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

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER SIX

  The training session was not held in its usual place, the entry hall. The Queen, in an apparent effort to convince the world that the Eternal Dungeon was up to date, had unexpectedly ordered renovations made to the dungeon. The entry hall was consequently crowded with laborers dragging in equipment and furnishings and boxes. As a result of this institutional chaos, the junior guards’ training had been moved to a quieter spot.

  Pausing at the doorway to the Seekers’ common room, Barrett Boyd looked around for someone to sit next to. He could see at a glance that almost none of the other senior guards had accepted the High Seeker’s invitation for them to attend the training. No doubt most were taking advantage of the extra free time they had been given, for Mr. Smith had ordered that, during this training period, the between-shifts dusk break be extended from two hours to three.

  Barrett could see several day guards yawning into their fists, and he could not blame them. With a perverse adherence to tradition, the Eternal Dungeon maintained its centuries-old custom of determining shifts, not by where the hands stood on a clock, but by the daily leave-taking and homecoming of the dungeon’s bats, which in turn was determined by the seasonally changing hours of sunset and sunrise. At this time of year, near midsummer, the day guards had a shift that was fully fourteen hours long, though in the winter their shift would accordingly narrow to six hours a day. Barrett was looking forward to the shorter hours he would enjoy as a night guard on summer duty, although he had heard that the night guards’ long winter shifts came close to driving men mad. The High Seeker had rejected a petition a few years back to equalize the hours of the night and day shifts year-round, although Barrett understood that the decision had been a close call. He found himself wondering whether the High Seeker would even consider such a petition again, now that matters had changed in the dungeon.

  The High Seeker had at least possessed enough tact to extend the dusk break into the day shift rather than the night shift. Although the dusk shift had officially begun, the sun remained above the horizon. Sunlight still flooded this room, the only one in the dungeon to have a window. The “window” consisted of a thick, semi-translucent stone in the ceiling that obscured sight of everything above except the occasional cloud shadow. Now the sky was cloudless, as Barrett knew from having spent the past week visiting his parents, who lived in the city surrounding the palace.

  What with the upcoming training and his start at a new position, he had been aware that it was unlikely he would receive his usual monthly work break for some time, so he had asked and received permission to visit the lighted world in order to tell his parents of his change of position. He gathered that no other guards were being permitted to leave the dungeon during this tense period; the guards who did not already live in the outer dungeon had been crammed into whatever living space was available for them. He felt honored that Layle Smith apparently trusted him to hold his tongue during his visit to the city.

  His visit had not been relaxing, though. His parents had grumbled without pause about the latest unrest caused by the Commoners’ Guild and had appeared to blame him for the rise in crime in the city. “If those Seekers of yours didn’t spend so much time arguing in courts that criminal commoners should be let free,” his father had said, “we wouldn’t have violent young men thronging our streets, causing trouble.” And he had pointed at a newspaper photograph of the youthful founder of the Commoners’ Guild, who had a deceptively mild expression on his face.

  “So where shall we sit?”

  Barrett was brought back to the present by Mr. Urman’s cheerful question. He glanced over at the junior guard, who had evidently just come from the dining hall, for he was munching on carrots. He offered one to Barrett.

  Barrett took it reluctantly. The last thing he wanted was to be forced to listen through the entire two hours to Mr. Urman’s no doubt acid commentary on what was taking place, but given that he had just accepted a position that Mr. Urman had been vying for, he could hardly reject this friendly overture. He looked again at the guards sitting on the benches; with relief, he caught sight of a senior guard standing near the front, next to the wall. “Let’s ask Mr. Sobel where he plans to sit,” he replied.

  Mr. Urman shrugged, but followed Barrett as he squeezed his way through the crowd. The tables and chairs that normally littered the room had been removed, replaced by benches brought in from the entry hall. They had been placed in neat, orderly lines, as though the guards were schoolboys. There was even a schoolmasters’ stand near the front of the common room, Barrett noticed as they came closer to that area. Mr. Smith was leaning against the solid stand of wood as he spoke with a Seeker whose back was turned, so that Barrett could not immediately recognize who the man was.

  The benches were filling fast. Some of the younger guards, recognizing that there would be a shortage of seats, had begun to line up against the walls. Barrett squeezed his way past them with murmured apologies. Mr. Urman squeezed his way past them with rude comments about how much room they took up. It was hard to tell whether the comments were intended as jokes, and it was evident that several of the guards did not have the patience to enquire, for Barrett heard dark mutterings in the wake of their progress. Only the fact that Mr. Urman was now the High Seeker’s junior night guard saved him from returned rudeness, Barrett guessed.

  Not for the first time, Barrett reflected that working under a strong Seeker had its advantages for a guard, and he momentarily wondered whether he was making a mistake in transferring into service under Mr. Taylor. True, Elsdon Taylor was said to be creative in how he broke his prisoners, but he was also gentle and mild-mannered. Barrett frowned, and then shook his head clear of such thoughts as he reached Mr. Sobel, who was standing at the front of the crowd, along the wall to the right of the schoolmasters’ stand.

  The common room was rectangular and exceedingly plain in design, like all the rooms and cells in the Eternal Dungeon. The walls were white-washed cement blocks, broken only by the single door and by air ducts. A fat, iron stove in the middle of the room had a pipe leading up to the ceiling, but the stove was rarely used to heat the room. Near the door, lining one wall, was a bar counter; with seats short, several of the junior guards had seated themselves upon the counter.

  The front half of the room was empty except for the sunlight and the schoolmasters’ stand. Layle Smith had shifted his position so that his back was to the crowd; the Seeker he spoke with was now facing the guards. It was always difficult to recognize a Seeker from his eyes alone – that was part of the point of the hoods, after all – but Barrett had worked long enough in the dungeon that he could tell that the other Seeker here was Mr. Ferris.

  That was an interesting turn of events. Switching his attention to Mr. Sobel, Barrett saw that the older guard was not watching the High Seeker, as he was accustomed to do when the two men were in the same location, but instead was scanning with his eyes the crowded benches where the day and night guards sought to make room for newcomers.

  “What are you doing here?” Barrett asked. “You must know everything that’s going to be said in this place.”

  “I imagine that you do as well,” Mr. Sobel replied. “We might learn something new.”

  He did not look Barrett’s way as he spoke; his gaze was moving ceaselessly over the crowd.

  Barrett turned his eyes. Very few seats were left now. “Where shall we sit?” he asked.

  “I’m standing.” Still Mr. Sobel did not move his gaze from the crowd, though his eyes had slowed, as though he were examining particular aspects of the scene before him.

  Barrett was silent a moment before saying, “I’ll join you.”

  He had forgotten all about Mr. Urman, standing behind him, and was only brought back to remembrance of the other guard’s presence by Mr. Urman’s loud sigh. “You two are idiots,” the junior guard said. “If we stand here, the High Seeker is likely to make us demonstration models for whatever torture devices he plans to show off.”

