The Eyes of the Dragon (25 page)

Andrew rose, putting his reading glasses in his pocket.

“Da'?” Ben asked.

“I'll go,” Andrew said.

Let it only be some traveler, lost in the dark and seeking shelter,
he hoped, but when he opened the door a soldier of the King stood there on the stoop, stolid and broad-shouldered. A leather helmet—the helmet of a fighting man—clung to his head. There was a shortsword in his belt, near to hand.

“Your son,” he said, and Andrew felt his knees buckle.

“Why do you want him?”

“I come from Peyna,” the soldier said, and Andrew understood that this was all the answer he was to have.

“Da'?” Ben asked from behind him.

No,
Andrew thought miserably,
please, this is too much bad luck, not my son, not my son
—

“Is that the boy?”

Before Andrew could say no—useless as that would have been—Ben had stepped forward.

“I am Ben Staad,” he said. “What do you want with me?”

“You must come with me,” the soldier said.

“Where?”

“To the house of Anders Peyna.”

“No!”
his mother cried from the doorway of their small living room. “No, it's late, it's cold, the roads are full of snow—”

“I have a sleigh,” the soldier said inexorably, and Andrew Staad saw the man's hand drop to the shaft of his shortsword.

“I'll come,” Ben said, getting his coat.

“Ben—” Andrew began, thinking:
We'll never see him again, he's to be taken away from us because he knew the prince.

“It will be all right, Da',” Ben said, and hugged him. And when Andrew felt that young strength embracing him, he could almost believe it. But, he thought, his son had not learned fear yet. He had not learned how cruel the world could be.

Andrew Staad held his wife. The two of them stood in the doorway and watched Ben and the soldier break their way through the drifts toward the sleigh, which was only a shadow in the dark with lanterns glowing eerily on either side. Neither of them spoke as Ben climbed up on one side, the soldier on the other.

Only one soldier,
Andrew thought,
that's something. Maybe it's only for questioning that they want him. Pray it's only for questioning that they want my son!

The Staads stood in silence, membranes of snow blowing around their ankles, as the sleigh pulled away from the house, the flames in the lanterns jiggling, the sleigh bells jingling.

When they were gone, Susan burst into tears.

“We'll never see him again,” she sobbed. “Never, never! They've taken him! Damn Peter! Damn him for what he's brought my son to! Damn him! Damn him!”

“Shh, mother,” Andrew said, holding her tightly. “Shh. Shh. We'll see him before morning. By noon at the latest.”

But she heard the quiver in his voice and cried all the harder. She cried so hard she woke little Emmaline up (or maybe it was the draft from the open door), and it was a very long time before Emmaline would go back to sleep. At last Susan slept with her, the two of them in the big bed.

Andy Staad did not sleep all that night.

He sat up by the fire, hoping against hope, but in his heart, he believed he would never see his son again.

B
en Staad stood in Anders Peyna's study an hour later. He was curious, even a little awed, but not afraid. He had listened closely to everything Peyna said, and there had been a muted chink as money changed hands.

“You understand all of this, lad?” Peyna asked in his dry courtroom voice.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“I would be sure. This is no child's business I send you on. Tell me again what you are to do.”

“I am to go to the castle and speak to Dennis, son of Brandon.”

“And if Brandon interferes?” Peyna asked sharply.

“I am to tell him he must speak to you.”

“Aye,” Peyna said, settling back in his chair.

“I am not to say ‘Tell no one of this arrangement.' ”

“Yes,” Peyna said. “Do you know why?”

Ben stood thoughtfully for a moment, head down. Peyna let him think. He liked this boy; he seemed coolheaded and unafraid. Many others brought before him in the middle of the night would have been gibbering with terror.

“Because if I said such a thing, he would be quicker to tell than if I said nothing,” Ben said finally.

A smile touched Peyna's lips. “Good,” he said. “Go on.”

“You've given me ten guilders. I'm to give two to Dennis, one for himself and one for whoever finds the dollhouse that belonged to Peter's mother. The other eight are for Beson, the Chief Warder. Whoever finds the dollhouse will deliver it to Dennis. Dennis will deliver it to me. I will deliver it to Beson. As for the napkins, Dennis himself will take them to Beson.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-one each week,” Ben replied promptly. “Napkins of the royal house, but with the crest removed. Your man will engage a woman to remove the royal crests. From time to time you will send someone to me with more money, either for Dennis or for Beson.”

“But none for yourself?” Peyna asked. He had already offered; Ben had refused.

“No. I believe that's everything.”

“You are quick.”

“I only wish I could do more.”

Peyna sat up, his face suddenly harsh and forbidding. “You must not and you shall not,” he said. “This is dangerous enough. You are procuring favors for a young man who has been convicted of committing a foul murder—the second-foulest murder a man may do.”

“Peter is my friend,” Ben said, and he spoke with a dignity that was impressive in its simplicity.

Anders Peyna smiled faintly, and raised one finger to point at the fading bruises on Ben's face. “I would guess,” he said, “that you are already paying for that friendship.”

“I would pay such a price a hundred times over,” Ben said. He hesitated just a moment and then went on boldly: “I don't believe he killed his father. He loved King Roland as much as I love my own da'.”

“Did he?” Peyna asked, apparently without interest.

“He did!” Ben cried. “Do you believe he murdered his father? Do you
really
believe he did it?”

Peyna smiled such a dry and ferocious smile then that even Ben's hot blood was cooled.

