The Thief-Taker's Apprentice

by Stephen Deas

  They crossed over the Avenue of Emperors and climbed to The Peak, the top of the low flat hill that overlooked the bay, and the richest part of the city. At the top of The Peak sat Deephaven Square, an enormous paved expanse of marble. One end of the square was fully occupied by the magnificent solar temple, the even more magnificent Guild Hall, and behind them both sat the looming bulk of the Overlord’s Palace. At the other end of the square were the infamous city moneylenders. Along either side, the houses of Aria’s richest merchant-lords competed for attention. In sunlight, gaudy colours and murals and statues of bronze and marble and even gold fought with each other, blended into a confusion of glittering opulence. Now, under the moon, they were muted and dull. Berren looked around, twitching and jittery. Old instincts had him. This wasn’t a place where someone like him was supposed to be. Boys like him disappeared up here.

  The grip on his arm tightened. ‘You like gold, lad? Here are the gold-kings of your city. There’s a mile, maybe a bit more between the river-docks and the sea. The men here make more money every day buying and selling across that mile than you will ever see. Money is the blood of this city. The rest of it, the flesh and bones where everyone else lives: that sprawls inland, that’s the stuff you know. But here is its heart. Ships and money, lad.’

  Berren gawped and nodded as if all that made any sense. The thief-taker tugged him sharply away and headed inland again. Down Lime Street and then along Stonecutter’s Way, leaving Berren to wonder what he should make of all this. They crossed Four Winds Square again and walked into the Courts District, but before they’d gone a dozen yards the other side, the thief-taker turned sharply to his left, almost pulling Berren’s arm out of its socket. They plunged into the shadows of a narrow street where the darkness was so thick that Berren might as well have been blind. Then down an alley and into a yard. The thief-taker stopped, fumbling at the wall with his fingers. He reached under his coat and pulled out a key. He gave it to Berren.

  ‘Open the lock,’ he said, propelling Berren to a tiny iron door set into one wall of the yard and barely visible in the gloom. Berren did as he was told. He offered the key back and it disappeared under the thief-taker’s coat.

  ‘In you go, boy.’ The thief-taker almost threw Berren inside and then quickly followed. He lit a lantern and sat down. Berren looked around. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but certainly not this. The house – what he could see of it – was tiny, even smaller than master Hatchet’s. The furniture was old and battered. There was nothing here worth more than a few copper bits, except what the thief-taker carried. For a moment, Berren was more bewildered than scared.

  ‘Did you think I was rich, boy?’

  Berren said nothing. He nodded.

  ‘You saw the Secretary to the Courts give me a purse and say that it was filled with gold. It’s true; I was well rewarded for hunting down those men and bringing them back. I was well rewarded for others before them and will be rewarded again. But I rarely receive much gold. My rewards are what you see here. This house, in this yard. Other things like that. Goods and services and favours.’ He laughed. ‘I suppose you would have much preferred the shiny golden emperors.’

  Berren nodded.

  ‘And what use is gold, lad? Not good for much except what you can buy with it, and favours are much less easily stolen than gold. How much money does it cost to stay at an inn for a night? A few pennies, perhaps, but my tastes run a little finer than some sailors’ flophouse. Ten emperors must sound like a ransom for a king, but how long, do you suppose, could you live on so much gold?’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘Why am I asking you? To you, it probably seems like enough to last forever. I promise you, boy, that gold would barely last someone like me a year. So I take things like this house instead.’

  Berren frowned, though he still didn’t dare speak. ‘You saw the purse, is that what you’re thinking? But you never saw what was in it. Not until too late, at least.’ He laughed again. All of a sudden he was talking easily, as though they were friends. Sometimes, when Hatchet sent Berren to collect a debt or to deliver a warning, men would speak to him like this. Usually he took it as a sign that they were terrified of Hatchet. Usually they were sweating. With this man he didn’t know what to think.

  The thief-taker seemed to read his thoughts. His demeanour changed again, grew hard and distant. He looked at Berren for a long time before he spoke again.

