"Wait," Beson said in a hard growl that made the butler hesitate. "I come with a message for your master."

The butler hesitated for a moment and then began to swing the door closed again. The man's sullen, swollen face was frightening. Could he actually be a dwarf, down from the north country? Supposedly the last of those wild, fur-clad tribes had either died or been killed off in his grandfather's time, but still* one never knew*

"It is from Prince Peter," Beson said. "If you close this door, you will hear hard things later from your master, thinks"

Arlen hesitated again, torn between closing the door against the ghoul and the power the name of Prince Peter still held. If this man came from Peter, he must be the Needle's Chief Warder. Ye "You don't look like Beson," he said.

"You don't look like your father, neither, Arlen, and it's made me wonder more than once where your mother may have been," the lumpish ghoul retorted rudely, and stuck a smudged envelope through the crack still open in the door. "Here* take it to ' im. I'll wait. Close the door if you want, although it's devilish cold out here."

Arlen didn't care if it was twenty below. He didn't intend to have the horrible-looking fellow toasting his feet in front of the fire in the servants' kitchen. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the envelope, shut the door, bolted it, started away*then returned and double- bolted it.

Peyna was in his study, staring into the fire and thinking long thoughts. When Thomas had been crowned the moon had been new; it was not yet at the half, and already he did not like the way things were going. Flagg-that was the worst. Flagg. The magician already wielded more power than in the days of Roland's reign. Roland had at least been a man, full of years, no matter how slow his thinking might have been. Thomas was only a boy, and Peyna feared that Flagg might soon control all Delain in Thomas's name. That would be bad for the Kingdom* and bad for Anders Peyna, who had never concealed his dislike of Flagg.

It was pleasant here in the study, before the crackling fire, but Peyna thought he nonetheless felt a cold wind around his ankles. It was a wind which might rise and blow away* everything.

Why, Peter? Why, oh why? Why couldn't you wait? And why did you have to seem so perfect on the outside, like a rose-red apple in autumn, and be so rotten below the skin? Why?

Peyna didn't know* and would not admit to himself, even now, that doubts as to whether or not Peter really had been rotten were beginning to nibble at his heart.

There was a knock at the door.

Peyna roused himself, looked around, and called out impatiently: "Come! And it better be d.a.m.ned good!"

Arlen came in, looking ruffled and confused. He held an envelope in one hand.

"Well?"

"My Lord* there's a man at the door* at least, he looks like a man* that is, his face is most awfully puffed and swelled, as if he had gotten a terrible beating* or*" Arlen's voice trailed away.

"What's that to do with me? You know I don't receive this late. Tell him to go away. Tell him to go to the devil!"

"He says he's Beson, my Lord," Arlen said, more fl.u.s.tered than ever. He raised the smudged envelope, as if to use it as a shield. "He brought this. He says it's a message from Prince Peter."

Peyna's heart leaped at that, but he only frowned more strenuously at Arlen.

"Well, is it?"

"From Prince Peter?" Arlen was almost gibbering now. His usual composure was utterly lost, and Peyna found this interesting. He wouldn't have believed Arlen would lose his composure come fire, flood, or invasion of ravaging dragons. "My Lord, I would have no way of knowing* That is, I* I*"

"Is it Beson, you idiot?"

Arlen licked his lips-actually licked his lips. This was utterly unheard of. "Well, it might be, my Lord* it looks a bit like him* but the fellow on the doorstep is most awfully bruised and lumpy* I*" Arlen swallowed. "I thought he looked like a dwarf," he said, bringing out the worst and then trying to soften it with a lame smile.

It is Beson, Peyna thought. It's Beson and if he looks as if he's been beaten it's because Peter administered the beating. That's why he brought the message. Because Peter beat him and he was afraid not to. A beating's the only thing that convinces his sort.

There came a sudden feeling of exultation in Peyna's heart: he felt as one might feel in a dark cave when a light suddenly shines out.

"Give me the letter," he said.

Arlen did. He then made as if to scuttle out, and this was also something new, because Arlen did not scuttle. At least, Peyna thought, his mind lawyerly as always, I have never KNOWN him to scuttle.

