The Eyes of the Dragon (22 page)

The Lesser Warders peering through the hole in the door were agog with surprise. Beson, being beaten by a
boy?
It was as unbelievable as rain would have been coming down from a clear blue sky. One of them now looked at the key in his hand, thought briefly of going in there, then thought better of it. A man could get hurt in there. He slipped the key into his pocket, where he could later claim to have forgotten it.

“Are you ready to talk reasonably now?” Peter wasn't even out of breath. “This is silly. I require only two small favors of you, favors for which you can count on being well and amply repaid. You—”

With a roar, Beson flung himself at Peter again. This time Peter was not expecting an attack, but he managed to pull back anyway, the way a matador pulls back from a bull which charges unexpectedly—the matador may be surprised, perhaps even gored, but he rarely loses his grace. Peter did not lose his, but he
was
wounded. Beson's nails were long, ragged, and filthy—more like animal claws than human nails—and he liked to tell his Lesser Warders (on dark winter's nights when a gruesome tale seemed required) about the time he had slit a prisoner's neck from ear to ear with one of those thumbnails.

Now one drew a bloody line down Peter's left cheek as Beson flailed his way by. The cut zigzagged from temple to jawline, missing Peter's left eye by hardly half an inch. Peter's cheek fell open in a flap, and all his life he would bear the scar of his encounter with Beson there.

Peter grew angry. All the things that had happened to him over the last ten days seemed to slam together in his head, and for a moment he was almost—not quite, but
almost
—angry enough to kill the brutish Chief Warder instead of just teaching him a lesson he would never, never forget.

As Beson turned, he was rocked by left hooks and right jabs. The jabs would ordinarily have done little damage, but the pound and a half of metal in Peter's fist turned them into torpedoes. His knuckles sprung Beson's jaw. Beson roared with pain and again tried to close with Peter. This was a mistake. There was a crunch as his nose broke and blood flooded over his mouth and chin. It dripped onto his filthy jerkin. Then a bright flare of pain as that heavy right hand smashed his lips back. Beson spat a tooth onto the floor and tried to circle away. He had forgotten that his Lesser Warders were watching, afraid to interfere. Beson had forgotten his anger at the young prince's attitude, had lost his former desire to teach the young prince a lesson.

For the first time in his tenure as Chief Warder, he had forgotten everything but a blind desire to survive. For the first time in his tenure as Chief Warder, Beson was afraid.

Nor was it the fact that Peter was now punching him at will that frightened him. He had taken bad beatings before, although never at the hands of a prisoner. No, it was the look in Peter's eyes that had so terrified him.
It is the look of a King. Gods protect me, it is the face of a King—his fury blazes almost with the heat of the sun.

Peter drove Beson against the wall, measured the distance to Beson's chin, and then drew back his weighted right fist.

“Do you need more convincing, turnip?” Peter asked grimly.

“No more,” Beson replied groggily, through his rapidly puffing lips. “No more, my King, I cry your mercy, I cry your mercy.”

“What?” Peter asked, flabbergasted. “What did you call me?”

But Beson was sliding slowly down the curved stone wall. When he had called Peter my King, he had done so as unconsciousness stole over him. He would not remember saying it, but Peter never forgot.

B
eson was unconscious for over two hours. If not for his thick, snoring breaths, Peter would have been afraid that perhaps he really
had
killed the Chief Warder. The man was a gross, vicious, underhanded pig . . . but for all of that, Peter had no wish to kill him. The Lesser Warders took turns staring in the little window in the oaken door, their eyes wide and round—the eyes of small boys looking at the man-eating Anduan tiger in the King's Menagerie. Neither made any effort to rescue their superior, and their faces told Peter that they expected him to leap on the unconscious Beson at any moment and tear his throat out. Perhaps with his teeth.

Well, why shouldn't they think such things?
Peter asked himself bitterly.
They think I killed my own father, and a man who would do such a thing might stoop to any low act, even that of killing an unconscious opponent.