  Barret
t guessed that Mr. Urman was irritated at being ignored, but even so, a junior guard simply did not address two senior guards as idiots. Barrett waited to see how Mr. Sobel would respond to this breach of duty, but the older guard seemed too preoccupied to notice. Barrett decided that he would be too preoccupied to notice as well. After a couple of minutes, he looked round and saw that Mr. Urman had departed; the junior guard was now sitting on the back bench, glaring at nothing in particular.

  Barrett felt a stab of guilt at his own rudeness, and then another stab of guilt at not having reprimanded Mr. Urman. As a senior guard, that was his duty as much as Mr. Sobel’s, and Mr. Sobel was clearly too preoccupied at the moment to deal with a troublesome junior guard.

  Under the light chatter of the waiting audience, Barrett murmured to Mr. Sobel, “Are you expecting trouble?”

  “Not necessarily.” Mr. Sobel’s voice was equally quiet. Whether he would have said anything more, Barrett could not know, for at that moment, Mr. Sobel’s attention suddenly snapped toward the back of the room.

  Barrett followed his gaze. A man in laborers’ clothing stood at the doorway to the common room. He was staring around the room, appearing to search for something. A couple of guards brushed past him in the doorway, ignoring him. Barrett glanced over at Mr. Sobel to see what he thought of this intruder.

  Mr. Sobel was no longer standing next to him. He was directly in front of the schoolmasters’ stand now, talking with Mr. Crofford, who, having already taken his seat at the foremost bench, looked somewhat overwhelmed at being singled out for conversation by the senior-most guard in the dungeon. Mr. Sobel nodded at something Mr. Crofford said as he slid his hands into his jacket pockets.

  Barrett was amused. Guards did not rest their hands in their pockets, least of all well-trained guards like Mr. Sobel. Rarely did Mr. Sobel ever slip in his duties. It was a good thing Mr. Urman was not here to notice, Barrett thought, or Mr. Sobel would endure his ragging for months to come.

  Barrett was about to turn his attention back to the laborer when he noticed something important, something he ought to have seen right away, for his own training should have ensured that he noticed such details.

  Mr. Sobel was no longer carrying his whip.

  Barrett’s gaze flew to the High Seeker. Mr. Smith was standing in the same position as he had been before, with his back to the schoolmasters’ stand as he spoke with Mr. Ferris. But as Barrett watched, Mr. Smith’s arm snaked back to the stand, twisting in an improbably difficult position, and pulled something off the stand. Mr. Ferris, who had been standing very still, nodded to whatever the High Seeker had said and stepped aside, well out of Mr. Smith’s line of sight.

  Not out of his line of sight, Barrett thought. Out of the line of fire.

  All was clear now. A laborer, standing where he should not be, searching for someone. Mr. Sobel, blocking the High Seeker from the laborer’s sight and placing his hand in his pocket. Mr. Smith, taking Mr. Sobel’s whip. No Seeker ever touched a weapon, except when a life was at stake.

  Barrett’s heart was pounding so hard now that he found it difficult to breathe. The laborer must have a gun, he thought. If he did not, then there would be no reason for Mr. Sobel to try to hide the High Seeker’s location. The guard would have moved forward by now to capture the laborer. Indeed, the High Seeker himself might have moved forward, using his deadly skill with the whip. Instead, both men were frozen, unable to take action.

  Mr. Sobel had a handgun in his pocket; of that much, Barrett could be sure. By tradition, dungeon guards were not normally permitted to carry guns, since any shooting in the confined spaces of the Eternal Dungeon could easily result in ricocheting bullets. Whips and daggers were considered far safer weapons with which to subdue the unarmed prisoners. However, Mr. Sobel, as senior-most guard to the High Seeker, had a higher responsibility than other guards, and he had the appropriate training for the added responsibility.

  But if Mr. Sobel started a gunfight in this crowd, there was too great a chance that someone besides the laborer would die. All that the guard could do was continue to block the laborer’s line of fire and hope that, if anyone was shot, it was himself rather than the High Seeker.

  Barrett did not know he had moved until he heard another guard complain loudly at having his feet trodden upon. Barrett paid no attention; his eyes were focussed on the laborer, whose gaze had narrowed as he continued to search the room. Nobody else had taken notice of him. He looked much like the laborers who were presently renovating the dungeon, and though the Seekers’ common room was not being renovated, nobody would think twice about the man’s presence here. Which, Barrett thought bitterly, would be precisely why he chose those clothes.

  He wasted no time in speculating as to the man’s motives. All Seekers had enemies; it was in the nature of their work, which required them to obtain evidence that condemned men to death. This laborer – if he truly was a laborer – might be the brother or son of a former prisoner of the High Seeker, a prisoner whose ashes now lay in the crematorium. Mr. Sobel, most likely, had recognized the resemblance and drawn the proper conclusion in his quick-minded manner. What mattered was not why the laborer was trying to kill the High Seeker, but whether he would succeed.

  As Barrett squirmed his way to the back of the room, he glanced at the crowd to see who, besides Mr. Sobel, was in the laborer’s line of fire. As he did so, he noticed that Mr. Urman was now sitting on the edge of his bench, watching him expectantly. Barrett hesitated only momentarily; then he beckoned with his chin.

  Mr. Urman promptly placed his dagger on his seat to mark his place and made his way over to Barrett. Barrett did not let himself worry about the loss of the blade; daggers would be of no use in this situation. He wasn’t even sure a whip would be, though he was busy uncoiling the one he always carried at his left hip. A guard he was passing eyed him curiously, but did not quiz Barrett as to his purpose.

  Neither did Mr. Urman when he arrived, for which Barrett was grateful. He simply followed Barrett’s gaze over to the laborer and said in a low voice, “Shall I arrest him?”

  Barrett shook his head. “He may be weaponed,” he responded in an equally low voice. “I’m going to try to get him into the corridor. If I succeed, bolt the door behind us.” He hesitated before adding, “Stand away from the door when you’re done. He may have a gun.”

  Mr. Urman’s eyes widened, but he simply nodded. Barrett felt a small measure of relief at that. There was a reason, he reminded himself, that Mr. Urman had kept his position as junior guard for five years. The younger guard had often shown himself to be competent when emergencies arose.

  They had reached the area between the benches and the back wall now. The man standing under the door lintel still hadn’t noticed them. His brow was puckered, either with puzzlement or with anger. Barrett took a swift look toward the front of the room, but nothing had changed there. Mr. Sobel – several inches taller than the High Seeker and considerably more broad-shouldered – was still blocking the killer’s view of the High Seeker. Mr. Smith remained motionless. Barrett turned his attention back to his own problem. He began to edge his way along the wall in which the door was set.