  ‘I came to this city years ago, looking for something. I had almost nothing. I took what work I could get, for what money I was offered. As you’ve seen, I have a sword, and I know how to use it. Finding honest work was hard. Finding dishonest work was easy. I’ve known plenty of men like your Master Hatchet. I’ve killed for them. I know what they’re like.’ He grinned, showing his teeth. ‘Then I learned more about how this city works. I betrayed the men I worked for, betrayed them for a few crowns. Ever since, I’ve hunted thieves for the money put on their heads. The rewards can be pleasant enough, as you’ve seen.’ He shook his head. ‘Certainly better than picking pockets and lurking in alleys. That way leads you to the mines, boy. There or to your ancestors.’

  Berren listened, feigning interest. When he’d been hauled away from Hatchet he’d assumed it was for one of the usual punishments – a beating, to be shackled in public and have abuse, rotten fish and the occasional stone thrown at him. He didn’t much fear those. Worse was the prospect of being sold to one of the work-yards. Boys caught thieving were often sent to the yards and they were said to be dreadful places. But if the man was going to send him to the yards, why all this?

  ‘Sir?’

  The thief-taker looked at him in surprise. ‘You have a question?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m very sorry I stole your purse, sir. I promise it’ll never happen again.’ It was a practised speech, one that Hatchet had taught them all. He’d used it a few times, too. Usually there was more, about how he was an orphan caring for his little sisters and trying to keep them from starving. That sort of thing. Usually it didn’t work, but the times it did were enough to make it worth a try.

  The thief-taker spat. ‘I’d be a piss-poor thief-taker if I fell for that. Try again, lad. A bit harder this time.’

  ‘Sir, what do you mean to do with me?’

  The man gave him another long look. ‘Better. What’s your name, boy?’

  ‘Berren, sir.’

  ‘Well then, Berren, I mean to keep you, that’s what I mean to do with you. Until you have worked off your debt to me. I have need of someone to keep my possessions, such as they are, in order. Someone to run errands and buy goods. Someone to keep an eye on what ships are in the sea-docks. A boot-cleaner, knife-sharpener, water-carrier and flag-watcher.’

  To Berren this sounded a lot like being a slave. In fact it sounded a lot like being with Master Hatchet except with a much better prospect of an easy and early escape, possibly with some of the thief-taker’s goods or money. So he said nothing.

  ‘Rich men have house-boys who are slaves, is that what you’re thinking?’ His new master bared his teeth with disdain. ‘They’re for decoration, and that’s certainly not what I have in mind for you! No, you’ll work, boy, and work hard. You stole from me. For that you must absolve yourself.’

  Again Berren kept his silence. A few days. Then the man would let his guard down and Berren would be away.

  The thief-taker stared through him. ‘I’m thinking I might take an apprentice,’ he said slowly. ‘Someone to learn what I know.’

  Berren blinked. He suddenly saw the fight in the alley again, as clear and vivid as if he was right back there, drenched in the rain. He saw the thief-taker with his sword, powerful and deadly, cutting down his assailants. ‘Does that mean you’d teach me swords?’ he blurted.

  ‘If I were to decide you were worth taking on as an apprentice?’ The thief-taker grimaced. ‘Yes, lad. In time and if you proved yourself then I suppose I’d teach you the beginnings of how to use a sword.’

  In his head, Berren still
thought he’d run away after a few days. But something warm and bright was building inside his stomach. ‘Sir? May I ask something? You said a thief once stole something precious from you. What happened to him?’

  The man’s laugher died and a bitterness entered his voice. ‘Nothing, lad. Absolutely nothing at all.’

  5

  THE SEAMSTRESS’S DAUGHTER

  He was propelled up a precipitous flight of stairs and pushed into a room. The door closed behind him and he heard the click of a key in a lock. Moonlight filtered in through an open window that looked out onto the yard. The floor was bare boards. Not even a bed. He was halfway through the window when he heard the key in the lock again. The door opened and there was the thief-taker, now with a bundle of blankets under his arm. He looked long and hard at the window and then at Berren.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  ‘No, sir!’ Berren stared at his feet, eyes already half screwed up, waiting for Master Hatchet’s ham of a hand to slap him sideways.

