well behaved women

Buried Queens
Chpt. 4

Susan Pevensie has been living alone in London since her siblings died, alone with her grief and determination. She's long since abandoned childish fantasies, but her recent dreams of a great lion give her comfort where nothing else does. And then she is catapulted into Narnia again; but a very, very different Narnia indeed.



She still remembered when the first bomb fell.

Not the first first, but the first one that was really close, the first one that rattled her teeth and made her ears make fuzzy echoes and jarred her down to her bones with terror and panic and selfish adrenaline.

This felt a little like that.

Like the blow to the gut she'd suffered once in battle, where Peter had had to step in quickly and cut down her enemy as she gasped for breath her spasming muscles couldn't pull in, clutching her ribs and feeling the swell of panic. Susan stared up at Caspian, bare legs askew before her, fingers clenched on the straps of her high heels--how had she even kept a hold of them?--so hard she thought they were probably making imprints in the flesh of her fingers.

"Who," Caspian repeated, voice too soft, too calm, "are you?"

A small, cold, crystal-clear voice spoke up. It was the crisp command of the High Queen, the woman who had taught herself utter composure in the face of unspeakable danger. He doesn't know you. You're among strangers and potential enemies, and none of your people in sight. What do you do?

Susan rose to her feet, finding her balance and composure with a hard, scrambling effort, pulling together the shreds of serenity. Her feet blazed with pain, her hands and back and legs ached, but she let none of it show on her face. A little of this was the society girl she'd learned to be away from Narnia, selecting every word with utter care, always conscious of appearance.

You don't give an inch.

"My lord," one man, the older one that had first spoken, directed his words to Caspian, "you found her within our perimeter?"

"Far within our perimeters," Caspian replied, voice too cold, eyes still locked on hers. "I hope there is a good explanation for this." The chill to his tone made her skin prickle. The Caspian she'd known had never used that tone, however soft the edge of threat was. There was a set to his shoulders, his jaw, that she did not recognize.

"She knows you," another said suspicious. This one was younger, with a neatly trimmed beard and heavy-lidded dark eyes, and his dark curls were damp with sweat.

Caspian made a sharp gesture, but aborted the shake of his head when he looked at her--really looked at her--again. And she felt that connection again, the one that had struck her the first time they're seen each other, when his lovely, proud dark eyes and swept over them cautiously and met hers.

"She is..." His voice trailed away, softened. Finally he said, "familiar."

"She must, then, be from the castle." The older man sounded grim, voice flat and final.

"No," Susan corrected coolly. "I am not."

"Then who are you?" He growled.

She arched her eyebrows. "Who are you?"

A change came over them, a cool sharp wind of alarm, chilling the expression on the face of every man. Caspian's sword, which had lowered, abruptly rose again. "Why do you want to know?"

She didn't flinch away from it, but met his eyes coldly. In iron control, holding on and thinking desperately fast, she felt more like herself than she had in years, dirty flimsy dress, loose leaf-tangled hair, mud covered feet and all. "I do not," she answered, etching each word with precise scorn. "But it's simple manners to introduce yourself before you demand a lady's name."

"A lady?" The man standing beside the young bearded soldier gave her a look of harsh amusement. He had a strong proud nose, long dark hair tied at the nape of his neck, and a full mouth that was set sternly at the moment. "You do not look the part."

"You treat a woman with courtesy only if she is of rank?" Susan said softly, letting her voice carry the weight of cold contempt and letting her eyes pass from him as though dismissing him as insignificant. Maybe such behavior was customary for Telmarines--but use the right tone and reaction, and any man would react as though any words were the most personal of insults.

His mouth tightened and his eyes blazed, but he had enough self restraint that he barely reacted beyond that, and kept silent. Perhaps she had not spent enough time among soldiers when she was allowing courtship, so many ages ago; as High Queen, the lords and princes that courted her reacted poorly, to say the least, to the barbed edge of her tongue should they somehow rouse her usually slow-burning ire.

