Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 25 of 30

Prince Charming rode home in the dusk with a lighter purse and a heavier problem. The scavenger had taken the coin and walked. So had the poacher before him. But two men paid off was not a system. The next stranger might pocket the silver and still spill the story in the first tavern he reached. He needed a way to know, before he opened his hand, which men would keep quiet and which would not. He sat at his kitchen table until the lamp guttered. He thought about the shape of his house — three floors, front door on the ground, small round window under the peak. A stranger who came to his door saw only the porch. Anyone brought inside would see the rest: the ledger on the second-floor desk, the dragon scale on the mantel, the princess's letters in the top drawer. A man who saw those things and still walked out had chosen his side. A man who balked at the threshold had chosen the other. In the morning he sent a jewel bird to the tower with a scrap of charcoal writing. Bring the next one to me. He set a bench on the porch and waited. The bird returned at midday with a diamond flock trailing behind it, and a traveler behind the flock — a tinker with a mule, come up the road asking after the mountain. Prince Charming brought him inside. He poured wine. He showed him the second floor and the scale on the mantel and told him plainly that the dragon was tame, that the stories were his own invention, that a lie kept the mountain safe. The tinker listened. He drank the wine. When Prince Charming named a price for silence, the tinker set the cup down and said he would not take coin for a promise he could not swear to keep. He said the story was too big for one man's mouth. He asked to leave. Prince Charming walked him to the door and let him go, and the tinker rode down the road with nothing bought and nothing owed. An hour later a second traveler came, a woman with a pack, and she took the wine and the tour and the coin and swore on her sister's grave, and Prince Charming believed her because she had asked the price before he named it. He watched her go and knew the test worked. The house had sorted them for him. But the tinker was already on the road with the truth, unbought, and Prince Charming had handed it to him himself.