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The Wraith arrived in Port Paravel on the coattails of a late March storm, gliding into harbor as the dregs of the gale spent themselves on the palisaded shore and trickled away in skirls of fog and aggravation. Dawn broke in the ship's wake, hints of gold striking the foamy water through the slowly shredding clouds.
Captain Inej Ghafa dropped from the lines as her crew began furling the last sails and followed her shadow shoreward. A yawning dockworker on the pier caught the mooring rope she tossed over the starboard rail and began tying the ship fast.
That the dockworker in question was an oversized sea otter who wore a neckerchief and leather bracers, and could speak as intelligently as any human, was still difficult to believe -- but the world was vaster than Inej had dreamed as a girl, and these lands in the farthest west, beyond even Novyi Zem, would likely find Grisha as fantastical as she found Talking Beasts and spirits of water and wood that one might as readily meet in the market as in a tale of long-ago.
"Is Queen Susan in residence at the Cair?" she asked the otter as they moved toward the Wraith's stern and she tossed another rope over the rail.
"Aye, 'til dawn tomorrow," the otter said, in a voice disquietingly similar to Tante Heleen. Inej fought down a flinch. "Then she rides for the Dancing Lawn -- the Lord Bacchus has called a great feast and all the kings and queens plan to attend. I may go myself if it lasts more than three days."
"I see," Inej said noncommittally. "Do this lord's feasts often run so long? That sounds ruinously expensive."
The otter shrugged, tiny rainbows glittering in the spray-dampened fur along her back and shoulders. "Gods do as they like -- not for the likes of you and me to try predicting their whims. As for expense, whatever he spends to multiply the food and wine, he must get back tenfold from the revels."
"Ah," Inej said in an even more carefully noncommittal tone. "I have never met a god, though I once came very close to meeting a saint."
"Saint? Don't think I've heard that word before," the otter said as she tied off the final hitch.
Inej leaned against the salt-stained rail and frowned at the cliffs framing the harbor, trying to marshal an explanation of something she had always known in her blood and bones. "A saint is a mortal being who is closer to the gods than most," she eventually said, "and who is given special powers in order to do great deeds and protect more ordinary people. The most recent one I know is Sankta Alina, the Sun Summoner, who purified the great darkness that had split the land of Ravka in two for centuries, and killed the wicked man who had laid the curse and kept it alive."
"Oh, like their majesties!" the otter said, standing straight and bracing her weight on her tail. "They brought down the White Witch who laid a hundred years of winter on Narnia, and Aslan himself crowned them and blessed their reign. Though I've never heard that they have special powers," she added in a less certain tone. "Gifts from Father Christmas, aye, but having special tools isn't the same as being like a god."
Inej considered Queen Susan's likely reaction to being compared to a saint or a goddess, and bit back a smile. "Perhaps the gods of my land make saints because they hold themselves more distant from my people. If your gods walk among you to throw feasts and crown kings, they have less need of emissaries."
"That could be. That could well be," the otter agreed. "Anyway, push over the plank and I'll get it secured. Then I'll get you to the harbormaster and she'll make arrangements for your cargo."
A few hours later, Inej left her ship in the capable hands of her crew and the Port Paravel harbormaster, and began the walk up from the sea to the castle of Cair Paravel, perched on a high granite headland just north of the harbor breakwater. The road climbed through a half dozen switchbacks, wrapping around sheaves of tall, narrow houses, many of which had one front door on the upper curve of the street and another a full story down on the lower. The cheek-by-jowl crowding and the cheerful cries of vendors in the streets and tiny squares reminded her of Ketterdam, but this town was much cleaner, and split by crags and rivulet-carved fissures rather than joined by sluggish canals.
Also, only a third or so of the townsfolk were human, but that felt less important. All people could be dangerous if they chose -- at least those with claws or fangs or horns wore that danger in plain view.
The castle gates stood open when she arrived, and the guards (two humans, a massive tiger, and a barrel-chested badger) merely asked her name before summoning a songbird (its feathers were bright yellow and deep black; perhaps a finch or an oriole) to escort her to an audience chamber.
In her time with the Dregs, Inej had seen Kaz spend hours cooling his heels at the whim of merchants whose holdings amounted to barely half the Crow Club's annual take -- to say nothing of the difficulty of so much as buying a five-minute meeting with a member of the Merchant Council. The Narnian rulers' willingness to welcome and meet with anyone who approached their doors still struck her as deeply naïve.
