by Stephen Deas
‘Radek knows you’re here! The Headsman already sent word! Kill me and you’re a dead man! But listen to me! It’s the black powder. Everything’s changed!’
‘Not for me!’ The thief-taker screamed something else, something that sounded like a name but was so contorted with fury that it came out as an animal sound. Then he drove the short blade of his sword down through the soft flesh between the man’s neck and his collar bone, with all his strength behind it. The Weasel lurched, gurgled, rolled his eyes and then fell forward, the weight of him tearing the sword out of Master Sy’s hand.
‘Boy,’ he hissed without looking round, ‘go find somewhere else to be.’
Berren backed away and crept up the stairs to the dead snuffers. For something to do he finished taking the sword-belt off the lanky one and put it on. He fumbled his sword back into its scabbard. Then he stood, imagining how he looked. The belt was definitely too big and the scabbard dragged on the floor however he tried to wear it. He could still take the sword, though, couldn’t he? No one else needed it.
Slowly, he drew it out of its scabbard again. This turned out to be a lot harder than it looked.
‘You want to start with something lighter,’ said Master Sy from the top of the stairs. He was leaning against the wall, watching. ‘It’s too heavy for you,’ he said.
‘Can I keep it?’
He could see the answer in Master Sy’s face at once. There were a hundred good reasons why he shouldn’t.
‘I’ll grow,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll get stronger.’
And then, to his surprise, Master Sy nodded. ‘Maybe you can trade it for one you can actually hold.’
‘They said something about a strongbox.’ He kept seeing the man with the cane die, kept hearing what he’d said. It wasn’t that it troubled him. Rather, it had thrilled him just as the time he’d seen Master Sy kill three men in an alley over a purse that had turned out to be filled with nothing but rusty iron and a few pennies. But priests? Black powder? A grey wizard? What did it all mean?
‘So he did.’
They went downstairs. Master Sy ran his hands over the dead body by the door. When he stood up, he had another key in his hand and a gleam in his eye. He led Berren back to the stone passage with the heavy doors. One of them was open now and the thief-taker moved slowly inside. The room beyond was pitch black, with no windows. They felt their way around, blind in the darkness. Pushed up against the far wall was a wooden chest bound in metal. It was too big and heavy for even two men to lift and carry away. Master Sy fumbled with the key he’d taken from the dead man with the cane. There was a click. Berren reached to open it.
‘Careful.’ Together they lifted the lid. Berren was sure it would be laden with gold and treasure, but when he reached inside, all he felt were bundles of parchment. Underneath those were round cases, hard and leathery, the sort you might use to store a map. Then his fingers finally closed on something hard and metallic. He couldn’t see what it was in the darkness but it felt like a buckle for a belt or a cloak. He imagined it to be silver or even gold, maybe even covered in gems! He slipped it into his pocket.
‘Come!’
At the far end of the strongroom passage there was another door. It was a heavy thing bound in iron, impossible to see in the dark until you walked right into it. Master Sy fiddled with his ring of stolen keys once more until he found the one that opened it. Berren sighed with relief – he could see his feet again. Shadows were one thing; shadows were for hiding and watching and he liked shadows. But full pitch dark where a man couldn’t even see where he was treading, that was a different matter.
He stepped out. They must have been in one of the myriad alleys that ran around the back of the docks and Reeper Hill, one that he didn’t know. He looked for the moon but it had dipped below the warehouses. The door, he saw, had no keyhole and no handle on the outside. In fact, from the outside, you’d barely know it was a door at all.
‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’ Master Sy trotted away down the alley. He was limping again, quite badly. When he came back, he was pushing an enormous handcart. A tarpaulin lay bundled up inside.
‘You’ll have to help me,’ he said. ‘We’re going to move the bodies.’
‘The bodies? Why, master?’ No one had seen the killings. ‘What if the watch stop us?’
Master Sy went inside. Berren followed.
‘Khrozus Blood! What a mess!’ The thief-taker started to laugh.
Three men dead on the floor downstairs, two more upstairs, blood everywhere and papers strewn about the place. ‘The soldiers and the snuffers – they saw us, master! They’re going to know!’
