The Undercover King, Part 1 for freudiancascade
Title: The Undercover King
Author: aurilly
Recipient: freudiancascade
Rating: PG
Content/Warnings: none
Summary: Tirian's half-baked scheme for espionage in Calormen gets a much-needed boost when Narnian hero Jill Pole shows up. Little do they know that the fate of the world---the prevention of the apocalypse itself---rests on their success (and also on the lumber tariffs). (pre-Last Battle AU)
The Undercover King
The daily battle between Galman fishermen and Galman seagulls for the finest catch of fish left little room at the port for almost any other activity. It took almost an hour for Tirian to navigate through their ranks and board the ship that was to take him to Calormen.
Tirian was wholly unaccustomed, not only to waiting, but also to the disrespectful crush of people and carts against his person. But he quashed his growing irritation by reminding himself that all this jostling meant his plan was working. With his dyed black hair, handsome tan from a bottle, and the wide-brimmed straw hat he wore instead of his golden circlet, no one in Galma had any notion that this toe-tapping young merchant was King Tirian of Narnia.
Hired hands loaded his wares-a hodge-podge of dwarf-forged steel, faun-carved flutes, mermaid-sourced pearls and other valuable Northern products-on to the ship. His fellow passengers were a mix of Terebinthian emigrants, Galman adventurers and Calormene merchants.
Strong arms below deck supplemented the easy breeze that drew the trading ship away from the harbor. This would always be Tirian’s favorite moment-the start of a journey, the promise of something new.
Farsight and his other counselors had tried to dissuade him from this self-appointed project with cluckings and brayings about ‘other important matters’ and ‘lack of proofs’ and ‘potential diplomatic catastrophes’. But Tirian, rash and restless and still smarting from the recent death of his father, had heeded them not at all.
And now he was off-off to Calormen and adventure, leaving the tedium of everyday rule behind.
Tirian couldn’t have been more delighted.
************************
"The main problem," a hunched-over Terebinthian merchant wheezed, "is that the tariffs on grain are inconsistent from port to port. Tashbaan charges only three percent, while Archenland maintains a draconian insistence on weighted tariffs, so you never know what you’ll be charged."
Only ten minutes had elapsed since they set sail-the flags atop the Galman Keep were still visible-but boredom had already set in. Ten minutes of grain tariffs, and an entire week to go. Tirian began to regret having ignored Farsight’s advice against this mission.
He had half a mind to announce his identity and demand that the ship make an unscheduled stop at Cair Paravel. Indeed, as the merchant continued to drone on, Tirian wondered how much it would cost to accommodate such a demand.
A soft pop distracted him from his escape plans. A spot by the railing that had previously been empty was now occupied by someone-or something-clad in the oddest and ugliest of clothes. The Galman sun saw everyone in short sleeves and loose linens, but this newcomer was outfitted for deepest winter; it was impossible to make out a physique underneath the greatcoat, or a face underneath the wool hat and scarf.
Tirian, who had been plagued by disturbing dreams as of late, feared his nightmares were beginning to encroach upon his days. He blinked; but the apparition persisted, and even happened to lock wide, equally astonished eyes with his.
For a moment, the conversations around him continued uninterrupted. No one else seemed to have witnessed the precise moment of this stranger’s miraculous appearance, but it didn’t take long for the other passengers and crew to notice an interloper in their midst.
"You!" the captain yelled and ran across the ship. He cornered the stranger against the railing and knocked the hat off her head. For it was a her, a female whose long brown hair tumbled down around her shoulders, obscuring her face. "Where did you come from?"
"I…" she began to answer, but then stopped herself.
The girl-practically a woman, Tirian noticed, no more than two years younger than himself-beamed, inexplicably delighted to find herself in such a dreadful situation.
"I asked you a question," the captain repeated.
"She is my assistant," Tirian announced, blurting out the first thought that came to mind.
It might risk his mission, but as a knight, he felt honour-bound to rush to any damsel’s aid; it was even less of a burden when it involved a damsel as mysterious and intriguing as this one, who was providing such a welcome distraction from his previously dull conversation. Moreover, by helping this powerful sorceress (Tirian could not imagine what else she might be), perhaps he could make an ally of her, an aide in his quest. Whatever magic she possessed, he did not think it black.
"She belongs to you?" the captain asked, looking between this bizarrely dressed stowaway and the successful Calormene merchant Tirian was posing as.
"I don’t belong to anyone!" she cried, and while Tirian admired her pluck, the answer didn't quite help his cause.
"I thought you had missed the ship," Tirian scolded. He silently prayed to Aslan that she would be able to read the kindly intent in his face. "I had no idea you dared to embark before me. Indeed, it was naught, very naught of you to do so."
The girl hesitated for a moment and looked at the water, weighing her odds between Tirian’s face and the swim back to the coast. Slowly, she replied, "Thank you, sir. I… I snuck on after you and hid below decks. I knew you would be angry with me for having overslept."
Tirian nodded encouragingly before turning on his heels to face the captain. "My apologies for the confusion. I will pay for my assistant’s passage and board, of course, as well as for any inconvenience."
"You most certainly will. All the cabins are taken, though. You’ll have to share. Doubt you’ll mind, though."
Everyone snickered and the girl stiffened in discomfort. Tirian loudly thanked the captain for his trouble and bustled her and her belongings below decks before she could protest. "Upon my honour," he whispered, "you are safe with me. Now, let us talk, away from prying eyes and eager ears."
She followed him quietly-a little too quietly, he should have realized-along the corridor and into his cabin. As he shut the door behind them he felt a dagger pressed against the back of his neck.
His own dagger.
Jewel would be so disappointed, he thought. A hardened warrior disarmed by a mere girl.
"I mean you no harm, lady," he promised again with his nose pressed to the wall. She allowed him to spin around so that they were face to face; the dagger pricked at his collarbone.
"Who are you and why did you pretend to know me?"
"I did only what any knight…" Tirian caught himself too late. "What anyone would."
Her face grew curious. "A knight?"
Tirian doubted he could deceive a sorceress such as this; so, he told the truth.
"I am Tirian, King of Narnia. I know you have no reason to believe this, attired as I am, but by the Great Lion himself I will give you proofs. First, I-"
But she seemed to require no proofs, for she dropped her weapon (his weapon) and laughed for joy.
"So I’ve made it back to Narnia, after all! How ripping. At first, I though perhaps I’d gotten into one of the other ponds."
Her words made little sense. This was the Eastern Sea, hardly to be mistaken for a pond. "Nay, lady. This is not Narnia. You are aboard a ship that left Galma this afternoon, en route to the Calormene coast."
She waved away his comment. "It’s all the same."
"I know not whom you offend most by such a statement: the Galmans, the Calormenes, or me."
She laughed again, and Tirian found it a friendly, tinkling thing, full of fun. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. My name’s Jill. Jill Pole."
She reached out with her right hand. It did not contain a weapon or any other object. Tirian stared at it in apprehension; he assumed she was casting a spell, but nothing happened. She laughed again and drew her hand back to herself.
"The pleasure is mine, damsel," he finally replied, once the tense moment had passed. Jill Pole, he thought. It was an odd name, but it a familiar one. The association danced in his brain, teasing and just out of reach.
"You’re King Tirian, you say? Are you…" And then all the joy went out of her face. "Is Rilian dead? The others told me this might happen. Oh dear. Are you his son?"
Tirian’s opinion of her began to shift. For a sorceress, he found her poorly informed. Bacchus and his wild ladies were the only ones who made similar requests for basic information on where and when they were, but their sustained inebriation usually explained the need for such questions; Jill, on the other hand, seemed perfectly sober, not to mention overclothed.
And then he remembered: her strange appearance, her mention of King Rilian…
"You are that Jill, from the histories? The brave little girl from beyond the world’s end who went on the great quest to rescue my ancestor Rilian from the Green Witch of Underland?" Tirian tripped over the words in his excitement. "The Jill who outwitted the fearsome Northern giants of Harfang, who befriended the inhabitants of the world’s core, who looked upon Father Time himself? The Jill who followed Aslan’s own signs to save the sunlit lands from certain conquest?"
"It wasn’t half so grand as all that," she mumbled.
"There was never anything grander." Tirian clasped her hands as he worked through the implications. Her fingers were bony and warm and real, and sent a thrill all the way to his toes. "And you have come again. Aslan has sent you from the ageless halls of heroes, where children remain young, merry and wise forever. He has sent you back to aid in my journey. If only Farsight were here; he would now regret doubting the urgency of my plan. What are the signs this time, fair Jill? What clues from the Great Lion?"
"Er," she said.
************************
It transpired that Jill had been given no instructions at all. As far as Tirian could tell, one moment, she had been trudging through snow-covered roads toward a port-like place called a ‘station’ after some time period knows as ‘winter hols’, which she had spent in a town called ‘Bright’ with all of Narnia’s greatest heroes… and the next moment, she had found herself standing with her bag on the deck of the ship.
No wondrous meetings with Aslan, no instructions, no forewarning or preparation of any kind.
As Jill rustled through her enormous bag for something she could refashion into semi-recognizable attire, Tirian couldn’t deny feeling a bit disappointed. Jill seemed like a sweet girl, but she came with no experience of espionage, fighting, or ruling, and no guidance from Aslan.
The situation was far from ideal.
She tried to assure him that this was perfectly normal (though she-and Tirian-found it somewhat queer that she was here on a solo trip). The others never had signs, she explained, and had to muddle through on their own-quarrelling and losing their way and getting by mostly on luck, common sense, and the kindness of strangers. The quest for Rilian was an aberration, she said, to the contrary of every history Tirian had ever read.
(An aberration for which she had always felt rather lowly, Tirian guessed from her manner… But he had no time for her self-doubt; his thoughts were on what on earth he was to do with her.)
Luckily, Jill proved herself a quick study. Locked together in his cabin, Tirian gave her the outline of the mission. Vague rumours and arrhythmic movements in the stars prophesied dire catastrophes, including a Calormene offensive against Narnia, this one more fearsome and dastardly than even Rabadash’s underhanded attack over a thousand years ago. It appeared that the Tisroc meant to invade and subdue the little northern country-perhaps all the little northern countries-despite recent treaties and gestures of peace and alliance.
However, the spies gave no reports of armies massing or weapons being stockpiled. The generals remained at their country estates, drinking spirits and spoiling their children. Only the Calormene navy seemed at all in use, and this was easily explained by the recent war they’d fought with lands even further south. If the reports were true, Tirian could not fathom by what means the Tisroc planned to attack.
Tirian told Jill of how, against the wishes of his closest circle of advisors, he had taken it upon himself to scout deep within Calormen and discover the Tisroc's plan before it could be enacted. "This is a quest of great subtlety and valor," he said, "which as king-"
"You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing, have you?" she interrupted.
This was not the expected response.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A king going all alone on a secret spy mission he could very easily have sent anyone else on, with absolutely no facts… you don’t even know if there’s really anything to it… It all sounds rather green to me. If Edmund were here, he’d set you straight."
No one had ever spoken to Tirian like this. If it were anyone else, he would have drawn his sword and demanded satisfaction. But Jill had just invoked the name of one of Narnia’s greatest leaders, and she herself was considered one of Narnia’s heroes, one of the legends from beyond the world’s end whom Tirian had spent his whole life wishing to meet.
If his poorly hidden disappointment in her skills had brought out a shadow of insecurity in her, so did her questioning of his judgment now lay him low in a way he was here to escape. Tirian had not been king for long-a few months at most-and the constant unflattering comparisons to his ancestors and forbears stung.
"But you have come," he reasoned, trying not to let her shake his confidence. "Aslan has sent you to aid me. That alone validates my quest, does it not?"
She shrugged. "I suppose so. It doesn’t matter though. If it turns out to be nothing, all the better, and it’ll still an adventure. How can I help?"
************************
Together, they agreed that their goal this week, during the sea voyage, was to learn the ways of Calormene merchants so as to more successfully penetrate Tashbaan, without giving themselves away at any step of the process.
