the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[jackfrostbite]

"You own an inescapable fucking dungeon," he reminds her. "At that, you would have to take me out of the inescapable dungeon to try any especially creative means of killing me. The efficient thing to do, if you spare not a thought to my comfort - and I see no reason why you should - is to stab me in the heart and lock me away and destroy the key so I can never be retrieved. Though there be but few things I can think of worse than the life I live now, that same life locked in a forgotten dungeon is one of them."

They have reached another door, or something like it; he's stopping and touching the walls again.

[deepest_magic]

"I don't understand you," repeats Isabella.

She pauses.

"James doesn't either. But she wants to. She has for years."

[jackfrostbite]

Silence.

[deepest_magic]

"She probably would've talked to you even if it weren't to sit you down and discuss how to get you dead. She's wanted to talk to you since you fought at Beruna. She wants to figure you out."

[jackfrostbite]

He finds the catch of this door; it clicks open. He carries Isabella through it and shuts it again and continues down the tunnel.

"And why is Aslan's king," again he utters the name unhappily and with great difficulty, "so interested in the Witch's assassin?"

[deepest_magic]

"She's interested in people. And she's very. Very. Good at learning what makes them tick. If Aslan handpicked us at all it wasn't for uncuriosity."

[jackfrostbite]

"Do you enjoy hearing his name?"

[deepest_magic]

"...Yes. I mean, it's worn off a little from the first couple times."

[jackfrostbite]

"It is," he says, "the most horrifying thing I have ever felt."

[deepest_magic]

"I don't know enough about the phenomenon to know why that would be."

[jackfrostbite]

"When I say you are Aslan's creature I do not mean that he chose you to rule Narnia, though I am sure he did. I mean that you are the sort of person he would choose. The sort who can speak his name unflinching. I am not, and could never be. Perhaps it truly is a curse. I do not know."

[deepest_magic]

"I don't know either. But James would try to figure it out if she had a chance."

[jackfrostbite]

He continues walking in silence for a while. Incidents of Isabella bumping into the walls are very rare now indeed.

[deepest_magic]

Still total darkness she can't adjust to?

[jackfrostbite]

Yes. Still that.

[deepest_magic]

Damn.

[jackfrostbite]

Walking. Walking.

"If I return you unharmed to your king, what do you expect to happen?"

[deepest_magic]

"Returning me in person or just dropping me in the middle of the wilderness to be found and brought home?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Either. Both."

[deepest_magic]

"If you drop me off somewhere I will try to find creatures who can find knights and tell Jamie I'm all right and have someone pick me up. And then I will tell her about this conversation and she will come to conclusions I can't predict because I don't have this talent of hers. And might try to get a message to you somehow - you must have some source of news, you set up the venue for the music festival. The contents of which message I can't predict because I am not James. If you carry me all the way to Cair Paravel and knock on the door some knight serving a guard post might decide to attack you, but James would probably get me to safety and then - look at you and try to figure out what you were going to do."

[jackfrostbite]

"And would you lock me in your dungeon and destroy the key, or would you try very hard to kill me?"

[deepest_magic]

"I'd have to talk that over with James. But if this conversation has made it sound like I have some serious objection to you dying then you're very much mistaken."

[jackfrostbite]

"I do not merely need you to allow that it may happen. I need you to pursue it with every resource at your disposal - you, or your husband."

He sets Isabella down on the floor, which is made of rough chilly stone.

"But I do not want to kill you," he adds, softly.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella quietly pats the stone surrounding her, investigating its dimensions and possible sharp protrusions.

"Even we could run out of ideas eventually."

[jackfrostbite]

The stone is rough and uneven but mostly blunt. There are no obvious walls within quiet-patting distance, just more floor.

"And so you see why I might prefer you to be as strongly motivated as possible," says Winter.