‘They saw Weasel and his men too.’ The thief-taker rounded on Berren. ‘Listen, lad: When the harbour-masters find this, they’re going to have fits. And yes, they’re going to know who was here, and yes, they’re going to want us all strung up – you, me, the Headsman, the lot of us.’ He pointed at the bodies. ‘One way or the other, we have to disappear now, lad. We leave them all behind us, everyone knows how it turned out. We all vanish, no one knows but us.’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘With a bit of luck, people will think we’re dead. Maybe the Headsman might start wondering about Weasel and his snuffers, and how much can he trust them? Uncertainty makes for fear, Berren, and fear is always the thief-taker’s friend.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘We can get Kol doing our work for us – your monks would string the Headsman up as quick as look at him. What business has he got at a temple though?’ He looked at the bodies again and sucked air between his teeth. ‘Kol could take the bodies to his catacombs and then try and get a priest to talk to them, but …’ The thief-taker was frowning furiously. ‘Or Kuy could do it. I dare say he’s not the only one. But these ones don’t know anything. Except about us.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘No, they’ve all got to go.’
Kuy! He meant Saffran Kuy, the witch-doctor from the House of Cats and Gulls. ‘So it’s true then? The witch-doctor can really make dead people talk?’ He’d never seen the witch-doctor in the flesh, but that was what the city whispers had always said: if the dead had secrets to spill, take them to the witch-doctor.
‘He really can. Now be quiet and get to work. We need to be up to Wrecking Point and back before it gets light.’
Whatever past Master Sy and the witch-doctor shared, the thief-taker kept it to himself. As best Berren could make out, they’d both come from the same place, a long time ago, both running from the same enemies. He shrugged and bowed his head, wise enough to know when there wasn’t any point in arguing, and got on with the job of dragging two corpses, bumping them down the stairs and out to the back door. He helped heave them into the handcart on top of the ones from downstairs; then Master Sy dragged the last corpse from the front door of the House of Records out to the back. It took both of them with all their strength to lift him in as well. When they were done, Berren’s hands were sticky with blood. It was on his shirt too.
‘This won’t do,’ growled Master Sy. ‘This won’t do at all.’ Berren ran around, arranging the tarpaulin on top of the cart. Master Sy circled a few paces away, pointing out where a hand or a boot or a lock of hair had broken free and was hanging out for all to see. All the while, Berren’s heart pounded. What if the watch came by? It was the middle of the night and the alley was dark and deserted, but still, this was the docks! And if not the militias, there were plenty of other gangs all ready to be full of trouble.
But no men came, no drunken sailors who’d lost their way, no shady men with cloaks and daggers and hoods to hide their faces, no gangs with padded jackets and big sticks. When the bodies were properly hidden, Berren and Master Sy went back to the strongbox. They scooped up the piles of paper and map-cases and went back to the cart. With five bodies, it took both of them to push it into motion.
‘Master, why are we doing this? What if someone stops us?’
‘Why would they?’
‘Because it’s the middle of the night!’
Master Sy shrug
ged. ‘But this is the docks. Is it that unusual to see a respectable citizen and his apprentice pushing a heavy cart up towards the Wrecking Point road in the middle of the night?’
Berren rather thought that yes, it was quite unusual indeed, but he held his tongue, and whatever Master Sy thought, the thief-taker kept to the alleys and the back-streets nonetheless. They pushed their cart into the warren of Reeper Hill, up steep narrow little roads that were never quite deserted, not even in the middle of the night. Here and there shadows lurked in doorways to let them pass, or else saw them coming and flitted a different way, out of their path.
When they reached the top they were both gasping for breath. The higgledy-piggledy houses of Reeper Hill fell away until there was nothing but the long crescent of broken cliff-top that was Wrecking Point. There was a road and then a path along the top, one that ran all the way to an old watchtower that no one used any more, except you couldn’t get there unless you brought a bridge with you because of the great cracks that ran right across the rock. No one came out to Wrecking Point at night. Not for anything good.
