He thought about these things and prayed over them. The fourth night passed… the fifth… the sixth. On the seventh night, Peter came to this conclusion: it was better to try than not to try; better to make an effort to right the wrong even if he died trying to do so. An injustice had been done. He discov-ered a strange thing-the fact that the injustice had been done to him didn’t seem half so important as the fact that it had been done at all. It ought to be righted.
On the eighth day of Thomas’s reign, he sent for Beson.
53
Beson listened to the speech of the imprisoned prince with incredulity and mounting rage. Peter finished and Aron Beson let loose a gutter flood of obscenity that would have made a horse drover blush.
Peter stood before it, impassive.
“You murdering snot-nosed hound!” Beson finished, in a tone that was close to wonder. “I guess you think yer still livin’ in the bloody lap o luxury, with yer sairvants to run scurrying every time you lift one o yer perfoomed little fingers. But it ain’t like that in here, my young prince. No, sir.”
Beson leaned forward from the waist, scruffy chin jutting, and although the stench of the man-sweat and thick cheap wine and great gray scales of dirt-was nearly overpowering, Peter did not give ground. There were no bars between them; Beson had yet to fear a prisoner, and certainly he felt no fear of this young whelp. The Chief Warder was fifty, short, broad of shoulder, deep in the gut. His greasy hair hung in tangles around his cheeks and down the back of his neck. When he had come into Peter’s room, one of the Lesser Warders had locked the door behind them.
Beson balled his left hand into a fist and shook it under Peter’s nose. His right hand slid into the pouch pocket of his shirt and closed around a smooth cylinder of metal. One hard smash with that loaded fist would break a man’s jaw. Beson had done it before.
“You take your requests, and you jam them up your nose with the rest of the boogers, my dear little prince. And the next time you call me in here for any such royal rubbage as this, you’ll bleed for it.”
Beson started away toward the door, short and hunched over and almost troll-like. He traveled in his own tight little cloud of stink.
“You are in danger of making an extremely bad mistake,” Peter said. His voice was soft but grim, and it carried.
Beson turned back to him, his face incredulous. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Peter said. “And when you speak to me next, you stinking little turnip, I think you had better remember you are speaking to royalty, don’t you? My lineage did not change when I climbed those steps.”
For a moment Beson could not reply. His mouth opened and closed like the mouth of a fish yanked out of the ocean-although any fisherman catching something as ugly as Beson would surely have thrown it back. Peter’s cool requests-requests delivered in a tone which made it clear that they were in reality demands not to be refused-made Beson’s head buzz with fury. One of the requests had been that of either an utter sissy or an outright lunatic. That one Beson had dismissed at once as nonsense and tomfoolery. The other, however, had to do with his meals. That, combined with the firm resolute look in Peter’s eye, suggested that the young prince had thrown off his despair and meant to live.
The future prospects for idle days and drunken nights had looked bright. Now they had dimmed again. This young boy looked very healthy, very strong. He might live a long time. Beson might very well have to look at the young murderer’s face for the rest of his own life-there was a thought to set a man’s teeth on edge! And-
Stinking turnip? Did he actually call me a stinking turnip?
“Oh, my dear little prince,” Beson said, “I think you are the one who has made the mistake… but I can promise you’ll never make it again.” His lips split open in a grin, revealing a few blackened stumps of teeth. Now, about to attack, he moved with surprising grace. His right hand came out of the pouch pocket, wrapped around the bar of metal.
Peter took a step backward, his eyes moving from Beson’s fisted hands to Beson’s face and then back to his fists. Behind Beson, the tiny barred window in the middle of Peter’s door was opened. Two of the Lesser Warders were crammed there cheek to stubbly cheek, grinning and waiting for the fun to start.
“You know that royal prisoners are to be given some consid-eration in smaller matters,” Peter said, still backtracking and circling. “That is tradition. And I have asked you for nothing untoward.”
Beson’s grin widened. He imagined he heard fear in Peter’s voice. He was mistaken. This error would shortly be brought home to him in a way to which he was unaccustomed.
“Such traditions are paid for, even among the royalty, my little prince.” Beson rubbed his left thumb and finger together. His right fist remained tightly balled around the chunk of metal.
“If you mean you wish an odd bit of cash from time to time, that might be arranged,” Peter said, continuing to circle away. “But only if you drop this foolish behavior of yours right now.
“Afraid, are you?”
“If anyone should be afraid here, I think it is you,” Peter said. “You apparently mean to attack the brother of the King of De-tain.”
This shot struck home, and for a moment Beson faltered. His eyes grew uncertain. Then he glanced toward the open window in the door, saw the faces of his Lesser Warders, and his own face darkened again. If he drew back now, he would have trouble with them-nothing he couldn’t handle, of course, but still more annoyance than this little stinker was worth.
He moved forward in a rush and swung the weighted fist. He was grinning. The prince’s screams as he fell to the stone floor with his smashed and squirting nose clutched in his hands would be, Beson thought, shrill and babyish.
Peter moved back easily, his feet moving as gracefully as if in a dance. He seized Beson’s fist and was not surprised in the least by its weight-he had seen the gleam of metal between Beson’s swelled fingers. Peter pulled with a wiry strength that Beson would not have believed five minutes ago. He spun through the air and hit the curving inner wall of Peter’s “sitting room” with a crash that rattled the few teeth remaining in his jaws. Stars exploded in his head. The metal cylinder flew from his fist and rolled across the floor. And before Beson could even begin to recover, Peter had sprung after it and seized it. He moved with the simple, pure liquidity of a cat.
This can’t be happening, Beson thought with dawning dismay and stupid surprise. This absolutely can’t be happening.
He had never feared entering the two-room prison at the top of the Needle, because there had never been a prisoner here, not of noble blood, not of royal blood, who could best him. Oh, there had been some famous fights up here, but he had taught them all who was boss. Perhaps they ruled the roost down below, but up here he was the boss, and they came to respect his dirty, compact power. But now this stripling of a boy…
Bellowing with rage, Beson came off the wall, shaking his head to clear it, and charged Peter, who had folded the cylinder of metal into his own right hand. The Lesser Warders stood staring at this unexpected development with stupid wonder. Nei-ther thought of interfering; they could believe what was hap-pening no more than Beson himself.
Beson ran at Peter with his arms outstretched. Now that the prince had gotten his fist weight away from him, Beson had no more interest in the sort of free-for-all swinging and hitting he thought of as “boxing.” He meant to close with Peter, grapple with him, drive him to the floor, land on top of him, and then choke him unconscious.
But the space where Peter had been emptied with magical suddenness as the boy stepped aside and dropped into a crouch. As the squat, troll-like Chief Warder went past, trying to turn, Peter hit him three times with his right fist, which was closed around the metal cylinder. Hardly fair, Peter thought, but, then, it wasn’t I that brought this piece of metal into it, was it? The blows did not look hard at all. If Beson had been watching a fight and had seen those three quick, fluttering punches thrown, he would have laughed and called them “sissy punches.” Beson’s idea of a real man’s punch was a roundhouse blow that made the air whistle.