  If he simply approached the gunman directly, the man would see him coming, and he would shoot Barrett. Guards were expected to make such a sacrifice if it was needed to save the life of a Seeker, but the assassin, if he panicked, might began firing randomly into the crowd – and he might be carrying a six-shot revolver. Six deaths would be five too many. Barrett needed to get the intruder back into the hallway, where it was more likely that, if anyone died, Barrett alone would be the victim.

  The man was standing just a couple of inches outside the frame of the doorway. His head was turned away now to look toward the bar counter that the young guards were sitting upon. Barrett wondered whether he was considering using that as a place from which to make his shots. The thick counter would shield him from any answering gunfire.

  The man took a step in the direction o
f the bar. Barrett, who already had his arm pulled back, flung his lash forward in the direction of the door.

  Over the years, he had developed power in his arm from giving prisoners heavy beatings, and with any luck he would have sliced the man open with his whip. Luck was not with him. At the very moment he began to swing, the killer turned his head in the direction of Barrett. With quick reflexes, the man jerked his body back through the doorway, and the lash landed upon the doorway itself, jarring Barrett’s arm.

  He did not wait to see whether the killer would re-emerge through the doorway; nor did he look round to see the expressions of the onlookers, though he had noticed the sudden silence. He charged through the door. Mr. Urman, nearly as quick, had the door closed behind him, with the bar scraping into place, by the time Barrett skidded to a halt in the corridor.

  He half expected to meet a bullet or a knife. But his lashing had apparently been more effective than he had thought; the killer had stumbled back several yards. Too many yards; he was out of range of Barrett’s whip now. Barrett was still trying to figure out what to do next when the man began to fumble inside his jacket.

  Three seconds were all that Barrett had in which to think. Thanks to his training, those three seconds were enough. He knew that if he ran straight forward, not deviating from his path, he would have time enough to come within whip range of the assassin, and he might be able to disarm the man with his whip.

  But if Barrett should miss, and the man’s pistol was powerful enough, the bullet would travel through him, and through the door, and through anyone close to that door. Mr. Urman or one of the other junior guards might die – perhaps even Mr. Sobel, if he had run forward to help.

  Barrett did not hesitate. He flung himself against the left wall of the corridor, far enough down the corridor that any bullet that passed through him would enter, not the common room, but one of plumbing rooms. Nothing would die now except himself and perhaps a water pipe or two.

  The man’s hand emerged from the jacket. The hand was shaking. It held a white handkerchief, which the man dabbed against his face and neck, apparently soaking up the sweat there. “What – what did you do that for?” he asked in a plaintive voice.

  There is nothing worse, Barrett reflected during the next few minutes, than to think yourself a principal player in a tragedy, only to discover that you are the buffoon in a farce. The fact that Mr. Sobel had made the same error offered no comfort. Barrett was the one who had made the attack; he was the one whom the other guards would be ragging for weeks to come.

  He heard the man out, and then hailed down a servant who was emerging with a push-cart from the shared living quarters of Mr. Chapman and Mistress Birdesmonde. She had just finished collecting the contents of the Seekers’ chamber-pots, and so she readily agreed to escort the laborer to the outer dungeon.

  “She’ll explain to you how to travel to the dining hall without journeying past the Seekers’ living cells,” Barrett told the laborer. “You might want to inform your fellow workers of this path, so that they won’t make the same error.”

  The High Seeker would have delivered such a statement in a dangerously dark voice, while fingering his whip. Fortunately, no such measure was needed here; the laborer’s face was still pasty white after his terrifying encounter with a guard from the infamous Eternal Dungeon. His hands shook as the servant guided him away.

  Barrett was shaking too, and the sweat on his skin was as slick as the lubricating oil of lovemaking liquid. He hoped the servant hadn’t noticed. He spent a moment near the door to the common room, trying to steady his breath. It was hardly the first time he had risked his life for the sake of a Seeker or a prisoner or another guard, but always before he had been able to comfort himself with knowledge of a life saved. Now he simply felt stupid on top of his continued illness at the thought of what might have happened, had this been the tragedy he had imagined.

  He rapped at the door – a coded rap, known by all guards. The bar scraped, and the door opened a crack. Mr. Urman cautiously looked past him, and then opened the door wide enough for Barrett to slide in.

  The common room, he saw to his amazement, had changed little since he had left it. Junior guards and a handful of senior guards were chatting with one another lightly, as though they were used to having a guard use his whip in this room and charge out the door. A couple of guards sitting on the benches glanced over their shoulders and smirked at Barrett.

  Barrett turned his attention back to Mr. Urman, who was assuming an expression of innocence. Barrett’s eyes narrowed. “What did you tell them?”

  Mr. Urman raised his eyebrows. When he spoke, it was in a voice loud enough to be heard by the smirking guards. “I told them the truth, of course – that I’d fooled you into thinking that a common laborer was a deadly assassin, intent on killing the High Seeker.”

  For a long moment, Barrett contemplated various manners in which he could employ the antique instruments of torture on the walls of the rack room. Then he allowed himself to chuckle. Mr. Urman grinned. He was well known for his practical jokes against fellow guards, and his story would be easily believed. Thanks to Mr. Urman’s tale, Barrett decided, the ragging he would receive from the other guards would be marginally better than the jokes he would have had to endure if anyone had known the truth.

  Mr. Urman glanced at the nearby guards, who had switched their attention back to their own conversations, since it was clear that Barrett would take Mr. Urman’s joke with good grace. Turning back to Barrett, Mr. Urman asked in a low voice, “So what did happen?”

  Barrett’s smile turned wry. “I was fooled into thinking a common laborer was a deadly assassin.” As Mr. Urman laughed, Barrett added, “He’s helping to renovate the furnace in the corridor next to the Seekers’ living cells. Thirsty work, so he asked where the Seekers drink their beer. Some fool directed him here.”

  Mr. Urman whistled. “If that fool was a guard, I’ll wager his back will be bare to Mr. Sobel’s whip by the end of the day.”

  “Yes.” Barrett’s mind wandered away from the conversation; matters of discipline were Mr. Sobel’s concern, not his own. The High Seeker’s senior-most guard, he noticed, had retrieved his whip and returned to his place against the wall, as though he had never left it. As for Mr. Smith, he was back in conversation with Mr. Ferris, leaning against the schoolmasters’ stand with his body as relaxed as though he were directing the torture of a prisoner. He had probably enjoyed watching the attack, Barrett thought cynically.

  “All the junior guards are here,” said Mr. Urman. “I counted them while you were out there.”

  “Mm.” Barrett fished his chain of keys out of his pocket and handed them to Mr. Urman. “Best lock the door, then. If any senior guards arrive late, they can use their keys to get in.” His eye remained on Mr. Sobel, who still had not turned his gaze away from the crowd, despite the lack of danger. Barrett frowned.

  “Lock it yourself.” Mr. Urman thrust the keys back into his hand. “I’m not your maid.”

