COMMENTFIC!

[metonomia]

Guys guys guys, so ilysia_039   wrote epic amazingness re: the Duke of Galma's daughter (Isamene), the one who squints and has freckles, and then rthstewart  started shipping Edmund/Isamene because WHO WOULDN'T, and then she wrote AU fan fic for fan fic, and then she said I could put it here and continue it!!!

So, go read this:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5450216/14/Singing_Paeans_to_the_Stars

And then...muahahhahaha!



"Really, Caspian, must you be such a complete Telmarine about it?" It was only over fifteen years of self control and that they were in full view of the assembled Galmans on the Great Hall’s dais, that kept Edmund from cuffing the Narnian King on the side of the head.

"What?" Caspian mumbled as bits of stew slid off his trencher to the immaculately scrubbed floor.

With practiced ease, the stiletto slid out of his wrist sheath and into Edmund’s hand. Under the cover of the rough cloth on which they dined, he aimed its point at Caspian’s thigh.

"Our host's daughter has obviously cleansed this Hall and changed the rushes herself. You dishonor her and Narnia eating as a common, dumb swine." He gave Caspian a little jab so the King knew that he too was a King, and rather better at it. "Pick that food up from the floor!"

"Rushes?" Caspian asked stupidly, jerking away and looking about. “Who? Do you mean that creature with the squints and freckles?"

On Caspian's other side, Lucy hissed with anger. Edmund had hoped to keep his sister out of it; in matters such as this, Lucy was even less forgiving than he.

"Caspian, you are such a boor," Lucy huffed and Edmund saw a flash of silver in her hands. “You will cease to embarrass us and our country this instant or I shall teach you better manners at knifepoint.”

A polite cough caught his attention and Edmund looked up to see that the whole of their whispered lesson had been observed by one other. Squints indeed. There was a shrewd intelligence in Isamene’s eyes. With a knowing quirk of her eyebrow, she raised her cup and behind its rim, Edmund caught a whispered “thank you.”

He subtly tilted his head to the other end of the table. “And listen to what happens next,” he told Isamene silently.

Lucy begin in her sweet seeming way that was always a shade too blunt for strict Court politeness. “My Lord Galma, my brother, the Just King, and I are so pleased to see that you have held to the sound laws We enacted so long ago that recognize inheritance by lineal primogeniture regardless of gender. Our fair cousin Caspian told me but today how Narnia most heartily approves of Galma in this and intends to hold her as a model of equity for all her territorial Crown possessions.”

Isamene flushed at Lucy’s words; and it was too bad because those very attractive freckles smattered across her high cheekbones disappeared.

Edmund raised his glass in salute, echoing Lucy with a hearty “To Princess Isamene.” He wondered how he might coerce Drinian into keeping their on Galma a full month.

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

"Store rooms?" she repeated. Truly Edmund was a most unconventional King. He was not the least bit abashed over or even repentant at having obliterated her monthly accounts. Though he professed to be unfamiliar with the device, Isamene suspected deliberate tampering.

"There shall be no inspections of the store rooms until you assist in reconstruction of my accounting!" On this, Isamene was prepared to be firm and had still not ruled out hitting the monarch.

Reaching out, he plucked a twig from her own hair and twirled it idly between his fingers. "As you wish. In so pleasant of company, I find accounting can be very stimulating. How much will be involved you think?"

"Hours," she ground out.

"So you say? Well, nothing for it!" he responded cheerfully. "Let us make for your office!"

She could not believe he was acceding so easily. "And what of the store rooms you wish to inspect?"

Edmund tucked the twig behind his ear and carefully cleared away the vine trailing from her skirts.

"A reconstruction of this estate's monthly financials will require frequent forays to the store room to confirm and count inventory."

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

She petted her abacus absentmindedly as she considered what he was clearly intending. They wouldn't get much work done, she guessed, but she could always just do the accounting later. A little holiday could be alright, just for once...

"Very well, Edmund, let us away to the store rooms."

--

An hour later, Isamene found herself wondering why she had ever been angry at him. The man was a god, by the Lion! His style of notation and his mental math and the deft manner in which he shoved the beads of the abacus from side to side, the little furrow in his brow as he concentrated on her numbers...King Edmund was a better financier than anyone Isamene had ever come across, except perhaps, she allowed humbly, herself.

[ilysia-039.livejournal.com]

As the Duke and his simpering wife and their many similarly simpering acquaintances were finishing with their meals and beginning- ever so slowly- to speak of touring the gardens and the vineyards, Caspian turned puzzled eyes on Lucy and said, "Your pardon, Queen Lucy, but where has King Edmund gone off to? He must have slipped out without my noticing..."

Lucy stifled an exasperated sigh, wondering how it could have escaped Caspian's notice that Edmund had been gone for the better part of two hours... she rather hoped that he and Isamene had finished their own inspection of the vineyards by now. "Edmund and the Duke's daughter stepped out for a moment."

"The Duke's daughter!" Caspian looked absolutely shocked. "But she's-" catching Lucy's look, and perhaps awakening to the fact that the Duke was sitting not ten feet from him, Caspian turned his unfortunate comment into: "- I do mean, I wonder what it is that she could show King Edmund that the good Duke could not."

"She is, I believe," Lucy said with the greatest of dignity, "showing him her abaci."

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

In fact at that moment Isamene was showing Edmund her abacus, on which she had finished tallying up the bushels of grain in the eastern store room.

"Hm," he said, taking it from her and glancing up at the neat rows of golden wheat. "Is this not a bit of a ... disappointing yield? Our inspection of the fields seemed to indicate a much higher possible percentage of production."

Isamene blushed. "His Grace my father does not find agriculture to be nearly so necessary as I do. This represents the sum production of all the fields we may currently use. The rest he has set aside for tourneys and the like."

