The Eyes of the Dragon

73

Peter at first entertained giddy thoughts of promising Beson another bribe to take the locket and the crumbling sheet of foolscap to Anders Peyna. In his initial flush of excitement, it seemed to him that this note must point the finger of guilt at Flagg and set him, Peter, free. A little reflection convinced him that while that might happen in a storybook, it would not happen in real life. Peyna would laugh and call it a forgery. And if he took it seriously? That might mean the end of both the Judge General and the imprisoned prince. Peter’s ears were sharp, and he listened closely to the gossip of the meadhouses and the wineshops as it was passed back and forth between Beson and the Lesser Warders. He had heard of the Farmers’ Tax Increase, had heard the bitter joke which suggested that Thomas the LightBringer should be renamed Thomas the Tax-Bringer. He had even heard that some few daring wags had renamed his brother Foggy Tom the Constantly Bombed. The headsman’s axe had swung with the regularity of a clock’s pendulum since Thomas had ascended Delain’s throne, only this clock called out treason-sedition, treason-sedition, treason-sedition with a regularity that would have been monotonous, had it not been so frightening.

By now Peter had begun to suspect Flagg’s goal: to bring the ordered monarchy of Delain to an utter smash. Showing the locket and the note would only get him laughed at or cause Peyna to take some sort of action. And that would undoubtedly get them both killed.

In the end Peter put the locket and foolscap back where they had come from. And with them he put the little three-foot pigtail it had taken him a month to weave. On the whole, he did not feel too bitter about the evening’s work-the rope had held, and the finding of the locket and foolscap after more than four hundred years proved at least one thing-the hiding place was not apt to be discovered.

Still, he had much food for thought, and he lay long awake that night.

When he slept, he seemed to hear Leven Valera’s dry, stony voice whispering in one ear: Avenge! Avenge! Avenge!