The Thief-Taker's Apprentice

by Stephen Deas

  And anyway, there was always Master Hatchet. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a place to go. He took a deep breath. Shipwrights was a part of the fishing quarter and the fishing quarter was a huge place, but Loom Street was close enough to the docks. With a bit of luck he could get there before the streets got really dark. He set off again at a run. That was the thing. Never stop anywhere that wasn’t out in the open. Never stop in the shadows. Never stop if someone shouted at you or if a hand grabbed at you. Never stop at all if you could help it. Not here in the back alleys of the sea-docks. He didn’t stop when he reached the harbour and the waterfront either. There was less to fear among the crowds of sailors and the teamsters. Some of them were drunk, but most were still hard at work. The work on the docks never stopped. There were always people there at all hours of the night, hauling bales and crates to and from the boats at the edge of the sea.

  He slowed down again once he passed through the Sea Gate and reached Reeper Hill. Every house on the street here was a brothel, from the crumbling ramshackle town-houses at the bottom by the docks to the almost-mansions at the top and back to the squalid shanty-town of huts down the other side on the edge of the fishing quarter. Everyone came to Reeper Hill. Sailors and dockers mostly but princes and priests too; you’d find them all if you knew where to look. No one wanted any trouble on Reeper Hill. Although he’d learned the hard way not to stop and stare for too long at any of the ladies out by their doors.

  Near the top of the hill on the fishing quarter side there was a small road that led out around the north side of the sea-docks. Further on it petered out into a path that led eventually to nothing much except the jumble of rocks at the top of Wrecking Point. Berren followed it a little way and then turned down a muddy track, skittering down the steep slope of the ridge and into the stinking backside of Shipwrights. The smell reached out and grabbed him like a hand, shaking him to his senses. He’d forgotten how strong it was here, or perhaps he’d never noticed because he’d never really known anything else. He hopped and skipped down the path, dancing from one uneven step to the next without even looking. This was home, this was, and between that and the smell, he was almost smiling when he reached the bottom. He squeezed through the darkness between the twine-maker’s house and the gloomy but familiar half-collapsed bulk of an old compass-maker’s workshop. When he came out the other side, he stopped. Loom Street. He sniffed. Over in this part of the city, the air was rich. A heavy base scent of the sea and of rotting fish. A steady mid-tone of manure from the dung heaps. High notes of sweat, of soured milk, of vinegar, of cheap perfume, depending on the time of day. They don’t get air like this up on The Peak. Makes you strong, it does. When the smell from the fishing wharves got particularly bad, that’s what Master Hatchet always said, regular as the tides.

  He walked carefully. The cobbles of Loom Street were either uneven and full of holes or worn smooth and slick with a fine slurry of rain and sea-water and dung. The locals here had a saying: You could always tell a Loom Street boy from how clean their hands were. On Loom Street you learned the hard way to wash your hands before you put them in your mouth.

  The alley behind the tool-makers’ was as dark as it always was in the middle of the night. Berren was used to it. Used to not being able to see his feet or even his hand in front of his face. They used to run down here, even in the pitch black, but today he was more cautious. The alley had a few traps for the unwary. Buckets of slurry, brooms propped up against the wall. Things that would make a noise and give a warning if anyone came. Berren picked his way past them. He reached the little door that led up a tiny flight of steps into the brothel next to Master Hatchet’s. It was ajar. A breath of warm air brushed his face, moist and heavy with cheap perfume. A few steps on, the alley ended in one last entrance. Master Hatchet’s house. In daylight he could have gone the other way, around into the yard where they kept the dung-carts. The yard had a gate, though, and that was always bolted shut after sunset.

  He knocked on the door. Quietly at first, then louder. Hatchet didn’t sleep much. Except sometimes when he went out drinking all night and the boys woke up the next morning to the sound of his snores shaking the house.

  Berren banged on the door again. This time he heard footsteps, heavy and slow. A glimmer of candlelight seeped through the gaps around the door where it didn’t quite fit in its frame.

  ‘Who is it and what do you want?’ growled a voice from the other side. Berren’s heart jumped inside his chest. A little bit of fear, a little bit of hope, maybe a little bit of despair. Master Hatchet.

  ‘It’s me, sir.’ His voice had a tremor to it.

  ‘Who’s me? And what do you want?’

  ‘It’s Berren, sir.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Berren. Had a boy work here once called Berren. Worthless little shit, he was. Can’t be that Berren though. Boy was stupid all right, but not even he was dim enough to come back to Loom Street after he’d taken up with a thief-taker. So you must be a different Berren.’

  ‘Set the dunghill wet so it may rot and be odourless; also set it out of sight; the seed of thorn will decay and die in it. Asses’ dung is best to make a garden with; sheep’s dung is next; and after that the goat’s and also horses’ and mares’. Swine’s dung is the worst and should be kept apart and thrown into the sea.’ All you needed to know to be a city dung-collector. Hatchet made them recite it every day when they went off with their carts. It was the closest thing they had to a password. There was another long silence. The door didn’t open.