It was his original plan, improved with many of Jill’s suggestions, though he now found it even more difficult to focus on their dull fellow passengers when he had a being from another world beside him. What he most wanted was spend the rest of the voyage in their cabin, asking her questions about Spare Oom (for lack of any further information, the historians still called their world by that name; Jill said she hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about).
The implementation of the plan and the satisfaction of his curiosity, however, were both delayed. Jill had never before been at sea, and thus spent most of her first day vomiting over the ship’s railing while the other passengers teased Tirian about his pretty but sick ‘assistant’.
It wasn’t until it was almost time to retire to their cabin for bed that she gained her sea legs. But now it was Tirian’s turn for nauseous discomfort.
He’d thought little of it when he’d claimed Jill as his traveling companion, but now he found himself facing the uncomfortable reality that he was to spend every night of the voyage in cramped quarters with this young woman. Tirian’s only experience with women his age had been Archenland’s tittering princesses. All of them-any lady of good standing and honour, really-would have balked at such a scandalous arrangement, and at the damage it might do to their reputations.
Jill, however, displayed no matching awkwardness. Blind to his discomfort, she handed him a second hammock that she had procured from the captain and asked him to hang it above his own, the space being too small to allow side-by-side berths. Meanwhile, she stood behind him and changed into her pajamas. When it was safe to look at her again, he was relieved to see that her striped cotton shirt and matching trousers were every bit as modest as the winter garments she’d arrived in.
While hammering, he prepared a pretty speech that would hopefully reassure any fears she may have been dissembling with good humour, but she was too busy chatting for him to get a word in edgewise. Eventually, he gave it up; perhaps this sort of thing was perfectly normal in her world. Perhaps he overreacted; they were hardly sharing a bed, he told himself.
"Lucy told me it took Scrubb over a week before he was able to stand up without turning green," Jill gloated to Tirian while she in turn faced the wall so he could change. "He’ll be sick as a pig to hear I did it faster."
"Who?"
She tried another name. "Eustace?"
"Ah. You mean your former questing companion. Why did you not say so before? The legend of Lord Eustace the Undragoned is one of my favorites."
Jill giggled as she stepped on his chest to climb into the upper hammock.
"What humours you, my lady?"
"It’s just that Scrubb’s always hated his name. Even if it weren’t dreadful, his cousins were ‘High King Peter’ and ‘Queen Lucy the Valiant’ when they were here, while he’s just plain, awful ‘Eustace Clarence Scrubb’. He’d be glad to know you lot have come up with a more impressive substitute, even if no one he knows will ever call him by it."
"Do they not honour titles in your place?"
"We aren't such prigs as to call one another such things, even amongst ourselves. And we never talk about Narnia to anyone else. Most of the time, we pretend as though none of it ever happened."
"Does your time here mean so little?" The idea of Narnia’s heroes shrugging off the adventures that meant so much to him and his people was almost unbearable. And then an even more unpleasant thought came to him. "Do you have other worlds you regularly visit and prefer? Earlier you mentioned-"
"There are other worlds, though I’ve never been to any. But coming here means everything, to all of us. It’s… I wish I could explain." Her sleepy voice made it clear that he wouldn’t get any answers tonight, but her words were reassuring.
"You are tired, and I interrogate you too harshly. I apologize. We’ll talk more in the morrow. Goodnight, Jill," he said.
"Goodnight, your majesty."
"My name is Tirian."
************************
Tirian dreamt that all the stars in the sky rained down upon Narnia until the night became blacker than the darkest cave. The horrible image jolted him out of his sleep. He woke so violently that he almost toppled out of his hammock (he would never admit it, but he was no seaman either).
To quiet his nerves, he lit a lamp and hovered it over where Jill slept on her side, curled up into a ball.
Basked in the swinging yellow light and shadows, she looked otherworldly in a way she hadn’t earlier. More like what he would have imagined her to look like.
He had been dreaming of these people since he was a small boy, the age Queen Lucy was when she first charmed her way into the hearts of all Narnia's inhabitants. And then Tirian had grown, progressing into a boy the same age King Edmund was when he broke the White Witch’s wand and ended her overlong reign; and on until he was a youth like Eustace-bored, spoiled, and obsessed with dragons. A bit older, and newly susceptible to a pretty face, the Queen Susan next became his idol; it was her fabled hand that had motivated him during his fencing lessons and tournaments, and it was hopeless comparisons to her imagined face that had kept him from liking any of the princesses that had been introduced to him. Later, more recently, when he’d begun to learn statecraft and military strategy, High King Peter had been his role model in all things.
But this girl, the one who was not related to any of the others, who’d only been to Narnia once… He had revered her, like every good Narnian, but there had always been someone slightly more interesting at the age she was in the stories, someone about whom there was much more written and much more to aspire to. She had never figured much into his fancies, and yet here she was, a hero for his current age, no longer a child but a contemporary.
His reverie shattered when she suddenly spoke.
"’s the middle of the night, Scrubb," she mumbled through closed eyes, completely asleep. "Switch off the light and go to sleep."
Tirian did as he (or rather, as Eustace) was bid, but could not find a comfortable resting position until it was nearly dawn.
************************
"Your tariffs are too high," Jill said the next evening when they finally found themselves alone in the cabin again. "When you get back, you should advise the ministers to lower them."
Jill had taken the goal of learning the lifestyle and conversation of a Calormene merchant very much to heart. All day, she had thrown herself into dull, trade-oriented conversations with surprising gusto. The men didn’t seem to notice that they were telling her entirely too much information about their businesses, for she slipped her way past their walls of discretion, using her wit more than her pretty face.
She was very good at this; better than Tirian would ever be. ("I played Rosalind in the school play last term," she proudly told him, though it elucidated little.)
Still, he wished she would keep the information to herself. He was interested in the style of their manner and address, not the substance. In running away from court and gaining an extra-terrestrial traveling companion, he’d hoped to escape this tedium, not win himself even more lectures.
"I don’t think it matters, Jill."
"Of course it matters. Not just for this project, but in general. It’s dull but it matters. My father says if only more of the members of Parliament cared about all that instead of about wars and-"
"Your father?" Logically, Tirian knew Jill and the others had to have parents of some sort, but… Sprung fully formed before his eyes as she was, he had difficulty imagining her, or any of them, as true children, with parents and families like anyone else.
"He’s one of the directors of the Bank of England. That’s why I’m so good at talking to the men here. I’ve been listening to that sort of thing all my life."
Tirian’s nose wrinkled of its own accord. "Your family is in trade?"
"Oh, you needn’t be so snobbish about it. We can’t all spend our days relaxing at hunting lodges with unicorns." She sniffed. "And he was able to get Edmund a very good apprenticeship under the finance minister, I’ll have you know. Susan thinks one day he could even be Prime Minister."
This grew more and more alarming, and Tirian began to think that perhaps some legends were best left unresearched. The idea of one of the greatest and wisest kings of Narnia setting his ambitions on a mere ministerial position and submitting himself to any form of paid employment-much less a lowly apprenticeship-was as disturbing to Tirian as the idea of squashing oneself into a flying metal box (although Jill assured him that this, too, was done all the time).
"What does such a thing entail?" he asked tentatively, trying not to be snobbish, as she had accused.
Jill explained it in great detail; Tirian understood some, enough, but remained stunned. She told him about High King Peter as a low-level (but fast-rising) officer in the army, Queen Susan as a civil servant in the foreign office, and Queen Lucy as a nurse.
After a few minutes of despairing reconciliation of these facts with his previous dreams, he asked, as politely as he could, "And what do you do?"
"Eustace and I are about to start our last term at school together, which is partly why I don’t see the rest of them very often. It’s a bit difficult, you see. They all stayed with Professor Kirke during the war, so it’s normal for them to spend weekends with him or have him visit them in London. Aunt Polly came down like a shot to spend the rest of that first summer with them, and since she's a grown-up, no one questions her movements. And Eustace is their cousin, so… There’s almost nothing to arrange. But with me, it’s more difficult. I’m not related to any of them, so we aren’t naturally thrown together at holidays. Eustace’s parents don’t like me very much. We aren't grown-up like Susan, or even Lucy, so we can’t yet do as we please. Not to mention, now that we’ve gotten a bit older, it’s gotten awkward for me to tag along as Eustace’s 'chum'…"
Jill went on, and Tirian began to sense that the other Narnian heroes were as much legends for her as they were for him. She, too, lived on the scraps of time she spent with them and the stories they let drop on the rare occasions when she entered their orbit.
He remembered the shadow of self-doubt that had plagued her the day before when she was explaining about being the only one to receive instructions from Aslan; what to him had always sounded like a favor to be grateful for haunted her as a lack of confidence in her abilities or worth. Tirian did not yet know her well enough to dispute this or even to verbalize the subtext of her words; for all he knew, this other family to which the Golden Age rulers and Lord Eustace belonged was truly as superior as she thought.
************************
"I’m beginning to think there really issome deep plot going on," Jill announced a couple of nights later.
Tirian threw himself into his hammock, exhausted. Playing this role was proving even more tiring than playing at being king had for the past few months. "What news?"
"I think they think you’re a Tarkaan. At first, I thought it was just a question of you being a terrible actor, unable to pretend you’re anything but royalty-"
"I beg your pardon!"
"But now I'm wondering if maybe you’re doing something right after all, without even knowing it."
Tirian was far from amused. "Go on."
"Don’t tell me you didn’t realize. The way you walk about all haughty and glowering-"
"As a Calormene does," he interrupted, becoming incensed.
"As a Tarkaan does, not a middle-class merchant. You haven’t talked to the others here… and yes, I know you think you try to chitchat, but you haven’t gotten to know them like I have. They’re not so proud or mean or whatever you seem to think they’re like. I had such a laugh this morning with-"
"Tell me about the plot."
She related a conversation she had had with the Calormene logging merchant-one of the many who had taken a special liking to her. It involved something about Narnian lumber and ‘finding ways to get around the tree monsters' and it ‘not being long now’ until entire forests that were protected by the dryads were open to his men. "And he said something very unflattering about your majesty that I won’t repeat."
Tirian pursed his lips. "And yet you claim this man as a friend."
"He’s the only one who’s less than nice. Well, and also the thin one with the bald spot. I’ll work on him tomorrow."
"What else did he say?"
"Something about ‘his kind’ getting more respect soon. That such a one as yourself-he meant you-must be learning the value of his profession or class or something. I assume he was talking about tradesmen, but I’m not sure. I’ll keep investigating, though. Does any of this mean anything to you?" she asked. "I’m sure you sat in on the policy meetings and wrote legislation on logging and exports and things?"
Tirian was ashamed to admit that he had been at his hunting lodge with Jewel when these matters were most recently discussed. He had spent most of recent years fighting alongside his father in the wars, not at the legislation table.
Perhaps the kings of Narnia, he confessed, had not been as involved in these matters as closely as they should have been.
"What does all this mean for when we get to Tashbaan?" Jill asked.
"I cannot say. But by Aslan’s grace, we will find our way. You have done most excellent sleuthing today, Jill."
She leaned over the edge of her hammock and beamed down at him.
************************
The nightmares had been coming on worse and worse for some weeks now; this journey had partly been conceived as a way to hopefully cure himself of them; it wasn't working.
On the last night of the voyage, Tirian dreamed of a great, fearsome hand reaching into the sky and squeezing the sun like an orange, until all the world went dark; all around him stood Talking Beasts whose powers of speech were ripped from them-whole sentences reduced to purrings and quacks in an instant. He shook himself awake, shivering all over, but this time the reality proved worse than the dream.
Jill was not with him.
Tirian panicked. He remembered the tales, both from his youth and from Jill’s own lips, of how suddenly these adventures could end. Riding on a hunt one moment, tumbling out of a cupboard the next, without a chance to bid friends farewell.
What if Aslan had taken her away from him, deemed him unworthy of her continued company?
Or worse, what if she had gone out to use the chamber pot, tumbled overboard and drowned?