  By the time Barrett took notice of what Mr. Urman had said, the other guard was already returning to his seat – treading on several people’s feet again in the process, judging from the muffled curses coming in that direction. Barrett hesitated. Disobeying the orders of a senior guard was a flogging matter; at the very least, he ought to reprimand Mr. Urman, to prevent his insolence from growing into a more serious case than it already was.

  Barrett sighed as he turned to lock the door. He had had enough troubles already today; if the matter grew worse, no doubt Mr. Sobel would take action. Right now, Barrett just wanted to get through this training session and his subsequent duty shift so that he could return to his room and put his mind to leisure activities in an effort to forget his stupidity.

  Mr. Sobel, as he might have anticipated, greeted his return with a discreet murmur of thanks for his assistance. Barrett glanced over at the High Seeker and discovered, with a jump of the heart, that Mr. Smith was watching him. For a moment, Mr
. Smith held his gaze; then the High Seeker gave a brief nod, barely perceptible, before turning his attention to whatever it was he was reading upon his stand.

  Barrett’s heart thundered like hooves. The High Seeker was notorious for rarely offering commentary on the actions of the Seekers and guards who were under his care. If his men did poorly, they would be punished; if they did well, the High Seeker treated this as no more than what he would have expected of them. For Mr. Smith to have given a brief nod in acknowledgment of what Barrett had done was the equivalent of him handing out the Queen’s commendation for outstanding service.

  The mixture of fear and embarrassment Barrett had felt before drained away, leaving him with a more solid feeling, like a foundation block. Glancing over at Mr. Sobel, he saw that the other guard was watching him. In a low voice that did not carry to the other men standing near them, Barrett said, “Sometimes I remember why I became a guard here.”

  Mr. Sobel smiled but said nothing; he had returned to running his eye over the crowd, even though he must have noticed that Barrett had locked the door against further intruders. Barrett looked over the men as well, the solid feeling increasing inside him. All these men, united in their love of the Code, were willing to sacrifice their lives if needed to uphold the Code. Sometimes he forgot that – sometimes he began to think of guard duty in the Eternal Dungeon as being like guard duty anywhere else. That simple acknowledgment by the High Seeker of what he had done was enough to remind him of what Mr. Urman had said the other day: The Eternal Dungeon was not like the lesser prisons. In the lesser prisons, he would have had praise heaped upon him for risking his life. Here his action was taken for granted. No man who would think twice about sacrificing himself to uphold the Code was permitted to work in the Eternal Dungeon.

  “Gentlemen.” The voice was the High Seeker’s, cutting through the conversation as cleanly as a surgeon’s knife parting flesh. There was immediate silence, other than a rustle as various guards settled firmly into their seats. Barrett turned his head in time to see Mr. Smith place a small, black, familiar volume onto the schoolmasters’ stand.

  “We will begin with the prayer for dedication to duty,” the High Seeker said. “Mr. Crofford, will you be so kind as to guide the responses?”

  Flushed with pleasure at receiving this privilege, Mr. Crofford hurried toward the stand as the High Seeker stepped back. Around the room, guards exchanged glances with guards. One junior guard who had served under Barrett a few years earlier caught his eye, but Barrett shook his head slightly. He had no more idea than the other men what Layle Smith had in mind. Though the Code of Seeking had always included prayers as a reminder of the essentially religious goals of the Seekers’ work, those prayers were usually only recited at funerals or in private devotions. He could not remember any time during his nine years as a guard in this dungeon that the High Seeker had required their recitation at a general meeting.

  “O Immortal Ones, who have sacrificed renewal of life and who dwell in the death of immortality . . .”

  Many of the guards were now inscribing circles of rebirth upon their foreheads with their thumbs. Barrett followed their example, reflecting to himself that Mr. Smith could not have chosen a less cheerful prayer for recital. The Immortal Ones – the souls who had chosen to remain in afterdeath for eternity rather than be reborn into mortal life – were never a pleasant topic to dwell on. Why anyone would choose unchanging eternity rather than the sorrows and joys of life was a question that exercised theologians in every generation. Barrett could certainly think of no reason why Mr. Smith, with his patent thirst to bring prisoners to rebirth, should want to dwell on the prisoners who, refusing to acknowledge their faults, went to their deaths unrepentant and remained trapped in afterdeath.

  “. . . grant that, as once you gave the knife of death to the soul who was first reborn, so too we may have the courage to guide our prisoners into death. . . .” Mr. Crofford’s voice wavered; he had been a guard long enough that those words were more than formality. The other guards quickly covered his hesitation by reciting tonelessly the response: “As we too shall be guided to our death, and may hope for our rebirth.”

  Barrett glanced over at the High Seeker. All around the room, men were making the sign of rebirth, and all around the room, men were either staring straight ahead, as a brave man stares unflinching at the death that will bring him to rebirth, or they were staring upward toward the world of afterdeath, no doubt hoping that their time there would be brief. The High Seeker, though, was staring at the ground, and his hands were flat at his side, as though he had never known the sign of rebirth.

  Perhaps, Barrett thought, there was a simpler reason for Mr. Smith’s choice of prayer: It was the only prayer in the Code that was addressed to other beings. Indeed, Yclau theologians were uncertain whether most of their queendom’s prayers could properly be called prayers at all, while foreign theologians were often uncharitable enough to claim that the Yclau religion was no religion, since it did not include belief in the gods. No doubt, for a man like Layle Smith, who had been raised to believe in the existence of gods above and below, it was easier to choose a prayer which intimated that something other than mortal beings existed in the world.

  “. . . that once reborn, our prisoners may renew their lives, gaining strength from what they have suffered in the past . . .” Mr. Crofford’s voice had grown more confident; he was still inexperienced enough a guard that he could speak the word “suffer” without full understanding of what that meant. One session in the rack room, Barrett thought with a twist of the mouth, would be enough to make the younger guard question whether any renewal of life was worth the suffering experienced by some prisoners in the Eternal Dungeon. Barrett could not say that he had ever fully answered that question himself.

  “. . . that our own sacrifices may be used to bring healing to the prisoners here . . .”

  Much more to the point; but Barrett’s contemplation of the most beautiful image the Code of Seeking had to offer – the image of a torturer suffering for his prisoners – was interrupted by a squeak of the hinges.

  A few guards in the back rows looked over their shoulders. Barrett stared too, wondering which senior guard was so brave – or so unwise – as to enter a room where the High Seeker had already begun a meeting.

  No guard entered; it was a Seeker, too far away for Barrett to immediately identify him. Barrett glanced quickly at the High Seeker, but Mr. Smith was so absorbed in the prayer – or pretending to be absorbed – that he failed to take note of the late arrival.

  Barrett looked back at the new arrival. He seemed in no hurry to dispose any of the guards of their seats, which puzzled Barrett a moment until the Seeker, glancing around the room, paused his search long enough to raise a hand of greeting at Barrett.