  ‘Piss off, boy,’ he said, at last.

  ‘Master, please . . .’ No, that was a mistake. Begging and pleading with Hatchet never got anyone anywhere.

  ‘Run away from your new master, did you, little thief-taker boy?’

  Berren swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

  Now the door did open. Hatchet stood there in a night-gown, clutching a candle-holder. He gave it to Berren. ‘Here. Hold this.’

  Berren took the candle. Hatchet bent over and reached for something just inside the door. ‘Here’s your welcome home, boy.’ He stood up, holding a bucket, and threw the contents. Berren jumped sideways, but not quickly enough to completely dodge whatever Hatchet had thrown at him. Cold wetness slashed his chest. The candle went out, plunging them back into darkness. Suddenly he couldn’t even see Hatchet, even though he knew exactly where he was. He stepped very carefully away, backing silently down the alley, heart pounding in his chest.

  ‘Your new master gives me the ghosts, boy. I want nothing to do with him. I don’t want him coming back here and I don’t want to see your sorry little face again either. I raised you. Fed you. Sheltered you, and what do you do? So piss off you little ingrate.’ He picked up the stick he always kept by the door and banged it on the cobbles. ‘You come here again, if I even see you on my patch, I’ll give you the thrashing of your life. If you’re lucky.’

  The door slammed shut. Berren was alone.

  12

  SHELTER

  He stood in the alley, wet and scared. The stink of pig-shit wafted around him. His breathing was ragged. He was trembling. Anger flushed through him. Sheltered me? You sold me! His fists clenched. He had a mad urge to rush at the door and pound on it until Hatchet came back and then punch and kick all this rage away. But that could only go one way, a bad one. As far as Berren knew, Hatchet had never lost a fight with anyone. He took a deep breath. Loom Street. The arse end of Wrecking Point and Reeper Hill in the middle of the night. Not a good place to be. Not that he had anything much worth taking, but that didn’t mean people wouldn’t try.

  He moved back down the alley to the door of the brothel and gave it a very gentle push. It opened. That was usual enough. Club-Headed Jin would be waiting up the top of the steps if anyone came in. Now there was someone who could have given Master Hatchet a good run when it came to fisticuffs, but as far as Berren knew, the two of them were friends. At least they used to go and get drunk together, which, as far as Berren could tel
l, made them friends.

  The smell of pig-shit followed him through the door. Berren sniffed at his shirt and then recoiled. Jin was good-natured enough. Maybe he’d let Berren stay the night if he kept out of the way, but not with him smelling like a pigsty. With a sigh he took off his shirt and threw it back into the alley. It was a good shirt. Master Sy had given it to him, and he was fairly sure that Lilissa had brought it. Might even have made it. It was plain and simple and it scratched at his skin, but it was easily the nicest shirt he’d ever had.

  Chances were it would still be there in the morning. He could pick it up then, take it out to the sea and wash it clean. Maybe.

  ‘Oi-oi!’ Berren jumped. He looked around, back up the steps from the doorway. Dim light framed the shape of Club-Headed Jin. ‘Who’s that down there?’

  ‘Berren,’ said Berren. Jin knew all of Hatchet’s boys. He was easy on them most of the time, as long as they didn’t mess with his women. The older boys often spent their money here, if they had any.

  ‘Thought you were gone. Heard you’d taken up with a thief-taker. What you doing back here?’

  ‘I don’t want to be a thief-taker.’ He found he wasn’t nearly as sure of that as he was when he’d left Master Sy. He tried to remind himself of the thief-taker’s temper. Of the flying ink pot that could have taken his head off. Instead he found himself remembering fresh clean water and meals that were simple but at least not stale or mouldy. Remembering walking with Master Sy through the city streets, gawping at everything, pretending to pay attention to what the thief-taker was saying about who lived where and did what and why. Remembering Lilissa.

  Jin made a means-nothing-to-me sort of noise. ‘Well you can’t stay here and I doubt Hatchet’s going to take you back. Running away from your master?’ He drew a long breath between his teeth. ‘Boys should know better. Now you’ve run away from two.’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to be a thief-taker.’ He shouted it up the stairs. ‘Hatchet sold me.’

  ‘Oi.’ Jin frowned. ‘Keep it down.’

  Berren sighed and flopped down on the bottom of the steps. ‘I don’t know where to go.’

  ‘You’re not staying here.’

  ‘Where do I go, then?’

  ‘Home. You stupid?’

  ‘Up Reeper Hill and through the back of the docks? In the middle of the night?’

  Jin thought about this. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Master Hatchet threw a bucket of pig-swill at me. He missed,’ he added quickly, ‘But it’s all over the alley.’