He pulled on his boots and went to search the ship. A few well-placed lamps shone like globes in the mist, but other than a single sailor manning the steering, the deck at night was empty.
"Asked if she could sit up there for awhile," the sailor whispered to Tirian, and pointed at the crow’s nest. "Had a lover’s quarrel, did you?"
Tirian barely heard the man’s rude joke; he was too busy breathing for the first time in minutes as he drank in the sight of the dark figure shrouded in mist and moonlight high up above the mast of the ship. In her pajamas and the ugly wool hat she’d arrived in, Jill looked small and brave and ethereal up there.
He began climbing, each rung cold under his fingers. She spotted him before he’d gone a third of the way.
"Oh, stop! Really. I’ll come down," she called and hurriedly moved to descend.
"What for? I’m coming to join you."
"You don’t have to. I wouldn’t want you to fall." And as a nonsensical coda, Tirian thought she whispered, "Not again."
He shook his head and continued to climb. Only when he was almost at the top did Jill give up trying to dissuade him. The only way for both of them to fit was to huddle tightly together, interlacing their bent knees and sitting on one another’s feet. For all that they’d been sharing a cramped cabin, this was the closest they had yet been.
Even now, the inherent awkwardness was lost on her; Tirian couldn’t decide if he found her blindness reassuring or infuriating.
"Your disappearance had me worried, lady," he gently reprimanded her. "And I do not frighten easily."
"You didn’t have to follow me up here. I would have come down."
"I wanted to join you," he replied. "I love a good climb."
She brightened at this, surprised. "You do?"
"When I was a boy, I was forever scaling the tower above my bedchamber, much to my mother’s discontent. They had to send the owls out after me on more than one occasion."
"At least you never almost killed anyone," she mumbled.
It was an odd remark, and it reminded him of her warning a moment ago. "You said you didn’t want me to fall ‘again’. But you have never seen me fall."
She grimaced. "I almost killed poor Eustace when we first came to Narnia. Showing off my love of heights."
She related the whole story-not one of the infinite he had been trying to coax out of her all week, but rather an entirely unknown prologue to the tale of Rilian’s disenchantment.
"This is not a tale I have heard," he said, hoping she could hear the lack of judgment in his voice. There was nothing to judge; whatever had happened, it had all turned out well in the end, and Jill was now (if she ever had been) anything but a show-off.
She sighed. "Puddleglum’s such a dear… was such a dear… I’m sure he left that part out when he told the story afterwards for your history books. But it’s true. That’s how I flubbed the first of Aslan’s signs. Aslan went out of his way to give me those signs-the others never even needed any-and I flubbed them all. Even at the end, it was Puddleglum who salvaged the last one and released Rilian. Eustace and I didn’t do much of anything, except fall off ledges."
Tirian was certain she underestimated her own worth, and now felt even guiltier about his first-impression disappointment in Aslan’s choice of a hero for him. In only a few days, she’d already proven herself more than a helpful partner. Given his recent fear that she might leave him at any moment, he decided now was the time to tell her so.
"Even were you to return home tomorrow, dear Jill, know that you have already taught me many a lesson about kingship, as well as been a companion one can only dream of."
She turned her head away in embarrassment, but Tirian could feel her toes wriggling under him as she listened.
"Is this why you couldn’t sleep?" he asked next.
"Well, partly that, but mostly the cabin. I can’t stomach tiny, under-ground-type places."
"The cabin? You have never complained before. You, who spent weeks in Underland, the deepest and darkest place of all. You are braver even beyond what I have learned.""
She continued to hug her knees-his knees-and look up into the night sky. "I’m sorry if I gave you a fright. I didn’t mean to, but I needed to go outside and see the stars. Puddleglum taught me their names. It cheers me up to come out here and say hello to all of them again."
"Will you introduce me?"
"Don’t you know them? You’ve lived here your whole life."
"I never paid much attention. My blood may have a sprinkling of star in it, but to me, they have served mostly as portents of doom for the centaurs to neigh about. I’d like to hear about them from you."
They spent the rest of the night making up their own stories, wars and romances between constellations-pure silliness. Jill fell asleep with her head on his knees; Tirian held her close so that even if she shook, they’d stay secure in their perch. The sailor down below whistled, but Tirian ignored him.
Hours later, a low throbbing music greeted the dawn. Softly, gradually, it increased in volume and solemnity. Jill only woke when the music had become so rich and deep that the river itself vibrated with its sad melody, causing the ship to quiver. Tirian knew this song well. A hundred trumpets had played the same sequence of notes every day for thousands of years, signaling the opening of Tashbaan’s gates for the day.
"What’s that?" she asked, muzzy-headed and confused as to where she was.
"Tashbaan. We have arrived."
Jill rubbed her eyes and finally saw the marvelous sight in front of them. They sailed down a broad river flanked by pleasure gardens as far as the eye could see. An almost infinite number of towers arced around the island upon which Tashbaan was located, terraces all but fell into the sea, and fishing boats swayed playfully in the creeping light. Tashbaan may have been accursed, but not even Tirian could deny its beauty.
"But what are the trumpets for?" Jill pressed.
"To bid you welcome."
It was just light enough now for Tirian to see her roll her eyes.
************************
It took what felt like an age to disembark. Tirian knew Jill had charmed every man on the ship into loosening his tongue, but he had not understood the depth of the affection she had generated-on both sides-until now, when each man tripped over one another to bid her farewell. Many even had little (or large) gifts to bestow upon her, begging Tirian’s permission to do so. He felt irrationally irritated by it all, but despite their assumed identities, he knew it wasn't his place to say no.
A merchant who supplied Western Tarkheenas with luxurious silks handed her an elaborately embroidered dress box. Jill shooed Tirian out of their cabin so she could change in the two minutes before they had to-truly this time, the captain sadly decreed-disembark.
Tirian had never seen Jill in anything except the bizarre overcoat she’d first appeared in, and since then, she’d been walking around with her bare feet ("just like Lucy!" she’d said proudly the other day) sticking out of a pair of sloppily cut trousers from Tirian’s wardrobe and a disconcertingly foreign blue men’s-like shirt from her own belongings. So, when she emerged in a rich purple gown, matching silk slippers, and a gauzy sash that veiled her entire face except for her twinkling brown eyes, it was like discovering her anew. Even though he could see barely any of her at all, her figure was for the first time in evidence; this startling reminder that Jill was a woman made Tirian feel rather shy. And also a bit of a degenerate; one shouldn’t look at one’s legendary heroes like that, not even accidentally or for a moment.
"Thank you ever so much. Does it look all right?" she innocently asked the old, enamored man who’d given her this gift.
"It’ll do," Tirian choked out, before anyone else could think of a more flattering response. She was supposedly his assistant, after all, which he tried to glower everyone into remembering. Unfortunately, Jill took his reply as a disparagement of her appearance; he could see the outline of a pout through her veil.
"You look lovely," he corrected for only her ears. "But we really must be going."
He had his own farewells to make, some of which were mystifying. One or two Calormenes winked at him and called him ‘my lord’, but he didn’t think they had discovered his identity, for they didn’t call him ‘your majesty’. Very odd, indeed, but in line with Jill’s continued suspicions that there was some link between Tarkaans, Calormene merchants, and a plot against Narnia.
Tirian and Jill were the only two stopping at Tashbaan; the ship’s main destination had always been southward, towards the other great cities of Calormen. Tirian had thought it strange that the original Arsheesh (a Calormene seller of coal whose identity Tirian had assumed when the man unexpectedly died) had chosen to take his passage on this vessel, but it came in handy now; in case he needed to change his story or abort the mission, there would be fewer in Tashbaan who knew either his true face or his disguised one.
"I know now what an excellent actress you are," Tirian praised Jill once they were standing on the pier and waving the ship and their friends (her friends) out of sight. "But I had no idea how extensive your talents truly are. Those men not only believed you are who you said you were, but they adored you, too."
"Acting’s easiest when it isn’t acting at all," she replied. "Most of them were all rather darling, once you got to know them."
Tirian noticed how Jill hid her hands in the fabric of her dress as the harbormaster approached them with multiple bows. Posed and dressed as she is, there was no way to tell that she was as fair-skinned as a Narnian.
"You have come with reports from the Northern countries?" the harbormaster asked Tirian. "I was told to meet you as you disembarked from that ship."
"Yes," Tirian said. It seemed like the right answer.
The harbormaster recommended one of Tashbaan’s finest hotels in a way that sounded more like a passed-along instruction than a helpful suggestion.
"That hotel is only for the highest Tarkaans and visiting nobility," Tirian countered. He remembered having attended a banquet there on his last visit. "While we…"
The man smiled. "Your lordship is as witty as he is fearsome."
Tirian frowned but said nothing, and a few minutes later, he and Jill were being hand-carried through the city in a cloth-covered litter.
"Curiouser and curiouser," Jill whispered on the way, in between peeks through the slits in the cloth, but did not elaborate, for fear the carriers would hear.
The hotel was every bit as luxurious as Tirian remembered. The proprietor received them as a great lord and his richly attired wife, instead of as a prosperous merchant and his assistant.
Before Tirian could correct him and continue their previous charade, Jill, even more tightly veiled than before, leaned dotingly against him, going on tiptoes to nuzzle her head against his shoulder. Tirian stiffened and sputtered, momentarily forgetting the presence of the man in front of them in his surprise.
Her plan, whatever it is, succeeded, because the innkeeper smiled indulgently upon them. "You are lucky to have such a fond wife. She must have missed you while you were on assignment," he told Tirian.
"My assignment…" Tirian repeated.
"I travelled to meet him. The separation was too painful," Jill purred demurely, pressing a kiss to his shoulder through the cloth on her face.
"The poets have said that a doting wife is the key to a lifetime of happiness."
"Quite," Tirian replied.
The hotel sat far atop the dirty smells and sounds of the city, and a pleasant, fruit-scented breeze wafted through the windows. They climbed to the uppermost floor of the old building, to a large room decorated with intricate mosaics and colourful silks. Their private terrace even boasted a view of the Grand Vizier’s pleasure gardens on the other side of the river.
As soon as the numerous servants had finished installing them in their quarters and left them alone, Jill tore away her veil and began exploring. "Well, this is certainly a step up from camping in Ettinsmoor."
"Jill…" Tirian asked cautiously, proud of himself for keeping the embarrassed tremor out of his voice. "Why did you change the plan?"
"If I hadn’t, we would have had to have separate rooms," Jill answered distractedly, too busy cooing over the view to pay him any mind. "No more secret plotting sessions. And then where would we have been? Anyway, it’s clear you’re meant to be a Tarkaan. I don’t think Tarkaans have ‘assistants’ and this dress is too expensive for me to be anything but a Tarkaan’s wife, don’t you think?"
It was a logical, strategic move. Tirian tried to think as little of it as she did. "It was a happy plan, Jill."
Something about his tone must have finally claimed her attention, for she turned sharply to look at him.
"You don’t sound happy." Then, finally, after an entire week, Jill got a whiff of the awkwardness that plagued Tirian. She looked around the suite, which consisted of a cozy sitting area and an alcove containing a single four-poster bed, and clasped her hand over her mouth. "Unless… Goodness, you aren’t engaged or anything, are you? I never even thought to ask! I’m so-"
"No, my lady. My father never forced me into such an arrangement. My heart and hand are free. It was your reputation, not mine, that weighed upon my conscience."
"Oh, well that’s hardly anything to worry about. You’re perfectly harmless, no one knows who I am, and when I get home, it’ll be as though nothing ever happened. Plus, everyone shares rooms and tents and things on adventures, don’t they? Eustace and I did, and still sneak into one another’s bedrooms when we can, for old times sake."
Tirian didn’t appreciate being dubbed ‘harmless’ and continued to dislike the idea that she’d go home and act as though she'd never met him. He wondered how Eustace would feel… But given how at ease Jill felt here, with him, Tirian supposed it would be churlish to continue to complain.
