“King Edmund!” came an equally cheery, feminine voice. His lady love, a recurring nuisance every summer season. Or rather, a rotating cast of lady loves, hailing from all corners of the Great Eastern. For as much as Peter hated boats, he sure loved her island maidens.
“My lady,” Edmund said. “What a surprise to see you here.” This one looked vaguely familiar, and also very very drunk. Probably an islander, from the look of her. Maybe Seven Isles or Terebinthia.
Not that he cared much.
He casually checked the corners of the courtyard, barely spotting the shadows of the Guard along the courtyard pillars. They would not leave their High King unguarded, thankfully, but it was always good to confirm when non-Narnians were around. They tended to get tetchy when they realized their “private moment” with the Wolfsbane of Narnia was being interrupted by Cats.
Not that the Guard particularly cared, outside of assessing whether Peter’s lady love was a threat.
“No, Edmund, why so quick to leave?” Peter asked. Good Aslan, he was drunk. How often did this occur? Normally, he would refrain from getting too drunk at Susan’s various charity events, if to preserve the image of a united Narnian front before foreign dignitaries, and of course join the other three of them to get wildly, disastrously out of it during more Narnian celebrations.
“I’ve got an errand to run, Peter. I’ll — er — leave you to it!”
Through the moonlight and the flickering lanterns, the revelrous music a pleasant background noise, Edmund fled. Getting to the royal wing while dodging drunk ballgoers, diplomats, and all other court accessories while dressed in a mud-splattered travelling cloak was easy. Rather, it was the suspicious looks he garnered when he entered through a side entrance directly into a side of the guest wing that was ordinarily empty, but apparently this time Susan had commandeered it to stuff the entirety of the Seven Isles visiting entourage — the Grand Prince, his wife, his seven closest retainers (the Council of Seven), their wives, their children, servants, lesser lords, bureaucratic officials, assistants-of-assistants, and their pets.
He’d rather take suspicious looks over fawning sycophants and swooning second daughters any day. How many of the Seven Isles courtiers brought their very unmarried daughters and sisters and nieces and cousins-of-cousins with them, to woo the very unmarried kings of Narnia? Maybe that was who had manage to capture Peter’s attention this time.
“I’m also a king of Narnia,” he muttered to himself as he rounded a corner. But it was always Peter. They always fawned over the overdramatic older brother, perfect and blond and golden.
“What’s so interesting about a perfect match?” he asked himself. Edmund of Narnia. Tall, dark, and mysterious. Spymaster, lawmaker, wandbreaker. The perfect foil to his loud, obnoxious, and overdramatic golden brother, who relished the spotlight as much as he hated being in it.
This wasn’t even the proper Midsummer Festival. This was the leadup to the leadup of the main event, the one where they invited the honored guests of their allied lands to partake in a charity event to benefit some cause of Susan’s choosing. Most recently, the concern on the table was relief for the freed slaves of the Lone Islands, recently forcefully re-invested into Narnian domain by the expert naval movements of Peter and Lucy — the former being virtually useless and incredibly seasick while failing to command while ship boys worriedly held a bucket next to his head; and the latter proving Narnian’s naval superiority by commandeering the first floating carrier of the Narnian Air Force to victory.
Thus, much to Susan’s glee and Lucy’s displeasure, Lucy was the guest of honor, newly-named Royal Admiral of the Narnian Navy — which, prior to this year, had consisted of a paltry handful of fishing dinghys and a privateered pirate ship — and Peter could run off having dalliances with his lady friends in abandoned courtyards.
Speaking of spotlights, it seemed that Susan had taken advantage of Lucy and Peter’s efforts to establish naval supremacy in the Great Eastern from Port Paravel to the Lone Islands, singlehandedly toppling the Calormene monopoly on trade routes, and had used their windfall to finally liven up the deserted corners of the Cair to make it seem like a proper palace.
After checking that the coast was clear, there were no prying eyes of unwanted outsiders, and most importantly no siblings having romantic affairs in secret hidden closets that Edmund did not want to see, he snuck into a small round door that looked like a closet or a servants’ door, but if one were to pull the lever disguised as a pile of linens, they would discover one of many secret passageways to the royal wing.
Thankfully, the guards who blocked the doors of the royal wing let him in, proving that a flimsy cloak was no match for a Beast with a nose. He needed a steaming hot bath and a stiff drink.
Speaking of steaming hot baths… someone — thank Aslan and Susan — had ordered a tub to be filled in his bathchamber. No detour necessary to the bathhouses, where he would most likely run into people and have to converse with them while pretending that he didn’t want to punch them in the face.
