The Eyes of the Dragon (18 page)

F
lagg watched the proceedings with a lively eye. Like Peyna, he knew that all would be decided here, and he felt confident.

Peter's head was up, his gaze firm. He met the eyes of each member of this informal jury in turn.

The stone walls frowned down on all seven. The spectators' benches were empty, but Peyna seemed to feel the weight of phantom eyes, eyes that
demanded
justice be rendered in this terrible matter.

“My Lord,” Peyna said at last, “the sun made you King three hours ago.”

Peter looked at Peyna, surprised but silent.

“Yes,” Peyna said, as if Peter had spoken. The Great Lawyers were nodding, and they looked dreadfully solemn. “There has been no coronation, but a coronation is only a public event. It is, for all its solemnity, show and not substance. God, the law, and the sun make a King, not the coronation. You are King at this very minute, legally able to command me, all of us here, the entire Kingdom. This puts us in a terrible dilemma. Do you understand what it is?”

“Yes,” Peter said gravely. “You think your King is a murderer.”

Peyna was a little surprised by this bluntness, but not entirely unhappy with it. Peter had always been a blunt boy; it was a pity that his surface bluntness had concealed such depths of calculation, but the important thing was that such bluntness, probably the result of a boy's stupid bravado, would speed things up.

“What we believe, my Lord, doesn't matter. Guilt or innocence is for a court to determine—so I've always been taught, so I believe with my most sincere heart. There is only one exception to this. Kings are above the law. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“
But
—” Peyna raised his finger. “
But
this crime was committed before you were King. So far as I know, this terrible situation has never come before a court of Delain before. The possibilities are terrible. Anarchy, chaos, civil war. To avert all of these things, my Lord, we must have your help.”

Peter looked at him gravely. “I will help if I can,” he said.

And I think—I pray—you will agree to what I am about to propose
, Peyna thought. He was conscious of fresh sweat on his forehead, but he didn't wipe it off this time. Peter was only a boy, but he was a bright boy—he might take it as a sign of weakness.
You'll say you're agreeing for the good of the Kingdom, but a boy who could have the monstrous, twisted courage to kill his own father is also, I hope, a boy who cannot help believing he will get away with it. You believe we will help you cover this up, but oh my Lord, you are so wrong.

Flagg, who could almost read these thoughts, raised his hand to his mouth to cover a smile. Peyna hated him, but Peyna had become his number-one helper without even knowing it.

“I want you to put aside the crown,” Peyna said.

Peter looked at him with grave surprise. “Renounce the throne?” he asked. “I . . . I don't know, my Lord Judge-General. I should have to think about that before I said yes or no. That might be hurting the Kingdom by trying to help it—as a doctor may kill a sick man by giving him too much medicine.”

The lad's clever
, Flagg and Peyna thought together.

“You misunderstand me. It's not a renunciation of the throne I ask for. Only that you put the crown aside until this matter has been decided. If you are found innocent of your father's murder—”

“As I will be,” Peter said. “If my father had ruled until I was old and toothless, it would have made me perfectly happy. I wanted only to serve him and support him and love him in all I did.”

“Yet your father is dead, and you stand accused by circumstance.”

Peter nodded.

“If you are found innocent, you would resume the crown. If you are found guilty—”

The Great Lawyers looked nervous at this, but Peyna did not flinch.

“If you are found guilty, you would be taken to the top of the Needle, where you would spend the rest of your life. None of the royal family may be executed; that law is a thousand years old.”

“And Thomas would become King?” Peter asked thoughtfully. Flagg stiffened slightly.

“Yes.”

Peter frowned, deep in thought. He looked terribly tired, but not confused or afraid, and Flagg felt a faint stirring of fear.

“Suppose I refuse?”

“If you refuse, then you become King in spite of terrible charges which have not been answered. Many of your subjects—most, in light of the evidence—will believe they have come to be ruled by a young man who murdered his own father to gain the throne. I think there will be revolt and civil war, and that those things will come before much time has passed.

“As for myself, I would resign my post and set out toward the west. I am old to begin over, but I should have to try to do so just the same. My life has been the law, and I could not serve a King who has not knelt to the law in such a matter as this.”

There was silence in the chamber, a silence that seemed very long. Peter sat with his head bowed, the heels of his hands planted against his eyes. They all watched and waited. Now even Flagg felt a thin film of sweat on his brow.

Finally Peter raised his head and took his hand from his eyes.

“Very well,” he said. “Here is my command as King. I will put the crown aside until I am cleared of my father's murder. You, Peyna, will serve Delain as Chancellor during the time it is without a royal head. I would that the trial should take place as soon as may be—tomorrow, even, if that is possible. I will be bound by the decision of the court.

“But you will not try me.”

They all blinked and sat up straighter at this dry note of authority, but Yosef of the stables would not have been surprised by it; he had heard that tone in the boy's voice before, when Peter was only a stripling.

“One of these other four will do that,” Peter continued. “I'll not be tried by the man who will hold power in my place . . . a man who, by his look and manner, already feels in his heart that I have committed this terrible crime.”

Peyna felt himself flush.

“One of these four,” Peter reiterated, turning to the Great Lawyers. “Let four stones, three black and one white, be put in a cup. The one who draws the white stone shall preside at my trial. Do you agree?”

“My Lord, I do,” Peyna agreed slowly, hating the flush which even now wouldn't leave his cheeks.

Again, Flagg had to raise a hand to his mouth to cover a small smile.
And that, my little doomed Lord, is the only command you will ever give as King of Delain, he thought.

T
he meeting which began at three o'clock was over by quarter past the hour. Senates and parliaments may drone on for days and months before deciding a single issue—and often the issue is never decided at all in spite of all the talk—but when great things happen, they usually happen fast. And three hours later, as dark was coming down, something happened which made Peter realize that, mad as it seemed, he was going to be found guilty of this terrible crime.