She sat on the bed and rolled up her sleeves and skirts. "I wrapped up well enough that no one saw what I look like, but I suppose it’s time for me to become a proper Calormene. Pass me the juice, would you? I have to say, I've been dying to join you in disguise."
Tirian watched from the archway between the two rooms as she applied the compound to her skin.
"It really isn’t that different from what they sell back home for people who want to pretend they’ve been in Biarritz all summer," she observed.
"Our new circumstances," Tirian thought aloud, saving that nugget for later inquiry, "corroborate with what you guessed on board the ship. But the question remains: what was Arsheesh’s assignment? Was he a Tarkaan spy? What do they think I have been doing in the northern countries?"
"I can’t even guess. But give it time. We’ve only just arrived."
Jill expressed an eagerness to explore Tashbaan, and although he abhorred the place, Tirian could not help but indulge her wish. Given that their middle-class seafaring clothes (with the exception of Jill’s new dress) were insufficient for the new rank they had been thrust into, they invented a tale of lost trunks, asked the hotel’s owner for advice, and received the address of the finest tailor in the city. Tirian chose fabrics and provided memorized measurements quickly and almost automatically, taking no more joy in the activity than he did in brushing his teeth. However, Jill had never been to a tailor before, and delighted in the entire process. She made a friend of the seamstress by being a much more pleasant customer than the spoiled Tarkheenas to which she was accustomed, while Tirian made a friend of the owner by paying regal sums for outfitting them as quickly as possible.
"A gifted poet once said, my lord," the owner told Tirian as they made appointments for future fittings and pick-ups, "a wife is only as happy as she is beautiful, and she is only as beautiful as the shoes on her feet and the bracelet on her wrist."
Tirian repressed a most undignified grunt. This was always the worst of Calormen, he remembered: more than the stiffness and the heat and the demon god they worshipped, it was the tyrannical ubiquity of dreadful poetry that didn’t even have the decency to rhyme that made him hate the place most.
"If you have never been to such an establishment," he asked Jill on their way out, "then how do you come by your garments?"
"All the best dresses come pre-made nowadays. You pick the one that fits you, not the other way around."
This struck Tirian as a monstrously inefficient system, one that explained the hideousness of her wardrobe.
Jill was already sick of being carried around like a doll, and requested that they spend the afternoon walking around the market, where a cacophony of shouts and barks drowned out any attempt at conversation, young men careened about in a dizzying and dangerous rush, and the air was suffused with a host of smells that shouldn't go together.
"How can you enjoy this so?" he asked Jill, whose face was lit with excitement as she fingered the wares of the different tables at the bazaar. "Is this not an assault to your senses?"
"It isn’t that different from Leicester Square on a Saturday, to be honest."
The unpacking of that statement took them the rest of the journey home.
Supper was a leisurely affair. They ordered fruits and stews from the kitchen to their private balcony, where they sat, eating and commenting on the ships that they could see sailing by.
"Oh!" Jill suddenly exclaimed, and then ran into the bedroom. Tirian followed her, but she waved at him to go back outside, too busy rummaging through her bag to speak.
"What is it?" he asked when she finally returned to join him.
Jill presented him with a dingy yellow envelope.
"I’ve been meaning to show you this, but our cabin was always too dark."
Tirian pulled out some shiny pieces of grey-tinted paper. At first, he didn’t understand what he was meant to do with them, but once he looked closely at the first one, he gasped. Jill’s face-more precise and lifelike than any artist’s portrait-smiled at him. "It’s you!"
"My parents got me a Polaroid camera for Christmas," she said while he marveled. "I took it to Brighton with me for the New Year’s party with the others."
A handsome young man had his arms around Jill and a pretty young woman who was slightly older than either of them. They had an air of happy prosperity, but were all dressed in the dingiest and shabbiest of clothes. Clothes that would still have been dingy even had the colours not been erased. A terribly depressing realization dawned on Tirian. "Do you live in a world devoid of colour?"
"No, we have colours, same as here. But cameras-the machines that make these pictures-only do black and white."
"Who is the young man with you?"
"That’s Edmund, and Susan, too." She fished two more of these magical portraits from the envelope. "Here’s one with Peter and Lucy. And another with me, Eustace, Aunt Polly and the Professor."
But Tirian was still staring at the first one. "By the Lion, this is deep magic indeed. Exact portraits of the Just King and the Gentle Queen from beyond the grasp of time."
"It was only last week."
Tirian peered at the small face, scarcely larger than one of the miniatures foreign kings liked to send him of their unattractive daughters. At first glance, he’d been focused on Jill and had barely noticed the other woman, but now he saw that she was very beautiful indeed, even with her drab clothes and short hair; but not quite as beautiful as he’d expected. He couldn’t decide if it was the lack of colour, or the impossibility of anything living up to a lifetime’s worth of fevered fantasy.
"Throughout my youth," he said in hushed awe, "I dreamed of winning the heart of one as fair as the Queen Susan."
"You didn’t even know what she looked like until this minute," Jill pointed out with uncharacteristic irritation. "And anyway, Susan isn’t a thing you can win like a prize in a tournament. She’s a person. You’re just as bad as all the boys back home. None of them seem to understand that either."
Tirian was still staring, but Jill’s words did settle into his consciousness. He transferred his attention to the other pictures. Peter looked exactly as one would imagine a youthful High King, and Queen Lucy smiled sweetly, but then he looked up at Jill. Jill who was real and jolly and in full colour right next to him. Jill, who could never falter in an unfair comparison to fantasy, since he had never truly imagined her before meeting her.
"What is it?" she asked when she noticed him staring at her.
His thoughts refused to articulate themselves into anything coherent, so he replied a brusque, "It is nothing."
He went back to poring over the pictures, trying to glean any tiny details of the world around the figures in the pictures. "Is that your palace?" he asked, forgetting for a moment that she had already told him they were commoners.
"No, that’s just the Brighton Pavilion. It belongs to the actual king of England. We’d just taken a tour of it before stopping to take photos."
"You and Eustace make a handsome couple," Tirian said charitably about the young man whose spots were visible even in these wonderful miniatures.
"Scrubb?" she scoffed. "You think we-?"
"Of course. You yourself are familiar with the tale of Cor and Aravis. It is ever so. Questing companions from every history fall in love." Out of delicacy, Tirian refrained from mentioning their first night together, when he’d heard her speak to Eustace in her sleep; but even without such details, he found his argument impregnable.
"But I’m not a questing… person… from history. People in history are all old or dead or imaginary, or all three. I’m still in school. So’s Eustace. We've got our whole lives ahead of us. And we’re only chums. I could never even imagine…"
Much as Jill had become real to Tirian during their trip, in this one way she had remained in his mind a kind of locked object, tied to Eustace in an unchanging narrative that was greater and more romantic than everyday relationships between mere mortals such as himself. Now freed from that last tie to the stories, he wasn't sure what to think or hold onto.
"The histories all end with a coda about how you and Eustace returned to your world and… well," he tried to explain. "Though now that I think on it, it must have been a storyteller's license, for how could they know? You never came back until now."
"It’s all right. You aren't the first to think that. We're rather used to it, Eustace and I," she said, and Tirian regretted having touched what was obviously a sore spot for the girl. "Anyway, you should have these. You can give them to your historians when you get back to Narnia."
"That is a precious gift indeed. Are you certain?"
"I can always take more when I get home. In the meanwhile, I’d like to have one of you."
"How…"
She dived into her bag again and pulled out a terrifying object made of a black substance Tirian had never seen, lined with metal and glass.
"What is that monstrosity?"
"It’s what makes the pictures." She took out a box of paper and put one of the sheets into the device. "Come, help me hold it up in front of us."
"Whatever for?" Tirian had faced giants and armies, but never before had he felt this frightened.
"Stop being such a baby."
Shamed, Tirian suffered to touch it, expecting to be bitten, or worse, at any moment. Together, they held it out at arm’s length in front of their faces.
"Smile," Jill said.
"Eugh! Does it smile back?"
"Just smile, Tirian."
Jill pressed down on a button on the front of the device. A blinding flash of light and a horrible noise unlike anything Tirian had ever heard erupted, and without warning, the paper began to move through it. Tirian found it disgusting.
When it finished coming through, the paper was just as white and shiny as it had been before. Jill pulled it out and began to fan herself with it.
"Let me pour you a glass of chilled wine," Tirian said, taking her movements as defense against the heat, and finding it very annoying. He had not endured such an ordeal merely to produce an inadequate fan for Jill; he could have bought her a beautiful one from the stand near the hotel if that was all she wanted.
"No, thanks."
"Is something supposed to happen?" he asked.
"Give it a minute."
Soon, an image ghosted into existence, creeping up the paper as she shook it. A perfect portrait of their faces, framed by the mosaicked doorway, completed itself with a flourish.
Checking himself to ensure his face had not been stolen, Tirian asked, "Are you certain it’s safe?"
"Of course it’s safe. We do it all the time back home. You should see the ones that move and talk."
A frequent topic of her conversation finally made more sense. "Is that what you mean when you speak of these ‘films’ you love so much?"
"Now you’ve got it."
"I thought you said there was no magic in your world, but this is the greatest sorcery I have ever witnessed."
"It’s science, not magic. A thing done with chemicals and light. Let’s do another. One for you, and one for me. This time, try to look less disgusted. Looking at this one, you’d never know we were friends."
************************
Tirian dreamt of horrible lizards-larger than any he had ever seen-running amok in Narnia, ripping up the trees and shrubs until the ground was barren and dry and covered with little hills and blemishes that one had never noticed before.
"Tirian?" He heard Jill’s voice call his name in the dream, but the starless abyss was too dark to see her. He could not even follow her voice to find her, could not move his feet to save her from being devoured along with everything else that was good and beautiful in the world.
"Tirian!"
And then he did see her-or at least her outline in the darkness-hovering over him, her hair falling in front of her face to tickle his nose. She had him by the shoulders, and shook him out of his paralysis. His soldierly reflexes sprang into action; instinctively, he rolled himself on top of her, shielding her from harm.
"Er… Tirian?"
Now awake, he saw that the danger was over, had only ever been in his mind. He climbed off Jill with a thousand horrified apologies.
"It’s a good thing we’re the only ones in this hotel," she said, when she, too, had recovered herself, "or you’d have woken the entire building with your screaming. If you’re anything in battle like you are in your sleep, I don’t wonder you’ve already won so many wars. You almost took my eye out, thrashing like that."
"I can never apologize enough."
"What was it this time?"
Tirian looked at her askance. He was certain he had never told her of the constant nightmares that tormented him. "What do you mean ‘this time’?"
"You’re always muttering and shaking the bed, but tonight was definitely the worst of it."
"I saw the end of Narnia, as I always do. But tonight, you were there, lost, in danger."
"What if I read to you until you fall asleep again?" she proposed. "That might help stave off bad dreams."
She put on her slippers and went to the cupboard in which her luggage was locked and hidden. Minutes later, she returned to the bed and sat with her back to the headboard and her knees tucked almost under her chin. In her hands were a book and a flashlight.
(Tirian had one of these in Cair Paravel's treasure room, a precious relic left behind by King Edmund; but the batteries had run out hundreds of years ago, and until now, no one in Narnia knew what it was for).
"What sort of tale is this?"
"It’s a kind of adventure-romance, set during the French Revolution. That’s my favorite time period for adventure stories, just as the Pevensies’ reign is yours. France is the country across the channel from mine," she explained. "The people revolted against their useless king awhile back and cut off his head."
Tirian cocked one eyebrow at her. "And you think regaling me with such tales will facilitate a calm sleep? After the sort of nightmare I just had?"
"It’s this or nothing. I have other books but it’s too late and too dark to hunt around for anything else."
"Very well. Read on. I have often wondered what yarns your bards spin."
Jill shone the flashlight on the book and began to read in a low voice, just rushed enough to show that she did not do this often.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…"
Tirian closed his eyes, rested his fingers against her nearby ankle, and listened.
Just before drifting off into a dreamless sleep, he thought, not for the first time, that sharing a room with Jill was perhaps not so terrible.