"Well, that's stupid." Isamene wanted to be shocked for a moment, and had to remind herself yet again that Edmund was not the normal sort of king.

"Your soil is obviously very good for wheat, here, and for grapes in some places. If I had such obliging fields, I wouldn't put any of them to waste."

"But, King Edmund, what if the fields were fenced off, shut away from you?"

He raised one eyebrow.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

"But, King Edmund, what if the fields were fenced off, shut away from you?"

He raised one eyebrow.

“Fencing off fertile fields? Whatever for? It is shocking waste to permit unappreciative Knights and their tourneys to hinder or abuse things that would otherwise flourish. You recall our old ways to know that Narnia should not be so contained.”

Isamene had the peculiar sense of ground shifting beneath her feet.

Edmund thrust his hand into a bag of wheat and let the golden grains slide through his ink-stained fingers. “More to the point, I dislike fences that would bar me from fields I wish to traverse.”

[ilysia-039.livejournal.com]

"More to the point, I dislike fences that would bar me from fields I wish to traverse."

Worrying with the bit of dried cornstalk in her hands, Isamene asked, "And what, King Edmund, would you do, should you find such a fence barring you from such a field?"

With a pensive frown, he dumped the grain from his hand and reached over to pluck the stalk from her hands before she shredded it entirely. "There are several options, of course. Common wisdom would support speaking with the landowner about his dreadful lack of husbandry skills, though I find that in cases such as the barring of a fertile field for no better purpose than tourneys, the landowner is often too foolish to consider a better path." He paused, met her troubled face, and then smiled- quite nefariously, she thought. "I find that it is often better, in the long run, to simply remove the landowner in question from his mishandled fields, and turn them over to one who better understands the needs of the land."

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Oh for the sake of the Lion. Isamene snorted in disgust. Really, when it came down to it, King Edmund was as overbearingly monarchical as the next, even if he was blessed with accounting skills almost equal to her own and in his company she had a persistent urge to retire to a remote corner of the store room to count bolts of silk, sheepskins, and flats of spun cotton.

"And just who might that person be who better understand the needs of the land?" she snapped.

[ilysia-039.livejournal.com]

"And just who might that person be who better understand the needs of the land?" she snapped

He seemed quite unperturbed by her ire, which only made her angrier. She was fully prepared to retire to her office in a rage and leave him standing there alone, king or not, when he said, "Why, the land itself, of course. Narnian land has always had the strange and wondrous characteristic of being quite able to care for itself."

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

"As I mentioned," he continued, "it is not the land herself that needs a master. It is that I find irksome those things that prevent my entrance into access to enjoyment of Narnian lands." Edmund gently smoothed the dry corn stalk and set it to stand alongside its fellows against the rough store room wall. "And what is your pleasure, Isamene? For what should I account next?"

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

"Grapes, I think," she said with supreme, frosty dignity. "You ruined my count of that harvest as well."

"I love grapes!" he replied enthusiastically, striding over to the barrels and coming back with a large bunch.

"Your Majesty." He popped a few in his mouth and held one out to her.

"Grape?"

"King Edmund." He shrugged and ate that one, too, obviously enjoying himself and obviously aware of her annoyance.

"Edmund! You are eating my harvest."

"I'll repay you?" he offered, and as she gaped in disbelief, he threw a grape with perfect aim into her mouth.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

A disturbingly maniacal gleam rose in his eye. He held up the bunch of grapes and in the light they glinted, richly purple. "Brilliant," he murmured.

Isamene flushed a little at the praise. "Thank you, King..."

"Edmund," he interrupted, gently manipulating the stem of lush, sweet fruit in the dusky light of the store room.

"Thank you, King Edmund," she repeated firmly. "I appreciate your admiration of my fruit."

"Oh, the grapes are lovely and all that -- delicious, and leaving a person wanting rather more than just a taste. I, however, meant that I have had brilliant idea."

Her anger rose again. "So it is you you who is ever so brilliant, your Majesty," Isamene bit out.

"As gorgeous as your fruit and grains are, it is their stunted outputs that trouble me."

"And your access to them?"

Really, he was completely, and probably deliberately, missing her own acidic responses in contemplation of his own brilliance. Impertinent did not begin to cover the full of it.

Edmund tossed another grape into the air and easily caught it in his mouth. Chewing with smug satisfaction, he concluded mysteriously, "Where stunted fields, impeding fences, and other restraints upon old Narnia are concerned, I know just the chap to help."

[lady_songsmith]

Oh dear. The longer this goes on, the more I feel like I'm not old enough to be reading it. I can't remember the last time I felt like that. And if Bacchus is going to turn up, I may spontaneously combust.

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

MAHAHAHAHA. You have discerned our maniacal plot! Bacchus makes everything better.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I mentioned this to Ilysia last night and I think this may actually be a, dare I say it, coherent end to this AU fic of fan fic. A sort of deux ex machina as it where. However, I still like the idea of the two of them rediscovering Narnian fertility rituals while Lucy sails off on her Love Boat cruise to World's End with Caspian.

[ilysia-039.livejournal.com]

I love it. I really do. And then Bacchus shows up and Caspian falls over in shock and Eustace starts stuttering about "nutters dressing up like old myths".

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

Love it so much. I think at this point Isamene might be half expecting Aslan to show up, btw. And she fears that Bacchus will be more akin to her father, all frivolity and gaiety, but of course she ends up seeing how awesome he is. Yes?

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

"And who might that be?" she asked, cursing herself for how easily she let him pique her interest.

"Ah..he'll come in his own time, I think," Edmund said, grabbing more grapes from the barrel behind him. "Now, would you care to show me more of your lands?"

(and then they go to the well)