He was escorted back to his apartments by unsmiling, silent guards. His meals, Peyna said, would be brought to him.

Supper was fetched by a burly Home Guardsman with a heavy stubble of beard on his face. He was holding a tray. On it were a glass of milk and a large, steaming bowl of stew. Peter stood up as the guardsman came in. He reached for the tray.

“Not yet, my Lord,” the guardsman said, the sneer in his voice apparent. “It needs seasoning, I think.” And with that he spat into the stew. Then, grinning, showing a mouthful of teeth and gaps like an illtended picket fence, he held the tray out. “Here.”

Peter made no motion to take it. He was utterly astonished.

“Why did you do that? Why did you spit in my stew?”

“Does a child who murders his father deserve any better,
my Lord
?”

“No. But one who has not even been tried for the crime does,” Peter said. “Take that out and bring me a fresh tray. Bring it in fifteen minutes, or you'll sleep tonight below Flagg in the dungeons.”

The guardsman's ugly sneer faltered for a moment and then returned. “I think not,” he said. He tilted the tray, first just a little, then more, then more. The glass and bowl shattered on the flagstones. Thick stew splattered in ropes.

“Lick it up,” the guardsman said. “Lick it up like the dog you are.”

He turned to go. Peter, suddenly blazing, leaped forward and slapped the man. The sound of the blow rang in the room like a pistol shot.

With a bellow, the scruffy guardsman pulled out his shortsword.

Smiling humorlessly, Peter lifted his chin and bared his neck. “Go ahead,” he said. “A man who would spit in another man's soup is perhaps also the sort of man who would cut an unarmed man's throat. Go ahead. Pigs also do God's bidding, I believe, and my shame and my grief are very great. If God wills me to live, I must, but if God wills me to die and has sent such a pig as you to do the killing, that is very well.”

The Home Guardsman's anger melted into confusion. After a moment he sheathed his sword.

“I'll not dirty my blade,” he said, but his words were almost a mumble, and he was not able to meet Peter's eye.

“Bring me fresh food and drink,” Peter said quietly. “I don't know who you have been talking to, guardsman, and I don't care. I don't know why you are so eager to condemn me for my father's murder when no testimony has yet been heard, and I don't care about that, either. But you will bring me fresh meat and drink, and a napkin to go with them, and you will do this before the clock strikes half past six, or I will ring for Peyna, and you will sleep below Flagg tonight. My guilt is not proved, Peyna is yet mine to command, and I swear what I say is true.”

During this the Home Guardsman grew paler and paler, because he saw Peter did speak the truth. But this was not the only reason for his pallor. When his mates had told him the prince had been caught redhanded, he had believed them—he had
wanted
to believe them—but now he wondered. Peter did not look or speak like a guilty man.

“Yes, my Lord,” he said.

The soldier went out. A few moments later, the captain of the guard opened the door and looked in.

“I thought I heard some disturbance,” he said. His eye fell on the broken glass and crockery. “Has there been trouble here?”

“No trouble,” Peter said calmly. “I dropped the tray. The guardsman has gone to fetch me a fresh meat.”

The captain nodded and left.

Peter sat on his bed for the next ten minutes and thought deeply.

There was a brief knock on the door. “Come,” Peter said.

The bearded, gap-toothed guard came in with a fresh tray. “My Lord, I wish to apologize,” he said with awkward stiffness. “I've never behaved so in my whole life, and don't know what came over me. For my life I do not. I—”

Peter waved it away. He felt very tired. “Do the others feel as you do? The other guards?”

“My Lord,” the guardsman said, carefully setting the tray on Peter's desk, “I'm not sure
I
still feel the way I did.”

“But do the others feel that I am guilty?”

There was a long pause, and then the soldier nodded.

“And is there some one reason they tell against me most of all?”

“They speak of a mouse that burned . . . they say you wept when Peyna confronted you. . . .”

Peter nodded grimly. Yes. Weeping had been a bad mistake, but he hadn't been able to help it . . . and it was done.

“But most of all they only say you were caught, that you wanted to be King, that it must be so.”

“That I wanted to be King and so it must be so,” Peter echoed.

“Yes, my Lord.” The guardsman stood looking at Peter miserably.

“Thank you. Go now, please.”

“My Lord, I apologize—”

“Your apology is accepted. Please go. I need to think.”

Looking as if he wished he had never been born, the Home Guardsman stepped out the door and closed it behind him.

Peter spread his napkin over his knees but didn't eat. Any hunger he might have felt earlier was now gone. He plucked at the napkin and thought of his mother. He was glad—very glad indeed—that she wasn't alive to see this, to see what he had come to. All of his life he had been a lucky boy, a blessed boy, a boy to whom, it sometimes seemed, no bad luck ever came. Now it seemed that all the bad luck which should have been his over the years had only been stored up to be paid at once, and with sixteen years of interest.

In some deep way he understood. They wanted a good King they could love. But they also wanted to know they had been saved by only a hair's breadth from a bad one. They wanted blackness and secrets; they wanted their fearful tale of rotten royalty. God only knew why.
They say you wanted to be King, they say it must be so.

Peter carefully refolded his napkin and laid it over the top of the fresh bowl of stew. He could not eat.

T
here was a trial, and it was a great wonder, and there are histories of the event if you care to read them. But here's the root of the matter: Peter, son of Roland, was brought before the Judge-General of Delain by a burning mouse; tried in a meeting of seven which was not a court; convicted by a Home Guardsman who delivered his verdict by spitting into a bowl of stew. That is the story, and sometimes stories tell more than histories, and more quickly, too.