by Stephen Deas
‘Focus on the blade!’ She feinted and caught him a bruising crack on the knee.
‘I mean a grey wizard.’ Heavier and heavier came the rain. Water ran down his forehead, out of his hair towards his eyes. He flicked it away.
Tasahre’s face drew taut. Her waster snapped at his head with three sharp blows which he managed to block and then came a hard lunge to his ribs which he didn’t. He tried not to wince. That one was going to hurt. ‘The creature on the docks is worse than an abomination, it is an anathema. It is only a matter of time before it draws the wrath of the sun.’
He couldn’t be that terrible, could he? The witch-doctor was a friend to Master Sy, and the thief-taker was hardly evil. Angry sometimes, and gods help you if you were on the wrong side of his steel, but he was still a servant of the city and Berren had seen kindness in him more often than spite.
They were both soaked now. Their light clothes clung to their skin. Most of the time, Tasahre looked more like a boy with her short cropped hair and the sunburst tattoo breaking the lines of her face; most of the time, but not now.
The prince’s token around his neck seemed to burn, urging him away. Rain ran in rivers down his face, down his arms, and suddenly it was there, the opening he’d been looking for. Maybe Tasahre caught an inkling of what was on his mind, or maybe even sword-monks made mistakes from time to time. Whatever it was, Berren didn’t care, because for an instant he was inside her guard. He dropped his waster, lunged and rammed her with his shoulder. He grabbed her arm, jabbed at her ribs with his elbow and reached a foot between her legs to sweep her over, all at once. She staggered, and then his foot caught her and she went down with Berren on top of her. He grabbed her other arm. She was still as quick as a snake, every bit as strong as him and he wasn’t even much heavier, but this was what Master Sy had shown him, and he’d meant it to work on men twice his size. She almost wriggled free, but then he had her down flat on her back, sitting astride her, pinning her arms with his knees and his hands. Rain dripped from his hair into her face. She looked furious.
‘What are you doing?’
His hands wanted to touch her, but that meant letting go and he didn’t dare. ‘Concede.’
She almost laughed at him. ‘What?’
‘Concede. Surrender!’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got you.’
‘You are as paralysed as I.’
‘I’m on top.’
‘If you move, I will be free. If this were a fight, how would you kill me?’
‘I could bite your face off I suppose.’
‘If you come close enough, I will bite yours first.’
He tried not to think about that. His heart was racing.
Beneath him, Tasahre bucked, heaving him upwards. The next thing he knew, she had her legs around his chest and a bear-like force had grabbed him, tearing him backwards, and then he was flat on his back and Tasahre was on top of him, arms and legs all tangled together, with two fingertips at his throat. ‘If that was a fight then this is a knife and you are dead. Now get up.’
She seemed to pause for a moment more than needed before she sprang away. For the rest of their practice time she fought with cold unforgiving precision. The rain came down and made no difference at all. But afterwards, in the steamy evening twilight before sunset prayers, she took him back with her to the yard.
‘Show me again how you did that,’ she said.
21
THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME
Being a true novice, it turned out, was nothing like taking paid-for lessons in the day and then going home at sunset. Being a true novice meant you worked for your keep. He hadn’t expected much by way of kindness or sympathy, but between his lessons with Sterm and his time with Tasahre, there didn’t seem much time left in the day for more work.
He was wrong. Straight after practice with the sword-monks came twilight prayers – he had to go to those now. After prayers, the novices worked in the kitchens chopping vegetables, fetching, carrying, cleaning and sweating, serving the priests and the sword-monks with their supper; afterwards, they all sat together on long hard benches and got to eat whatever was left. There were a lot more novices than Berren had realised; a lot of them he’d never seen before, who’d never shared his class with Sterm the Worm or any of the others.
By the time he sat down, Berren was ravenous, but he barely managed to take a sip of gruel before a novice he didn’t know banged into him, spilling it.
‘Oops.’
