The Eyes of the Dragon(44)

That was a secret Thomas kept.

51

Above the jubilee of the coronation, at the top of the Needle, Peter stood at a small window, looking down. As Thomas had hoped, he had seen and heard everything, from the first cheers when Thomas appeared on Flagg's arm to the last as he disappeared back into the palace itself, also on Flagg's arm.

He stood at the window for nearly three hours after the ceremony was over, watching the crowds. They were loath to break up and go home. There was much to discuss and much to relive. This-One had to tell That-One just where he had been when he heard the old King was dead, and then they both had to tell T'other-One. The women had a final good cry over Roland and exclaimed over how fine Thomas had looked, and how calm he had seemed. The children chased each other and pretended they were Kings and rolled hoops and fell down and skinned their knees and screamed and then laughed and chased each other again. The men clapped one another on the back and told each other that they guessed all would be well now-it had been a terrible week, but now all would be well. Yet through all of this there ran a dull yellow thread of unease, as if they realized that all was not well, that the things which had gone so wrong when the old King had been murdered were not right yet.

Peter, of course, could tell none of this from his high, lonely perch in the Needle, but he sensed something. Yes, something.

At three o'clock, three hours early, the meadhouses opened, supposedly in honor of the new King's coronation, but mostly because there was business to be had. People wanted to drink and celebrate. By seven that night, most of the population of the city was reeling through the streets, drinking the health of Thomas the Light-Bringer (or brawling with each other). It was nearly dark when the revelers finally began to disperse.

Peter left the window, went to the one chair in his "sitting room" (that name was a cruel joke), and simply sat there with his hands folded in his lap. He sat and watched the room darken. His dinner came-fatty meat, watery ale, and coarse bread so salty it would have stung his mouth if he had eaten any. But Peter did not eat the meat or bread, nor did he drink the ale.

Around nine o'clock, as the carousing in the streets began again (this time the crowds were much more boisterous... almost riotous), Peter went into his prison's second room, stripped to his ringlet, washed with water from the basin, knelt by his bed, and prayed. Then he got into bed. There was only a single blanket, although the little bedroom was very cold. Peter pulled it to his chest, laced his hands together in back of his head, and looked up into the darkness.

From outside and below came screams and cheers and laugh-ter. Now and then there was the sound of firecrackers, and once, near midnight, there was an explosive gunpowder flatulence as a drunken soldier set off a blank charge (the following day, the unfortunate soldier was sent as far east as the Kingdom of Delain stretched, for his drunken salute to the new King-gunpowder was rare in Delain, and jealously hoarded).

Sometime after one in the morning, Peter at last closed his eyes and slept.

The next morning, he was up at seven. He knelt, shivering in the cold, his breath puffing white from his mouth, goosebumps on his bare arms and legs, and prayed. When his prayers were done, he dressed. He went into the "sitting room" and stood by the window silently for nearly two hours, watching the city come to life below him. That coming alive was slower and crankier than usual; most of the adults in Delain woke with drink-swollen heads. They stumbled to their jobs slowly, and in a foul temper. Many of the men went to their tasks blistered by angry wives who had no sympathy with their aching heads (Thomas also had an aching head-he had drunk too much wine the night before-but at least he was spared the lecturing wife).

Peter's breakfast came, Beson, his Chief Warder (who had a hangover of his own), fetched him plain bran cereal with no sugar, watery milk that was rapidly souring, and more of the coarse, salty bread. This was a bitter contrast to the pleasant breakfasts Peter had enjoyed in his study, and he ate none of it.

At eleven, one of the Lesser Warders fetched it silently away.

"Young princeling means to starve, thinks I," he said to Beson.

"Good," Beson replied indifferently. "Spare us the trouble of keeping him."

"Maybe he fears poison," the Lesser Warder ventured, and in spite of his aching head, Beson laughed. The jest was a good one.

Peter spent most of his day in the "sitting-room" chair. In the later part of the afternoon, he stood at the window again. The window was not barred. Unless you were a bird there was nowhere to go but straight down. No one, not Peyna, not Flagg, not Aron Beson, worried that the prisoner might somehow climb down. The Needle's curving stone wall was utterly smooth. A fly might have done it, but not a man.

And if he grew depressed enough to jump, would anyone care? Not much. It would save the state the expense of feeding and housing a blue-blooded murderer.

As the sun began to move across the floor and up the wall, Peter sat and watched it. His dinner-more fatty meat, watery ale, and salty bread-came. Peter did not touch it.

When the sun was gone, he sat in the dark until nine, and then went into the bedroom. He stripped to his singlet, knelt, and prayed with small white puffs coming from his mouth. He got into bed, laced his hands behind his head, and lay on his back, staring up into the darkness. He lay there thinking about what had become of him. Around one o'clock in the morning, he slept.

So he was on the second day.

And the third.