By the time his travelling clothes had been flung into an unceremonious pile on the marble tile and left to gather dust as his bathwater slowly grew tepid and cloudy, the thick scent of lye soap unable to scrub away everything despite his best efforts, he had resigned himself to attacking himself with a strigil in the bathhouses. The sauna also sounded nice. But that could be done tomorrow. As he pulled on a dressing gown, the bed looked even more and more tempting.
Maybe just resting his eyes for a moment… that was right. It would just be a moment, and then he could find the requisitioned scrolls and consider what in Aslan’s world he was going to do with them.
He awoke to harsh rapping on his door; instinctively, his hand closed around the sheathed silver knife that lay under his pillow. From the faint gap in between the drawings of his four-poster, sunlight streamed into the room; someone had taken the time to draw open the curtains, secure them to their tiebacks, and unlatch the window to allow the fresh ocean breeze to stream in.
He cursed whoever gave him an east-facing room. Sleep still clung to his eyelids, the pillow beckoning with each passing second. An assassin this early in the morn would be annoying to deal with, but nothing the Guard couldn’t handle. His fingers loosened on the grip of his knife, as Edmund began to hear the deafening call of even deeper sleep.
“Rise and shine!” His hazy dreamstate shattered as an unnecessarily loud, cheerful voice cut through it like a knife, so much so that he winced, violently drawing the blanket over his head. “Day awaits for no man!”
“Mrs. Fulney?” The name of the widowed Dwarvess housekeeper slipped instinctively through his lips. “Rhys?” The name of his secretary, who fussed over him more than he fussed over himself, was next.
“Can you not distinguish my voice?” the mysterious voice said, full of mirth.
“... Linus?” he made yet another guess, the Archen squire who had taken it upon himself to appoint himself Edmund’s personal valet.
“Oh, dear. You’re so lost in Hypnos’s slumber.” There was light shuffling around the edge of his bed.
“Oh, please don’t,” Edmund grumbled. “Please don’t, please—”
His bed curtains were violently yanked apart, revealing the loathsome, traitorous, and horrifying figure of a morning person. Peridan, a morning robe draped over casual loungewear, looking remarkably cheerful and not hungover, watched over him with amusement.
Edmund threw a pillow at Peridan’s head. He missed. “Leave me alone,” he retorted lamely, rolling over. Maybe he could smother himself with his own pillow if he tried hard enough. Susan would then resurrect and kill him yet again for making her manage their intelligence network all on her own.
“The Lady Captain reported to your royal sister — your elder sister — that you had returned from your mission with a prisoner and a cartload of scrolls,” Peridan said. “But of course, her Majesty was otherwise occupied, and your royal sister — Queen Lucy — had charmed the Council of the Seven Isles into believing that she was a siren of the water, and spent day as a human and night as a mer of the sea. They were fools, of course, and believed her — but perhaps the excess of drink was the reason why. That aside, the High King was nowhere to be found and to be quite honest, I doubt the Captain wished to find him with his lady friend of the week. Queen Susan’s favorite — the one she wants to name Lady Regent, you remember her — was at her grove to avoid dealing with the ‘plague of humans,’ to quote her own words, and quite frankly I believe the Captain only wished to sleep at that point.”
“So Ciana found you. The next best option.”
“It would be more accurate to say that I found her,” Peridan said. “But yes. Who else would you thank for your bathwater? Your squire boy was certainly too drunk.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said into his bedsheets.
“And do you know the most saddening part?”
“I daren’t say no. You shall refuse my royal command if I were to tell you to stop.”
The mattress dipped as Peridan leaned his weight on the opposite side of the bed; Edmund suddenly felt very, very aware of every movement of the bedsheets, every slight shifting of the covers. He heard the rustling of Peridan’s morning robe as it was shed and thrown across the room. He felt the mattress even out as Peridan leaned back, lounging against the pillow Edmund had thrown at his head.
Edmund didn’t move.
“I heard you returned to residence last night,” Peridan murmured into his ear. “You didn’t call for my presence.”
Oh, good Aslan. Thank the Lion that his face was still in the sheets so that Peridan wouldn’t see the blazing red that had spread across his face. “I was occupied,” Edmund muttered.
“And you aren’t now.”
“I have scrolls,” he protested, half-heartedly. “And a debrief. And a—”
“— And tell me you really want to do that before morning coffee,” Peridan said. “Or, rather, I believe it to be afternoon coffee by now.”
“I can hear your smirk,” Edmund said. “By royal command, I order you to shut your face.”
“I missed you too.”
“No, really, please. Can we do this any other day? I don’t know how many scrolls we have in those carts, and I need to do this. I just — I need to.”