************************
Part 2
Author: aurilly
Recipient: freudiancascade
Rating: PG
Content/Warnings: none
Summary: Tirian's half-baked scheme for espionage in Calormen gets a much-needed boost when Narnian hero Jill Pole shows up. Little do they know that the fate of the world---the prevention of the apocalypse itself---rests on their success (and also on the lumber tariffs). (pre-Last Battle AU)
The Undercover King
The daily battle between Galman fishermen and Galman seagulls for the finest catch of fish left little room at the port for almost any other activity. It took almost an hour for Tirian to navigate through their ranks and board the ship that was to take him to Calormen.
Tirian was wholly unaccustomed, not only to waiting, but also to the disrespectful crush of people and carts against his person. But he quashed his growing irritation by reminding himself that all this jostling meant his plan was working. With his dyed black hair, handsome tan from a bottle, and the wide-brimmed straw hat he wore instead of his golden circlet, no one in Galma had any notion that this toe-tapping young merchant was King Tirian of Narnia.
Hired hands loaded his wares-a hodge-podge of dwarf-forged steel, faun-carved flutes, mermaid-sourced pearls and other valuable Northern products-on to the ship. His fellow passengers were a mix of Terebinthian emigrants, Galman adventurers and Calormene merchants.
Strong arms below deck supplemented the easy breeze that drew the trading ship away from the harbor. This would always be Tirian’s favorite moment-the start of a journey, the promise of something new.
Farsight and his other counselors had tried to dissuade him from this self-appointed project with cluckings and brayings about ‘other important matters’ and ‘lack of proofs’ and ‘potential diplomatic catastrophes’. But Tirian, rash and restless and still smarting from the recent death of his father, had heeded them not at all.
And now he was off-off to Calormen and adventure, leaving the tedium of everyday rule behind.
Tirian couldn’t have been more delighted.
************************
"The main problem," a hunched-over Terebinthian merchant wheezed, "is that the tariffs on grain are inconsistent from port to port. Tashbaan charges only three percent, while Archenland maintains a draconian insistence on weighted tariffs, so you never know what you’ll be charged."
Only ten minutes had elapsed since they set sail-the flags atop the Galman Keep were still visible-but boredom had already set in. Ten minutes of grain tariffs, and an entire week to go. Tirian began to regret having ignored Farsight’s advice against this mission.
He had half a mind to announce his identity and demand that the ship make an unscheduled stop at Cair Paravel. Indeed, as the merchant continued to drone on, Tirian wondered how much it would cost to accommodate such a demand.
A soft pop distracted him from his escape plans. A spot by the railing that had previously been empty was now occupied by someone-or something-clad in the oddest and ugliest of clothes. The Galman sun saw everyone in short sleeves and loose linens, but this newcomer was outfitted for deepest winter; it was impossible to make out a physique underneath the greatcoat, or a face underneath the wool hat and scarf.
Tirian, who had been plagued by disturbing dreams as of late, feared his nightmares were beginning to encroach upon his days. He blinked; but the apparition persisted, and even happened to lock wide, equally astonished eyes with his.
For a moment, the conversations around him continued uninterrupted. No one else seemed to have witnessed the precise moment of this stranger’s miraculous appearance, but it didn’t take long for the other passengers and crew to notice an interloper in their midst.
"You!" the captain yelled and ran across the ship. He cornered the stranger against the railing and knocked the hat off her head. For it was a her, a female whose long brown hair tumbled down around her shoulders, obscuring her face. "Where did you come from?"
"I…" she began to answer, but then stopped herself.
The girl-practically a woman, Tirian noticed, no more than two years younger than himself-beamed, inexplicably delighted to find herself in such a dreadful situation.
"I asked you a question," the captain repeated.
"She is my assistant," Tirian announced, blurting out the first thought that came to mind.
It might risk his mission, but as a knight, he felt honour-bound to rush to any damsel’s aid; it was even less of a burden when it involved a damsel as mysterious and intriguing as this one, who was providing such a welcome distraction from his previously dull conversation. Moreover, by helping this powerful sorceress (Tirian could not imagine what else she might be), perhaps he could make an ally of her, an aide in his quest. Whatever magic she possessed, he did not think it black.
"She belongs to you?" the captain asked, looking between this bizarrely dressed stowaway and the successful Calormene merchant Tirian was posing as.
"I don’t belong to anyone!" she cried, and while Tirian admired her pluck, the answer didn't quite help his cause.
"I thought you had missed the ship," Tirian scolded. He silently prayed to Aslan that she would be able to read the kindly intent in his face. "I had no idea you dared to embark before me. Indeed, it was naught, very naught of you to do so."
The girl hesitated for a moment and looked at the water, weighing her odds between Tirian’s face and the swim back to the coast. Slowly, she replied, "Thank you, sir. I… I snuck on after you and hid below decks. I knew you would be angry with me for having overslept."
Tirian nodded encouragingly before turning on his heels to face the captain. "My apologies for the confusion. I will pay for my assistant’s passage and board, of course, as well as for any inconvenience."
"You most certainly will. All the cabins are taken, though. You’ll have to share. Doubt you’ll mind, though."
Everyone snickered and the girl stiffened in discomfort. Tirian loudly thanked the captain for his trouble and bustled her and her belongings below decks before she could protest. "Upon my honour," he whispered, "you are safe with me. Now, let us talk, away from prying eyes and eager ears."
She followed him quietly-a little too quietly, he should have realized-along the corridor and into his cabin. As he shut the door behind them he felt a dagger pressed against the back of his neck.
His own dagger.
Jewel would be so disappointed, he thought. A hardened warrior disarmed by a mere girl.
"I mean you no harm, lady," he promised again with his nose pressed to the wall. She allowed him to spin around so that they were face to face; the dagger pricked at his collarbone.
"Who are you and why did you pretend to know me?"
"I did only what any knight…" Tirian caught himself too late. "What anyone would."
Her face grew curious. "A knight?"
Tirian doubted he could deceive a sorceress such as this; so, he told the truth.
"I am Tirian, King of Narnia. I know you have no reason to believe this, attired as I am, but by the Great Lion himself I will give you proofs. First, I-"
But she seemed to require no proofs, for she dropped her weapon (his weapon) and laughed for joy.
"So I’ve made it back to Narnia, after all! How ripping. At first, I though perhaps I’d gotten into one of the other ponds."
Her words made little sense. This was the Eastern Sea, hardly to be mistaken for a pond. "Nay, lady. This is not Narnia. You are aboard a ship that left Galma this afternoon, en route to the Calormene coast."
She waved away his comment. "It’s all the same."
"I know not whom you offend most by such a statement: the Galmans, the Calormenes, or me."
She laughed again, and Tirian found it a friendly, tinkling thing, full of fun. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. My name’s Jill. Jill Pole."
She reached out with her right hand. It did not contain a weapon or any other object. Tirian stared at it in apprehension; he assumed she was casting a spell, but nothing happened. She laughed again and drew her hand back to herself.
"The pleasure is mine, damsel," he finally replied, once the tense moment had passed. Jill Pole, he thought. It was an odd name, but it a familiar one. The association danced in his brain, teasing and just out of reach.
"You’re King Tirian, you say? Are you…" And then all the joy went out of her face. "Is Rilian dead? The others told me this might happen. Oh dear. Are you his son?"
Tirian’s opinion of her began to shift. For a sorceress, he found her poorly informed. Bacchus and his wild ladies were the only ones who made similar requests for basic information on where and when they were, but their sustained inebriation usually explained the need for such questions; Jill, on the other hand, seemed perfectly sober, not to mention overclothed.
And then he remembered: her strange appearance, her mention of King Rilian…
"You are that Jill, from the histories? The brave little girl from beyond the world’s end who went on the great quest to rescue my ancestor Rilian from the Green Witch of Underland?" Tirian tripped over the words in his excitement. "The Jill who outwitted the fearsome Northern giants of Harfang, who befriended the inhabitants of the world’s core, who looked upon Father Time himself? The Jill who followed Aslan’s own signs to save the sunlit lands from certain conquest?"
"It wasn’t half so grand as all that," she mumbled.
"There was never anything grander." Tirian clasped her hands as he worked through the implications. Her fingers were bony and warm and real, and sent a thrill all the way to his toes. "And you have come again. Aslan has sent you from the ageless halls of heroes, where children remain young, merry and wise forever. He has sent you back to aid in my journey. If only Farsight were here; he would now regret doubting the urgency of my plan. What are the signs this time, fair Jill? What clues from the Great Lion?"
"Er," she said.
************************
It transpired that Jill had been given no instructions at all. As far as Tirian could tell, one moment, she had been trudging through snow-covered roads toward a port-like place called a ‘station’ after some time period knows as ‘winter hols’, which she had spent in a town called ‘Bright’ with all of Narnia’s greatest heroes… and the next moment, she had found herself standing with her bag on the deck of the ship.
No wondrous meetings with Aslan, no instructions, no forewarning or preparation of any kind.
As Jill rustled through her enormous bag for something she could refashion into semi-recognizable attire, Tirian couldn’t deny feeling a bit disappointed. Jill seemed like a sweet girl, but she came with no experience of espionage, fighting, or ruling, and no guidance from Aslan.
The situation was far from ideal.
She tried to assure him that this was perfectly normal (though she-and Tirian-found it somewhat queer that she was here on a solo trip). The others never had signs, she explained, and had to muddle through on their own-quarrelling and losing their way and getting by mostly on luck, common sense, and the kindness of strangers. The quest for Rilian was an aberration, she said, to the contrary of every history Tirian had ever read.
(An aberration for which she had always felt rather lowly, Tirian guessed from her manner… But he had no time for her self-doubt; his thoughts were on what on earth he was to do with her.)
Luckily, Jill proved herself a quick study. Locked together in his cabin, Tirian gave her the outline of the mission. Vague rumours and arrhythmic movements in the stars prophesied dire catastrophes, including a Calormene offensive against Narnia, this one more fearsome and dastardly than even Rabadash’s underhanded attack over a thousand years ago. It appeared that the Tisroc meant to invade and subdue the little northern country-perhaps all the little northern countries-despite recent treaties and gestures of peace and alliance.
However, the spies gave no reports of armies massing or weapons being stockpiled. The generals remained at their country estates, drinking spirits and spoiling their children. Only the Calormene navy seemed at all in use, and this was easily explained by the recent war they’d fought with lands even further south. If the reports were true, Tirian could not fathom by what means the Tisroc planned to attack.
Tirian told Jill of how, against the wishes of his closest circle of advisors, he had taken it upon himself to scout deep within Calormen and discover the Tisroc's plan before it could be enacted. "This is a quest of great subtlety and valor," he said, "which as king-"
"You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing, have you?" she interrupted.
This was not the expected response.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A king going all alone on a secret spy mission he could very easily have sent anyone else on, with absolutely no facts… you don’t even know if there’s really anything to it… It all sounds rather green to me. If Edmund were here, he’d set you straight."
No one had ever spoken to Tirian like this. If it were anyone else, he would have drawn his sword and demanded satisfaction. But Jill had just invoked the name of one of Narnia’s greatest leaders, and she herself was considered one of Narnia’s heroes, one of the legends from beyond the world’s end whom Tirian had spent his whole life wishing to meet.
If his poorly hidden disappointment in her skills had brought out a shadow of insecurity in her, so did her questioning of his judgment now lay him low in a way he was here to escape. Tirian had not been king for long-a few months at most-and the constant unflattering comparisons to his ancestors and forbears stung.
"But you have come," he reasoned, trying not to let her shake his confidence. "Aslan has sent you to aid me. That alone validates my quest, does it not?"
She shrugged. "I suppose so. It doesn’t matter though. If it turns out to be nothing, all the better, and it’ll still an adventure. How can I help?"
************************
Together, they agreed that their goal this week, during the sea voyage, was to learn the ways of Calormene merchants so as to more successfully penetrate Tashbaan, without giving themselves away at any step of the process.