And yet, she wouldn't want to test the Cair's security. Humans were simple enough to fool and evade. If you added dogs and birds and bats and spirits of fountains and trees, all of whom were equally intelligent and loyal? Even Kaz might think twice about a job that tricky.
(Only twice, though. She was sure he'd find some loophole the third time round. Fortunately she had no plans to let him within a hundred leagues of Narnia.)
The audience chamber was a small, square room with a lit fire in the heart on the northern wall, and a glass-paned window facing southward onto a small courtyard garden. Blue woolen hangings covered the western and eastern walls (lightly embroidered with stars in white and gold), and small ceramic bowls stood by the hearth along with a scoop for coals. Inej had been puzzled by those on her first visit to Narnia, but now she filled a bowl, slid it into the footstool by a cushioned chair, and sighed as the heat began to radiate up to soothe her tired feet.
She had nearly dozed off by the time Queen Susan entered the room, though the other woman could not have kept her waiting even half an hour.
The snick of a latch as the door swung open jolted Inej from her languor, but she relaxed her hands from the hilts of her knives at Susan's gentle laughter.
"Peace, friend!" the queen said. "My apologies for disturbing your rest, but I wished to see you as soon as I had the time to spare. Have you brought any more of Narnia's people home to our shores?"
Inej shook her head. "No, your majesty--"
"Susan," the queen said firmly. "I would not claim authority over you. Call me Susan."
"--Susan," Inej conceded after a moment. "The last slave ship I took was bound from Novyi Zem, and directly after we returned those people home, the gale chased us all the way west from those shores to Port Paravel. We had no time to seek new prey."
She watched from the corner of her eye as Queen Susan knelt by the hearth, gracefully sweeping her forest green skirt and the shining fall of her black hair aside, and filled her own ceramic bowl with glowing coals. Inej tried to imagine Tante Heleen doing something equally menial with her own hands, but the image refused to form. Somehow Susan made the task seem perfectly natural.
"I may have some trails for you to pursue," Susan said as she settled into her own chair and rested her slippered feet on the warming stool. "But that is a conversation for another day. This day, I wish to ask you to accompany me to Lord Bacchus's feast on the Dancing Lawn."
She held up a hand to block Inej's instinctive demurral. "You had so little time to enjoy Narnia on your last visit, and I find that a life with no time for joy and rest hones the mind and body over-thin, like a blade that snaps at the slightest blow. I would not see you snap, Inej Ghafa -- because your work is vital, but more importantly, because I count you a friend."
Inej tucked her feet up under her thighs, burrowing into the cushioned chair, and looked aside. The glass panes of the courtyard window were irregular, making the small garden's winter-bare branches and vines waver, and the small patches of crocus and snowdrops blur into bright smears of color against the brown and gray.
She knew Susan meant her words honestly, that there were no strings attached, no traps waiting to spring. Even so, she couldn't respond in kind.
Ketterdam's lessons had carved too deep into her bones.
"What should I expect at a god's feast?" she asked instead.
"Wine, food, dance, song -- all the pleasures of the flesh," Susan told her. "Bacchus is a god of freedom and plenty and he is generous with his gifts."
Inej tensed. "By pleasures of the flesh," she said slowly, still watching the garden rather than meet Susan's gaze, "do you mean--" She paused, wet her lips, then pushed through the dry tension in her chest. "Do you mean sexual acts?"
Susan leaned forward, worry etched across her radiant face. "Oh, Inej. Yes, but not the way you fear. Bacchus wishes his revels to bring ecstasy, not pain. I promise that you need not join in any act that causes you discomfort, and no one will think either more or less of you for your choices. If you wish, you and I can spend the entire feast dancing and enjoying well-earned sleep -- whatever pleases you will please the god."
Inej wet her lips again, then slowly uncurled from the chair and placed her feet back on the heated footstool.
Tante Heleen and so many others had stolen her control over her body, tainted what should have been joys she could share with someone she loved. She and Kaz were lancing those wounds one by one, pressing forward through the caltrops and shattered glass that paved the road between their hearts, but every inch of progress came with pain.
And they had never promised to be each other's one and only.
Perhaps there were other ways to steal back some of what she had lost.
"Yes," she said, and held Susan's eyes while the queen smiled.