  Ah. Barrett gave him a military salute, there being no regulation in the Code to guide a guard in how to greet his Seeker from across the room. At that moment, as Mr. Crofford was stumbling through the final words of the prayer – a dreadful promise of the eternal life that awaited any Seeker or guard who failed to obey the Code – Mr. Urman suddenly rose from his seat, causing a number of anguished yelps from his neighbors as he trod his way over their toes and hurried toward Barrett.

  This left an open seat. Mr. Taylor engaged in a brief dispute with a senior guard over who should take precedence – each man encouraging the other to sit down – before he quietly claimed the seat, treading on no one’s toes in the process. Barrett, following the gestures of the dispute, found himself frowning. Politeness in a Seeker he valued, of course, but he wanted a Seeker who was capable of taking leadership. How much of the submission that Mr. Taylor was rumored to show in the bedroom with Layle Smith did he carry into the breaking cells? Was Barrett giving up a steady but unimaginative Seeker in place of a creative but weak one?

  Mr. Urman had reached his side now. “Can’t see a bloody thing back there,” the junior guard grumbled as Mr. Crofford settled back into his seat. The g
uards around the room shifted minutely on the benches in the aftermath of the prayers.

  “Half a day’s pay for cursing on duty, Mr. Urman.” Mr. Sobel’s voice could barely be heard amidst the guards’ whispers as the High Seeker stepped toward the stand. Mr. Sobel’s eyes were fixed on the doorway, though he had surely seen Mr. Taylor relock it after he entered.

  “You—” Mr. Urman wisely cut off the rest of his protest as Mr. Smith reached the stand and turned to look at the guards.

  As was always the case, the High Seeker waited until the rustles and whispers had died down, and then waited a long moment more, until all eyes were upon him. Then he said, “You are a prisoner. You are being abused by your Seeker in a heinous fashion, in contradiction to the Code. Who is your protector?”

  The guards exchanged looks. None, it seemed, were eager to voice their opinion and chance earning the High Seeker’s scorn. Finally a junior guard said, “The healer, sir. He— That is, she must give approval to all torture that the prisoners undergo, and if she learns that the prisoner’s body has been abused, she must report that fact to the Codifier.”

  “How would she know that a prisoner was being abused, if no one notified her of that fact?” Mr. Smith responded. “And what if the abuse was of mind, not of body? Come, gentlemen, your wits are better than that.”

  The guard who had responded flinched visibly at this reprimand. The High Seeker’s tone had indeed been cutting; Barrett suspected that this had something to do with the pronoun “she” that Mr. Smith had been forced to voice. There was another, longer silence, as the High Seeker patiently waited, like a murderer in the shadows. Finally one of the braver junior guards said, “The Codifier, sir. He inspects the prisoners periodically.”

  “Better,” said Mr. Smith, and then, waiting until the very moment that the guard emitted a sigh of relief, “but not good enough. The Codifier is only here during the daytime, and his inspections, as you say, are only periodic. What if the prisoner should be abused at night, or at some other time when the Codifier was unaware? For that matter, what is to save the Codifier from being in league with the Seeker? He has lived many years in this dungeon, after all, and no man can be said to be totally immune from corruption—”

  “The magistrates, sir!” The junior guard who was sure he had the answer was so eager to speak that he overrode the end of Mr. Smith’s sentence. “You said it at the meeting the other day: Prisoners can appeal to the magistrates, and if their appeal is ignored, they can offer their plea to the Queen, and even the Queen’s ruling can be overturned if the people say—”

  “And how,” said the High Seeker, his voice now a knife flaying flesh, “is the prisoner to get word to the magistrates, much less to the Queen or her people? He is imprisoned; the Codifier is in conspiracy with the Seeker; the only other people who visit him are his guards. Gentlemen, who is the prisoner’s protector?”

  As one or two of the senior guards shook their heads at the younger men’s inability to answer so obvious a question, Barrett carefully watched the junior guards, taking note of who the most courageous of the junior guards were. Those were the ones who were opening their mouths to reply.

  Mr. Phelps finally said, with a voice that emerged in something hardly better than a hushed whisper, “The prisoner’s senior-most guard?”

  The High Seeker said nothing. He simply waited, his gaze fixed on the speaker.

  Mr. Phelps, wilting somewhat, answered his own question. “No, it couldn’t be him. He could be in league with the Seeker too.”

  “Indeed, since senior guards often work for many years alongside their Seekers,” Mr. Smith replied. “Even in cases where the senior guard does not intend harm, his close alliance with the Seeker may blind him to abuses the Seeker commits.” His gaze flicked, ever so quickly, toward Mr. Sobel, and then away again. He leaned forward against the stand. “Gentlemen, there is not a man among you who should not know the answer to this question; it is written plainly in the Code of Seeking. . . . Mr. Crofford, you have been silent, and I suspect that is out of modesty, for I believe that you know the answer to this question, since you came close at one time to seeing this process put in place – though thankfully, your Seeker, who had intended no harm, reported himself to the Codifier. Who is the prisoner’s protector, Mr. Crofford?”

  “Myself, sir.” Mr. Crofford’s voice was quiet.

  “Yes. Yourself.” The High Seeker’s raised his eyes, but he did not raise his voice, which had grown soft. “Gentlemen, the prisoner’s greatest hope does not lie in the healer or the Codifier or the senior guards or even in myself. His greatest hope lies in you. You are the members of the inner dungeon who have dwelt here the shortest amount of time; you are most likely, out of all the members of the inner dungeon, to have the integrity to defy authority when the Code requires it to be defied. Mr. Phelps, with that matter clear in your mind, can you tell me what would happen if a prisoner under your care was abused by his Seeker?”

  Mr. Phelps, who shared the looks of chagrin that had spread over the faces of most of the junior guards, said in a subdued manner, “I would report the matter directly to the Codifier, sir. If the Codifier failed to heed my warning, then my duty would require that I leave the dungeon and alert one of the Queen’s magistrates.”

  “And the chances that a magistrate you chose at random was in league with the rest of us would be extremely small. Yes.” The High Seeker raised his voice finally. “Gentlemen, you are the prisoner’s shield. You are his greatest hope against abuse, assault, violation, oppression. You must . . . not . . . fail him.”

  Barrett glanced at Mr. Urman. There was no trace of his usual mockery or impatience in his expression. Everyone at the dungeon knew that Mr. Urman, like Mr. Crofford, had come close to being forced to exercise that power over his Seeker on one occasion, though in that case also, the Seeker who had committed the abuse – Layle Smith – had turned himself over to the Codifier for punishment.

  Barrett could only imagine the sort of courage it would have taken to defy the High Seeker’s wishes. Yet judging from Mr. Urman’s expression, he had that courage.