The path stopped abruptly. A chasm as wide as a man barred their way. Sheer walls of black stone fell forty feet down into the sea. The path picked up again on the other side, but only for those agile enough to jump the gap. The rest of Wrecking Point was an island.
Berren slumped against the handcart. He was drenched with sweat. The thief-taker already had the tarpaulin off, but it took both of them to lift out a body. Master Sy seemed all ready to simply hurl it off the edge into the water below; Berren had other ideas – he set to work on the man’s boots.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Good boots, master. Good armour, too. They’d be worth something. We might as well take it as not, master, especially if there’s no work to be had for the rest of the year. They don’t need them any more.’
‘Where I come from, looting the dead is a wicked thing to do.’
‘Bu–’
‘Besides, where will you sell them? The boots, perhaps, could go to someone like your old friend Hatchet. But the sword? The armour? They’re stolen. They’re bloody. Are you going to go wagoning in the night market? What if someone remembers your face? Think, lad! These aren’t chances you should be taking. There’s no need for it. The Headsman doesn’t know anything about you, might not even know you exist. Keep it that way. From tonight, we’re dead.’
With a heave, they tossed the first body over the edge and onto the rocks below.
‘The tide’s on the rise,’ said Master Sy. His limp was bad now. ‘With luck it’ll take the bodies out to sea. If fortune truly smiles on us, that’s the last anyone will ever hear of them.’ They tossed a second body over.
‘Won’t anyone go looking for them, master?’
The thief-taker laughed. ‘They were never there. The Headsman’s not going to admit he had his men in the House of Records in the middle of the night. You heard his man. I’m not sure they had any better right to be there than we did.’ Another body dropped into the sea with a splash.
‘What about him, though? The Headsman?’ asked Berren when they were done.
‘People like him don’t throw themselves on the mercy of the watch. They pay people like me to find the thieves who stole from them and bring them to justice. Which to those sort means a killing, long and bloody.’
‘People like you?’
‘Snuffers, lad. And thief-takers. People who hunt men. The Headsman knows I’m here, but he’s known that for a while now. He’s not going to know what happened tonight, perhaps not even where, but when five of his men don’t come back he’s going to know it was me. And we’re going to make sure it stays right where it is, between the two of us. Him and me. Don’t want anyone else near this, especially not you. There’ll be a price on my head after tonight, simple as that, and then there’ll be a reckoning. He’ll come for me, he’ll buy snuffers, but this is my city, lad, not his. Come on. And bring that. No sense in leaving a perfectly good handcart behind.’
Without another word, he began the long walk home. The cart seemed light as anything, now it was empty, and they made much better time. Still, as they walked, Berren couldn’t help glancing back over his shoulder now and then. His head was full of things to think about. He had a sword. He’d seen the thief-taker cross a line, and do it without blinking. They were outlaws now, both of them.
And the witch-doctor down by the docks could talk to the dead.
19
BURYING THE TRUTH
Berren slept soundly. When he woke up, brilliant lines of sunlight shone through the gaps in his shutters, lighting up unexpected corners of his little room. It was late. The night’s exertions had finished him and, by the looks of things, Master Sy hadn’t banged on his door before dawn as he usually did.
On the floor, the sword from the night before gleamed. Berren rolled off his straw mattress, sat up and pulled it from its sheath. He didn’t know much about weapons but the edge seemed straight enough. He ran his fingers over the steel. It felt slightly oily. There were two little notches in the cutting blade, but still, it was his now. He’d dreamed for years that he might own such a thing. With a sword hanging from your belt, people treated you with respect. Other gangs of boys didn’t throw stones at you and the watch didn’t beat you black and blue simply because they could. A sword made you a man.