‘Oi!’ Berren rounded on him. The boy must have been almost twice his size. He picked up Berren’s bowl off the table and tipped it over Berren’s head.
‘Oops,’ he said again. Then he looked at Berren. And? Berren knew that look. The What are you going to do about it, runt? look. None of the priests had seen it happen. The other novices were all staring, eyes a-glitter. They hated him, they always had.
‘Stupid!’ they sniggered. ‘Can’t even drink from a bowl.’
Berren’s face burned. This was what used to happen with Master Hatchet whenever a new boy was taken. He could see exactly where this was going. It was a challenge and it couldn’t go unanswered; the years with Hatchet had taught him that.
As they filed out of the eating hall, he held back. Sure enough, when he went out, as soon as they were out of sight of any priests, there was the boy who’d emptied his gruel over him. Oops, or whatever his name was. He had a couple of friends with him too, just in case, but Berren didn’t bother worrying about them. He threw himself straight at the big one, fists and feet flying. In the first second, he’d kicked the boy’s legs out from under him and stamped on his knee to keep him down. Then he was on the ground too, all over the other novice, punching and kicking him while his friends were suddenly nowhere to be seen. ‘Oops,’ he said.
When the priests arrived with Tasahre to pull him off, everyone assumed it was all his fault. He was the one still standing, after all. Tasahre made his apologies to the priests, promised she would punish him harshly, and then she took him back out into the practice yard in the dark.
‘Foolishness.’ She shook her head. ‘Words, not fists, Berren. That is the correct way.’
‘Then why do you exist?’ he asked.
‘The threat of a sword so deadly means there is no need for it to be drawn.’
‘Then that’s what I was doing,’ said Berren flatly. ‘Showing off my sword. And now I won’t ever have to do that again.’
She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes bored into him, searching for something, but her face gave him no clue as to what it was or whether she found it. ‘I’m not finished with you,’ she said in the end. ‘Show me again how you threw me.’
So he did, and they wrestled and threw each other in the dark until she understood exactly how he’d beaten her and could do what he’d done with an ease and grace and speed that he’d never have. By the time they finished, he was battered and bruised and full to the brim with the touch of her, the smell of her. Afterwards he lay awake at night in the dormitory he shared with the other boys, listening to their snores, thinking of her and thinking of other things too. He’d been in a place like this before and the memories were of horrors and hurt and fear. What if Master Sy was wrong? What if he was killed? What then? Stay and fight his corner and spend half his days learning stuff he didn’t care about, letters and gods? Or did he run?
The token around his neck felt cool against his skin. Run away from the sword-monks? From Tasahre?
As soon as he was sure everyone was asleep, he slipped out of the dormitory. Getting out of the temple was easy. Getting into Master Sy’s house was easy too, but the thief-taker wasn’t there. It was tempting to climb into his old bedding, with its familiar feel and its familiar smell and fall asleep, safe and away from the snores and the taunts, but that’s what a boy would do, not a man, and so he crept back out the way he’d come, all the way back to his temple bed. He’d try again tomorrow, and again the day after that, and again and a
gain until he found Master Sy once more, over and over until the thief-taker gave in and understood he wasn’t a boy any more, that he was a thief-taker too and that whatever Master Sy was trying to do, he could help.
Tasahre was waiting for him in the morning. Oops, whoever he was, wasn’t forgotten. There was a long lecture from the priest in charge of discipline in the dormitory. Berren got a whipping in front of all the other novices while another priest delivered a short sermon on obedience and humility. The whipping wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared, a ritual humiliation more than anything else, a bit of pain but no real injury – he’d had worse beatings from Master Hatchet every week back before the thief-taker. After that, instead of lessons with Sterm and practice with the sword-monks, he spent the rest of the day with a grumpy old priest who growled at him and showed him around the parts of the temple where the other novices lived, fed him a dry crust and then gave him chores until his knees were raw from scrubbing floors. The old man hardly said a word. When Berren asked how long he would be punished, all he got was a clip round the ear.
