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CAIR PARAVEL. LATE WINTER 1007
Joints stiff from weeks spent sleeping on the ground and muscles aching from a battle that lasted much longer than anyone could have anticipated, Edmund was eager to crawl into his bed. He wanted out of the dark and into soft satin sheets. He wanted to hide under the covers and stay there for the foreseeable future.
As king, he could probably get away with it. But it was also because he was king that he kept pace among the soldiers beside and behind him.
“Nearly there, my King.” Oreius spoke quietly, walking along to his right.
He knew the general was tired, perhaps even more so than he was, but his voice was steady and full, still strong. It was reassuring, at first. Then the words themselves made Edmund sick to his stomach.
While it was normally a relief to be back within the walls of Cair Paravel, he dreaded approaching it now. Being home meant it was all over—the march, the battle, the dead. Being home meant dealing with the consequences of his choices and the fallout from his failings.
They were all still learning, the kings and queens of Narnia. Of course they were, it had only been six years since the coronation. It was still early in their reign. That they would make mistakes was understandable. But it had been one of Edmund’s mistakes that had led to a smaller group returning than the one that had left. And no matter what any of the others said, he knew the truth.
It had been entirely preventable.
Oreius’s hand settled on his shoulder and Edmund’s mind stilled before he looked up. He was older now than Peter had been when they first came to Narnia and took up arms. Perhaps it was fitting, then, that it was only now that he truly understood what it meant to be a king. Beginning to, perhaps. Seeing the ache of his heart reflected in the centaur’s eyes, Edmund knew he still had so much more to learn.
He said nothing, his jaw still set as he faced front once more, but Oreius’s hand never moved from where it gripped him, somehow holding him up despite resting on top of his shoulder. They passed through the gates that way, and Edmund felt a bit of the pressure in his chest lift as the gentle light of Cair Paravel’s halls washed over him. It was enough, for the remainder of the night’s tasks.
“Oreius,” he called when they passed through the inner gates. “Please tell Sir Torienne and Morwen to have their reports ready by midday tomorrow. The wounded are to be sent to the Healer’s Wing and the others are dismissed once they’ve seen to their horses and their gear. Allow them… Allow them a few days, please. To see to their families and homes.”
If the centaur general disagreed with Edmund’s orders, he showed no sign of it, and instead only bowed before turning back to the men.
Edmund heard nothing of the orders, nothing of Oreius’s voice. Instead, his own voice rattled in his head, repeating the word home again and again, and he grit his teeth at the thought of those who would never see theirs again.
Eventually, he became vaguely aware of being led through the castle to his rooms. Vaguely aware of Susan’s careful fingers unfastening the ties of his gambeson, her hands pulling the fabric and his shirt from him altogether. And Edmund drew up all the energy he had, then, and gave her the slightest indication that he could do this himself.
She acquiesced and retreated silently. But still, he needed… something.
“Su?” He twisted to find her standing at the door, already turned back to him with a gentle smile on her face. Like she knew what he needed.
“He’ll be back the morning after next. Glassfeather came with the news just before you arrived.”
He sighed, of the slightest disappointment.
“A bath, Ed,” she called. “It’ll help.”
He nodded absently, but sat quietly for some time.
Edmund’s first brush with Death had been nothing more than a sharp, single knock on the door by another hand in the name of Deep Magic. But Death took, just for a moment, another life instead.
Then, Death had returned, ready to take the young fighter, only to find that this time, it was not the Witch who called him, but the king—Edmund himself. He'd opened the door for Death on his own, in a calculated risk—a decision made for the sake of a kingdom that was not yet his, and for a family he was desperate to keep. It was a thing of courage and a thing of foolishness. Exactly the kind of summoning Death was eager to answer, to honored even. Yet, Edmund had walked away once more, this time with a heartbeat stronger than before, brought back by the love of his family.
So Death commanded the boy-king, “Wait,” not appreciating being toyed with in this manner. “I am coming.”
But however ruthless he wished to be, Death was forbidden to cross certain boundaries, and Edmund, by some blessing or another, continued to remain beyond that line, just out of reach. Most recently in the battle against the giants in the marshlands to the north, further evading him.
