by Stephen Deas
‘Kelm’s Teeth! Who’d have thought that a life of rape and murder could leave a man so fat?’
That was Master Sy’s voice. There was another, one he didn’t know, the whispering voice from before, but then there was a coughing and a third, gulping, gasping for air.
‘You!’ The Headsman.
The realisation broke whatever spell was freezing Berren still. He needed to be closer. Gently, he slipped across the roof to a little shuttered window that opened into the stable attic. The shutters were loose. He pried them slowly apart, and then whipped one open and dropped inside, into the hayloft.
‘What was that?’ The voices down below fell quiet. All that separated Berren from the men below was a thin layer of creaky wooden boards and he had no idea which ones might squeak and which ones wouldn’t. He lowered himself down, lay flat and pressed his ear to the floor, sweating and shaking. One whisper of noise and the thief-taker would know he was there, and then … Whatever the and then was, he didn’t want to know.
‘Noises in the wind, Syannis. Ghosts and night-creepers, nothing more,’ said the whispery voice.
More footsteps. ‘You have a choice,’ said Master Sy, as amiably as if he was commenting on the weather. ‘Your life ends tonight, either way. I can do it quickly or I can linger. I’d like to linger. I’ve a decade of lingering to catch up on. So please, don’t tell me who in Deephaven is a part of this. Let me take my time over you.’
‘Time is dripping by, Syannis,’ said the other voice. ‘Wasting.’ It was brittle, like old dry paper rustling in a breeze. ‘Take his head and be done with it.’
‘Treacherous necromancer!’ The Headsman again. ‘Cut me loose, bastard. We’ll settle this the old way.’
‘See?’ Master Sy snorted. ‘Saffran wants to do it his way. That would be quickest and we’d know the answer, but I want to see your face. I want to see your pain. I want to see it wrenched out of you as though I was tearing out your heart. So why are you here? Weren’t Tethis and Kalda enough?’
Saffran? Saffran Kuy? The witch-doctor?
‘Deephaven is not Tethis, Syannis.’ The whispery voice sounded bored. Perhaps a touch impatient, but only insofar as it had better things it could be doing.
‘Yes! So they would have accomplices within the city!’
‘Armies would march from the fortresses around Varr, vast and fast, and how would we stop them, eh? The Emperor would smash us flat rather than lose us. Crush and rend us to ash and sand. How would you stop such a fate?’
Someone lit a lamp. Pale orange light flickered. Berren moved his head and put an eye to a crack in the floor. He could see the top of Master Sy’s head, slowly shaking, but he couldn’t see anyone else. He could smell something, though. The smell of dead fish, even worse than it had been outside; stronger and richer, almost deep enough to make him retch.
‘I want to hear it from him while he lives!’ Master Sy moved out of sight, and then the familiar sound of fists pounding flesh began. Berren winced. He’d heard that too many times before, back when he’d been with Master Hatchet. ‘This bloated turd has no more power than the Overlord here holds in his little finger! He’s a foot soldier. Foot soldiers advance and die, sacrificed to save more potent pieces. I want to know who the Dragon is.’ The edge to Master Sy’s voice set flies fluttering in Berren’s stomach – it was like steel being sharpened on a whetstone. He wriggled back and forth so he could either see the top of Master Sy’s head again, or an occasional glimpse of the Headsman, sprawled against the wall. All he saw of the witch-doctor was a fleeting shadow.
The Headsman spat. ‘Get on with it, bastard. You won’t get out of here alive! Every snuffer here is mine. And even if you kill me, Radek is coming. When he does, it’ll be the end of you!’
The thief-taker spat right back at him. ‘Yes, I know Radek is coming. I delight in knowing that. In fact, the only reason I waited so long for this was to make sure, certain beyond any possible doubt, that Radek will be coming. Believe me, I’ll be sharpening my sword every day in anticipation. All I need to know is when.’ There was a pause, but whatever happened, Berren couldn’t see. ‘Yes, you overfed leech, I’ve been watching you for weeks. You have no idea how hard it was to wait. I know you murdered Kasmin.’
