The Eyes of the Dragon

66

On the seventeenth day of Thomas’s reign, Brandon’s son, Dennis, brought the first lot of twenty-one napkins to the Needle. He brought them from a storeroom that neither Peter nor Thomas nor Ben Staad nor Peyna himself knew about, although all would become aware of it before the grim business of Peter’s imprisonment was done. Dennis knew because he was a butler’s son from a long line of butlers, but familiarity breeds contempt, so they say, and he thought nothing much about the storeroom from which he fetched the napkins. We’ll speak more of this room later; let me tell you now only that all would have been struck with wonder at the sight of it, and Peter in particular. For had he known of this room which Dennis took completely for granted, he might have attempted his escape as much as three years sooner… and much, for better or for worse, might have been changed.