It was his original plan, improved with many of Jill’s suggestions, though he now found it even more difficult to focus on their dull fellow passengers when he had a being from another world beside him. What he most wanted was spend the rest of the voyage in their cabin, asking her questions about Spare Oom (for lack of any further information, the historians still called their world by that name; Jill said she hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about).
The implementation of the plan and the satisfaction of his curiosity, however, were both delayed. Jill had never before been at sea, and thus spent most of her first day vomiting over the ship’s railing while the other passengers teased Tirian about his pretty but sick ‘assistant’.
It wasn’t until it was almost time to retire to their cabin for bed that she gained her sea legs. But now it was Tirian’s turn for nauseous discomfort.
He’d thought little of it when he’d claimed Jill as his traveling companion, but now he found himself facing the uncomfortable reality that he was to spend every night of the voyage in cramped quarters with this young woman. Tirian’s only experience with women his age had been Archenland’s tittering princesses. All of them-any lady of good standing and honour, really-would have balked at such a scandalous arrangement, and at the damage it might do to their reputations.
Jill, however, displayed no matching awkwardness. Blind to his discomfort, she handed him a second hammock that she had procured from the captain and asked him to hang it above his own, the space being too small to allow side-by-side berths. Meanwhile, she stood behind him and changed into her pajamas. When it was safe to look at her again, he was relieved to see that her striped cotton shirt and matching trousers were every bit as modest as the winter garments she’d arrived in.
While hammering, he prepared a pretty speech that would hopefully reassure any fears she may have been dissembling with good humour, but she was too busy chatting for him to get a word in edgewise. Eventually, he gave it up; perhaps this sort of thing was perfectly normal in her world. Perhaps he overreacted; they were hardly sharing a bed, he told himself.
"Lucy told me it took Scrubb over a week before he was able to stand up without turning green," Jill gloated to Tirian while she in turn faced the wall so he could change. "He’ll be sick as a pig to hear I did it faster."
"Who?"
She tried another name. "Eustace?"
"Ah. You mean your former questing companion. Why did you not say so before? The legend of Lord Eustace the Undragoned is one of my favorites."
Jill giggled as she stepped on his chest to climb into the upper hammock.
"What humours you, my lady?"
"It’s just that Scrubb’s always hated his name. Even if it weren’t dreadful, his cousins were ‘High King Peter’ and ‘Queen Lucy the Valiant’ when they were here, while he’s just plain, awful ‘Eustace Clarence Scrubb’. He’d be glad to know you lot have come up with a more impressive substitute, even if no one he knows will ever call him by it."
"Do they not honour titles in your place?"
"We aren't such prigs as to call one another such things, even amongst ourselves. And we never talk about Narnia to anyone else. Most of the time, we pretend as though none of it ever happened."
"Does your time here mean so little?" The idea of Narnia’s heroes shrugging off the adventures that meant so much to him and his people was almost unbearable. And then an even more unpleasant thought came to him. "Do you have other worlds you regularly visit and prefer? Earlier you mentioned-"
"There are other worlds, though I’ve never been to any. But coming here means everything, to all of us. It’s… I wish I could explain." Her sleepy voice made it clear that he wouldn’t get any answers tonight, but her words were reassuring.
"You are tired, and I interrogate you too harshly. I apologize. We’ll talk more in the morrow. Goodnight, Jill," he said.
"Goodnight, your majesty."
"My name is Tirian."
************************
Tirian dreamt that all the stars in the sky rained down upon Narnia until the night became blacker than the darkest cave. The horrible image jolted him out of his sleep. He woke so violently that he almost toppled out of his hammock (he would never admit it, but he was no seaman either).
To quiet his nerves, he lit a lamp and hovered it over where Jill slept on her side, curled up into a ball.
Basked in the swinging yellow light and shadows, she looked otherworldly in a way she hadn’t earlier. More like what he would have imagined her to look like.
He had been dreaming of these people since he was a small boy, the age Queen Lucy was when she first charmed her way into the hearts of all Narnia's inhabitants. And then Tirian had grown, progressing into a boy the same age King Edmund was when he broke the White Witch’s wand and ended her overlong reign; and on until he was a youth like Eustace-bored, spoiled, and obsessed with dragons. A bit older, and newly susceptible to a pretty face, the Queen Susan next became his idol; it was her fabled hand that had motivated him during his fencing lessons and tournaments, and it was hopeless comparisons to her imagined face that had kept him from liking any of the princesses that had been introduced to him. Later, more recently, when he’d begun to learn statecraft and military strategy, High King Peter had been his role model in all things.
But this girl, the one who was not related to any of the others, who’d only been to Narnia once… He had revered her, like every good Narnian, but there had always been someone slightly more interesting at the age she was in the stories, someone about whom there was much more written and much more to aspire to. She had never figured much into his fancies, and yet here she was, a hero for his current age, no longer a child but a contemporary.
His reverie shattered when she suddenly spoke.
"’s the middle of the night, Scrubb," she mumbled through closed eyes, completely asleep. "Switch off the light and go to sleep."
Tirian did as he (or rather, as Eustace) was bid, but could not find a comfortable resting position until it was nearly dawn.
************************
"Your tariffs are too high," Jill said the next evening when they finally found themselves alone in the cabin again. "When you get back, you should advise the ministers to lower them."
Jill had taken the goal of learning the lifestyle and conversation of a Calormene merchant very much to heart. All day, she had thrown herself into dull, trade-oriented conversations with surprising gusto. The men didn’t seem to notice that they were telling her entirely too much information about their businesses, for she slipped her way past their walls of discretion, using her wit more than her pretty face.
She was very good at this; better than Tirian would ever be. ("I played Rosalind in the school play last term," she proudly told him, though it elucidated little.)
Still, he wished she would keep the information to herself. He was interested in the style of their manner and address, not the substance. In running away from court and gaining an extra-terrestrial traveling companion, he’d hoped to escape this tedium, not win himself even more lectures.
"I don’t think it matters, Jill."
"Of course it matters. Not just for this project, but in general. It’s dull but it matters. My father says if only more of the members of Parliament cared about all that instead of about wars and-"
"Your father?" Logically, Tirian knew Jill and the others had to have parents of some sort, but… Sprung fully formed before his eyes as she was, he had difficulty imagining her, or any of them, as true children, with parents and families like anyone else.
"He’s one of the directors of the Bank of England. That’s why I’m so good at talking to the men here. I’ve been listening to that sort of thing all my life."
Tirian’s nose wrinkled of its own accord. "Your family is in trade?"
"Oh, you needn’t be so snobbish about it. We can’t all spend our days relaxing at hunting lodges with unicorns." She sniffed. "And he was able to get Edmund a very good apprenticeship under the finance minister, I’ll have you know. Susan thinks one day he could even be Prime Minister."
This grew more and more alarming, and Tirian began to think that perhaps some legends were best left unresearched. The idea of one of the greatest and wisest kings of Narnia setting his ambitions on a mere ministerial position and submitting himself to any form of paid employment-much less a lowly apprenticeship-was as disturbing to Tirian as the idea of squashing oneself into a flying metal box (although Jill assured him that this, too, was done all the time).
"What does such a thing entail?" he asked tentatively, trying not to be snobbish, as she had accused.
Jill explained it in great detail; Tirian understood some, enough, but remained stunned. She told him about High King Peter as a low-level (but fast-rising) officer in the army, Queen Susan as a civil servant in the foreign office, and Queen Lucy as a nurse.
After a few minutes of despairing reconciliation of these facts with his previous dreams, he asked, as politely as he could, "And what do you do?"
"Eustace and I are about to start our last term at school together, which is partly why I don’t see the rest of them very often. It’s a bit difficult, you see. They all stayed with Professor Kirke during the war, so it’s normal for them to spend weekends with him or have him visit them in London. Aunt Polly came down like a shot to spend the rest of that first summer with them, and since she's a grown-up, no one questions her movements. And Eustace is their cousin, so… There’s almost nothing to arrange. But with me, it’s more difficult. I’m not related to any of them, so we aren’t naturally thrown together at holidays. Eustace’s parents don’t like me very much. We aren't grown-up like Susan, or even Lucy, so we can’t yet do as we please. Not to mention, now that we’ve gotten a bit older, it’s gotten awkward for me to tag along as Eustace’s 'chum'…"
Jill went on, and Tirian began to sense that the other Narnian heroes were as much legends for her as they were for him. She, too, lived on the scraps of time she spent with them and the stories they let drop on the rare occasions when she entered their orbit.
He remembered the shadow of self-doubt that had plagued her the day before when she was explaining about being the only one to receive instructions from Aslan; what to him had always sounded like a favor to be grateful for haunted her as a lack of confidence in her abilities or worth. Tirian did not yet know her well enough to dispute this or even to verbalize the subtext of her words; for all he knew, this other family to which the Golden Age rulers and Lord Eustace belonged was truly as superior as she thought.
************************
"I’m beginning to think there really issome deep plot going on," Jill announced a couple of nights later.
Tirian threw himself into his hammock, exhausted. Playing this role was proving even more tiring than playing at being king had for the past few months. "What news?"
"I think they think you’re a Tarkaan. At first, I thought it was just a question of you being a terrible actor, unable to pretend you’re anything but royalty-"
"I beg your pardon!"
"But now I'm wondering if maybe you’re doing something right after all, without even knowing it."
Tirian was far from amused. "Go on."
"Don’t tell me you didn’t realize. The way you walk about all haughty and glowering-"
"As a Calormene does," he interrupted, becoming incensed.
"As a Tarkaan does, not a middle-class merchant. You haven’t talked to the others here… and yes, I know you think you try to chitchat, but you haven’t gotten to know them like I have. They’re not so proud or mean or whatever you seem to think they’re like. I had such a laugh this morning with-"
"Tell me about the plot."
She related a conversation she had had with the Calormene logging merchant-one of the many who had taken a special liking to her. It involved something about Narnian lumber and ‘finding ways to get around the tree monsters' and it ‘not being long now’ until entire forests that were protected by the dryads were open to his men. "And he said something very unflattering about your majesty that I won’t repeat."
Tirian pursed his lips. "And yet you claim this man as a friend."
"He’s the only one who’s less than nice. Well, and also the thin one with the bald spot. I’ll work on him tomorrow."
"What else did he say?"
"Something about ‘his kind’ getting more respect soon. That such a one as yourself-he meant you-must be learning the value of his profession or class or something. I assume he was talking about tradesmen, but I’m not sure. I’ll keep investigating, though. Does any of this mean anything to you?" she asked. "I’m sure you sat in on the policy meetings and wrote legislation on logging and exports and things?"
Tirian was ashamed to admit that he had been at his hunting lodge with Jewel when these matters were most recently discussed. He had spent most of recent years fighting alongside his father in the wars, not at the legislation table.
Perhaps the kings of Narnia, he confessed, had not been as involved in these matters as closely as they should have been.
"What does all this mean for when we get to Tashbaan?" Jill asked.
"I cannot say. But by Aslan’s grace, we will find our way. You have done most excellent sleuthing today, Jill."
She leaned over the edge of her hammock and beamed down at him.
************************
The nightmares had been coming on worse and worse for some weeks now; this journey had partly been conceived as a way to hopefully cure himself of them; it wasn't working.
On the last night of the voyage, Tirian dreamed of a great, fearsome hand reaching into the sky and squeezing the sun like an orange, until all the world went dark; all around him stood Talking Beasts whose powers of speech were ripped from them-whole sentences reduced to purrings and quacks in an instant. He shook himself awake, shivering all over, but this time the reality proved worse than the dream.
Jill was not with him.
Tirian panicked. He remembered the tales, both from his youth and from Jill’s own lips, of how suddenly these adventures could end. Riding on a hunt one moment, tumbling out of a cupboard the next, without a chance to bid friends farewell.
What if Aslan had taken her away from him, deemed him unworthy of her continued company?
Or worse, what if she had gone out to use the chamber pot, tumbled overboard and drowned?
