Hush now, quiet now,
It's time to lay your sleepy head,
Hush now, quiet now,
It's time to go to bed,
Driftin' (driftin') off to sleep,
Exciting day behind you,
Driftin' (driftin') off to sleep,
Let the joy of dream land find you,
Hush now, quiet now,
Lay your sleepy head,
Gush now, quiet now,
It's time to go to bed,
—Traditional Pegasus Nursery Rhyme
Standing outside the door of the stairs leading down to the prince Sersjant Golivir shivered in his gold cloak and tried to ignore the occasional screams coming from the subterranean chamber. Everyone knew the golden prince was troubled. Sleeping below ground in the security wing of the palace with only a tiny floor level window behind two thick oak doors was only one symptom of his precarious mental condition.
The prince had moved to his dismal quarters directly from his old rooms at the Pinnacle of Wisdom, the military school and monastery. He left those rooms the day he graduated but had never actually given his rooms in the eastern tower back to the academy. Gerald never gave anything back if he didn’t have to. Occasionally he would store things there. Usually, creatures that would be inconvenient to the security forces if released, or if held in a more conventional prison. Sometimes those things were brought from there to here. Kicking and screaming.
The international Red Hoof sometimes conducted inspections of Griffonstone’s prisons. Nothing ever came of it. The Red Hoof didn’t look hard at the reality of the Talons or the prisons of Griffonstone, and the King never encouraged them to.
Past the door Golivir guarded was a broad staircase of a dozen steps down to a second door and beyond that what had been a well-drained cellar. The drains remained, with additional plumbing and hoses but now it was a room fit for a prince. Or it would be, providing that prince only desired a single, if sumptuous bed, a small bathroom and shower, and a single armoire and chest.
The chest held waterproof sacks. Large ones. Goliver knew. He’d delivered them.
Sometimes he delivered other things.
The large room held almost no other furniture besides a box of coal and various blacksmithing tools, chains, tongs, a bellows, and a few chairs bolted into place. There was also an adjustable “workbench” with plenty of bolts for holding “workpieces”. He’d never seen the prince working. He never wanted to.
One would wonder where all the gold the prince kept spending was going. It certainly wasn’t going into his personal wardrobe or furnishings.
He knew that past the inner door there were pegs on the wall. A fine fur cloak hung from one, and a fine sword from another. The pony leather hood that hung from the third squicked Goliver fiercely. He refused to look at it. It was an executioner’s hood.
Gerald III had ordered his guard to keep an eye on the prince and to keep him busy. To comply with those orders Gerald IV had taken it upon himself to ally himself with the Talon security forces. The Talons had an obsessive focus on punishing the Maplegrovers for assisting the Prench in the second Prench war. The murder of the cervid agitator Loius in broad daylight in the middle of Cobbolenook in the heart of Sugar Maple Grove Forest last month being the latest example.
Shame they’d caught Gerry at the scene. Bigger shame the griffon had not taken his suicide pill. The prince and the Talons had provided the funds, personnel, and leverage for the hit. The Prench had remained silent, but the Maplegrovers were swift to react. The Foreign Minister Aubree summoned the Griffin ambassador in Cobbolenook and expelled two Griffin diplomats. The King of course denied being behind it. Of course, he would. They hadn’t told him about it. Sersjant Golivir had been a part of that. A large part he thought.
As a flysoldat, doing as he was ordered and not thinking about it was a big part of the job. He had arrived at dusk, relieving another Sersjant, and no one had come or been brought since. Sersjant Golivir didn’t think the prince had any griffon, cervid or pony with him tonight, so they were probably his own screams, but he tried not to judge his superiors. Occasionally he had been told to help bury a wrapped body, by his own superior or by the prince. Sometimes he could feel that the bodies were in pieces. Spies or ‘traitors’ or ‘dead of natural causes’, they were taken to the cemetery for the poor and interned. He treated the dead with respect. That’s all the law called for. He didn’t ask where the bodies came from, and he didn’t want to know. He had no desire to join them.
Occasionally he escorted a ‘guest’ – a bound and gagged hooded captive to or from the prince for questioning. Usually, they were escorted out again. Always by a different shift. The prince was meticulous. Only once or twice had the prince been joined by one of his ‘friends’ to speak with these ‘guests’. Hardened veterans of the Talon, they said nothing. But when they visited the prince was always in a good mood for weeks afterward.
Since Gerry had been caught no one had come to visit. There were no ‘guests’ down below. So why was the screaming of the golden prince so unnerving?