  Barrett found his gaze wandering over to Elsdon Taylor. He discovered that Mr. Taylor, whose line of sight did not permit him to look directly at Mr. Phelps, already had his head pointed in Barrett’s expression. Barrett gave him a rueful smile. Despite what the High Seeker had said about the corruptibility of senior guards, Barrett knew that it was the duty of every guard here, from Mr. Sobel on down, to intervene if a prisoner was abused by his Seeker. It would be Barrett’s duty, if Mr. Taylor unduly harmed his prisoner.

  It seemed unlikely that would happen. True, Elsdon Taylor had originally arrived at the dungeon under arrest for a crime he had committed, but he had been barely eighteen at the time, and he had shown no tendencies in the five years since then toward violence or even due force. Frowning as he turned his attention back to the High Seeker, Barrett wondered again whether he had chosen a Seeker who was too gentle at his work.

  “Some of you worked in the lesser prisons before you came here,” Mr. Smith said, breaking into Barrett’s thoughts. “The rest of you worked at other types of employment – or arrived here immediately after your school years.” His head, perhaps not by coincidence, turned in the direction of Mr. Taylor at that moment. “Even those of you who have worked at other Yclau prisons, however, may not be aware of the extent to which the Code of Seeking has shaped the behavior of guards in the lesser prisons. Nobody who has worked only at Yclau prisons knows what it is like to be in a place of imprisonment where a code of ethics is entirely unknown.”

  “Bloody blades,” muttered Mr. Urman, too low for his oath to reach Mr. Sobel’s ears. “I don’t want to hear what’s coming next.”

  His sentiment matched Barrett’s . . . and, to judge from the restlessness of the audience, everyone else’s in the room. The Eternal Dungeon had managed to survive the news that their High Seeker was a former torturer of the Hidden Dungeon, only because Mr. Smit
h had been kind enough to spare them the details of what he had done there. Mr. Taylor, perhaps, knew what deeds Layle Smith had committed in the past; if nothing else, the junior Seeker had been a prisoner in the Hidden Dungeon for a brief period. The rest of the Eternal Dungeon would sooner not know.

  “Are there any questions at this point?”

  Without warning, a smile appeared in the High Seeker’s voice. Apparently he could guess quite well what his audience was dreading to hear and was amused by their response. Mr. Urman muttered something that sounded like, “Bloody sadist,” but he kept his voice so quiet as to be indistinguishable this time.

  Mr. Smith’s voice returned to sobriety as he said, “Because of this, I have asked Mr. Ferris to speak to us here. He was arrested in Vovim thirty-seven years ago, shortly before the Intermittent Peace Accord, and spent time in a prison in east Vovim. Although you may find this hard to believe before his tale is over, east Vovimian prisons are the most advanced prisons of that kingdom, since they lie close to the Yclau border and have been influenced by conditions in this queendom. Prisoners in east Vovim are kept in relative warmth during the winter; their cells are fairly sanitary and vermin-free; the prisoners are permitted a period of exercise each day in order to keep up their strength. Other than the Hidden Dungeon under its recent High Master, you will find no prison in Vovim where prisoners are better treated than they are in prisons like the one Mr. Ferris was held captive in. Mr. Ferris’s prison therefore represents the heights of civilization that can be achieved without the Code of Seeking or another ethical code like it. Mr. Ferris?” The High Seeker stepped back from the schoolmasters’ stand.

  Mr. Ferris came forward. He was a tall man, taller than the High Seeker, with hands that had the sunken skin and pronounced veins of age. His voice was vigorous, though, as he said, “The High Seeker and I don’t see eye to eye on everything. I want you all to understand that. I think he’s taken the wrong course of action in the present crisis. Seekers aren’t meant to be puppets on a string, rigidly following every jot and tittle of the Code. To my mind, the Code’s spirit is what is meant to guide us, and sometimes that means the letter of the Code must be broken. That’s always been true in this dungeon, for as long as I can remember; the High Seeker is going against tradition by demanding that Seekers set aside their best judgment on how to handle particular prisoners. —Nonetheless,” he added, cutting into the whispers that had begun, “I think I understand better than anyone else here at the dungeon what he fears . . . with the possible exception of one other man.” He nodded in the direction of Mr. Taylor.

  Elsdon Taylor made no gesture in reply. He was sitting very quietly, not joining into the whispered discussions raging on either side of him. He was watching, not Mr. Ferris, but Mr. Smith.

  “I’ll be brief about this,” said Mr. Ferris. “Your gorges would rise if I made it a lengthy tale. I was arrested in Vovim in the spring of 323, on charges of being a spy. I was not a soldier; I don’t know whether my fate would have been better or worse than a soldier’s would have been. I was simply a mid-class tradesman, visiting Vovim on a business matter at a time when the King there – the father of today’s King – had promised that no foreign visitors would undergo molestation, despite the continued unrest between our two nations.

  “I was rounded up, along with every other Yclau citizen in that town, and placed in the town’s prison. This was in the years before Vovim’s royal dungeon flitted from prison to prison, keeping its activities hidden from the public eye; ours was just an ordinary prison, no different than the rest. None of the guards there struck me as being in any way out of the ordinary, so I expected decent treatment. Perhaps I received it. My mistake was in thinking the decency would match Yclau standards.

  “Some of the men and women and young folks had been wounded during their arrests. We asked for medical supplies to care for them. The guards laughed at us. They were not mocking us, I came to realize; they were simply unable to hold back their laughter at so absurd a request.

  “We cared for the wounded as best we could. We were all in one cell, and our surroundings were not uncomfortable. Indeed, the pallets we were given to sleep on were far softer than those on the bed-shelves in the Eternal Dungeon, and certainly more comfortable than the straw-strewn floors that serve as beds in Yclau’s lesser prisons. Once a day we were taken to a courtyard within the prison and allowed to walk in circles. We were given water and food, and our night buckets were removed daily. To that extent, it was as well-run a prison as I have ever visited.

  “But that was the full degree of mercy we received. Guards entered our cells every few hours, sometimes to see whether our daily needs had been met, sometimes to beat a prisoner bloody. We never could be entirely sure which motive would bring a guard into our cell, though over time we learned to be wary of certain guards.

  “Periodically, men and women and young folk were taken from our cells for questioning. We could tell from their screams how they were being questioned. When I asked a guard whether those prisoners would have the opportunity to defend themselves at their trials, he looked at me as though I were some strange, alien creature that had wandered up from the depths of the sea. Out of pity, I think, he carefully explained matters to me: There would be no trials. The prisoners would be questioned under torture until they confessed to their crimes, and then they would be executed.

  “I asked him whether there were no alternatives for any of us prisoners. He looked me up and down and said, Yes, an alternative existed, but he doubted I would like it.

  “The next day – perhaps by chance, perhaps not – a group of guards came into our cell and began choosing the prisoners they wanted to serve them in their beds. Mainly it was the young that were chosen: youths and maidens. The guard I had spoken to on the previous day chose me.

  “I allowed him to take me.”

