CHAPTER TWO
The guardroom, when Barrett entered it at the beginning of the dawn shift, was its usual self: crowded, chaotic, and full of comradeship. The jam at the main entrance was worse than usual, though; Barrett paused to see what was causing the clutter. The new object of interest, it turned out, was a time clock.
An older guard, close to retirement, examined the clock’s dial and gleaming metal surface before snorting. “It’ll last one month,” he predicted. “Then it will rust.”
Several of the other guards nodded. Everyone knew the effects of the dungeon’s air on machinery; perpetual dampness was the reason that the Eternal Dungeon had resisted the introduction of most machinery since the Industrial Era began.
“No more water clocks to turn, though,” said a guard who evidently hoped for a reduction in workload.
Mr. Crofford, having located his time card, with each hour and half hour carefully listed on the edge, tentatively inserted the card into the time clock, and then jumped in place as the clock emitted a heavy “chunk” sound. The guards around him gave half-smothered laughs that Mr. Crofford failed to notice. He was busy extracting and staring at his card, which now had a bite against the time: “3.30 AM.”
“But how do I know whether my shift has ended?” the young guard asked, bewildered.
“Ask a bat,” replied another guard, to chortles from the men around him.
“They forgot to give the bats their cards,” said a third guard, which left the guards howling with laughter. Barrett, grinning, squeezed his way past the crowd, nodding to several guards in greeting as he passed.
The jam lessened as he reached the place where the entryway gave way to a narrow room. Not that there was much to look at here. With the notable exception of the washroom section, the guardroom was not a place where guards lingered, since the dungeon’s common room and dining hall were the preferred locations for leisure activities. The guardroom had the more utilitarian purpose of being a place for storage and notices and discipline.
Ignoring the thick pillar at the far end of the room, Barrett armed himself with dagger and whip from his locked cubbyhole at the armory – he had already uniformed himself in his living quarters – and then made his way toward the wooden notice-board, ignoring the horseplay taking place beyond the washroom doorway to his right. Mr. Yates, who had trained Barrett upon his arrival at the dungeon, and who was now senior guard to a day-shift Seeker, was spending the final minutes of his off-duty time perusing this week’s city arrest report, which was attached to the notice-board. He smiled a greeting at Barrett and asked, “Have you seen the latest news?”
“What news is that?” replied Barrett, reaching toward a stack of blank paper that was left on the table near the notice-board for anyone who wished to make use of it. He did not bother to look up at the arrest report. He had never seen the point of reading it, since most of the men and women arrested in the city were sent to the lesser prisons for searching.
Mr. Yates, squinting in the flickering light of the old-fashioned oil lamp attached to the wall, said, “They’ve caught the man responsible for the case of the Earl of Hartgrove.”
“The man thought responsible,” Barrett replied automatically, screwing open the inkwell. A Vovimian-style paintbrush lay nearby, courtesy of the High Seeker, who had argued seven years before that the broad strokes of the brush were more appropriate for notices that might be seen from afar. Some guards had made mock at the time about Mr. Smith trying to turn the Eternal Dungeon into the Hidden Dungeon. Nobody had made mock about this in his presence, or in any tone above a whisper.
Mr. Yates grinned at him. “You’ve turned the mentor. You’re right, of course – ‘thought responsible.’ He’ll be showing up here, no doubt, so we’ll have the chance to find out for ourselves whether he’s innocent.”
Barrett leaned over the table as he wrote out a notice that told of the dusk-shift meeting. “It’s not a capital crime. They’ll send him to one of the lesser prisons.”
“For a case involving an earl? He’ll end up here for sure.”
Barrett shook his head as he blew the paint dry, and then reached for the hammer and nails. “Hold this for me?” he requested.
Mr. Yates obligingly held the notice in place as Barrett hammered it onto the board. “You’re stubborn. I say that he’ll turn up here.”
“And I say that he won’t,” Barrett mumbled around the wooden nails in his mouth. He paused to give Mr. Yates a challenging look.