A harsh laugh. ‘Kasmin was a thief and a liar.’
‘He was a fine man once.’ Master Sy’s voice was flat.
‘He was a killer and a drunkard. Putting him down was a mercy. Do you want to know how we found him?’
Everything went silent. Berren listened to his heart, pounding so hard it seemed that everyone must hear it. Then a crash shook the stables. The door flew open, kicked almost off its hinges by some heavy boot. Berren wriggled frantically, trying to see. Master Sy was moving. At least three more people had come in. More than that, Berren couldn’t tell.
‘The warlock!’ a new voice called. ‘Get the–’ There was a crash. The lamplight died. Steel rang on steel. Berren heard a gasp, a shout, abruptly cut short, and then a screaming that went on and on, a screaming the likes of which he’d never heard. It was a keening, wailing cry of anguish and terror and dread and it ran through Berren and pinned him to the floor. Other noises pierced it: a crash, another crash, a shout, the smash of something thrown against a wall. But over the top, the constant howl held Berren fast. It took him a moment to realise that the noise was even human. It was the scream of something worse than death. He clamped his hands over his ears but even that didn’t help.
He ought to run. He could slip back out to the roof and be away. No one would possibly hear him now. Yet he couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe.
As suddenly as it had started, the chaos from below came to an end. There was no more crashing, no more shouting. The flickering light of a candle appeared.
‘Men will come now,’ breathed the whispering voice. ‘Soon and fast.’
‘All right, Kuy,’ said Master Sy. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
Berren heard sobbing.
‘You see, in the end, you fat feeble prick, I don’t care why you were here. I don’t care why you came. I don’t care what you’ve got in your ship dressed up as crates of black tea. I don’t care who or what or why or what war you’re trying to start and I don’t care what you think you could offer me to leave you be. You took my life, you murdering shit.’
The Headsman’s voice, when he spoke, was tight with pain. ‘A pox on you, bastard! You say you’re a godly man and you serve a thing like that …’
‘I serve my kingdom,’ answered the thief-taker evenly. He punched the Headsman in the face, knocking him out of Berren’s view. The Headsman lapsed into sobbing whines. Berren couldn’t see either of their faces.
‘I’ll give you anything I have.’
‘No, no. Gods! It’s too late for that. All you have that I want is your silence. I want you to disappear. I want you to end.’
‘Quickly, Syannis!’ hissed the witch-doctor from the House of Cats and Gulls.
‘I know about Radek! He’s coming! He’s …’
The Headsman said no more. His last sound was a punctured sigh. Then there came a heavy thud. Try as he might, Berren couldn’t find a crack in the floor wide enough to let him see what had happened.
‘I know, I know,’ said Master Sy softly. ‘He’s been looking for me for a long time, and now word is on its way to him that I’m here. We’ll hear all about it later, won’t we now.’ Wet fleshy sounds floated up through the floor, mixed with the sort of crunching Berren was used to hearing from dogs when they were chewing on a bone. Very slowly, he eased himself to where there was a slightly bigger crack in the floor.
Master Sy was hacking through the Headsman’s neck with his sword.
Berren’s heart nearly flew out of his chest. He rolled away and stared at the ceiling and clamped a hand over his mouth, partly to stop himself from gasping and partly to stop himself from being sick. He lay very still, wishing he was invisible. Kasmin had been decent, Master Sy was right enough a
bout that. He’d saved Berren’s life once, back when Jerrin One-Thumb had been about. He’d become something of a gruff-but-kindly uncle and Berren wouldn’t shed a single tear for the man who’d killed him. But still, hacking a man’s head off? Why?
When it was done, Berren thought he heard the thief-taker and the witch-doctor, slipping away. He couldn’t be sure. His ears were still filled with the terrible sound of Master Sy’s sword slicing at the man’s flesh. For a long time he lay where he was, flat on his back, not daring to move. What if Master Sy hadn’t gone anywhere? What if he was simply lurking downstairs in the darkness? What if the witch-doctor was still there, waiting for him?
