The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER FIVE

  They worked out the ballad, line by painful line, Yeslin composing the first draft, Elsdon striking out lines that revealed too much. At last, with thinly disguised exasperation, Elsdon showed Yeslin the Code of Seeking – not the public edition, which Yeslin had only glanced at so far, but the Seekers’ edition, which contained the Seekers’ secrets for how to break a prisoner.

  “Those passages are off-limits,” Elsdon said flatly. Then he went away, only to return a short while later to report that the Codifier had ruled that Seekers could provide information to balladeers who wished to memorialize dead prisoners, provided that no dungeon secrets were revealed in the process.

  Yeslin read the Seekers’ edition of the Code of Seeking as he might have read a ballad telling of a great scandal. The secret passages were an appalling companion to the high, idealistic passages of the public portion of the Code. They described, with dark bluntness, how to create excruciating, mind-breaking pain without killing a prisoner. They described the signs of imminent death. They described how much blood a man might lose while still remaining conscious enough to offer his confession.

  Yeslin wondered how Elsdon had managed to reconcile those passages with his conscience. Had he used the same technique his abusive father had used, of telling himself that pain was in the best interests of the prisoner?

  Yeslin didn’t ask, for he was caught in wonder at seeing his own ballad reshape into something new and unexpected.

  In place of the angry, confrontational, battle-stance ballad he had originally written, with the Seekers as hardened enemies of the commoners, came a different tale: the sad story of a prisoner dying for the sake of a well-meaning Seeker who, to the end, remained oblivious to what he had done.

  Yeslin saw more in the tale than Elsdon evidently did as his brother recounted his memory of the episode. Yeslin recognized how Elsdon’s prisoner had been puzzled and frustrated by Elsdon’s insistence on placing the Code above all considerations of human decency. Yeslin realized also how the prisoner’s respect for Elsdon had risen as the prisoner understood that his Seeker was prepared to apply this appalling principle even to his own life – that he was ready to let his own beloved mate die, rather than break the Code. Indeed, the Seeker’s love-mate was prepared to sacrifice himself for the same reason.

  “I don’t understand why you’ve included so many lines about me,” Elsdon said, reading over Yeslin’s shoulder. “The High Seeker is the important figure in this tale. My prisoner gave his confession so that I would be freed to care for the High Seeker when he was ill.”

  “People like a love story,” was Yeslin’s only response. He was not surprised to witness Elsdon’s humility – Elsdon’s inability to realize that his own greatness had played a role in the prisoner’s decision. Yeslin used all his skill to portray that greatness in his ballad – to change the Seekers of his ballad from cardboard figures in a puppet show into great men, though highly flawed, striving for transformation and falling well short of their goal, because of their blindness to what they did when they tied men to racks.

  In a word, he had learned to write tragedy. And tragedy, he was discovering as he built up a portrait of Layle Smith’s greatness, was a far more satisfying form of balladry than petty mockery.

  He had held no hope before now that any of the elite would listen to his ballads and learn from them. Now, watching Elsdon read the ballad with absorbed interest, Yeslin began to conceive of a new path in life – a path that might delay his arrest until he had accomplished at least a portion of what he needed to do.

  “This is good,” said Elsdon, fingering the paper. “You’ve done a really fine job of capturing what the High Seeker is like – that mixture of terrifying darkness and boundless generosity. And my prisoner . . . somehow you’ve managed to capture Mr. Little’s personality too, even though you never met him either. I still don’t understand why you bothered to include more than a line or two about me, but Yeslin . . . this is very good. I’m no judge of ballads, but I think people will sing this, and will pass on the song.”

  “You’re pleased?” He stole a look at Elsdon, hooded as always, though with his face-cloth up in the privacy of his own living quarters.

  Elsdon nodded, not looking up from the words Yeslin had written. “Shortly before he died, Mr. Little told me that he was sure he would be forgotten after he died – that only elite men like me appeared in history books. But this . . .” He waved his hand toward the page.

  “Some of the ballads are older than the oldest books,” Yeslin said. “You can tell that, by listening to the words.”

  He looked more closely at his brother. It had taken them three days to create the ballad. Yeslin, alternating between ballad-writing and stoking, had received little sleep during that period. Elsdon, alternating between ballad-writing and questioning a new prisoner, had received even less.

  Elsdon looked haggard now; the skin below his eyes was black, and the rest of his face was grey with exhaustion. Gazing at his brother, Yeslin found himself wondering whether Elsdon’s fatigue came from more than lack of sleep.