‘Stupid boy,’ said the priest, and that was that. No one said anything more, but the meaning was clear. Train with sword-monks or scrub floors. Your choice.
That evening the other novices kept away. He saw them watching him. They eyed him up with fear and, here and there, a flicker of nervous interest. No one tipped food over him. When he finished eating, Tasahre was waiting for him again.
‘You missed training,’ she said.
He shrugged. She knew why.
‘The presence of the sword is enough now, is it?’
This time he bowed. Not that he had a sword, but if Master Sy had taught him anything at all, it was when to keep his mouth shut. For that night and the two nights that followed she took him to the practice yard after dark, after supper and prayers. Away from the other monks, she battered him, taking what Master Sy had taught him and making it even better. Something had changed between them. He was catching her, slowly, and now when she spoke to him, he heard a quiet respect that hadn’t been there before.
After four nights practising in the yard, Tasahre used what Berren had shown her to win two of her fights with the other monks. They looked bemused, uncertain of how they’d been beaten, while the elder dragon wore a frown deep enough to sink a ship.
‘The teacher can learn from the pupil,’ Tasahre said as she bowed, and Berren didn’t know which pupil she meant – him or her.
He slipped away again that night, back to Master Sy’s house. There was a lock on the thief-taker’s door this time, shiny and new, which made him pause. Master Sy had never bothered much with locks before. Locks mean keys and keys are always stolen and Master Sy had shown that he knew all about stealing keys. Better to keep with you everything you value. That was another of the thief-taker’s mantras, always trotted out with a twinge of bitterness; but here it was – a lock. Berren stood and stared at it. Then he climbed onto the handcart they’d taken to Wrecking Point, still resting against the kitchen wall, and pulled himself onto its low roof. From there it took all of a few seconds to wriggle open the catch on the shutters to his old room. He crawled inside and stood and listened. The house was silent, which meant the thief-taker wasn’t asleep in his bed. Master Sy snored like a wounded donkey.
He crept down the stairs. The thief-taker’s table was still covered in papers, dozens and dozens of them, spilling onto the floor, the papers they’d stolen from the Headsman’s strongbox in the House of Records. Berren picked them up and leafed through them again, holding them up to the little windows at the front of the thief-taker’s parlour, and to the moonlit sky beyond, peering at them. They were full of numbers and names and places, the same as before.
He frowned. They were inventories, he saw that now. The numbers talked about swords and arrows and spears. They weren’t about ships, either, they were talking about places. He knew some of the names, parts of Deephaven where the Emperor’s soldiers were barracked: The Old Fort, the Emperor’s Docks and places along the coast, Mirrormere and Bedlam’s Crossing. Torpreah. The City of Spires. There were other places whose names were dimly familiar and others he didn’t know at all.
The more he looked, the more they started to make sense. The lists made a map, a map of the imperial armies.
He sniffed the air and smelled a slight whiff of tallow. Someone had burned a candle here not long ago. Then he checked the kitchen, looking for the crumbs and the fruit peelings and stones and where Master Sy would spit them. They were there and they were fresh. The thief-taker had been here, and not long ago.
He put the papers back and returned to the window, peering outside and wondering what to do. The yard was empty. This time, he decided, he was going to wait. He’d stay here until Master Sy came home again. He made his way back up the stairs, slow and careful so as not to creak the steps. Maybe he’d doze the night away in his old room, waiting for his master.
The door to the thief-taker’s room was open. Berren stopped. It had been closed when he’d come down, he was sure of it. He couldn’t bring himself to go in, but couldn’t help but look either. Everything was there. The table, the bundle of letters tied with a ribbon, the box … Oh gods, the box and the cursed ghost-knife inside it, only tonight, the box was open and he could see the knife, it’s cleaver-blade naked, gleaming in the moonlight that crept between Master Sy’s shutters. Point glittering, curling patterns shimmering.
Downstairs, the front door opened. Berren froze. Footsteps moved though the parlour. He heard Master Sy’s voice, muttering to himself. He started to move, but then he heard a second voice, a soft whispering.