He let Arlen get as far as the study door, as a veteran fisherman will let a hooked fish run, and then pulled him up short. "Arlen."

Arlen turned back. He looked braced, as if to receive a reprimand.

"There are no more dwarves. Did your mother not tell you so?"

"Yes," Arlen said reluctantly.

"Good for her. A wise woman. These dreams in your head must have come from your father. Let the Chief Warder in. To the servants' kitchen," he added hastily. "I have no wish to have him in here. He stinks. But let him into the servants' kitchen so he may warm himself. The night is cold." Since the death of Roland, Peyna reflected, all the nights had been cold, as if in reproach for the way the old King had burned, from the inside out.

"Yes, my Lord," Arlen said with marked reluctance.

"I'll ring for you shortly and tell you what to do with him."

Arlen went out, a humbled man, and closed the door behind him.

Peyna turned the envelope over in his hands several times without opening it. The dirt was no doubt from Beson's own greasy fingers. He could almost smell the villain's sweat on the envelope. It had been sealed shut with a blot of common candle wax.

He thought, I would do better, perhaps, to throw this directly into the fire, and think of it no more. Yes, throw it into the fire, then ring Arlen and tell him to give the little hunched-over Chief Warder-he really DOES look like a dwarf; now that I think of it-a hot toddy and send him away. Yes, that is what I should do.

But he knew that he wouldn't. That absurd feeling-that feel- ing that here was a ray of light in hopeless darkness-would not leave him. He put his thumb under the flap of the envelope, broke the seal, took out a brief letter, and read it by firelight.

Peyna I have decided to live.

I had read only a little about the Needle before I actually found myself in the place, and although I had heard a bit more, most of it was only gossip. One of the things I heard was that certain small favors might be purchased. It seems this really is so. I of course have no money, but I thought you might perhaps defray my expenses in this matter. I did you a favor not long ago, and if you were to pay the Chief Warder a sum of eight guilders-such sum to be paid anew at the beginning of each year I spend in this unhappy place-I would consider the favor repaid. This sum, you will notice, is very small. That is because I require only two things. If you will arrange for Beson to "wet his beak" so that I may have them, I'll trouble you no more.

I am aware that you would be put in a bad light if it came out that you have helped me, even in a small way. I suggest that you make my friend Ben your go-between, if you decide to do as I ask. I have not spoken to Ben since my arrest, but I think and hope he remains true to me. I would ask him rather than you, but the Staads are not well off, and Ben has no money of his own. It shames me to ask money from anyone, but there is no other to whom I may turn. If you feel you cannot do as I request, I will understand.

I did not murder my father.

Pete Peyna looked at this amazing letter for quite some time. His eyes kept returning to the first line, and the last.

I have decided to live.

I did not murder my father.

It did not surprise him that the boy continued to protest-he had known criminals to go on for years and years protesting their innocence of crimes of which they were patently guilty. But it was not like a guilty man to be so bald in his own defense. So* so commanding.

Yes, that was what bothered him most about the letter-its tone of command. A true King, Peyna felt, would not be changed by exile; not by prison; not even by torture. A true King would not waste time justifying or explaining. He would simply state his will.

I have decided to live.

Peyna sighed. After a long time, he drew his inkpot to him, took a sheet of fine parchment from his drawer, and wrote upon it. His note was even shorter than Peter's had been. It took him less than five minutes to write it, blot it, sand it, fold it, and seal it shut. With that done, he rang for Arlen.

Arlen, looking much chastened, appeared almost at once.

"Is Beson still here?" Peyna asked.

"I think so, sir," Arlen said. In fact he knew Beson was still there, because he had been peeking through the keyhole at the man, watching him lurch back and forth restlessly from one end of the servants' kitchen to the other with a cold chicken leg clutched like a club in one hand. When the meat on the leg was all gone, Beson had crunched the bones-horrible splintering sounds they made-and sucked contentedly at the marrow.

Arlen was still not utterly convinced the man was not a dwarf* perhaps even a troll.

"Give him this," Peyna said, handing Arlen the note, "and this for his trouble." Two guilders clinked into Arlen's other hand. "Tell him there may be a reply. If so, he's to bring it at night, as he did this one."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Don't linger and chat with him, either," Peyna said. It was as close as he was able to come to making a joke.

