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When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.
"I bet. But if I ask I might get fewer presents. I guess we'll see." Isabella trots off to bed, cloak billowing out below the knees behind her.
The next morning, she tries it on.
Isabella swings by her room precisely to have a look at it. Knock knock.
A golden surcoat bearing the red lion of Narnia, over a coat of chainmail that clinks musically when she moves; steel gauntlets, etched with rows of tiny golden leaves that echo her crown, over gloves of the same golden fabric as the surcoat; gold-etched steel boots in the same style as the gauntlets, and likewise the steel plate that covers her arms and legs and shoulders. She even has her shield on her arm and her sword at her waist, and the object of the knightly orders secured to the other side of her sword-belt in a leather pouch. It's all very... kingly.
"It's actually way comfier than I expected. And I can move in it. I think I'm going to wear it whenever I train with my sword from now on."
"And he gave you that bow. Either he thinks there's going to be trouble soon, or he wanted us both to have armour and a weapon just because it's the kind of thing we should have."
"If there is going to be trouble soon I guess I should be practicing, too."
"You might as well even if there isn't. You have the bow, and even though it still works when you don't know how to use it, it works best when you do. You know?"
"Yeah. It's a good thing it's a ranged weapon, if I had a sword and shield like you somebody could yank my staff away from its loop on my bag and then where would I be?"
"Definitely not as effective as you could be. I don't think there are many situations that could be improved by you falling over more."
"And probably none of those situations are in combat. Do you suppose we ought to have been more proactive about looking for and capturing the Witch's surviving soldiers?"
"We found the ones we could find with the resources we had. I'd much rather be dealing with them now, with everybody well-fed and happy and all the roads and bridges and wells and my armour and your bow and all the knights who know anything about fighting, than right after we won with pretty much nothing but my sword and an untrained, disorganized quasi-army. However much consolidating they've been able to do since then, I'd be very, very surprised if it was anywhere near as much as we have."
"Yeah, that makes sense. But I'm wondering if we're going to be attacked, or if the presents are enough information to let us go looking for and surprise them before they go after us."
"I guess we'll see. And I'll take this as a cue to start organizing the fighting knights into an army."
"And I suppose we can see if any of the winged horses want to be ridden into battle when we have more than usual reason to imagine one might happen."
"That would be helpful. Especially if we can get the dwarves to produce decent armour for them... I'll look into it."