There were bodies in the room downstairs for sure. He didn’t know how many, but more than one.
No, he needed to move, to get away, and as if to prove it, a gang of snuffers from the Two Cranes burst in, six or seven of them with lanterns from the inn.
‘Holy Kelm!’
‘Khrozus’ Blood!’
He couldn’t know what they were seeing, but he could imagine it. Three dead men and a fourth with his head missing, blood everywhere.
‘Sun and Moon!’
‘Well don’t just stand there, you onion-eyed oaf! Go and get someone!’
‘Who?’
‘Gods! I don’t know! Everyone! Don’t touch anything!’
The snuffers moved back outside. As quietly as he could, Berren tip-toed back to the window. He slipped out and closed the shutters behind him and lay quiet and still on the stable roof. The little yard behind the inn had half a dozen snuffers in it now. He didn’t dare move.
A few seconds later, they found the bodies of the two men who’d been guarding the back gate, the ones Master Sy had paid off to let him in. That was enough. They ran back inside, filling the night with cries of murder and alarm. Berren waited until they were gone, then jumped down into the yard, bolted for the open gate, and fled into the night as fast as he could.
23
THE NEED TO KNOW
Berren slipped across the city, silent and unseen, back into the temple and crept to his bed. He lay there with his arms wrapped around his head, trying to cast out the sounds so that he could sleep; except, even when he did sleep, they came back in his dreams. That was worse. His imagination provided what his eyes couldn’t. He saw himself watching Master Sy split the Headsman’s head from his shoulders. In his dreams, the Headsman was never quite dead. His tongue lolled, his eyes rolled and strange noises escaped his lips. As his head fell from his neck, some last word guttered from his throat, so bent and broken that Berren couldn’t understand what it was, no matter how many times he heard it. He woke up, sweating, his rough woollen blanket twisted around him. This was his thief-taker master? It seemed like madness. Master Sy was always so calm, always so assured. Never kill unless you have to. If you draw a blade you have already failed.
No, not always so calm. Underneath the surface was a rage like no other. Berren had seen it before. He’d seen more than a dozen men die on the end of his master’s blade, and the thief-taker wasn’t shy to use it once his ire was raised. But Master Sy had never chopped a man’s head off his shoulders before. It had been so … messy, that was the thing. Not a clean single stroke like an executioner, but hacking over and over, like a butcher with a cleaver having at a thick joint of meat. And the blood …
He was late to practice that morning, but once there, he immersed himself in it. He let his muscles do what they did every day, stopped thinking, turned his mind blank and in his head, he walked away from everything. By the end of the day, he’d had more curses and taps from Sterm’s cane than he could count, and Tasahre was giving him the strangest of looks. He thought he might have fought unusually well when they’d sparred.
Why? Why had Master Sy taken the man’s head? A ghoulish trophy? Kasmin was more than just a friend for Master Sy, but still – that wasn’t the thief-taker he knew; no, there had to be a reason for it.
The dreams left him alone that night. The next morning, Tasahre was shaking him awake.
‘A girl monk in with the boy novices?’ he mumbled at her. ‘Whatever will the elder dragon say?’
Tasahre glared at him. ‘Come,’ she hissed. ‘Quickly.’
Outside it was still dark. On the eastern horizon, out across the estuary, the sky was tinged with pink. Today was Abyss-day, the day the old gods pierced a hole through the heart of the world. What did she want with him on Abyss-day? There wasn’t supposed to be any training.