  “Elsdon,” he said slowly, “I have a question. You criticized my earlier ballad because it revealed secrets about the Eternal Dungeon that you felt needed to be kept, and you criticized it because it caricatured the Seekers and commoners . . . but you didn’t criticize it for attacking the idea that torture should be a means of questioning men who are accused of a crime.”

  Elsdon did not raise his eyes; his gaze seemed attached to Yeslin’s latest ballad.

  Yeslin carefully extracted the ballad from Elsdon’s hand, forcing the Seeker to look up. “Brother,” said Yeslin, “are you a troublemaker too?”

  He expected Elsdon to smile, but the Seeker merely cocked his head, considering the question. Finally Elsdon said, “I don’t know. I’ve never considered myself as such. But ever since you arrived, asking your questions and singing your songs . . . The trouble with ballads,” he added in a frustrated voice, “is that they make you think.”

  Yeslin laughed then, and after a moment, Elsdon’s mouth relented into a quirk of a smile. “Here,” said the Seeker, pulling some papers from his trousers pocket and handing them to Yeslin. “These are for you.”

  He looked at them. The first was a note indicating that his employment at the Eternal Dungeon would not be renewed, since Mr. Harden Pevsner, newly returned from overseas, had declined to offer Yeslin Bainbridge a positive recommendation. The other stated that, since there appeared to be an error in the documentwork of his oath of silence, he would be required to renew his oath before leaving, in the presence of a witness.

  Yeslin frowned at the latter document. “You told the majordomo what I’d done?” He could not prevent himself from sounding accusing. After all the trouble he had gone to in order to keep the dungeon’s secrets . . .

  Elsdon appeared reluctant to answer. Yeslin made a growling noise in his throat. Finally, with a sigh, Elsdon pulled a third document out of his pocket.

  Yeslin glanced at it and felt his throat close in. It was an order for his arrest.

  Elsdon silently took the order back and tore it to pieces. After a moment’s thought, Yeslin supplied him with a match. They placed the paper in the iron tub and lit it.

  The burning gave Yeslin time to think. “You stopped her from passing on the order?”

  “The messenger lad bragged about what he had done when he made his next delivery to Mistress Moore,” said Elsdon, his gaze focussed on the tiny flame within the sink. “We don’t arrest for many offenses in the Eternal Dungeon, but the Codifier takes very seriously any assistance in the forgery of signatures in signed oaths.”

  “Oh, Elsdon.” Yeslin could think of nothing to do except embrace the Seeker in loving gratitude. And in the end, he realized that this gesture summarized all that lay between himself and his brother.

  o—o—o

  “Sorry you’re going,” said Leo gruffly as he shook Yeslin’s arm. “You’re a good man. Meant well
. Just hadn’t been here long enough to understand our ways.”

  “Aye,” agreed Jerry. “Our fault, being fools enough to follow your advice, when you hadn’t been here long enough to understand how we do things here. Not your fault.”

  Yeslin managed to keep a smile plastered on his face. “I think I understand a little more now.” He held up a copy of the Code of Seeking – the public version – that Elsdon was letting him keep. After he had left Elsdon at noon, to permit his brother a few hours of sleep, Yeslin had not returned to the lighted world, where his own bed lay. Instead, he had spent the afternoon in the stokers’ cubby-hole, reading the book over and over, especially the first words of the Code: “A Seeker must be willing to suffer for the prisoners.”

  Elite words, written for elite men. Yet somehow the words – and the sentiments behind them – had buried themselves in the hearts of the laborers who helped run this dungeon of torture. And as he read further, Yeslin began to see how Layle Smith – the High Seeker who had spent his childhood living on the streets – had taken what he learned there and had given his knowledge back as a gift to the commoner prisoners.

  Now, feeling bitter regret that he would not have the opportunity to meet Elsdon’s complexly-motivated love-mate, Yeslin shook yet another friendly arm in farewell, saying, “You’re right: I would have had to be here a while to understand. But you men, you stokers who have worked in this dungeon for years . . .” He hesitated, wondering how to voice his thoughts.

  There was a cough. Everyone in the cubby-hole looked round to where Wade stood, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched.

  “Where you been, man?” demanded Leo. “We haven’t seen so much as your soul since yesterday! Yeslin here, he did your evening’s work for you.” Leo pointed his thumb.