‘Tonight. Done and finished, Syannis. You really think so?’
‘He’s in the Two Cranes. We’ve waited long enough. We can get to him tonight. You lure him out. I’ll be waiting for him.’
‘And then?’
‘Then Radek, that’s what. Look!’ Paper rustled.
‘Someone has been here, Syannis. I smell them.’
‘You’re imagining things. Look! It’s not proof, but when Radek comes it’ll be enough to bury him.’
The voices receded, back outside. The door closed. After a few moments, Berren started to breathe again. He tip-toed to the window and peered down into the yard in time to see the thief-taker vanish into the gloom of the alley at the far end outside. He had someone with him too, cloaked in swirling darkness. Could have been anyone, but the voice wasn’t one that Berren knew.
He took a deep breath and counted to fifty, enough time for Master Sy and whoever was with him to get to the end of the alley. Then he ran to the door, crept outside and listened. Silence. He paused a while longer and then slipped down the alley, following Master Sy’s steps. At the end, where the thief-taker would have turned right towards Four Winds Square, Berren turned left for Weaver’s Row. He started to run. It wasn’t the quickest way to get to the Two Cranes, but an instinct told him that if Master Sy knew he was about, nothing would happen. This way he could still get there first if he ran, and then he could watch and no one would be any the wiser. He jogged up towards the night market and then cut into The Maze, darting from shadow to shadow, taking his chances with the press gangs. He passed the Barrow of Beer, Kasmin’s old place before the Headsman had killed him. It was quiet and dark, its door closed and the windows all shuttered. Here and there he saw other shadows flitting through the dark. They left him to his business and he left them to theirs. That was the quiet rule of The Maze. After dark, you made sure to pay careful attention not to see anyone else who might be about and, if you could, you made quite sure that they saw you not seeing them. You left them alone and they didn’t bother you. Still, he wished he had the sword with him tonight, the one that he’d buried up at Wrecking Point.
The Maze spat him back out onto the Avenue of Emperors and the docks, always busy and never mind the hour. He slipped in among the teamsters and the sailors there, across to the other side, towards the Kingsway, around the warehouse where the arc
her had been on the day Kol had told them about Kasmin. He passed the old watchtower and then slid back into the dark streets between the Kingsway and the Avenue of Emperors until he reached the back yard of the Two Cranes. There were snuffers down on the street, watching the back gates, so he climbed up onto the rooftops next door and jumped straight over their heads onto the roof of the stable block. From there it was easy enough to get up onto the roof of the Two Cranes itself. He slithered on his belly, slow and silent – underneath his feet, the attic of the Two Cranes was where the servants slept and if they heard a noise they’d surely raise the alarm. He waited, peering over the edge of the roof, watching the front doors, breathing slowly and steadily. Did the sword-monks still come, watching out for Master Sy? He didn’t know. He scanned the shadows around the entrance but he didn’t see any of them.
He’d been there for ten minutes when the thief-taker finally arrived. He came on his own and he walked straight past the entrance and the snuffers there, round towards the back gate. Berren crept back up the roof in time to see the thief-taker stop by the two snuffers guarding the yard. A purse changed hands. The snuffers opened the gate and moved aside and then the thief-taker was moving swiftly across the open space behind the inn. He went straight for the stables. His sword was drawn, naked in his hand.
Carefully, Berren crossed the roof and slid down the other side. As he dropped onto the stable roof, he heard a muffled crash and a strangled cry. Alive with the moment, he lay down, very slowly pried back one of the roof tiles and peered inside.
22
GETTING A HEAD
‘Get in!’
There was a crash, the sound of someone being hurled across the room and then of wood splintering and Master Sy swearing. Then footfalls. A horse snorted. Berren heard a quiet splash of water, more quiet footsteps, then a loud one. There was some spluttering. He couldn’t see anything. There were no lights inside the stables. He wrinkled his nose – even though there was almost no wind, the city stink of rotting fish was uncommonly bad all of a sudden.
