Part of him, cold and calculating, was taking inner notes. The rest of him couldn’t bear what he was hearing. Finally he burst out, “Elsdon, how can you do this? How can you seek to transform men’s souls by tearing apart their bodies?”
Elsdon, who had been kneeling down to explain how the wheel controlled the tightening of the manacles, looked up. For the first time he seemed hesitant. At last he said, “It’s rather complicated, Yeslin. I don’t think you’ll understand until you’ve belonged to the dungeon a while.”
Yeslin did not bother to explain how short his visit to the dungeon was likely to be. “I ought to know about such matters, even if I live in the lighted world.”
Sighing as he dusted off his hands and rose to his feet, Elsdon said, “Don’t let it worry you, Yeslin. It has nothing to do with you.”
Yeslin turned, looked for something harmless to throw – there was nothing harmless in that room – and contented himself with beating upon the wall with his fists.
“Stop it.” Elsdon’s grip was firmer than before as he pulled Yeslin away from the wall. “You’ll hurt yourself. Yeslin, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with me. Elsdon, this place has everything to do with me!”
Elsdon’s brow was creased with faint puzzlement. “Why? Are you considering applying to become a guard, the way Weldon did?”
“Sweet—” Yeslin choked away the oath. “Elsdon, look at me. Look at me. I’m a commoner. How much of this queendom is made up of commoners?”
“I’m not sure—”
“One-third of the people in the Queendom of Yclau are commoners. The rest are mid-class or elite. Now, how many of the prisoners in this queendom are commoners?”
Elsdon was wise enough to keep quiet this time.
Yeslin cried, “Ninety-five percent! People say that it’s because commoners are all thieves and murderers, but the true reason is that mid-class men and elite men are rarely arrested. They have the money to bribe soldiers, they have the position of power to prevent an arrest. Commoners don’t. We’re the ones who end up in places like this.”
“Yes, I know.”
Elsdon said nothing more, but after a moment, Yeslin felt his cheeks flush. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten that you were a prisoner here. Were you racked?”
“No,” said Elsdon steadily. “I was barely tortured at all. And I’m not going to pretend I understand the fear that the typical commoner prisoner undergoes, finding himself powerless in the hands of the elite. But Yeslin . . . are you trying to tell me that you’ve committed a crime?”
“No.” Not quite yet. “It doesn’t matter whether I do. I’m founding a guild for commoners. Don’t you understand what that means? I’m going to be encouraging commoners to fight against the elite – to fight even against the mid-class. How long do you think it will be before the elite think up some excuse to arrest me?”
Elsdon remained silent for some time. Then he said softly, “The Queen is a wise and discerning woman. I’ve met her.”
“So perhaps I won’t end up here, in the Eternal Dungeon. But if you’re wrong . . . if I end up in this place . . . are you prepared to hold to the belief that I’ll be transformed by torture, if you’re the one torturing me?”
His throat felt raw; his soul felt scathed. Elsdon’s face was not quite blank, but it somehow had leached away all revealing emotion. The Seeker looked very much like he had on the day when he searched Harden Pevsner in an attempt to discover how his uncle was treating Yeslin.
Finally Elsdon said, “If you don’t like being in this rack room, we can leave.”
Yeslin let out his breath slowly, reminding himself that he was attacking the wrong man. Elsdon was not to blame for how this dungeon was run. This room had been decorated by a man who had decided that prisoners should be tortured on beautiful racks.
“No,” Yeslin said. “I want to understand. Can you tell me what happens when the prisoners reach the highest level of racking?”
Elsdon did not look eager to continue that part of the conversation, but with a little prodding, he supplied the information. And as he did so, the balladeer within Yeslin coolly resumed his notes, proceeding to rack the prisoner inside Yeslin’s mind.
o—o—o
“If we tell the High Seeker we don’t want to do things the way he wants things done, he’ll tie us to one of his racks and stretch us till we’re a mile long.”
Everyone nodded in agreement to what Wade said. Yeslin sat quietly on his upturned meal pail in the minutes after the stokers finished their midnight meals; they’d all agreed that such delicate conversations should take place in the outer dungeon, where some of the senior stokers lived, rather than in the inner dungeon, where the Seekers lived and worked.
He waited to see whether anyone else would speak, then said reasonably, “Well, we don’t have to approach the High Seeker, do we? He’s in mourning in a room below the crematorium this month. Who’s in charge while he’s gone? The Codifier?”
This suggestion brought about a collective groan. “Just slit my throat,” suggested Jerry, fingering his guild badge, which all the night-shift stokers wore now. “Sooner that, than face the dragon in his lair.”
“Ah.” Yeslin set aside that idea. He supposed he should have guessed that the Codifier was fierce, from the manner in which the man had reacted to Elsdon Taylor’s plea three years before that his adopted brother be permitted to visit the dungeon. “Well, then, who else could we approach? Who is senior enough to help determine policy in the dungeon, but isn’t likely to eat us for dinner?” He took a bite of his sandwich. He had made it himself; as a bachelor, he had learned long ago to take on any needed task at home.
There was a short spell of silence before Curt said hesitantly, “Mr. Chapman.”
“Weldon Chapman, of course!” Leo clapped his hand upon his thigh. “He’s day supervisor of the Eternal Dungeon; he takes over the High Seeker’s duties when Layle Smith is away. He’s boss man to us this month.”
“And he was a stoker like us, once,” added Jerry eagerly. “He’ll understand why we want to keep our jobs here.”
“Mr. Chapman, then.” Yeslin felt a thrill in his chest; they were coming closer now to his first victory. “Here’s how we’ll do it. . . .”
The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus Page 72