"No, my Lord," Arlen said glumly, and went out. He was still thinking of the crunching sounds the chicken bones had made when Beson bit through them.

Here," Beson said grumpily when he came into Peters cell the next day, thrusting the envelope at Peter. In truth, he felt grumpy. The two guilders handed to him by Arlen had been an unexpected windfall, and Beson had spent most of the night drinking it up. Two guilders bought a great lot of mead, and today his head felt large and very painful. "d.a.m.ned messenger boy is what I'm turning into."

"Thank you," Peter said, holding the envelope.

"Well? Ain'tcher going to open it?"

"Yes. When you leave."

Beson bared his teeth and clenched his fists. Peter simply stood there, looking at him. After a moment, Beson lowered his fists. "d.a.m.ned messenger boy, is all!" he repeated, and went out, slamming the heavy door behind him. There was the thud of iron locks being turned, followed by the sliding sound of bolts, -three of them, each as thick as Peter's wrist-being slid into place.

When the sounds had stopped, Peter opened the note. It was only three sentences long.

I am aware of the long-standing customs of which you speak. The sum you mentioned could be arranged. I will do so, but not until I know what favors you expect to buy from our mutual friend.

Peter smiled. Judge-General Peyna was not a sly man-slyness was not at all in his nature, as it was in Flagg's -but he was exceedingly careful. This note was the proof of that. Peter had expected Peyna's condition. He would have felt wary if Peyna had not asked what he wanted. Ben would be the go-between, Peyna would cease to actually be a part of the bribe very shortly, but still he walked carefully, as a man might walk on loose stones which might slide out from under his feet at any moment.

Peter went to the door of his cell, rapped, and after some conversation with Beson, was given the inkpot and dirty quill pen again. Beson did more muttering about being nothing but a d.a.m.ned messenger boy, but he was not really unhappy about the situation. There might be another two guilders in this for him.

"If them two write back and forth long enough, I guess I could get rich after it," he said to no one at all, and roared laughter in spite of his aching head.

Peyna unfolded Peter's second note and saw that this time the prince had left off both of their names. That was very well. The boy learned fast. As he read the note itself, his eyebrows shot up.

Perhaps your request to know my business is presumptuous, perhaps not. It matters little, since I am at your mercy. Here are the two things your eight guilders per year are to purchase: I want to have my mother's dollhouse. It always took me to pleasant places and pleasant adventures, and I loved it much as a boy.

I would like to have a napkin brought with my meals-a proper royal napkin. The crest may be removed, if you like.

These are my requests.

Peyna read this note over and over again before throwing it into the fire. He was troubled by it because he did not understand it. The boy was up to something* or was he? What could he want with his mother's dollhouse? So far as Peyna knew, it was still in storage somewhere in the castle, gathering dust under a sheet, and there could be no reason not to give it to him-not, that was, if a good man was charged with going through it carefully first, to make sure all the sharp things-tiny knives and such-were removed from it. He remembered quite well how enchanted Peter had been with Sasha's dollhouse as a very young boy. He also remembered-vaguely, very vaguely-that Flagg had protested that it was hardly fitting for a boy who would someday be King to be playing with dolls. Roland had gone against Flagg's advice that time* wisely, Peyna thought, for Peter had given the dollhouse up, all in good time.

Until now.

Has he gone mad, then?

Peyna did not think so.

The napkin, now* that he could understand. Peter had always insisted upon a napkin at every meal, always spread it neatly on his lap like a small tablecloth. Even when on camping trips with his father, Peter had insisted on a napkin. So oddly like Peter not to ask for better food than the normal poor prison rations, as almost any other n.o.ble or royal prisoner would have done before asking for anything else. No, he had asked for a napkin instead.

That insistence on always being neat* on always having a nap-kin* that was his mother's doing. I'm sure of it. Do the two go together, somehow? But how? Napkins* and Sasha's dollhouse. "at do they mean?

Peyna did not know, but that absurd feeling of hope remained. He kept remembering that Flagg had not wanted Peter to have the dollhouse as a little boy. Now, years later, here was Peter asking to have it again.