He pulled on his boots and went to search the ship. A few well-placed lamps shone like globes in the mist, but other than a single sailor manning the steering, the deck at night was empty.
"Asked if she could sit up there for awhile," the sailor whispered to Tirian, and pointed at the crow’s nest. "Had a lover’s quarrel, did you?"
Tirian barely heard the man’s rude joke; he was too busy breathing for the first time in minutes as he drank in the sight of the dark figure shrouded in mist and moonlight high up above the mast of the ship. In her pajamas and the ugly wool hat she’d arrived in, Jill looked small and brave and ethereal up there.
He began climbing, each rung cold under his fingers. She spotted him before he’d gone a third of the way.
"Oh, stop! Really. I’ll come down," she called and hurriedly moved to descend.
"What for? I’m coming to join you."
"You don’t have to. I wouldn’t want you to fall." And as a nonsensical coda, Tirian thought she whispered, "Not again."
He shook his head and continued to climb. Only when he was almost at the top did Jill give up trying to dissuade him. The only way for both of them to fit was to huddle tightly together, interlacing their bent knees and sitting on one another’s feet. For all that they’d been sharing a cramped cabin, this was the closest they had yet been.
Even now, the inherent awkwardness was lost on her; Tirian couldn’t decide if he found her blindness reassuring or infuriating.
"Your disappearance had me worried, lady," he gently reprimanded her. "And I do not frighten easily."
"You didn’t have to follow me up here. I would have come down."
"I wanted to join you," he replied. "I love a good climb."
She brightened at this, surprised. "You do?"
"When I was a boy, I was forever scaling the tower above my bedchamber, much to my mother’s discontent. They had to send the owls out after me on more than one occasion."
"At least you never almost killed anyone," she mumbled.
It was an odd remark, and it reminded him of her warning a moment ago. "You said you didn’t want me to fall ‘again’. But you have never seen me fall."
She grimaced. "I almost killed poor Eustace when we first came to Narnia. Showing off my love of heights."
She related the whole story-not one of the infinite he had been trying to coax out of her all week, but rather an entirely unknown prologue to the tale of Rilian’s disenchantment.
"This is not a tale I have heard," he said, hoping she could hear the lack of judgment in his voice. There was nothing to judge; whatever had happened, it had all turned out well in the end, and Jill was now (if she ever had been) anything but a show-off.
She sighed. "Puddleglum’s such a dear… was such a dear… I’m sure he left that part out when he told the story afterwards for your history books. But it’s true. That’s how I flubbed the first of Aslan’s signs. Aslan went out of his way to give me those signs-the others never even needed any-and I flubbed them all. Even at the end, it was Puddleglum who salvaged the last one and released Rilian. Eustace and I didn’t do much of anything, except fall off ledges."
Tirian was certain she underestimated her own worth, and now felt even guiltier about his first-impression disappointment in Aslan’s choice of a hero for him. In only a few days, she’d already proven herself more than a helpful partner. Given his recent fear that she might leave him at any moment, he decided now was the time to tell her so.
"Even were you to return home tomorrow, dear Jill, know that you have already taught me many a lesson about kingship, as well as been a companion one can only dream of."
She turned her head away in embarrassment, but Tirian could feel her toes wriggling under him as she listened.
"Is this why you couldn’t sleep?" he asked next.
"Well, partly that, but mostly the cabin. I can’t stomach tiny, under-ground-type places."
"The cabin? You have never complained before. You, who spent weeks in Underland, the deepest and darkest place of all. You are braver even beyond what I have learned.""
She continued to hug her knees-his knees-and look up into the night sky. "I’m sorry if I gave you a fright. I didn’t mean to, but I needed to go outside and see the stars. Puddleglum taught me their names. It cheers me up to come out here and say hello to all of them again."
"Will you introduce me?"
"Don’t you know them? You’ve lived here your whole life."
"I never paid much attention. My blood may have a sprinkling of star in it, but to me, they have served mostly as portents of doom for the centaurs to neigh about. I’d like to hear about them from you."
They spent the rest of the night making up their own stories, wars and romances between constellations-pure silliness. Jill fell asleep with her head on his knees; Tirian held her close so that even if she shook, they’d stay secure in their perch. The sailor down below whistled, but Tirian ignored him.
Hours later, a low throbbing music greeted the dawn. Softly, gradually, it increased in volume and solemnity. Jill only woke when the music had become so rich and deep that the river itself vibrated with its sad melody, causing the ship to quiver. Tirian knew this song well. A hundred trumpets had played the same sequence of notes every day for thousands of years, signaling the opening of Tashbaan’s gates for the day.
"What’s that?" she asked, muzzy-headed and confused as to where she was.
"Tashbaan. We have arrived."
Jill rubbed her eyes and finally saw the marvelous sight in front of them. They sailed down a broad river flanked by pleasure gardens as far as the eye could see. An almost infinite number of towers arced around the island upon which Tashbaan was located, terraces all but fell into the sea, and fishing boats swayed playfully in the creeping light. Tashbaan may have been accursed, but not even Tirian could deny its beauty.
"But what are the trumpets for?" Jill pressed.
"To bid you welcome."
It was just light enough now for Tirian to see her roll her eyes.
************************
It took what felt like an age to disembark. Tirian knew Jill had charmed every man on the ship into loosening his tongue, but he had not understood the depth of the affection she had generated-on both sides-until now, when each man tripped over one another to bid her farewell. Many even had little (or large) gifts to bestow upon her, begging Tirian’s permission to do so. He felt irrationally irritated by it all, but despite their assumed identities, he knew it wasn't his place to say no.
A merchant who supplied Western Tarkheenas with luxurious silks handed her an elaborately embroidered dress box. Jill shooed Tirian out of their cabin so she could change in the two minutes before they had to-truly this time, the captain sadly decreed-disembark.
Tirian had never seen Jill in anything except the bizarre overcoat she’d first appeared in, and since then, she’d been walking around with her bare feet ("just like Lucy!" she’d said proudly the other day) sticking out of a pair of sloppily cut trousers from Tirian’s wardrobe and a disconcertingly foreign blue men’s-like shirt from her own belongings. So, when she emerged in a rich purple gown, matching silk slippers, and a gauzy sash that veiled her entire face except for her twinkling brown eyes, it was like discovering her anew. Even though he could see barely any of her at all, her figure was for the first time in evidence; this startling reminder that Jill was a woman made Tirian feel rather shy. And also a bit of a degenerate; one shouldn’t look at one’s legendary heroes like that, not even accidentally or for a moment.
"Thank you ever so much. Does it look all right?" she innocently asked the old, enamored man who’d given her this gift.
"It’ll do," Tirian choked out, before anyone else could think of a more flattering response. She was supposedly his assistant, after all, which he tried to glower everyone into remembering. Unfortunately, Jill took his reply as a disparagement of her appearance; he could see the outline of a pout through her veil.
"You look lovely," he corrected for only her ears. "But we really must be going."
He had his own farewells to make, some of which were mystifying. One or two Calormenes winked at him and called him ‘my lord’, but he didn’t think they had discovered his identity, for they didn’t call him ‘your majesty’. Very odd, indeed, but in line with Jill’s continued suspicions that there was some link between Tarkaans, Calormene merchants, and a plot against Narnia.
Tirian and Jill were the only two stopping at Tashbaan; the ship’s main destination had always been southward, towards the other great cities of Calormen. Tirian had thought it strange that the original Arsheesh (a Calormene seller of coal whose identity Tirian had assumed when the man unexpectedly died) had chosen to take his passage on this vessel, but it came in handy now; in case he needed to change his story or abort the mission, there would be fewer in Tashbaan who knew either his true face or his disguised one.
"I know now what an excellent actress you are," Tirian praised Jill once they were standing on the pier and waving the ship and their friends (her friends) out of sight. "But I had no idea how extensive your talents truly are. Those men not only believed you are who you said you were, but they adored you, too."
"Acting’s easiest when it isn’t acting at all," she replied. "Most of them were all rather darling, once you got to know them."
Tirian noticed how Jill hid her hands in the fabric of her dress as the harbormaster approached them with multiple bows. Posed and dressed as she is, there was no way to tell that she was as fair-skinned as a Narnian.
"You have come with reports from the Northern countries?" the harbormaster asked Tirian. "I was told to meet you as you disembarked from that ship."
"Yes," Tirian said. It seemed like the right answer.
The harbormaster recommended one of Tashbaan’s finest hotels in a way that sounded more like a passed-along instruction than a helpful suggestion.
"That hotel is only for the highest Tarkaans and visiting nobility," Tirian countered. He remembered having attended a banquet there on his last visit. "While we…"
The man smiled. "Your lordship is as witty as he is fearsome."
Tirian frowned but said nothing, and a few minutes later, he and Jill were being hand-carried through the city in a cloth-covered litter.
"Curiouser and curiouser," Jill whispered on the way, in between peeks through the slits in the cloth, but did not elaborate, for fear the carriers would hear.
The hotel was every bit as luxurious as Tirian remembered. The proprietor received them as a great lord and his richly attired wife, instead of as a prosperous merchant and his assistant.
Before Tirian could correct him and continue their previous charade, Jill, even more tightly veiled than before, leaned dotingly against him, going on tiptoes to nuzzle her head against his shoulder. Tirian stiffened and sputtered, momentarily forgetting the presence of the man in front of them in his surprise.
Her plan, whatever it is, succeeded, because the innkeeper smiled indulgently upon them. "You are lucky to have such a fond wife. She must have missed you while you were on assignment," he told Tirian.
"My assignment…" Tirian repeated.
"I travelled to meet him. The separation was too painful," Jill purred demurely, pressing a kiss to his shoulder through the cloth on her face.
"The poets have said that a doting wife is the key to a lifetime of happiness."
"Quite," Tirian replied.
The hotel sat far atop the dirty smells and sounds of the city, and a pleasant, fruit-scented breeze wafted through the windows. They climbed to the uppermost floor of the old building, to a large room decorated with intricate mosaics and colourful silks. Their private terrace even boasted a view of the Grand Vizier’s pleasure gardens on the other side of the river.
As soon as the numerous servants had finished installing them in their quarters and left them alone, Jill tore away her veil and began exploring. "Well, this is certainly a step up from camping in Ettinsmoor."
"Jill…" Tirian asked cautiously, proud of himself for keeping the embarrassed tremor out of his voice. "Why did you change the plan?"
"If I hadn’t, we would have had to have separate rooms," Jill answered distractedly, too busy cooing over the view to pay him any mind. "No more secret plotting sessions. And then where would we have been? Anyway, it’s clear you’re meant to be a Tarkaan. I don’t think Tarkaans have ‘assistants’ and this dress is too expensive for me to be anything but a Tarkaan’s wife, don’t you think?"
It was a logical, strategic move. Tirian tried to think as little of it as she did. "It was a happy plan, Jill."
Something about his tone must have finally claimed her attention, for she turned sharply to look at him.
"You don’t sound happy." Then, finally, after an entire week, Jill got a whiff of the awkwardness that plagued Tirian. She looked around the suite, which consisted of a cozy sitting area and an alcove containing a single four-poster bed, and clasped her hand over her mouth. "Unless… Goodness, you aren’t engaged or anything, are you? I never even thought to ask! I’m so-"
"No, my lady. My father never forced me into such an arrangement. My heart and hand are free. It was your reputation, not mine, that weighed upon my conscience."
"Oh, well that’s hardly anything to worry about. You’re perfectly harmless, no one knows who I am, and when I get home, it’ll be as though nothing ever happened. Plus, everyone shares rooms and tents and things on adventures, don’t they? Eustace and I did, and still sneak into one another’s bedrooms when we can, for old times sake."
Tirian didn’t appreciate being dubbed ‘harmless’ and continued to dislike the idea that she’d go home and act as though she'd never met him. He wondered how Eustace would feel… But given how at ease Jill felt here, with him, Tirian supposed it would be churlish to continue to complain.