Outside, there were soldiers in the temple. Not just the usual ones in yellow with their sunburst shields but soldiers in the colours of the city Overlord, lots of them, passing yawns between them as though it was some sort of game. The other dragon-monks were there too, still as statues, watching, tense and prickling with hostility. At the open gates, he caught a glimpse of a man dressed in grey robes leaning quietly against the walls, his face hidden beneath a cowl. Grey was the colour of death. He thought he saw the man meet his eye and wag a finger, but then some soldiers passed between them and when they were gone, so was the man in grey; instead Berren saw someone else, almost the last person he’d expected to see, striding across the temple yard with a cadre of soldiers trailing behind him. Justicar Kol. Whatever this was, it wasn’t about a naughty novice who played truant in the night.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
Tasahre put a hand on his shoulder. It was a soft touch and yet it made him jump as though someone had set off a firecracker. ‘I don’t know. A man has been murdered. There is talk of conspiracy and treason and assassination, but it is all whispers. The elder dragon says we have a snake in our nest.’ She sounded unsettled. ‘They are looking for your master, too,’ she added softly. She nodded towards the justicar. ‘That one is here to speak with you.’
‘What? Why? Why are they looking for Master Sy?’
‘I don’t know. Has he done something wrong?’
Berren shook his head. But shaking his head wasn’t enough – the pictures and the sounds ran in circles inside him and he wanted to be rid of them. It would have been easy to tell her how he’d slipped out, how he’d lain in wait, and then how Master Sy had come with the Headsman and the terrible things that had followed. About the fight in the House of Records and the bodies they’d taken out to the Wrecking Point. It all wanted to come out. Right back to the archer up on the warehouse roof.
The hand on his shoulder tightened. ‘If he has done something wrong, Berren, the crime is his, not yours. You are his apprentice, that is all. You have nothing to fear.’
Really? Nothing? Because it didn’t feel like nothing.
At the gates, the figure in grey was there again.
‘Let this city man ask his questions. I will be with you. Is he a friend? He says you know him.’
‘Who’s that?’ He pointed towards the gates, to the man in grey. His finger was shaking. He wasn’t even sure why, just that everything was wrong, everyone was wrong, nowhere was safe and he needed to run away from all of them. The urge was building up inside him, irresistible.
‘Who?’ Tasahre frowned.
‘There!’ But the man in grey was gone again.
‘Berren! Stop! You’re shaking!’ She reached out to him again. Her hand on his shoulder was firm and warm, and in her face, all he could see was concern for him. He felt the panic ebb away. ‘What is it that makes you afraid, Berren?’
He wasn’t sure. Losing everything all at once, maybe. He shrugged and shook his head. He couldn’t give an answer that made any sense, and even if he could, he was quite sure he wouldn’t want to share it.
‘Whatever it is, you must find it and face it. Fear is the killer of thought.’ She frowned and let go of him. ‘There. It is fading. Come. You must talk to this city man who claims to be a friend and then he can go.’ She kept looking at all the soldiers scattered around the temple, the Overlord’s men. The other dragon-monks were prowling the temple yard like hungry tigers. He’d never seen them like this, never seen
them so on edge. It was infectious.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked again.
‘I don’t know, Berren. I don’t know.’
Kol had seen them and was coming towards them. Maybe he would know. Berren tried not to think about what he’d seen at the Two Cranes. A part of him wanted to let it all come out – Kol was a friend, right? But he couldn’t.
‘Berren.’ Kol stopped in front of him. He looked as nervous as the monks. He glanced at Tasahre. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk? Quietly? Preferably alone.’
‘I …’ Berren looked back at Tasahre.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Berren is my student and I am responsible for him. I will hear your questions too.’
‘You?’ Kol snorted. ‘What has any of this to do with you, monk?’
‘This is my temple and we are outside your law,’ she said, quiet but firm. ‘Come.’
There were soldiers everywhere, and men Berren didn’t know but who wore fine clothes and swords as though they were lords. Tasahre marched past them all, past a cluster of priests swathed in whispers who all stopped and stared as they passed. She took them to where the monks lived and slept, to their meditation room.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Speak your piece, city man, then go.’
Kol glared at her. ‘I wish to speak to Berren alone.’
‘I will not leave him with you. I don’t trust you.’
‘You do know who he is, girl?’
‘Of course.’
The justicar was seething. At other times, Berren knew, he would never have taken this. He would have shouted at her, driven her away somehow, or else walked away himself, too proud to be defied; but those were other days. Today he was … Kol was almost scared!
‘Boy, send her away,’ he hissed. ‘Do it!’