  Wade shrugged. “I been with Master Chapman.”

  Yeslin felt his heart beat hard in his throat. The other stokers, slower to understand, shrugged. Leo said, “That doesn’t excuse you from letting other men do your work—”

  “He’s keeping us on.”

  Leo paused. “What’d you say?”

  Wade grinned, placing a piece of straw between his teeth. “He’s keeping us on. All of us. Whether this dungeon gets ’lectrified or not, he says we can keep our jobs here.”

  There was a stunned silence; nobody seemed to know what to say. Finally Curt voiced the general sentiment: “You been tippling at the healer’s emergency supply of rum, Wade?”

  Wade chuckled. “Feels like I have, yeah.” He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “See, I been thinking all day, ’stead of sleeping. Shouldn’t be like ‘on this hand’ and ‘on this other hand.’ Shouldn’t be a choice between us staying and the prisoners suffering. So I went to Master Chapman tonight, and I said to him, ‘When you get rid of the stokers, I want to stay on as a janitor.’”

  Leo frowned. “Janitor’s job doesn’t pay much.”

  “That’s what Master Chapman said.” Wade nodded. “He asked me whether money didn’t matter to me. I said, ‘Sure, it matters. I’m saving up for my marriage. My girl, she’s going to be right tetched to hear it’s going to take me a year more to save ’fore we can marry. But that don’t matter,’ I told him. ‘I’m willing to suffer for the prisoners.’”

  Yeslin cleared his throat, though he could still feel his heart beating hard in it. “And what did he say to that?”

  “Well, that’s the strange thing,” said Wade, hunching his shoulders again. “He didn’t say nothing at first. Just looked at me, till I was wondering if I’d done something wrong, and he was going to take me off to one of those breaking cells. Then he asked me whether I was the only one thought that way. Among the stokers, he meant. And I said, ‘Bloody blades, no! All the fellows think that. We all decided it would be wrong to strike, ’cause we didn’t want the prisoners hurting.’ Didn’t tell him ’bout you,” he added to Yeslin. “Didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

  Several of the stokers turned aside to hide their smiles. Jerry made an ill-kept attempt to smother a snicker. Yeslin, feeling his cheeks burn, gave a sheepish smile. “Thank you,” he said. “But what did Mr. Chapman say after that?”

  “Oh!” said Wade. “That was when it got right strange. He apologized! Said he hadn’t realized before that we cared so much ’bout the prisoners. Said, when he was a stoker, he was the only one who cared – that the other stokers mocked him for caring ’bout the prisoners, and so did the other guards, when he ’came a guard.” Wade shrugged. “I said, ’That was ’fore Layle Smith came ’long, wasn’t it?’ And he just sort of looked at me, and finally he said, ‘Mr. Smith was still junior-ranked then. He couldn’t do much to change dungeon policy. But he gave me a helping hand when I needed it, because he saw how much I cared for the prisoners. As for myself, I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to do the same for you and your mates.’ And that’s when he shook my arm and told me he’d make sure we all kept our jobs, one way or ’nother.”

  This time the silence was broken, not by Leo or by Jerry or by any of the other long-time stokers, but by Yeslin, shouting and jumping and pumping his fists in the air.

  “Don’t know what you’re getting so excited about,” said Leo, staring at Yeslin as though he were the one who’d been tippling at the bottle. “We did things all different than what you’d planned.”

  “But that’s just it,” said Yeslin, getting his breath back. The other stokers were beginning to slap each other on their backs, finally grasping that their future employment was ensured, and without the prisoners paying the price for that employment. “You found the right way to help each other, and to help other commoners. You found your way. That’s what I wanted all along, for you to start thinking about how to stand up for your rights, in the way that suited you best. I needed you fellows to be able to take over the guild chapter, once I was gone. —Here,” he added, struggling with his penknife to tear off his badge, which said, “Commoners’ Guild, Chapter 1: Leader.” “I was going to give this to you, Leo, when I left, but I guess you won’t mind if it goes to someone else instead.” He offered the badge to Wade.

  Wade looked at the badge uncertainly, then at the others. There were slow nods from the other men – nods of thought and assent. Finally Wade’s expression cleared, and he picked up the badge. “Yeah, boy,” he said. “Maybe we’ll teach you commoners in the lighted world a thing or two.”

  “Maybe you will,” replied Yeslin with a smile and a salute. He turned to go.

  And that was when the true strangeness arrived.