Fortunately for Death, the same could not be said of Edmund’s soldiers and against them, he triumphed—vaguely victorious in having delivered such a blow to the young king’s resilient soul. Forcing him to acknowledge he’d been allowed to live while his men suffered was as sharp a blow as Death could manage against Edmund.
It was satisfying for Death, given the aftermath. The blow carried with it, a lingering guilt. It dripped through Edmund’s thoughts into the bedrock of his subconscious such that even now, days later, his breathing still felt ragged, as though his lungs were perforated with the same wounds that took the lives of his men.
Edmund felt hardly older now than he’d been at Beruna gasping for life at the base of the rocks, but the weight of his life seemed to expand that time wide enough to pour in the years of everyone he’d lost. To fill it up with every unfulfilled dream that Death ruined, so that he would have to carry them.
That was what Edmund had learned up north, an icy truth that cut at his already frayed edges. Death didn’t end on a battlefield or at a soldier’s last breath. Death touched more than just those it took. It spread, like fire, and it left him battered though he still lived. It was suffocating, and every breath burned in his chest.
Death left Edmund hopeless to shake his stubborn youth. It was not equipped to hold the weight of all the lives he was responsible for. It was barely enough to hold onto his own burdened existence.
He was desperate to be a better king, and stuck facing the bitter truth that he still had such a long way to go.
When Susan came back to check that Edmund hadn’t fallen asleep in the water, she found he hadn’t made it there at all. He hadn’t even moved, except to fall over against his covers at the edge of his bed, half-clothed. He was asleep, but it was clearly not restful.
“Oh, Ed.”
She crossed the room to him and carefully hefted him up. He whimpered, but whether it was from the ache of his bones—battered and bruised as they were—or what he saw in his mind’s eye, Susan couldn’t be sure. Nightmares were not uncommon at Cair Paravel, particularly not with Edmund. They were more frequent at the start of winter than the end, but he had just returned from a battle campaign, a long one. She should have known better than to leave him alone.
Peter was better at comforting Edmund than she was. He knew battle better than she did. At this point, even Lucy was beginning to understand better than she did, though the three of them were still struggling to keep Narnia’s youngest queen out of armed combat whenever possible. Lucy was only seventeen, now as old as Peter had been at the start. But Susan had to remind herself that Edmund was not much older.
He held himself in such a sophisticated manner, so often, that it shocked her still, to glimpse this side of him. The vulnerable side, the side too young for the burden of battlefields. Already scars marked his body, most across his arms and shoulders, and it looked as though there were plenty more in addition from this march north. Though he never talked of them, Susan knew he still felt the sting of each one.
“Ed, wake up.”
She hated to disturb him, when he so obviously needed the sleep, but a haunted rest did nothing good for the soul.
“Edmund,” she tried again, shaking his shoulder firmly. Susan was careful, but he still bolted upright, hands flying up. Her own reflexes kept either of them from hurting the other, as she caught his wrists.
“It’s okay, Ed. It’s only me. It’s only me.”
“M’sorry, Su.”
The life seemed to drain out of him as he dropped his shoulders, but she shifted her hold to his hands regardless. He didn’t object, and they sat there beside one another for what felt like ages, content to count the breaths the other took.
“They’re gone,” Edmund whispered.
“How many?”
“An entire patrol unit, and the third and ninth commands.”
It took a minute to grasp the numbers, at first, because Susan was sure she’d gotten her maths wrong. Eighty-seven. She had to be wrong, but then she remembered the size of the group who had left and that which returned.
Two hundred strong, reduced to nearly half.
“It’s my fault.”
“No…”
“It is,” he interjected, voice dark and heavy. Nothing like the wisp of breath it had been moments before. “I knew the giants would be there to meet them, and I still made the call. I sent them in knowing they wouldn’t come back.”
He shuddered and dropped his gaze again.
“I as good as killed them.”
“You couldn’t have known. No one ever does.”
“Peter does,” he snapped. There was a look in his eyes she hadn’t seen in years, one that told a story she had hoped he’d have forgotten by now.
One she’d seen too often where few others did.
Peter, Edmund, and Lucy—even Susan herself. The four had such heavy secrets, even from the courts. That was their lot, as Narnia’s sovereigns. They each held burdens and worries best kept to themselves.
But Edmund’s expression spoke to more than just their duty as kings and queens. It went back to the time before he, or any of them, held the responsibility of a kingdom on their shoulders.