“You’re such a workaholic,” Peridan commented. Edmund rolled over, only to accidentally almost slam his face into him.
“I’m a King of Narnia,” Edmund said, heat rising in his cheeks. This time, it wasn’t because of whatever pillow banter he wanted to exchange. “I have duties.”
“Ones that involve sleeping until noon?”
“Get out.”
Peridan’s face shuttered. “Is that a command?”
Edmund’s eyes darted up, averting his eyes. He didn’t want to see his expression. The top of his bed looked far too interesting right now.
“Fine. I’ll leave you to it.” The weight of the mattress shifted; he heard the door click open, and imagined Peridan’s eyes adopting that stormy look, the way his eyebrows would furrow when he would say something was fine when it was certainly not fine. “Enjoy your scrolls, your Majesty.”
The last thing he heard before he could smother out the wave of regret was the door slamming shut.
*
“Catastrophe. Catastrophe. What in the seven hells is this catastrophe?!” Edmund muttered to himself, pacing back and forth in his study like a madman. He picked up the latest draft of his work — covered in charcoal smears and ink stains, as he had to resignedly switch in between for whatever idiotic reason his mind conjured up — and crumpled it up with a violent force he would use to strangle an enemy. His fingers ached.
He threw the paper blindly, collapsing onto his chair. He needed a stiff drink. Well, more accurately, a stiff drink of coffee. Never mind that it was a Lone Islands tradition and he hadn’t seen Peridan since the incident; if the Islanders were right about something, it was that beautiful beautiful drink.
“Didn’t anyone tell you it’s not very courteous to throw things at a woman?” came a newcomer’s voice — Susan’s voice. Edmund jerked up from his reverie, only to see Susan at his doorway. “When was the last time you ate? You’ve been holed up here, you missed supper.”
“This is more important than supper,” Edmund announced. “Do you see this monstrosity?! I’d write better set theory than this nonsense! Look at this!” he shoved a piece of paper under Susan’s nose.
“This is a lot of highlighting and red ink.”
“Yes, but look at the similarities! They use the exact same proof notation for the second sequence formula of Lady Hemara’s dance, and even reach the same conclusion in the same amount of steps! Susan, this is ridiculous. Susan, this is astronomical. Susan—”
“What?”
“He’s been selling Narnian secrets in exchange for academic clout!” Edmund’s voice came out strangled. “He’s been cheating! There’s no way anyone with any kind of sanity could have the exact same thought process — let alone a Glasswater faun and a random Calormene scholar. They even use the same notation!! It’s like he was so stupid, he wanted to get caught, because there’s no way the Calormene school and Glasswater use the same standardized notation. For the seven hells—”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Edmund stopped pacing and stared at his sister like she had grown a second head. “You believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you!” Susan waved the papers in front of his face. “You’re going insane over this. You’re not stupid enough to go insane over something with no factual merit.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do in this scenario?”
“I don’t know, publish a refutation treatise or something?” Susan shrugged. “You seem more familiar with this than I am, but Narnia has at least a few good journals and we were the ones that popularized printing crosswords and all that. For Aslan’s sake, you’re the king, people will listen to you.”
“But I don’t want them to listen to me just because I’m king.” It came out more like a whine. He winced. “I want them to listen because I’m right.”
“Then publish under a pseudonym!”
“Wait, you’re a genius.”
“Thank you,” Susan said dryly. “Will you eat dinner now? The kitchens are complaining that you’ve had a skewed coffee-to-food ratio, and I think Peter wants to have a word with you over something that happened last night.”
“Yes, yes,” Edmund said distractedly. “I’ll be there in a second.”
A second turned into many minutes, but by the time he had crossed the threshold from his private study to the dining hall, he had conjured up a brilliant idea. One that would surely be reckoned with for the ages.
“The catastrophe is from the east,” he announced. “Specifically over the Great Eastern. No one knows what is out there! And all the details — all the histories and this blasted Torian Treatise and the Calormene journals — they all bicker about the exact timing, or the exact dating, or this-and-that variable of whatever formula their brains concocted. But they’re missing such a big part of the puzzle!”
“What is that?” Peter asked blankly from across the table. Next to him, Lucy was struggling holding back laughter.
“They’re missing the fact that Lady Hemara’s dance isn’t just a dance, it’s a warning,” Edmund plowed on. “A warning for what is to come. I’ve come up with some formulas. They need to be confirmed and tested, but the proofs align — and then Torius the Six Thousandth of his Name can languish in prison knowing that I have won!”
“And what will you publish it under?”
“Corax, the crow. The opposite of the dove, but one who can take flight and discern the truth of these scrolls.”