Mr. Yates smiled, glanced to the side, and leaned in, his hand already fingering the inner jacket pocket where his bill-clasp lay. “Want to wager a day’s pay on that?” he asked in an undertone.
Barrett was about to ask whose level of pay they were wagering – he had seniority in rank over Mr. Yates these days – but at that moment, Mr. Yates’s face suddenly went blank. Pulling his hand hastily out of his jacket, the guard turned his attention back to the notice he was holding.
Barrett spit the remaining nails into his palm, and then turned to look at the man who had come up beside them. Thankfully, it was not the High Seeker, but it was bad enough.
“Mr. Boyd, may I have a word with you?” murmured Mr. Sobel.
“Yes, sir.” Strict formality seemed best under the circumstances. “Mr. Yates, will you finish nailing the notice for me?”
Mr. Yates, whose expression had turned bleak, nodded as he took the hammer and nails from Mr. Boyd. Mr. Boyd stepped away, following Mr. Sobel to the clearest space in the room, which was next to the washroom. Mr. Sobel glanced through the open door, where the horseplay had proceeded to wet towels being snapped against bare bottoms; he carefully closed the door. One of Mr. Sobel’s many merits, in the eyes of the other guards, was that he was willing to overlook certain high-spirited activities that took place in the washroom.
What had happened at the notice-board was clearly not an activity he was willing to overlook. The High Seeker’s senior night guard flicked a glance at Mr. Yates, who was diligently hammering in nails. Over the sound of continued laughter at the time clock, Mr. Sobel murmured, “Your fault, or his?”
“Mine,” replied Barrett. “I encouraged him to make the offer. I’m sorry.”
Mr. Sobel slipped from the left pocket of his jacket the small, familiar volume that every guard was required to carry when on duty. “Find me the appropriate passage, please.”
Barrett did so with ease; the passage in the Code of Seeking that forbade gambling within the Eternal Dungeon was the one that guards were most likely to make mock at when having late-night drinking sessions in private. The mockery invariably led into a game of whist, played for stakes.
“Read the passage aloud, please.” Mr. Sobel’s voice remained quiet.
“‘We take necessary risks with the lives of our prisoners, but we refuse to profit from our prisoners’ sufferings and deaths. For that reason, no Seeker or guard may place wagers within the confines of the Eternal Dungeon, nor in the lighted world on any matter related to the dungeon.’” Barrett recited the passage in an automatic manner, seeing nothing there that he had not seen before.
Mr. Sobel took back the book, sliding it into his jacket. “A game of cards is one thing,” he observed. “Gambling on whether a prisoner will be placed in a breaking cell here is quite another. Are you aware that the High Seeker added that rule to the Code after a guard sought to win his wager about a prisoner’s endurance on the rack by trying to surreptitiously raise the racking level higher than he had been ordered?”
Barrett felt himself stiffen. “Mr. Sobel, you know that I would never do anything like that.”
“No, but you might encourage the folly of less experienced guards. There was a case before your time – I will not name names – where a senior guard made light remarks about the fates of certain prisoners. These remarks were overhead by the junior guard serving under him, who, trusting that his senior’s perspective was the correct one, made the quite reasonable assumption that guards, as much as Seekers, had the right
to determine the outcome of their prisoners’ fates.” Mr. Sobel paused as two guards emerged from the room behind them, laughing and reaching out to rumple each other’s wet hair. Seeing Mr. Sobel and Barrett, they smiled but did not pause on their way to the uniform racks.
They were both naked, except for the wet towels clinging to their loins; it took some effort for Barrett to turn his attention back to what Mr. Sobel was saying.
Mr. Sobel continued, “Soon afterwards, this junior guard was assigned to a prisoner who, unbeknownst to him, was mentally unbalanced. The Seeker searching the prisoner made this assessment swiftly and arranged to have the prisoner examined by this dungeon’s healer. The healer approved the prisoner’s transfer to an asylum. All was well and good, except that this guard, being very junior indeed, was not told of the transfer or of the reason for it.”