  The thief-taker didn’t move. ‘Don’t lie to me, lad. I can smell a lie and you’d best remember that. It’s a long way down and the ground’s hard out there. You owe me a few days’ hard work, boy. After that I’m not going to stop you from running away if that’s still what you want. But you might think first on where you’d go.’ The thief-taker threw down the blankets and looked at them. Then he looked at Berren, looked at the window, shrugged and left. ‘Night rains are almost here,’ he said as he closed the door. ‘It’s late. Get some sleep in the dry, lad. Be a long hard day for you tomorrow. With a bit of luck you might learn a thing or two.’ The door closed. The lock clicked for a final time. Berren heard the thief-taker’s footsteps creak outside. Heard another door opening into the second upstairs room next door. Two paces inside, door closed, another two paces. The creak of a bed. The grunt and sigh of boots coming off. More bed noise. Then silence for a while and finally snores. Berren stayed very still when he heard the snores, listening to them for a long time. Even then he wasn’t sure he should trust them. He was still listening when he heard a rustle of wind from outside. The pit-pat of raindrops began, turning quickly into a steady hiss.

  Berren reached his hand out of the window. He let the rain fall on his skin for a while and then pulled it back inside, closing the shutters behind him. Very quietly, he spread the thief-taker’s blankets across the floor and lay down on them, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. He listened to the drumming of water on the roof, the spatter of a dozen tiny waterfalls pouring into the yard below.

  He had a room. A room of his own. That deserved some thought. He’d never in all his life had a room of his own. In the orphanage they’d slept almost on top of each other, dozens of them in a long, thin stone room with tiny slits for windows that faced the wrong way to let in any sunlight. When Master Hatchet had bought him for two shiny new pennies – the going rate for a boy just about old enough to push a hand-cart – he’d been put in the attic with all Hatchet’s other boys. The windows had been bigger but they’d still been sleeping on top of each other.

  And now he had a room. His own space. So small that he could touch all four walls with his hands and feet if he lay across it from corner to corner, but still . . . It smelled of old wood and smoke, the unfinished plaster walls were dry and crumbled when he picked at them, but it was his. All his.

  It terrified him. The silence behind the rustle of rain. The aloneness. He lay there, the thief-taker’s last words running through his head, chasing themselves in circles, looking for a way out and not finding any. I’m not going to stop you from running away if that’s what you want. But you might think first on where you’d go. He could go whenever he wanted. It couldn’t be that far down to the ground, could it?

  ‘Boy!’ Berren jerked. The sound of the rain had stopped. Daylight stabbed through the gaps in the shutters. Gods! He’d fallen asleep and now it was morning and light already! A hot flush ran through him and he scrabbled to his feet. The shout came again. ‘Boy! Get down here, lad!’ Footsteps creaking on the stairs. In the House of Hatchet, that was never good. Berren ran for the door, clawing at the handle. It wasn’t locked. He fumbled it open in time to meet the thief-taker eye to eye, three quarters of the way up the steps.

  ‘Lazy.’ The man shook his head. Berren sniffed. He could smell air, fresh outside air on a tiny breeze wafting past his face, and another smell. A people smell. The sort of sickly perfume smell he was used to from the whores next door, only not as strong. Woman smell.

  The thief-taker was looking at him. ‘Good, lad. Yes, we have a visitor. You’d best come and meet her.’

  Berren hesitated, but the thief-taker had his arm before he could even think. He pulled Berren out of his room. ‘Lazy and rude, eh? I won’t tolerate either in this house, lad. Best you get used to that.’

  Tonight. Tonight I’m gone. As long as it doesn’t rain. Night rains. That was the summer coming, that was. Balmy evenings and steamy mornings; night rains, afternoon downpours and sultry days. Thieving season. Gingerly he tiptoed down the steps into the largest room of the house. There was a table and a couple of chairs and a hearth and nothing else. Nothing even to steal.

