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Coming to Calormen was undoubtedly a mistake, Edith thinks as she lounges by Rabadash's side in the dusk-shadowed courtyard, pretending to listen to an endless recitation of poetry. The way the court ladies look at her and the prince makes her think she's stepped into something deeper than a simple negotiation over a potential dynastic marriage -- something that makes Rabadash think their union is already assured instead of simply a possibility Edith is still examining for deal-breaking flaws. Getting out of Tashbaan will be tricky.
Still. Mistake or not, she doesn't regret the experience. Calormen is so vast compared to Narnia, and its culture hasn't been whittled away by a hundred years of terror and death and deliberate destruction of memory. In Narnia, Edith feels the past in the intangible weight of a few stone constructions Jadis had yet to tear down, and a few simple seasonal rituals pared down to the bare bones and passed from parent to child in furtive whispers. Everything else they've had to relearn from Archenland's records.
Calormen knows its own history, flings its sense of self into the world like a brilliant banner on the wind, like the scent of flowers and blood drifting through the blazing air. Calormen is cruel and proud, harsh and unforgiving, and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
"What do you think of the poetry, my lady witch?" Rabadash murmurs, his breath moist against the rim of Edith's ear. He drapes an arm proprietarily around her shoulders, tries to pull her closer against his side.
Edith turns toward him, letting the motion dislodge his arm so it slides down her back, over her unbound hair and away -- he knows better than to touch below her waist, here in public, while she wears her stone knife openly at her side. "The form is very different from that of the North," she says. "We make our poems long, to tell stories. You make them short, to distill a thought into as few words as possible. I should like to try my hand at your style, though I fear I would do poorly."
Rabadash smiles, his teeth glinting in the light of the oil lamps. "With the right subject, even the rawest novice can excel," he says. "Did I not fight better than ever in my life, when I fought for your regard at Cair Paravel?"
He could not be more obvious if he tried. Edith smiles as she pulls her hair to the side, exposing the hollow of her neck to his view. "You flatter me," she says, blunt and plainspoken as he thinks all Northerners are blunt and simple. "But if you suggest a subject, I might venture to inflict my words on your ears."
"Never would wounds be so gratefully received," Rabadash says. "Perhaps, since you will be writing in the Calormene style, you might think on what parts of Calormen have best pleased you since your arrival."
"Perhaps," Edith agrees. Then she leans forward to the bowl of fruit, kept cool despite the heat by a layer of crushed and melting ice, and plucks a bunch of green-gold grapes from between two oranges. "I will recite to you tomorrow evening. For now, let us listen to others' words."
She presses one grape to Rabadash's lips, stilling his protest at her evasion.
His dark eyes burn as he eats. He is a beautiful man, Edith thinks, tall and strong, with smooth skin, fine hands, a clean-boned face. She has seen him stripped to the waist in the practice yards, and his shoulders and back make her want to dig in her nails and mark him hers forever. Beautiful and unbowed, like his country.
Such a pity his soul is a horror.
Edith feeds her would-be lover another grape and flicks the fingers of her free hand in a coded pattern. A moment later, a shadow slips from the window -- Sallowpad, gone to find Tumnus and begin planning a covert withdrawal. Thank the Lion that Edith had made Mary see sense and let her come south alone. One woman and six escorts can vanish in a breath. If she'd had Stephen and a ship to worry about as well, let alone Prince Corin... but there's no use thinking of might-have-beens. Rabadash will not hold her by force, and he has lost whatever chance he had to hold her by choice.
Edith smiles to herself in sudden delight, a Calormene poem blooming in her mind.
When the prince storms into her house, his men overturning the empty rooms, he finds nothing but a folded sheet of paper on her erstwhile pillow. Opening it, he reads:
"Neither iron nor gold can fetter a heart; only love, freely given and freely taken, can forge chains so eternal and fine." Beneath the poem is Edith's name and her seal: a knife through a heart, pressed into blood-red wax.
Rabadash burns her rejection and declares war.