Barrett’s attention was on Mr. Sobel now, despite the fact that the guards had dropped their towels in the act of donning the drawers they had left next to the uniform rack. He thought he knew what was coming; it was the sort of scare-tale told to every new guard. He was embarrassed to discover that Mr. Sobel believed he might require a reminder of this elementary lesson.
“One day,” said Mr. Sobel, “the junior guard was left alone on duty while his senior guard was sent on an errand. Their Seeker had the night off duty; nobody was around to care for the prisoner except for the junior guard. Hearing the prisoner weep inconsolably, the junior guard went to investigate. The prisoner, in his madness, wove a very convincing tale of terrible horrors he had endured in the rack room, and swore that the Seeker had promised to place him in an iron chair the following day, with the fire beneath stoked to the point of unendurable torment. No such chair has ever existed in this dungeon, of course, even in its primitive years, but the guard was inexperienced and gullible enough to believe the prisoner’s mad fancy.
“So he helped the prisoner escape in the only way he knew how. When the senior guard returned, he found the prisoner dead in his cell, with the junior guard’s dagger through his heart.”
Barrett scratched his earlobe, tilting his head as he did so. “And the three boys who skated without permission on Farmer Jones’s pond fell through the ice and drowned. I don’t want to sound cynical, Mr. Sobel, but I’ve heard so many variations on this morality tale that I find it hard to believe. Every guard in this dungeon – nearly every man and woman in this queendom – knows that assisting a suicide is a capital crime.”
“So did this junior guard,” replied Mr. Sobel quietly. “As for fictional morality tales, I would be glad to show you my record of witness from the trial that led to this junior guard’s hanging. I was the senior guard who had spoken lightly about our prisoners in the junior guard’s presence, and I was the guard who discovered the prisoner’s corpse.”
Barrett closed his eyes. Through the darkness he could hear laughter from the guards at the time clock, now joined by the laughter of Mr. Crofford, attempting to imitate his elders’ levity.
He opened his eyes finally to see that Mr. Sobel was watching him carefully. Barrett said, “Sir, why don’t you just strip me to the waist and tie me to that pillar over there? Twenty lashes of your finest would be easier for me to endure than being shown what a fool I am.”
Mr. Sobel gave a quirk of a smile. “You’re far too talented a guard to need lashes. I take it that I won’t have to worry about this in the future?”
“No, sir, and I apologize for worrying you about it today.” Barrett kept his voice firm, though he was beginning to feel that he would need to splash cold water on himself afterwards, for his face was burning.
Mr. Sobel said, “You’re going on leave at week’s end?”
Barrett nodded cautiously. “Unless my leave has been cancelled, as it certainly deserves to be.”
“No, that’s not at all what I had in mind. What I wanted to suggest is that you come by my quarters before you leave. My wife can make up a fruit bouquet for you to give to your mother – I’m sure your mother would enjoy that, if I remember her tastes correctly.”
It took a minute for Barrett to regain his speech. Then he said, with an attempt at lightness, “Rewarding a miscreant, Mr. Sobel? It’s a good thing that the High Seeker isn’t around to witness this.”
Mr. Sobel smiled then. “Mr. Smith has his own ways of encouraging good behavior, and some of those ways are very pleasant indeed.” His gaze drifted past Barrett. “Excuse me. It looks to me as though someone is taking the opportunity to use the notice-board as a spot to add a rude graffito – something about time clocks mating with bats to produce a clock that will tell us when our shifts have ended. The sentiment I agree with; the placement of the sentiment I can’t permit.” He gave Barrett another, swift smile before moving forward to intercept the offender, who either had not seen or had not cared that the High Seeker’s senior night guard was standing nearby.
Barrett, watching him go, shook his head. It was fortunate, he decided, that his ambitions had never run to working directly under the High Seeker. Mr. Sobel had one of the worst jobs in the dungeon, and Barrett was quite happy to leave such supervisory activities in the other guard’s hands.
He turned away, and went over to the time clock to tell the guards there of Layle Smith’s dusk-shift meeting.
The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus Page 77