There was another thought wrapped up inside this, as neatly as filling is wrapped up in a tart. It was a thought Peyna hardly dared to entertain. If-just if-Peter had not murdered his father, who did that leave? Why, the person who had originally owned that hideous poison, of course. A person who would have been nothing in the Kingdom if Peter had followed his father* a person who was nearly everything now that Thomas sat on the throne in Peter's place.

Flagg.

But this thought was hideous to Peyna. It suggested that justice had somehow gone wrong, and that was bad. But it also suggested that the simple logic in which he had always prided himself had been washed away in the revulsion he had felt at the sight of Peter's tears, and this idea-the idea that he had made the single most important decision of his career on the basis of emotion rather than fact-was much worse.

What harm can there be in his having the dollhouse, as long as the sharp things are removed?

Peyna drew his writing materials to him and wrote briefly. Beson had another two guilders to drink up-already he had been paid half the sum he would receive for the prince's little favors each year. He looked forward to more correspondence, but there was no more.

Peter had what he wanted.

As a child Ben Staad had been a slim, blue-eyed boy with curly blond hair. The girls had been sighing and giggling over him since he was nine years old. "That'll stop soon enough," Ben's father said. "All the Staads make handsome enough lads, but he'll be like the rest of us when he gets his growth, I reckon-his hair'll darken to brown and he'll go around squintin ' at everything and he'll have all the luck of a fat pig in the King's slaughtering pen."

But neither of the first two predictions came true. Ben was the first Staad male in several generations to remain as blond at seventeen as he had been at seven, and who could tell a brown hawk from an auger hawk at four hundred yards. Far from developing a nearsighted squint, his eyes were amazingly keen* and the girls still sighed and giggled over him as much now, at seventeen, as they had when he was nine.

As for his luck* well, that was another matter. That most of the Staad men had been unlucky, at least for the last hundred years or so, was beyond argument. Ben's family thought that Ben might be the one to redeem them from their genteel poverty. After all, his hair hadn't darkened and his eyes hadn't grown dim, so why should he not escape the curse of bad luck as well? And after all, Prince Peter was his friend, and Peter would some-day be King.

Then Peter was tried and convicted of his father's murder. He was in the Needle before any of the bewildered Staad family could get their minds around what had happened. Ben's father, Andrew, went to Thomas's coronation, and he came home with a bruise on his cheek-a bruise his wife thought it might be prudent not to speak of.

"I'm sure Peter's innocent," Ben said that night at supper. "I simply refuse to believe-"

The next moment he was sprawling on the floor, his ear ringing. His father was towering over him, pea soup dripping from his mustache, his face so red it was almost purple, and Ben's baby sister, Emmaline, was crying in her high chair.

"Don't mention the murdering whelp's name again in this house," his father said.

"Andrew!" his mother cried. "Andrew, he doesn't under-stand-"

His father, normally the kindest of men, turned his head and stared at Ben's mother. "Be quiet, woman," he said, and some-thing in his voice made her sit down again. Even Emmaline stopped crying.

"Father," Ben said quietly, "I can't even remember the last time you struck me. It's been ten years, I think, maybe longer. And I don't think you ever struck me in anger, until now. But it doesn't change my mind. I don't believe-"

Andrew Staad raised one warning finger. "I told you not to mention his name," he said, "and I meant it, Ben. I love you, but if you say his name, you'll be leaving my house."

"I'll not say it," Ben replied, getting up, "but because I love you, Da '. Not because I'm scared of you."

"Leave off!" Mrs. Staad cried, more frightened than ever. "I won't have the two of you bickering this way! Do you want to drive me insane?"

"No, Mother, don't worry, it's over," Ben said. "Isn't it, Da '?"

"It's over," his father said. "You're a good son in all things, Ben, and always have been, but mention him not."

There were things Andy Staad felt he couldn't tell his son- although Ben was seventeen, Andy still saw him as a boy. He would have been surprised if he'd known that Ben understood his reasons for striking out quite well.

Before the unfortunate turn of events of which you now know, Ben's friendship with the prince had already begun changing things for the Staads. Their Inner Baronies farm had once been very large. Over the last hundred years, they had been forced to sell the land off, a piece at a time. Now fewer than sixty reels remained, most of that mortgaged.