She sat on the bed and rolled up her sleeves and skirts. "I wrapped up well enough that no one saw what I look like, but I suppose it’s time for me to become a proper Calormene. Pass me the juice, would you? I have to say, I've been dying to join you in disguise."
Tirian watched from the archway between the two rooms as she applied the compound to her skin.
"It really isn’t that different from what they sell back home for people who want to pretend they’ve been in Biarritz all summer," she observed.
"Our new circumstances," Tirian thought aloud, saving that nugget for later inquiry, "corroborate with what you guessed on board the ship. But the question remains: what was Arsheesh’s assignment? Was he a Tarkaan spy? What do they think I have been doing in the northern countries?"
"I can’t even guess. But give it time. We’ve only just arrived."
Jill expressed an eagerness to explore Tashbaan, and although he abhorred the place, Tirian could not help but indulge her wish. Given that their middle-class seafaring clothes (with the exception of Jill’s new dress) were insufficient for the new rank they had been thrust into, they invented a tale of lost trunks, asked the hotel’s owner for advice, and received the address of the finest tailor in the city. Tirian chose fabrics and provided memorized measurements quickly and almost automatically, taking no more joy in the activity than he did in brushing his teeth. However, Jill had never been to a tailor before, and delighted in the entire process. She made a friend of the seamstress by being a much more pleasant customer than the spoiled Tarkheenas to which she was accustomed, while Tirian made a friend of the owner by paying regal sums for outfitting them as quickly as possible.
"A gifted poet once said, my lord," the owner told Tirian as they made appointments for future fittings and pick-ups, "a wife is only as happy as she is beautiful, and she is only as beautiful as the shoes on her feet and the bracelet on her wrist."
Tirian repressed a most undignified grunt. This was always the worst of Calormen, he remembered: more than the stiffness and the heat and the demon god they worshipped, it was the tyrannical ubiquity of dreadful poetry that didn’t even have the decency to rhyme that made him hate the place most.
"If you have never been to such an establishment," he asked Jill on their way out, "then how do you come by your garments?"
"All the best dresses come pre-made nowadays. You pick the one that fits you, not the other way around."
This struck Tirian as a monstrously inefficient system, one that explained the hideousness of her wardrobe.
Jill was already sick of being carried around like a doll, and requested that they spend the afternoon walking around the market, where a cacophony of shouts and barks drowned out any attempt at conversation, young men careened about in a dizzying and dangerous rush, and the air was suffused with a host of smells that shouldn't go together.
"How can you enjoy this so?" he asked Jill, whose face was lit with excitement as she fingered the wares of the different tables at the bazaar. "Is this not an assault to your senses?"
"It isn’t that different from Leicester Square on a Saturday, to be honest."
The unpacking of that statement took them the rest of the journey home.
Supper was a leisurely affair. They ordered fruits and stews from the kitchen to their private balcony, where they sat, eating and commenting on the ships that they could see sailing by.
"Oh!" Jill suddenly exclaimed, and then ran into the bedroom. Tirian followed her, but she waved at him to go back outside, too busy rummaging through her bag to speak.
"What is it?" he asked when she finally returned to join him.
Jill presented him with a dingy yellow envelope.
"I’ve been meaning to show you this, but our cabin was always too dark."
Tirian pulled out some shiny pieces of grey-tinted paper. At first, he didn’t understand what he was meant to do with them, but once he looked closely at the first one, he gasped. Jill’s face-more precise and lifelike than any artist’s portrait-smiled at him. "It’s you!"
"My parents got me a Polaroid camera for Christmas," she said while he marveled. "I took it to Brighton with me for the New Year’s party with the others."
A handsome young man had his arms around Jill and a pretty young woman who was slightly older than either of them. They had an air of happy prosperity, but were all dressed in the dingiest and shabbiest of clothes. Clothes that would still have been dingy even had the colours not been erased. A terribly depressing realization dawned on Tirian. "Do you live in a world devoid of colour?"
"No, we have colours, same as here. But cameras-the machines that make these pictures-only do black and white."
"Who is the young man with you?"
"That’s Edmund, and Susan, too." She fished two more of these magical portraits from the envelope. "Here’s one with Peter and Lucy. And another with me, Eustace, Aunt Polly and the Professor."
But Tirian was still staring at the first one. "By the Lion, this is deep magic indeed. Exact portraits of the Just King and the Gentle Queen from beyond the grasp of time."
"It was only last week."
Tirian peered at the small face, scarcely larger than one of the miniatures foreign kings liked to send him of their unattractive daughters. At first glance, he’d been focused on Jill and had barely noticed the other woman, but now he saw that she was very beautiful indeed, even with her drab clothes and short hair; but not quite as beautiful as he’d expected. He couldn’t decide if it was the lack of colour, or the impossibility of anything living up to a lifetime’s worth of fevered fantasy.
"Throughout my youth," he said in hushed awe, "I dreamed of winning the heart of one as fair as the Queen Susan."
"You didn’t even know what she looked like until this minute," Jill pointed out with uncharacteristic irritation. "And anyway, Susan isn’t a thing you can win like a prize in a tournament. She’s a person. You’re just as bad as all the boys back home. None of them seem to understand that either."
Tirian was still staring, but Jill’s words did settle into his consciousness. He transferred his attention to the other pictures. Peter looked exactly as one would imagine a youthful High King, and Queen Lucy smiled sweetly, but then he looked up at Jill. Jill who was real and jolly and in full colour right next to him. Jill, who could never falter in an unfair comparison to fantasy, since he had never truly imagined her before meeting her.
"What is it?" she asked when she noticed him staring at her.
His thoughts refused to articulate themselves into anything coherent, so he replied a brusque, "It is nothing."
He went back to poring over the pictures, trying to glean any tiny details of the world around the figures in the pictures. "Is that your palace?" he asked, forgetting for a moment that she had already told him they were commoners.
"No, that’s just the Brighton Pavilion. It belongs to the actual king of England. We’d just taken a tour of it before stopping to take photos."
"You and Eustace make a handsome couple," Tirian said charitably about the young man whose spots were visible even in these wonderful miniatures.
"Scrubb?" she scoffed. "You think we-?"
"Of course. You yourself are familiar with the tale of Cor and Aravis. It is ever so. Questing companions from every history fall in love." Out of delicacy, Tirian refrained from mentioning their first night together, when he’d heard her speak to Eustace in her sleep; but even without such details, he found his argument impregnable.
"But I’m not a questing… person… from history. People in history are all old or dead or imaginary, or all three. I’m still in school. So’s Eustace. We've got our whole lives ahead of us. And we’re only chums. I could never even imagine…"
Much as Jill had become real to Tirian during their trip, in this one way she had remained in his mind a kind of locked object, tied to Eustace in an unchanging narrative that was greater and more romantic than everyday relationships between mere mortals such as himself. Now freed from that last tie to the stories, he wasn't sure what to think or hold onto.
"The histories all end with a coda about how you and Eustace returned to your world and… well," he tried to explain. "Though now that I think on it, it must have been a storyteller's license, for how could they know? You never came back until now."
"It’s all right. You aren't the first to think that. We're rather used to it, Eustace and I," she said, and Tirian regretted having touched what was obviously a sore spot for the girl. "Anyway, you should have these. You can give them to your historians when you get back to Narnia."
"That is a precious gift indeed. Are you certain?"
"I can always take more when I get home. In the meanwhile, I’d like to have one of you."
"How…"
She dived into her bag again and pulled out a terrifying object made of a black substance Tirian had never seen, lined with metal and glass.
"What is that monstrosity?"
"It’s what makes the pictures." She took out a box of paper and put one of the sheets into the device. "Come, help me hold it up in front of us."
"Whatever for?" Tirian had faced giants and armies, but never before had he felt this frightened.
"Stop being such a baby."
Shamed, Tirian suffered to touch it, expecting to be bitten, or worse, at any moment. Together, they held it out at arm’s length in front of their faces.
"Smile," Jill said.
"Eugh! Does it smile back?"
"Just smile, Tirian."
Jill pressed down on a button on the front of the device. A blinding flash of light and a horrible noise unlike anything Tirian had ever heard erupted, and without warning, the paper began to move through it. Tirian found it disgusting.
When it finished coming through, the paper was just as white and shiny as it had been before. Jill pulled it out and began to fan herself with it.
"Let me pour you a glass of chilled wine," Tirian said, taking her movements as defense against the heat, and finding it very annoying. He had not endured such an ordeal merely to produce an inadequate fan for Jill; he could have bought her a beautiful one from the stand near the hotel if that was all she wanted.
"No, thanks."
"Is something supposed to happen?" he asked.
"Give it a minute."
Soon, an image ghosted into existence, creeping up the paper as she shook it. A perfect portrait of their faces, framed by the mosaicked doorway, completed itself with a flourish.
Checking himself to ensure his face had not been stolen, Tirian asked, "Are you certain it’s safe?"
"Of course it’s safe. We do it all the time back home. You should see the ones that move and talk."
A frequent topic of her conversation finally made more sense. "Is that what you mean when you speak of these ‘films’ you love so much?"
"Now you’ve got it."
"I thought you said there was no magic in your world, but this is the greatest sorcery I have ever witnessed."
"It’s science, not magic. A thing done with chemicals and light. Let’s do another. One for you, and one for me. This time, try to look less disgusted. Looking at this one, you’d never know we were friends."
************************
Tirian dreamt of horrible lizards-larger than any he had ever seen-running amok in Narnia, ripping up the trees and shrubs until the ground was barren and dry and covered with little hills and blemishes that one had never noticed before.
"Tirian?" He heard Jill’s voice call his name in the dream, but the starless abyss was too dark to see her. He could not even follow her voice to find her, could not move his feet to save her from being devoured along with everything else that was good and beautiful in the world.
"Tirian!"
And then he did see her-or at least her outline in the darkness-hovering over him, her hair falling in front of her face to tickle his nose. She had him by the shoulders, and shook him out of his paralysis. His soldierly reflexes sprang into action; instinctively, he rolled himself on top of her, shielding her from harm.
"Er… Tirian?"
Now awake, he saw that the danger was over, had only ever been in his mind. He climbed off Jill with a thousand horrified apologies.
"It’s a good thing we’re the only ones in this hotel," she said, when she, too, had recovered herself, "or you’d have woken the entire building with your screaming. If you’re anything in battle like you are in your sleep, I don’t wonder you’ve already won so many wars. You almost took my eye out, thrashing like that."
"I can never apologize enough."
"What was it this time?"
Tirian looked at her askance. He was certain he had never told her of the constant nightmares that tormented him. "What do you mean ‘this time’?"
"You’re always muttering and shaking the bed, but tonight was definitely the worst of it."
"I saw the end of Narnia, as I always do. But tonight, you were there, lost, in danger."
"What if I read to you until you fall asleep again?" she proposed. "That might help stave off bad dreams."
She put on her slippers and went to the cupboard in which her luggage was locked and hidden. Minutes later, she returned to the bed and sat with her back to the headboard and her knees tucked almost under her chin. In her hands were a book and a flashlight.
(Tirian had one of these in Cair Paravel's treasure room, a precious relic left behind by King Edmund; but the batteries had run out hundreds of years ago, and until now, no one in Narnia knew what it was for).
"What sort of tale is this?"
"It’s a kind of adventure-romance, set during the French Revolution. That’s my favorite time period for adventure stories, just as the Pevensies’ reign is yours. France is the country across the channel from mine," she explained. "The people revolted against their useless king awhile back and cut off his head."
Tirian cocked one eyebrow at her. "And you think regaling me with such tales will facilitate a calm sleep? After the sort of nightmare I just had?"
"It’s this or nothing. I have other books but it’s too late and too dark to hunt around for anything else."
"Very well. Read on. I have often wondered what yarns your bards spin."
Jill shone the flashlight on the book and began to read in a low voice, just rushed enough to show that she did not do this often.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…"
Tirian closed his eyes, rested his fingers against her nearby ankle, and listened.
Just before drifting off into a dreamless sleep, he thought, not for the first time, that sharing a room with Jill was perhaps not so terrible.
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Part 2