The Eyes of the Dragon(70)

Peyna was fully able to appreciate the irony of his position. All his life, he had served the idea of the law. Ideas like "prison break" and "armed rebellion" horrified him. They still did, but certain truths had to be faced. That the machinery of revolt had come to exist in Delain, for instance. Peyna knew that the nobles who had fled to the north called themselves "exiles," but he also knew that they were edging ever closer to calling themselves "rebels." And if he were to keep that revolt from happening, he might well have to use the machinery of rebellion to help a prisoner break out of the Needle. That was the joke the stranger inside was laughing at, laughing too loudly for sleep to be even a remote possibility.

Such actions as the ones he was now thinking about went against the grain of his whole life, but he would go ahead anyway, even if it killed him (which it just might). Peter had been falsely imprisoned. Delain's true King was not on the throne, but locked in a cold two-room cell at the top of the Needle. And if it took lawless forces to put things right again, so it must be. But...

"The napkins," Peyna muttered. His mind circled back to them and back to them. "Before we resort to force of arms to free the rightful King and see him enthroned, the business of the napkins should be investigated. He'll have to be asked. Dennis... and the Staad boy, perhaps... aye..."

"My Lord?" Arlen asked from behind him. "Are you unwell?"

Arlen had heard his master rise, as butlers almost always do.

"I am unwell," Peyna agreed gloomily. "But it's nothing my physician can fix, Arlen."

"I'm sorry, my Lord."

Peyna turned to Arlen, and fixed his bright, sunken eyes upon the butler.

"Before we become outlaws, I want to know why he asked for his mother's dollhouse... and for napkins with his meals."

Chapter 13

87

Go back to the castle?" Dennis asked the next morning, in a hoarse voice that was almost a whisper. "Go back to where he is?"

"If you feel you can't, I'll not press you," Peyna said. "But you know the castle well enough, I think, to stay out of his way. If, that is, you know a way to get in unnoticed.

To be noticed would be bad. You look much too lively for a boy who is supposed to be home sick."

The day was cold and bright. The snow on the long, rolling hills of the Inner Baronies threw back a diamond dazzle which made the eyes water before long. I'll probably be snowblind by noon, and it'll serve me right, Peyna thought grumpily. The stranger inside seemed to find this prospect hilarious indeed.

Castle Delain itself could be seen in the distance, blue and dreaming on the horizon, its walls and towers looking like an illustration in a book of fairy stories. Dennis, however, did not look like a young hero in search of adventure. His eyes were full of fear, and his face bore the expression of a man who has escaped from a den of lions... only to be told he's forgotten his lunch, and must go back in and get it, even though he's lost his appetite.

"There might be a way to get in," he said. "But if he smells me, how I get in or where I hide won't matter. If he smells me, he'll run me down."

Peyna nodded. He did not want to add to the boy's fear, but in this situation, nothing less than the truth could serve them. "What you say is true."

"But you still ask me to go?"

"If you can, I still ask it."

Over a meager breakfast, Peyna had told Dennis what he wanted to know, and had suggested some ways Dennis might go about getting the information. Now Dennis shook his head, not in refusal but in bewilderment.

"Napkins," he said.

Peyna nodded. "Napkins."

Dennis's fearful eyes went back to that distant fairy-tale castle dreaming on the horizon. "When he was dying, my Da' said if I ever saw a chance to do a service for my first master, I must do it. I thought I'd done it coming here. But if I must go back..."

Arlen, who had been busy closing up the house, now joined them.

"Your house key, please, Arlen," Peyna said.

Arlen handed it to him, and Peyna handed it to Dennis.

"Aden and I go north to join the"-Peyna hesitated and cleared his throat-"the exiles," he finished. "I've given you Arlen's key to this house. When we reach their camp, I'll give mine to a fellow you know, if he be there. I think he will be."

"Who's that?" Dennis asked.

"Ben Staad."

Sunshine broke on Dennis's gloomy face. "Ben? Ben's with them?"

"I think he may be," Peyna said. In truth, he knew perfectly well that the entire Staad family was with the exiles. He kept his ear firmly to the earth, and his ears had not grown so deaf that he was not able to hear many movements in the Kingdom.

"And you'd send him down here?"

"If he'll come, aye, I mean to," Peyna replied.

"To do what? My Lord, I'm still not clear about that."

"Nor am I," Peyna said, looking cross. He felt more than cross; he felt bewildered. "I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on in-tuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludi-crous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.