A jolt of panic hit him. He was late! He should be at the temple, should have been there hours ago … Then he remembered: This was Abyss-Day, the day of the dead and the damned and the dark and no lessons. He sighed and smiled and rolled back onto his bed and stared at the blade of his sword. It had belonged to someone else until last night, a snuffer whose name Berren would never know. Having a sword hadn’t saved him …
He dressed himself. He supposed his master was sleeping late too, but even so he’d best get up and get on with his chores. Master Sy had been in a strange mood as they’d made their way home. He didn’t say much at the best of times, but a gloom and a silence had settled over him as they’d walked away from the docks. He was like that whenever the past came up, when he saw anything to remind him of the life he’d had before he’d come to Deephaven. Or maybe he’d been like that because his leg had been hurting like buggery again and he could barely even walk by the time they’d crossed the city. Maybe it meant they hadn’t found what they were looking for.
Which made Berren remember the strongbox. He rolled onto the floor and reached under his straw bedding. The clasp he’d found was still there. That was his – no reason for Master Sy to know anything about it. He looked at it and felt a pang of disappointment. It was plain silver, carved into the shape of something that looked like a cross between a helm and a crown and not worth nearly as much as he’d hoped. He shoved it back under the straw, jumped to his feet and charged out of his room.
‘Master! Master!’ There was no answer. He ran through the house but Master Sy wasn’t there. His boots were gone, though, so Master Sy was gone too.
In the parlour, the map-cases from the strongbox were all opened and empty. Pieces of paper and parchment were scattered everywhere. A few were ripped or screwed up into crumpled balls. Berren started to tidy them up; while he was doing that, he read a few. It was hard work, but even when he could make out the words, they didn’t make any sense. There were lists of names and places and none of it meant anything. He chewed on a piece of yesterday’s bread and sipped at some water.
Ah well. Usually when Master Sy woke him up, his first duty was to go and get fresh bread for the day. Then, on Abyss-Day, he had his chores. Cleaning Master Sy’s boots for a start – couldn’t do that if his master was off wearing them though, could he? – but then there was fetching water and a hundred and one other things and he’d cop a clip round the ear if he forgot anything. He didn’t much mind most of his chores, but if there was one he could have been rid of, it was getting water. It was a long way and it meant going past the House of Cats and Gulls and through the River Gate and
then paying a penny to get back, and Berren had better things to do with his pennies.
The House of Cats and Gulls made him think of the witch-doctor who lived there, Saffran Kuy. No one quite seemed to know how long he’d been there or how he’d arrived. From the stories Berren had heard, one day there had been a warehouse, the next, a witch-doctor. People scattered fish outside his door and it stank, stank strong enough to bring tears to your eyes. Even with the wind behind you, you always knew you were getting close from the porters with scarves wrapped over their faces and how the cobbles grew slimy underfoot. The guards on the River Gate wore scarves too; they swore and cursed at the witch-doctor for the smell but none of them ever lifted a finger to drive him away. Every Abyss-Day as he passed the witch-doctor’s house, Berren wondered how many of the stories he’d heard were true.
The witch-doctor could talk to the dead. Master Sy had said that, and he’d said it with certainty as though he’d seen it, and that made him think of Velgian. What was it that the poet thief-taker had wanted Master Sy to know, right there at the end before he fell? Justicar Kol had taken the body to the catacombs, but maybe the witch-doctor had a way to know? He shivered. Whatever it was that his master and Saffran Kuy shared, it wasn’t enough to make him go knocking on the door of the House of Cats and Gulls, that was for sure! Saffran Kuy is not the friend he thinks!
The man with the cane had said something before Master Sy killed him, too; something about the Headsman and a grey wizard? Grey was the colour of the dead. So did he mean the witch-doctor too? Maybe Master Sy had gone there then, to warn him?
The sun was already high and there might not be any more bread to be had for the day. He’d get some fruit, too, just in case. He went into Master Sy’s room to look for the thief-taker’s purse. Everything in the thief-taker’s room was as it always was. There was a bed, a wooden rack for hanging clothes, a table and nothing else. On the table sat a semi-circle of short, squat candles that hadn’t moved for as long as Berren could remember, the usual quill, pile of papers, bundle of old letters tied in ribbon, and the box, the plain wooden box almost as long as Berren’s arm. They were all there, arranged exactly the way they always were. The thief-taker’s purse was where it always was too, hanging from one end of the wooden clothes-rack. Berren opened it and took out a few pennies, plenty for bread and fruit.