Finally Beson began to moan and stir. His right eye fluttered and came open—the left
couldn't
open, and wouldn't completely for some days.

The right eye looked at Peter not with hate, but with unmistakable alarm.

“Are you ready to speak reasonably?” Peter asked.

Beson said something Peter couldn't understand. It sounded like mush.

“I don't understand you.”

Beson tried again. “You could have killed me.”

“I've never killed anyone,” Peter said. “The time may come when I'll have to, but if it ever does, I hope I don't have to start with unconscious warders.”

Beson sat against the wall, looking at Peter with his one open eye. An expression of deep thought, absurd and a little frightening on his swelled and battered features, settled over his face.

At last he managed another mushy phrase. Peter thought he understood this one, but wanted to be absolutely sure.

“Repeat that, please, Mr. Chief Warder Beson.”

Beson looked startled. As Yosef had never been called Lord High Groom before Peter, so Beson had never been called Mr. Chief Warder.

“We can do business,” he said.

“That is very well.”

Beson struggled slowly to his feet. He wanted no more to do with Peter, at least not today. He had other problems. His Lesser Warders had just watched him take a bad beating at the hands of a boy who hadn't had anything to eat for a week. Watched—and no more, the cowardly sots. His head ached, and he might well have to whip those poor fools into line before he could slink off to bed.

He had started out when Peter called to him.

Beson turned back. That turning was really all it took. Both of them knew who was in charge here. Beson had been beaten. When his prisoner told him to wait, he waited.

“I have something I want to say to you. It will be good for both of us if I do.”

Beson said nothing. He only stood and watched Peter warily.

“Tell
them
”—Peter jerked his head toward the door—“to close the spyhole.”

Beson stared at Peter for a moment, then turned toward the staring warders and gave the command.

The Lesser Warders currently jammed cheek to cheek into the opening, stood there staring, not understanding Beson's blurred words . . . or pretending not to. Beson ran his tongue over his blood-flecked teeth and spoke more clearly, obviously with some pain. This time the peephole was swung shut and bolted from the outside . . . but not before Beson had heard the contemptuous laughter of his underlings. He sighed wearity—yes, they would have to be taught some hard lessons before he could go home. Cowards learned quickly, though. This prince, whatever else he might be, was surely no coward. He wondered if he really wanted to do any business at all with Peter.

“I want to give you a note to take to Anders Peyna,” Peter said. “You'll come back for it tonight, I hope.”

Beson said nothing, but he was trying very hard to think. This was the most unsettling twist yet. Peyna! A note to Peyna! He had had a cold moment when Peter reminded him that he was the brother of the King, but it had been nothing compared with this. Peyna, by the gods!

The more he thought of it the less he liked it.

King Thomas might not much care if his older brother was roughed up in the Needle. The older brother had murdered their father, for one thing; Thomas probably didn't feel much brotherly love right now. And more important, Beson felt little or no fright when the name of King Thomas the Light-Bringer was invoked. Like almost everyone else in Delain, Beson had already begun to view Thomas with a certain contempt. But Peyna, now . . . Peyna was different.

To the likes of Beson, Anders Peyna was more frightening than a whole marching regiment of Kings, anyway. A King was a distant sort of being, bright and mysterious, like the sun. It didn't matter if the sun went behind the clouds and froze you, or came out all hot and white to bake you ative—either way you only accepted, because what the sun did was far beyond the ability of mortal creatures to understand or to change.

Peyna was a more earthly being. The sort of being Beson could understand . . . and fear. Peyna with his narrow face and his ice-blue eyes, Peyna with his high-collared judge's robes, Peyna who decided who would live and who would go under the headsman's axe.

Could this boy really command Peyna from his cell here at the top of the Needle? Or was it only a desperate bluff?

“If I were King, Peyna would have served me in any way I commanded,” Peter said. “I am not a King now, only a prisoner. Still, not long ago I did him a favor for which I think he is very grateful.”