  There was a girl, too, probably about his age. She was looking at him with her lips pressed tightly together, as though trying not to laugh. She was sitting at the table, half turned towards him with a plate and a crust of bread in front of her smothered in dripping. Her face was plain apart from being covered in freckles. She wore a loose shirt belted tightly at the waist. It showed off curves that demanded attention. Despite himself, Berren realised he was staring.

  A cuff around the head put a quick stop to that. ‘Rudeness, lad. I told you I won’t tolerate it. This here is Lilissa. She breaks bread with us some mornings. Lilissa, this is Berren. No . . .’ He held out a hand as she started to rise. ‘You stay there. This lad here is my apprentice and barely worthy of your notice. Berren, bow to the lady.’

  Berren blinked. ‘What?’ That got him another cuff round the head, hard enough to make him stagger.

  ‘Bow, lad. That’s what a gentleman does when he meets a lady.’

  Feeling stupid, Berren gave a clumsy bow and earned himself yet another cuff.

  ‘No no no. From the waist. Keep your back straight.’ Berren started to try again, but now the thief-taker’s hands were all over him. ‘Back straight. That means not bent in the middle. No, not like that, no, you have to . . .’ The thief-taker sighed as Berren stumbled across the room. ‘Try again. No no no, eyes up, eyes up! When you bow to someone you look at them, not at the floor. Don’t look her in the eye though lad, that’s rude. And not there, either.’ Another cuff almost knocked him over. Berren jumped round.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Watch your eyes, boy. Maybe where you come from you think you can look at a lady how you please, but that will change. Parts of this city are full of bravos with swords who like to show off how dangerous they think they are. Look at the lady on their arm like that when you bow and you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of one of them. And since they have names that matter and families with money and you don’t, no one will care either.’ The thief-taker’s face wrinkled up in disdain. Lilissa just looked frightened.

  ‘But she’s not a lady,’ Berren blurted.

  The thief-taker’s face went cold and flat. ‘Really? And how do you know that, boy? Because she doesn’t dress up in fine clothes?’

  Berren sniffed. ‘Well. Yeh, I suppose.’

  ‘From now on, boy, for as long as you live under this roof and until I say otherwise, every person you meet is either a lady or a gentleman to you. If I see you treat anyone otherwise, there will be punishment. Do you understand?’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Do you understand?’ The thief-taker didn’t even raise his voice but the words were edged with steel. Berren took a long deep breath and nodded.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Yes. For as long as I live under this roof. Exactly that long. He was thin
king of the window again.

  ‘Good. Now we shall do this until you get it at least crudely right, and then, perhaps, over the next month we might even find some grace and elegance in you. You may practice while we eat. Lilissa, please pay no attention to my apprentice for however long he chooses to remain here. Once we’ve broken our fast, Berren will be carrying out your usual chores, so we’ll have more time for your lessons today.’

  6

  MOON STREET

  ‘Water, air, earth and fire, sun-heart shields from dark one’s ire

  Fire, earth, air and water, moon-pride brings us naught but slaughter

  Air and water, fire and earth, dead god lifts forgotten curse

  Earth and water, fire and air, star-song rends what must repair

  Black moon comes, round and round

  Black moon comes, all fall down.’

  After the song came the muffled sound of giggling from outside. Berren groaned and rolled over. Light filtered in through the window.

  ‘Oi!’ The shout rang through the whole house. Every noise did. Four tiny rooms, walls so thin that a good kick would bring them down, old timbers that creaked and groaned in the wind. Wherever you were, you heard everything. But next to Hatchet’s place, the quiet was deafening. More than the singing and the laughing and the shouting, it was the quiet that came after that roused Berren from his torpor. He wasn’t used to waking up on his own. When he opened the shutters and looked out into the yard, a gang of ragged dirty children were dancing around, shouting and pointing up at his window.

  ‘Thief-taker man, thief-taker man

  Is he hungry, is he thirsty?

  If he is he’ll do you dirty

  Thief-taker man, thief-taker man

  Run while you can from the thief-taker man.’

  They stood there, jumping up and down, shrieking and laughing. As soon as the thief-taker opened his door they ran, skittering helter-skelter out of the yard and away.