Chapter 13, Keep Your Friends Close

[rthstewart]

Despite hacking illness and holidays, I managed the first chapter of the next mini story arc, Keep Your Friends Close (chapter 13) and Your Enemies Closer (Chapter 14) to follow.  The story begins its wind up after that.

Once again in the category of, I couldn't possibly make this stuff up, the episode involving the stolen pamphlet, its frantic copying, and return with no one being the wiser is taken straight from The Irregulars, sans Gryphon.

 

“Marsh had given him a draft of a pamphlet written by his close friend Henry Wallace.  Entitled “Our Job in the Pacific” it summarized the vice president’s postwar goals, among them international control of the airways, economic assistance for the industrial development of Asia, and the demilitarization of Japan.  Wallace was also in favor of “the emancipation of colonial subjects” in the British Empire, including India, Burma, and Malaya.  Dahl could feel his hair stand on end.  Dahl, immediate realized the document’s importance, and knowing that his superiors would want to see it, he excused himself saying that he was going to finish reading it downstairs.  He quickly phoned his BSC contact, explained the urgency of the situation, and convinced him to meet him on the corner as soon as possible.  The agent knew something was up and materialized on the street in front of Marsh’s house in a matter of minutes. 

 

Dahl sneaked out of the hosue and handed the document through his car window, warning his partner in crime to be in back in half an hour or there would be hell to pay.  … [T]he agent went straight to the BSC’s Washington offices to make copies and made it back within the allotted time.  Dahl nipped back out, collected the paper, and no one was the wiser. 

 

[The document] created a bit of stir in New York and again when it reached London.  Churchill reported could hardly believe what he was reading.  … [The] American government’s postwar plans for civil aviation … coupled with the liquidation of the British Empire, inspired Churchill to cataclysms of wrath. 

J. Connant, The Irregulars, Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.  pp. 121-122.

It's funny, when I first started mapping this out, I knew I would need a way to record and copy documents, Narnia-style.  That problem was solved with the dual action now part of the story.  You may also notice that I've stopped signaling the switch between Tashbaan and Washington.  I figure the reader is able to slide back and forth as well as Peter is at this point.

So, I hope you'll read and review.  

Comments

[min023.livejournal.com]

Hey Rth,

Wonderful new chapter here - there's a lot of things that I like, and but I'm fascinated by your continuation of Rabadash/Susan and the Great Game. I know you've been hesitant to take on The Horse and His Boy, but I'd really love to read more about the game in play, and the way that Susan was taken in, then pulled it out again (with the aid of Edmund and the other Narnians).

Sorry you've been unwell - do hope that you managed to have an enjoyable Christmas anyway. Congrats again on the awards - I'm rally pleased for you.

Cheers
: )

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Thanks Min! Yeah, the Susan/Rabadash thing has been done so well, I'm not sure I'd have much to add. I love Andi Horton's Susan in On Golden Sands. I love what Ilysia has done there. At this point, I'm interested in the story to the extent that I might explore the pantheon of Calormen gods, specifically, the Trickster, and his relationship with Aslan. The whole HHB is filled with these awesome tricks and coincidences. For instance, when Tumnus is clutching his head with the "idea" of the escape by boat, what if it's the Trickster, with the god Pan's help, trying to help the Faun come to that idea? Or when Shasta and Aravis both make the mistake of looking up -- that's the Trickster with a finger under their chins, whispering, "don't you want to see? It's pretty! It's interesting!"
And of course the reason the Trickster helps Aslan is because he really doesn't like Rabadash much. He thinks it's all just a great joke! Oh, right, where was I? Yeah, not much to add to Susan, per se. So far.

[min023.livejournal.com]

Yep, I maintain that I'd like to read that one (once you've got through everything else, and in your _copious_ quantities of free time - HA!). The ideas you've put down just are (to my mind) just begging for a story.

Forgot to add earlier that I liked that little sneaky Tebbitt/Susan moment. If he's admiring her, then that's all to the good. I still don't know that I'd class myself as a shipper, but I'm leaning more that way all the time.

Another interesting thought just occurred, too. In the opening paragraphs, we see Edmund's difficulties with trust. Being the Morgan/Harold fangirl that I am, it occurred to me to wonder about the effect that would have had there. We've already established that M/H was a bit more than some sort of temporary fling, so was trust an issue, or was Morgan an exception? Would be interesting to see how that played in that particular 'ship.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Fact is, I'm a shipper at heart. LOVE them. Until I entered this fandom, ships were at the heart of everything I wrote.

Most fundamentally, I would not characterize the Morgan and Harold ship as a particularly functional one. This is one where I could see everyone else around them just in a continual eyeroll. Morgan, in her role as financial advisor to Narnia, keeps sending these men and women as potential marital prospects for the Four in order to secure the succession (and her house's investment) and then gets really pissed if Harold so much as looks at one of them. And Harold is all, "Well, but you sent her!?" There is not a lot of self-knowledge on either side of that relationship to my mind. Hence Ed's Might Have Beens. I don't want it to be too angsty, 'cuz I'd rather write sexually charged witty banter.

After Jadis, I just don't see Ed trusting easily at all, of anyone. I have Sallowpad observing that of Ed in both BRD and TPG. Which brings me to sort of an interesting place... he obviously comes to trust Morgan to a point, and maybe for him, it's just easier to trust her, to the extent he is able, rather than any of the others who come knocking after. I do think she is pretty transparent to him which he respects. By the end of BRD he understands her agenda and her motives. It's not romantic -- it's businesslike, but that works for both of them, because it's her milieu and because that's just how he is. These are good things for me to keep in mind!