  Mr. Ferris paused at this point. The whispering had stopped, but a number of the guards were now exchanging looks with one another. When it became apparent that nobody was prepared to speak, Mr. Ferris continued.

  “Perhaps I might have done otherwise if the guard had not phrased his order in such a manner as to make clear that he was offering me a choice. He was a man of honor, after his own fashion; he was not a rapist by nature. He was offering me his protection, under the conditions that this prison’s tradition permitted. I suspected – and as it turned out, I was right – that the only prisoners left alive at the end of all this would be those who had served the guards in their beds. So I entered into his service.”

  Mr. Ferris shrugged. His voice was phlegmatic as he said, “I have undergone worse tasks in my life. His needs were simple. He had a certain wariness about him that I eventually realized came from the fact that, in Vovim, to ask another man to sleep with you is a killing matter. He was a man who desired other men; short of taking up a life of crime, this was the only fashion in which he could satisfy his desires. Nonetheless, he felt ashamed of himself for what he required of his prisoners.

  “Once I had learned that, matters went better between us. I was able to assure him that – having visited nations where such acts were lawful – I had slept with men since my coming of age and did not consider the mere act of sleeping with another man to be a stain upon my honor. Though surprised by this, he took this as his cue to make me his confidant. He was unhappy with the way in which matters were run in the prison, he told me, but he did not know of any alternative. As far as he knew, every prison in the world was run like this one.

  “From him, and through my own eyes, I witnessed what it means to be a prisoner in Vovim. His restraint with me was as much a part of the pattern as the harshness I had experienced from other guards. I realized this after a new lot of prisoners arrived two months later. These were Vovimian prisoners, men who had truly committed crimes, judging from their behavior. They bullied the other prisoners, or beat them, or raped them. Most of the stronger Yclau men had been executed by now or had died under torture; there weren’t
enough of us left to protect the weaker prisoners.

  “Some of the guards, such as my own, would stop the Vovimian prisoners’ cruelty when they witnessed it; other would not. It was all haphazard, a matter of each guard’s whim. One guard might like to beat prisoners, the next one might dislike such an act, but neither of them had any guide directing their behavior. The guard who enjoyed beating prisoners would beat a frail old man; the guard who disliked beating prisoners would stand back and watch as one prisoner preyed on the other.

  “It was anarchy. It was a world without law or order. It was hell.”

  The silence in the room was now absolute. Even Mr. Urman did not seem inclined to make commentary. Finally one of the senior guards, braver than the others, said, “You were released, sir?”

  Mr. Ferris nodded. “After four months, as part of the terms of the Intermittent Peace Accord. I returned to Yclau, determined to learn whether my guard had been right in believing that all other prisons in the world were run as his was. I simply could not put what had happened behind me, much as I would have liked to have escaped from my memories.

  “With the assistance of a cousin of mine who had connections within the Queen’s government, I received permission to inspect our queendom’s places of imprisonment. The first few Yclau prisons I visited were bad. Very bad. And yet they were not as bad as they could have been, given that the prisons had no code of behavior to govern their guards. I kept hunting around, trying to determine what was creating greater order in these prisons than in the Vovimian prison.

  “Finally, at one prison, I managed to trace a source: a guard who seemed to be following some invisible pattern that elevated his behavior above that of the other guards. When I asked the keeper why this guard was so different from the rest, he laughed. ‘He spent a year working in the Eternal Dungeon,’ the keeper replied. ‘Ever since he got back, he’s been spreading around his fool notions of how to run a prison. If you’re interested in prison management, you ought to visit the royal dungeon,’ he added. ‘They do everything there topsy-turvy.’”

  Mr. Ferris held the silence in his grasp for a minute, and then said quietly, “Three years later, I was hooded.”

  There was a collective sigh, as though everyone in the room had been holding their breath. One of the junior guards, apparently dissatisfied with this abrupt end to the tale, asked, “Sir, do you know what happened to the guard at the Vovimian prison, the one who cared for you?”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Ferris, his voice suddenly light. “Now, that is an interesting sequel indeed. At the time that I became Seeker, I sent my former guard a letter. He was not a torturer, you understand, and so he lived in the town near his prison rather than within the prison itself; I thought it was safe enough for me to correspond with him. With the letter, I sent him a copy of the public edition of the Code of Seeking and urged him to read it. I received no reply – perhaps he considered it too dangerous to send a letter to Yclau’s royal dungeon – and so I set the matter aside in my mind. That was all I knew for many years. It was from another man that I learned the ending to that part of my tale.” His head turned in the direction of the High Seeker as he stepped back from the schoolmasters’ stand.

  Mr. Smith came forward, but slowly, as though reluctant to add to the tale. When finally he spoke, his voice was so low that the guards in the back row leaned forward to hear him.

  “Not long after I turned eighteen, the Hidden Dungeon shifted from its previous location to a prison located in a rural town in east Vovim,” Mr. Smith said. “I was still under the age of manhood by Vovimian standards, and so I still received solicitations from men around me – though not from the workers of the Hidden Dungeon, who had grown to distrust me.

  “At this prison was a guard who had worked there for many years. He was rumored to confine his bed-partners to full-grown men, but I must have seemed more mature to him than the average youth, for he made clear his interest in me. I let him think that the interest was shared, in order to learn what I could obtain from him before I set him aside.

  “As it happened, I had been trying for some time to get my hands on a copy of the Code of Seeking – I had heard rumors that made me mildly curious about the Code. When the guard learned of my interest, he brought to the prison a copy of the Code that he had owned for many years.” The High Seeker paused.

  The junior guard, not quite knowledgeable enough to know the dangers of prompting the High Seeker, said, “He loaned you the book, sir?”

  “No, I had him arrested.” Mr. Smith’s voice was level. “He was delivered to me for questioning, so that I could check whether he was running a black market in such unlawful material.”

  Several of the guards glared at the junior guard, who had shrunk back in his seat. Mr. Urman’s lips twisted into a small smile; he was apparently amused by the dark humor of this turn of events. Even Mr. Sobel seemed to have lost interest in scanning the audience, though no surprise showed on his face.

  Mr. Smith said, “Fortunately for my prisoner, the Code was delivered to me as well, in case I should need it in my questioning. I read it during my leisure hours, mainly out of boredom, because my prisoner was turning out to be far too easy to break. Even raping him while he hung from the hook proved uninteres—”

  He stopped abruptly. Mr. Barrett was not sure what sign had warned the High Seeker to do so, though his own stomach had begun to sicken. After a moment, Mr. Smith said, even quieter than before, “Forgive me, gentlemen. I had not meant to supply the unpleasant details of what occurred. I simply want you to understand: I did not read the Code out of any great interest in its subject matter, nor out of any belief that it held truths I could learn from, despite the fact that my prisoner had told me that he had not taken any prisoners to his bed since the time he first read that the Code of Seeking forbade this. He had sought other, less conventional ways to assist the prisoners – a remarkable change in his behavior. As for myself, I did not expect my own views on the proper manner of handling prisoners to change in any way.”