“If I didn't, I should be careful who I said it to,” he said. “Very, very careful. Or I should soon feel the headsman's blade go through my neck.”

Ben stared at Peyna silently.

“You say you are his friend, and I believe you.” Peyna sat up straighter in his chair and leveled a finger at Ben. “If you would be a true friend, do just the things I have asked, and no more. If you see any hope for Peter's eventual release in your mysterious summons here—and I see by your face that you do—you must give that hope up.”

Rather than ring for Arlen, Peyna saw the boy out himself—out the back way. The soldier who had brought him tonight would be on his way to the Western Barony tomorrow.

At the door, Peyna said: “Once more: do not stray from the things we've agreed upon
so much as one solitary bit.
The friends of Peter are not much cared for in Delain now, as your bruises prove.”

“I'd fight them all!” Ben said hotly. “One at a time or all at once!”

“Aye,” Anders Peyna said with that dry, ferocious smile. “And would you ask your mother to do the same? Or your baby sister?”

Ben gaped at the old man. Fear opened in his heart like a small and delicate rose.

“It will come to that, if you do not exercise all your care,” Peyna said. “The storms are not over in Delain yet, but only beginning.” He opened the door; snow swirled in, driven by a black gust of wind. “Go home now, Ben. I think your parents will be happy to see you so soon.”

This was an understatement of some size. Ben's parents were waiting at the door in their nightclothes when Ben let himself in. They had heard the jingle of the approaching sleigh. His mother hugged him close, weeping. His father, red-faced, unaccustomed tears standing in his eyes, wrung Ben's hand until it ached. Ben remembered Peyna saying
The storms are not over but only beginning.

And still later, lying in bed with his hands behind his head, staring up into the darkness and listening to the wind whistle outside, Ben realized that Peyna had never answered his question—had never said whether or not he believed Peter to be guilty.

O
n the seventeenth day of Thomas's reign, Brandon's son, Dennis, brought the first lot of twenty-one napkins to the Needle. He brought them from a storeroom that neither Peter nor Thomas nor Ben Staad nor Peyna himself knew about—although all would become aware of it before the grim business of Peter's imprisonment was done. Dennis knew because he was a butler's son from a long line of butlers, but familiarity breeds contempt, so they say, and he thought nothing much about the storeroom from which he fetched the napkins. We'll speak more of this room later; let me tell you now only that all would have been struck with wonder at the sight of it, and Peter in particular. For had he known of this room which Dennis took completely for granted, he might have attempted his escape as much as three years sooner . . . and much, for better or for worse, might have been changed.

T
he royal crest was removed from each napkin by a woman Peyna had hired for the quickness of her needle and the tightness of her lips. Each day she sat in a rocker just outside the doorway of the storeroom, picking out stitches that were very old indeed. When she did this her lips were tight for more reasons than one; to unmake such lovely needlework seemed to her almost a desecration, but her family was poor, and the money from Peyna was like a gift from heaven. So there she sat, and would sit, for years to come, rocking and plying her needle like one of those weird sisters of whom you may have heard in another tale. She spoke to no one, not even her husband, about her days of unmaking.

The napkins had a strange, faint smell—not of mildew but of must, as if from long disuse—but they were otherwise without fault, each of them twenty rondels by twenty, big enough to cover the lap of even the most dedicated eater.

There was a bit of comedy attached to the first napkin delivery. Dennis hung about Beson, expecting a tip. Beson let him hang about a while because he expected that sooner or later the dimwitted lad would remember to tip
him
. They both came to the conclusion that neither was going to be tipped at the same time. Dennis started for the door, and Beson helped him along with a kick in the seat of the pants. This caused a pair of Lesser Warders to laugh heartily. Then Beson pretended to wipe his bottom with the handful of napkins for the Lesser Warders' further amusement, but he was careful only to pretend—after all, Peyna was in this business somewhere, and it was best to tread lightly.

Perhaps Peyna would not be around a great deal longer, however. In the meadhouses and wineshops, Beson had begun to hear whispers that Flagg's shadow had fallen on the Judge-General, and that if Peyna was not very, very careful, he might soon be watching the proceedings at court from an even more commanding angle than the bench upon which he now sat—he might be looking in the window, these wags said behind their hands, from one of the spikes atop the castle walls.

O
n the eighteenth day of Thomas's reign, the first napkin was on Peter's breakfast tray when it was delivered in the morning. It was so large and the breakfast so small that it actually covered the meal completely. Peter smiled for the first time since he had come to this cold, high place. His cheeks and chin were shadowed with the beginnings of a beard which would grow full and long in these two drafty rooms, and he looked quite a desperate character . . . until he smiled. The smile lit his face with magical power, made it strong and radiant, a beacon to which one could imagine soldiers rallying in battle.

“Ben,” he muttered, picking the napkin up by one corner. His hand shook a bit. “I knew you'd do it. Thank you, my friend. Thank you.”

The first thing Peter did with his first napkin was to wipe away the tears that now ran freely down his cheeks.

The peephole in the stout wooden door popped open. Two Lesser Warders appeared again like the two heads of Flagg's parrot, packed into the tiny space cheek to scruffy cheek.

“Hope that baby won't forget to wipe his chinny-chin!” one cried in a cracked, warbling voice.

“Hope that baby won't forget to wipe the eggy off his shirty!” the other cried, and then both screamed with derisive laughter. But Peter did not look at them, and his smile did not fade.

The warders saw that smile and made no more jokes. There was something about it which forbade joking.