"No," the grizzled soldier said suddenly, and sheathed his sword. "Her manner of dress may be strange, but the material is fine."

It was a silk dress, pale blue, with fine lines of pale embroidery at the hem. She stepped quickly back when he reached for her as though to show them, and Caspian caught her.

She froze at the touch of skin and he met her eyes, never looking away as he slowly sheathed his sword, fingers locked around her wrist, a warm but implacable shackle. Fight-or-flight tangled in her brain, and without opportunity for either she stood her ground and met his eyes, her own gaze cool and shielded and, she was determined, showing nothing of her inner turmoil.

The older man made to step forward again and Caspian's eyes flicked sideways, once, hard and dark enough to cut. The simple glance was warning enough, and as the other retreated the same frisson of uneasiness skittered down her spine. Who was this Caspian?

She was beginning to suspect that there were very clear differences from the one she had known. Certainly this was not the quiet, impeccably courteous and courageous young man only just finding his place in the world. There were signs of him--however quick to respond his men might be, they showed no signs of fear or mistrust, and he had treated her courteously enough for someone easily presumed to be an enemy--but there was a harder surety to the set of his mouth and the opaque, unreadable stare he turned on the world.

She had respected Caspian, as a person and a warrior, and liked him, but this man gave the very clear and immediate impression that he would be a dangerous enemy to have indeed.

And he still hadn't stopped staring at her.

"Caspian," the older warrior said quietly.

"Mavramorn," Caspian said sharply, turning towards him without letting go of Susan. "She is at the very least of foreigner."

"But human," one of the young men pointed out calmly. "Still quite human, not anything--" There he stopped.

Her heart squeezed savagely in her chest, and her arm jerked; Caspian swung around to look at her and she realized her nails must have sunk into his palm. "Anything?" She asked. "You have encountered something other than human on this land?"

The long-haired young man's brows arched. "You are no fairy tale," he said, and his full lips curved in something that might have been a smile, and he swept a bow, "my lady."

A poorer performance I've rarely seen, she thought scornfully, but said nothing. His companion, the man with the short-clipped beard, studied her with dark, unreadable eyes and said nothing, which disturbed her almost as much.

Somewhere a horn blew, a low long note of warning.

The rest of the swords were sheathed in a hissing chorus of metal. "We should move," Mavramorn said sharply, and Caspian drew in his arm and pulled Susan a stumbling step closer. She drew in a mouthful of scent--metal, warm skin, the cool flash of pine and the flush of male sweat--and then he turned his head, brushing her hair with his cheek, and released her.

"Tie her hands," he ordered crisply, and marched away.

They took her heels but did not discard them, most likely reluctant to leave any sign of their presence behind. Susan bit into her lower lip and followed them, trying her hardest not to limp, and trying not to be as glad as she was to see the horses. She shook off the hands that tried to lift her, but as she began the effort of try to clamber on warm bare hands cupped her thigh, steadying the leg she already had up, and then tossed her onto the horse. They'd tied her hands in front of her, so she could still cling, and once she was as secured as she was going to get she looked down into Caspian's face.

When their eyes met he drew in a sharp breath, face closing off, and turned away. The place where he'd touched her--thumb brushing along the fragile skin along the inside of her thigh--carried a deep smoldering-ember heat down into her bones.

Lord Mavramorn, now mounted, took up her reins with no expression on his face, and they began to move.

The skies were gray above them between branches, the day's clear beauty shifting into an ominous steely roil of clouds. They were heading deeper into the woods, following the line of the caves. A place well guarded by an ancient and difficult to traverse section of woods, but also--long ago, at least--shared by beasts no man should wish to encounter.

The caves she judged they were headed towards was a den of harpies, among other things.

And she with no bow, and no armor, and her hands tied by an incarnation of a man she thought she might have loved, once.

She could almost--not quite, never quite, but almost--have wished herself back on that foggy London street.