  He paused, his head turned in the direction of Mr. Taylor. Looking back, Mr. Barrett saw that Mr. Taylor was staring straight at the High Seeker, as though this recounting held special significance for them both. After a moment more, Mr. Smith broke his gaze and said, “Yet after three days, I made the decision to release my prisoner. I arranged for him to work as a guard at a prison in southern Vovim, a province which holds to certain ancient customs that permit men to sleep with other men. I thought my prisoner would be happier there than where I planned to go.”

  The silence was unbroken this time. Barrett finally decided that it was his turn to step back into danger. “The Eternal Dungeon, sir?”

  The High Seeker glanced his way. “The Eternal Dungeon. Yes.” He returned his attention to the audience. “That is the tale of two Vovimian prison-workers who had their lives changed by adopting the Code as their guide, and whose prisoners had their lives changed thereby. I believe I know of a third case of this sort. Mr. Taylor, as all of you know, was held in the Hidden Dungeon for a short spell. His torturer delayed executing him, a delay that permitted Mr. Taylor to be rescued. Although the reasons for that delay are complex, Mr. Taylor has suggested, and I concur, that the delay may be partially due to the fact that his torturer had received access to the Code. Mr. Taylor, who would have died an unjust death, therefore owes his life to the Code.”

  The High Seeker leaned forward, resting his arms on the schoolmasters’ stand. “This is what lies at stake in the present crisis, gentlemen. Not merely our reputations, which are of little importance, but the lives and souls of our prisoners, and the lives and souls of thousands of prisoners in Vovim. If we are to help them, we cannot shrink from the hard task of adhering to the Code. We must remain unified against nations who pressure us to alter the Code.”

  His voice had taken on a passion that Barrett had rarely heard in the High Seeker. For a moment, everyone in the room hung upon that passion, swaying forward as though they were a
ll souls held in the palm of Layle Smith’s hand. Then Mr. Smith straightened. He said in his normal, level voice, “Are there any questions?”

  Barrett looked around. Everyone appeared stunned, like Vovimian play-goers after a particularly powerful performance. Nobody seemed to want to serve as the anti-climax to that speech.

  Except one man. He had his hands clasped together over his head, in the universal sign of a pupil petitioning his schoolmaster for the right to speak.

  “Are there no questions?” asked Mr. Smith, moving his head to and fro.

  “I have a question, High Seeker,” insisted the petitioner, lowering his arms.

  “You may address your question to me in private, Mr. Taylor,” the High Seeker responded, not even looking in the junior Seeker’s direction. “This instruction is intended for guards.”

  “You said that anyone might attend, sir.”

  “Mr. Taylor” – and now there was a significant chill to the High Seeker’s voice – “Seekers are given formal instruction in all matters related to the Code. If you failed to pay attention to the instruction you were given, this is not the appropriate venue at which to correct the deficiencies in your education.”

  Mr. Crofford sucked in his breath audibly. Even Mr. Sobel winced. Barrett could envision the blood draining from Mr. Taylor’s face.

  But he was wrong. In a voice as level as the High Seeker’s had been, Elsdon Taylor said, “I fear, sir, that the deficiencies in my education are due to the fact that I was switched between instructors during my time as a Seeker-in-Training. Since this inevitably resulted in certain gaps in my education, I was hoping that you could fill them.”

  This time there was a collective gasp from the audience. Barrett stared at Mr. Taylor, unable to believe that the young Seeker had spoken those words deliberately. Surely it had simply been a slip on Mr. Taylor’s part to draw public attention to the fact that Layle Smith had been unable to tutor Mr. Taylor for the first six months of his training, due to the fact that the High Seeker had been suspended from his duties for attacking a prisoner.

  Barrett was unable to read any emotion in Mr. Smith’s voice when he spoke again. “What is your question, Mr. Taylor?”

  “It is concerning the Code of Seeking that you and Mr. Ferris’s guard were transformed by reading. That would have been the previous edition of the Code, the fourth revision?”

  “Since I had not yet been assigned to revise the Code, my introduction to the Code was indeed through the fourth revision.” Mr. Smith’s response was dry. Several of the younger guards tittered.

  If anything, though, Mr. Taylor seemed more determined than before to pursue his thought. “Then, if you were willing to revise the Code, you must have noticed certain flaws in it?”

  The tittering stopped. Mr. Smith paused before saying, “Mr. Taylor, you know as well as anyone else here that the Code is revised once in every generation, in order to incorporate new insights. I believe that you have been in touch in the past with the Codifier concerning certain suggestions for revision; those will be taken under consideration at the time of the next revision. The Codifier and I always welcome suggestions for bringing the Code up to date. That is a very different matter from deliberately transgressing the current Code—”

  “But sir, isn’t part of the process of revision gained from knowledge provided by experimental testings of new methods of questioning by Seekers, prior to the revision?”

  “Mr. Taylor.” The High Seeker’s voice was now as hard as a breaking cell’s bed-shelf. “If this is your circumlocutory manner of asking whether you might have permission to undertake experimental testing, let me remind you, please, that such experiments may only occur with permission of the High Seeker, and that I only grant such permission to senior Seekers—”

  “But sir, isn’t it true that sections 18, 23, 51, and 72 of the Code – which have been much praised for their effectiveness in transforming prisoners – were introduced to the fifth revision due to certain experiments in new forms of questioning that were undertaken in 338?” Mr. Taylor’s voice was as bland as unsweetened porridge. “And isn’t it true, sir, that the man who undertook those experiments was a Torturer-in-Training? And isn’t it true that he experimented without prior permission of this dungeon’s High Torturer, and that there was some question at the time as to whether the Torturer-in-Training should be placed under discipline or dismissed from the dungeon altogether?”

  The room had gone completely silent again. Even the many guards who had not been here in 338 knew the date of Layle Smith’s arrival at the Eternal Dungeon.

  For a minute, it appeared that the High Seeker would make no response. Then he said in a very soft voice, “Mr. Taylor, these matters are somewhat advanced for this class. I will address your questions later. Gentlemen, I believe that our time is complete. You may go to your duties or may enter into your leisure hours, as is applicable.” The High Seeker turned away from the schoolmasters’ stand.

  Barrett lost sight of him in the next moment as everyone in the room stood up and began talking in loud voices about what had happened. Mr. Sobel murmured something and slipped away in the direction of his Seeker. Standing on his toes, Barrett just managed to catch sight of Elsdon Taylor, walking toward the door in a seemingly calm and collected manner.

  Barrett turned in consternation to Mr. Urman, who had been watching him. “Is that what he’s like in a breaking cell?” he demanded to the junior guard.

  Mr. Urman grinned. Slapping Barrett on the back, he said, “Enjoy your new job, mate.”