Susan should have known better than to think he would have forgotten. Edmund was not one to forget. He breathed in the ghosts of his past and carried the skeletons of those he’d failed across his back. He woke up screaming more times than Susan could count and ran himself ragged, down to the bone, in an effort to make up for all that he’d done—right or wrong, it was never good enough.
It didn’t matter that Aslan had forgiven him or that the entire kingdom had done the same. There was a price to that forgiveness, and the guilt of knowing it was not something he could pay was what dragged him down. Edmund, who knew the value of forgiveness best, perhaps, of anyone in the whole of Narnia, would not allow himself the luxury of forgetting.
“Ed, you made what you thought was the right call.” She held up a hand when he started a retort. “There were lives lost, yes, but those who died, did so knowing they fought for all of Narnia. They helped you keep the giants from invading our home and our people.”
Susan rubbed at a smudge of dirt from his cheekbone. “Listen to me now, Edmund. You’re not Peter. You’re not Lucy. You’re not me.”
These were not forgiving truths. With their jagged edges and knife-like point, they left no corners to hide behind. Edmund had often been the odd one out, the furthest from the rest. But it was what Susan liked best about him, and she knew he leaned into this particular truth, too. Unfurled it and stitched it into new patterns. Made it something of his own to take advantage of.
“That’s how it should be. That’s how we need it to be. Peter hardly sees the whole picture at first and Lucy always runs in blind, and Aslan knows I wish you’d all just stay home. But you…” Susan smiled lightly. “Edmund, you see everything, before, during, and after a battle. You are more than the lives that are lost. You are also the courage that comes before, and the healing that comes after.”
She brushed a tuft of his unruly hair from his face. The murkiness in his eyes was beginning to fade. Just from the edges, but with Edmund, even the slightest change was monumental.
“You may have blood on your hands and lives you feel responsible for. But remember, you are a King of Narnia; yours are the hands we trust to protect this kingdom, scars and all. Yours are the decisions we believe will lead us forward. If they turn out to be mistakes, so be it; you are allowed mistakes—just don’t believe that you are deserving of their weight. They cannot all be fixed, but they can all be learned from. You taught me that. You taught us all that. Because it’s not what we’ve done or who we were…”
“...it’s what we decide to do going forward.”
Edmund’s voice was quiet, but it was steady as he finished the phrase he spoke often. To his siblings, to members of the court, or to the other knights under his command, the king had given this very advice often. By the look on his face, though, Susan knew it had been worth repeating. He deserved the same support he gave to others.
Susan saw the wrinkled worry lines fall from Edmund’s face and considered it a success, even if it was small. Edmund wore the weight of the kingdom in more than just the crown on his head and the armor fastened around his body; he carried it in his bones. Tonight, as weary and worn as they were, she could see them lift a bit as he settled into her words. It was a small victory, but a win nonetheless. The rest would come, in time.
“Get some sleep, Ed.”
Susan stood and yanked back the covers in a single movement before holding a linen nightshirt out for him. She was only slightly surprised when he complied without complaint, but chose to credit his exhaustion more than anything else.
Then, after she tucked him in and snuffed the light by the door, Edmund called out to her, voice muffled by satin sheets and dreariness.
“Goodnight, Susan.”
She let his farewell soothe her own worries then, about him, about her ability to console him, and about her own self-doubt.
They were alike in that; if not their own worst critic, then they were each other’s, on the grounds that they saw straight through one another. If anyone were to take issue with the support she’d tried to give tonight, it was Edmund. But he must have thought she’d done well enough if he was calling her Susan and not Su.
Edmund made a point of names and nicknames, of how and when they were used. He did the same with all the words he spoke, in public or private, for every purpose. But where nicknames were used for brevity and efficiency, full names were saved for matters of importance. Court hearings, missives, challenges, decrees.
This, Susan knew, was an indication of something special. A sign that he saw her, as she saw him. An inkling of recognition in both of them. For the kind of rulers they were becoming and the kind of siblings they had always been.
The kingdom relied on them, and the responsibility they had was sometimes more than they each could bear. But if a death was not something an individual bore alone, then Susan was certain that the weight of living could also be shared.
Someday, Edmund would come to believe the same. She would make sure of it.