“I see,” Beson replied, as noncommittally as he could.

Peter sighed. Suddenly he felt very weary, and wondered what sort of foolish dream he was pursuing here. Did he really believe he was taking the first few steps on the road to freedom by beating up this stupid warder and then bending him to his will? Did he have any real guarantee that Peyna would do even the smallest thing for him? Perhaps the concept of a favor owed was only in Peter's own mind.

But it had to be tried. Hadn't he decided, on his long, lonely nights of meditation as he grieved for both his father and himself, that the only real sin would be in not trying?

“Peyna is not my friend,” Peter went on. “I won't even try to tell you that he is. I've been convicted of murdering my father, the King, and shouldn't think I have a friend left in all of Delain, from north to south. Would you agree, Mr. Chief Warder Beson?”

“Yes,” Beson said stonily. “I would.”

“Nevertheless, I believe that Peyna will undertake to provide you with the bit of cash you are used to receiving from your inmates.”

Beson nodded. When a noble was imprisoned in the Needle for any length of time, Beson would commonly see that the prisoner got a better grade of food than the fatty meat and watery ale, fresh linen once a week, and sometimes a visit from a wife or a sweetheart. He did not do this free, of course. Imprisoned nobles almost always came from rich families, and there was always someone in those families willing to pay Beson for Beson's services, no matter what the crime had been.

This crime was of an exceptionally terrible nature, but here was this boy, saying that no less a one than Anders Peyna might be willing to provide the bribe.

“One other thing,” Peter said softly. “I believe Peyna will do this because he is a man of honor. And if anything were to happen to me—if you and several of your Lesser Warders were to rush in here tonight, and beat me in revenge for the beating I have given you, for example—I believe that Peyna might take an interest in the matter.”

Peter paused.

“A personal interest in the matter.”

He looked closely at Beson.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Beson said, and then added: “my Lord.”

“Will you provide me with pen, inkpot, blotter, and paper?”

“Yes”.

“Come here.”

With some trepidation, Beson came.

The Chief Warder's stink was tremendous, but Peter did not draw away—the stink of the crime with which he had been accused had almost inured him to the smell of sweat and dirt, he had discovered. He looked at Beson with a hint of a smile.

“Whisper in my ear,” Peter said.

Beson blinked uneasily. “What shall I whisper, my Lord?”

“A number,” Peter said.

After a moment, Beson did.

O
ne of the Lesser Warders brought Peter the writing implements he had asked for. He gave Peter the wary look of an alley cat that has been often kicked, and skittered away before he could receive a helping of the anger that had been heaped on Beson's head.

Peter sat down at the rickety table by the window, breath puffing out in the deep cold. He listened to the restless whine of the wind around the tip of the Needle and looked down at the lights of the city.

Dear Judge-General Peyna,
he wrote, and then stopped.

Peter was in a cheerier frame of mind that evening, and thought the answer to all three questions would probably be no. His plan might well fail, but it was unlikely to be foreseen by such an orderly and methodical man as Peyna. The Judge-General would be as apt to imagine himself donning a dress and dancing a hornpipe in the Plaza of the Needle at the full of the moon as he was to guess what Peter was up to.
And what I'm asking is so little,
Peter thought. That ghost of a smile touched his lips again.
At least I hope and believe it will seem so . . . to him.

Bending forward, he dipped the quill pen in the inkpot and began to write.

O
n the following evening, shortly after nine had struck, Anders Peyna's butler answered an unaccustomedly late knock and looked down his long nose at the figure of the Chief Warder standing on the doorstep. Arlen—that was the butler's name—had seen Beson before, of course; like Aden's master, Beson was a part of the Kingdom's legal machinery. But Arlen did not recognize him now. The beating Peter had given Beson had had a day to set, and his face was a sunset of reds and purples and yellows. His left eye had opened a little, but was still little more than a slit. He looked like a dwarfish ghoul, and the butler began to swing the door shut almost at once.