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

[deepest_magic]

"I'm not sure I'm seeing the subtlety in 'send them to attack Cair Paravel' that you are, casualties-wise?"

[neverbeatme]

"He could have sent them somewhere else," she explains. "He could have sent them anywhere else. He could have sent them everywhere else, at once, in secret, and made us chase down thirty different creatures attacking at once in thirty different places. We still would have won, but it would have been messier. Instead he sent them directly to the best-defended stronghold in the country, past towns and villages where they could have done so much more damage before we organized against them, with a force hardly even big enough to hold us in siege when they got here. Either he expected us to have the collective strategic genius and fighting ability of a wilted head of lettuce, or he wanted his side to lose as efficiently as possible."

[deepest_magic]

"Or the priority was us, personally," says Isabella. "We are not in thirty different towns. Although then I suppose it would have been sensible for them to come by night."

[neverbeatme]

"If he'd been after us personally, and actually wanted to succeed, he would've come along himself," she says. "Or done it very, very differently. Or both. Most likely both. In fact, sending them thirty different places still would've worked, if he'd wanted to draw us out - he would've gotten me that way for sure. I just wouldn't have been as easy a target as he might've hoped."

[deepest_magic]

"He's always had someone to answer to above him before this, and furthermore he's never been an insurgent but always the one with the overwhelming numbers. Perhaps he doesn't do well quite this undirected and unsupplied with even the possibility of reinforcements. Maybe he didn't think the creatures would want to make independent strikes, or didn't trust their initiative. Maybe he has some plan running in parallel, poisoning our larder or something, I'll want to check on that actually come to think of it."

[neverbeatme]

"Oh, believe me, I'm going to be checking every secondary plan I can think of," says James. "But... there were things he was very, very good at under Jadis - campaigns of public terror, assassination, that kind of thing - that he could have used effectively here, that I know he would have realized he could use effectively here, and he didn't. He sent them in with a simple, straightforward, blatantly doomed plan that played to none of his strengths."

[deepest_magic]

"Maybe he was going to change it midstream but something prevented him from joining them."

[neverbeatme]

"Maybe. I guess we'll see."

[deepest_magic]

"Maybe. I'm going to go make sure the household staff are all okay and that the doors have stayed closed."

Isabella sweeps off still in her armor-cloak.

[neverbeatme]

James heads back to the castle much more slowly, because she has knights to coordinate on the way.

All the prisoners are brought in safely. There are no intruders in the castle, and no sign that there were any. Nothing is poisoned or otherwise sabotaged. No reports of suspicious activity filter in from the rest of the country. Further conversation with the prisoners reveals that Winter told them he would be back and then never showed.

She doesn't get it.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella doesn't either, but she's not dwelling on it quite as much as James is. She goes around wearing her armor cloak for the next while. It's winter anyway, a cloak is a reasonable thing to wear.

[neverbeatme]

James gets even more thoroughly in the habit of wearing her armour whenever it is remotely reasonable.

It doesn't make a difference; there are no sneak attacks from their inexplicable enemy. She keeps it up anyway, because she might as well.

[deepest_magic]

There are side benefits to James wearing her armor around all the time.

[neverbeatme]

That too.

[deepest_magic]

The year wears on, as years so incorrigibly do. A flying horse who is not Flit travels to Narnia and dictates a popular collection of stories which are scribed down and distributed; Isabella's a fan. There is an enormous late-summer storm which tests some of the national architecture; repairs after that are pretty businesslike, although a few crops and houses are lost outright to flooding. The pictures of the lightning are spectacular, though. So are the pictures (a little gratuitously numerous) of James in armor. Over the course of the relevant section of the infinity notebook pictures of James not in armor also make an appearance, as "memories of kisses" serve to substitute somewhat for what the armor was doing in the first place.

Isabella has to renew her cordial again when a colony of dwarves takes fever. A few speaking animals want to settle on an island which has historically been considered too small to bother with; boating in Narnia is now in such a state that they will be able to travel to the mainland for supplies. Some giants have a giant baby and build a giant house. The first frost descends lightly; the second one is a hard crack of cold all at once, and then it is winter.

And, as is now the habit of winter, this winter contains Christmas.

And this Christmas contains monarchs waiting up till midnight.

[pythbox]

And, predictably enough, midnight brings Father Christmas.

"Merry Christmas, merry Christmas," he says, nodding to both of them. "And here are your presents. For you, Isabella daughter of Eve, a pair of shoes which you will find allow you to walk on air; and a fire-starter which will light fires in whatever colour you please, and its fires will always be very congenial about matters such as available fuel and what things they are and are not meant to burn." He hands her a pair of bundles, one rather larger than the other.

[deepest_magic]

"Thank you! Merry Christmas."

[pythbox]

He smiles, and turns to James.

"For you, James son of Eve, well, your project to restore the old mills and granaries of Narnia was very well begun, and now you will find it is very well finished; and I have left you a writing-desk in your office which will always have just the materials you need when you sit down to write."

[neverbeatme]

"Very nice. Thank you!"

[pythbox]

With a last acknowledging nod, he's off.

[deepest_magic]

"I wonder if your desk is as thorough as my bookshelf? Fancy colored ink? Protractors and compasses?"

[neverbeatme]

"I bet I at least get fancy coloured ink."

[deepest_magic]

Bella opens her little package. It contains a lighter, made of engraved brass with flowers and vines much like her crown's twining all around it. She flicks the cap open, and spins the wheel, and gets a little white flame. Close, open, spin: green. "Cute." She opens her shoes. They're soft-leather turnshoes, white with green beading, and when she puts them on she can step quite confidently into the air until she touches the ceiling and giggles and steps back down.

[neverbeatme]

James applauds.

[deepest_magic]

And Isabella bows. "Thank you, thank you. I unwrapped them myself."