  ‘Outside my door?’ Jin made a discontented rumbling noise. ‘We’ll have to have words about that. Who’s going to come in through that stink, eh?’ He blew out a great lungful of air and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s late anyway. Not many fellows about this time of night. I won’t be sheltering one of Master Hatchet’s boys if they’ve crossed him some, but I suppose if you sat down there all through the night and kept very quiet and very still, I might not even notice you were there. Mmmm.’ He shrugged again and then turned and vanished back into his room at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Thank you, Master Jin.’

  ‘Quiet and still,’ rumbled a voice.

  So he sat on the steps, hugging his knees to his chest to keep warm. At some point he must have nodded off, because when he looked up it was light outside. Not proper daylight, but the grim grey light of dawn. His arms and legs were stiff. The world was quiet. He crept up the steps to look for Master Jin, but the room at the top was empty and he knew better than to go any further; instead he went outside. His shirt was lying in the alley where he’d left it. When he picked it up, the stench almost made him sick. Then he trotted out of the alley and turned right down Loom Street, all the way to the end where it petered out into a shingle beach scattered with ropes and little boats turned upside down, with nets hung up to dry in amongst the broken bones of shattered ships. This was the thin end of the fishing district. South of Wrecking Point and north of The Peak and Deephaven Point was the huge Horseshoe Bay, home of the sea-docks. The waters there were deep and sheltered. North of Wrecking Point, starting here, the waters were shallower and when the winds came in off the sea, they howled straight up the beach and onto the shore. A whole string of small bays and coves were home to the Deephaven fishing fleet; in fact what the city called the fishing district extended for more than twenty miles up the coast and the fishermen who lived in the scattered villages at the far end of that would have been surprised to be told that they lived in Deephaven at all. Deephaven did that. It reached out along its waterways like a greedy prince stretching out to grasp at everything within reach.

  Berren felt a pang of anger. Those were Master Sy’s words, from one of the rare times he’d been given a break from beating his head against his letters. They’d walked half a dozen miles together along the bank of the River Arr to see how the city never quite came to an end. Past the river-docks, through Sweetwater and past Sweetwater Bend where rich and poor alike collected drinking water from the river before it flowed beside the city proper. Up into the gentle affluence of the River District, where small markets and expensive riverside inns mixed with open farmland.

  He shook himself and picked a path down to the sea. The water was cold this morning, the waves gentle and calm. Most of the fishing boats huddled together on the north side of each cove where they’d have shelter from the weather if they needed it. The southern corners like this became something of a wilderness. Debris washed up from storms past lay scattered about, all the pieces too big or too useless to be carried away. They’d stay until winter, when the beach would be picked clean of its wrecks. Anything that would burn and keep people warm at night.

  He wasn’t alone. The fishermen were already up. Old men mostly, down here. The old, the broken. People who eked out a desperate living as best they could. They’d take their little boats and row out into the water and throw out their nets and take what they could from the bay. None of them paid much attention to Berren as they groaned and dragged their boats into the waves. When he’d finished rinsing and wringing out his shirt, Berren stayed and watched them for a while. A breeze was slowly but steadily picking up, the usual wind blowing from the north-west, trying to push the fishermen back onto the shore. They had no choice but to fight it, labouring through the waves, hauling themselves out through the breakers, fighting against the will of the ocean. Berren shuddered. There was always this. Whatever else the city dangled in front of him and then took away, there was always this. He could spend his life breaking his back against the sea just to make sure he didn’t starve.

  Of course, if you didn’t come from around here, you wouldn’t know that the leaky boats that these old fishermen used weren’t their own. They paid rent for them, every day, whether they used them or not, to men like Master Hatchet. Most days the rent cost them almost everything they caught.

  He shivered again. The wind was chilly and he was already cold. He turned and left the fishermen to their work. He didn’t know where he was going to go, only that it was somewhere else. Anywhere but here.

  13

  OLD FRIENDS

  With nothing better to do, he wandered back up Reeper Hill. Outside the rich houses at the top, a few carriages still stood waiting to take the young princes of the city back home after their all-night orgies. Berren gave them a wide berth. Everyone knew about this part of Reeper Hill. Rich young men only a few years older than him, drunk, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, intoxicated with the most fashionable drugs from across the sea. Tempting targets, but the mentors and the bodyguards, the snuffers who looked after them, knew all about muggers and pickpockets. Most of the men who stood guard up here were old enough to have fought in the war from before Berren had been born. They were Khrozus’ soldiers, boys from the countryside. They’d eaten rats and dogs and crabs. They’d stripped the beach of seaweed and made it into soup. In the end, they’d eaten each other as they died. They’d seen an emperor’s son crucified alive over the
city gates to keep the enemy at bay. And in the end, they’d come through all that and they’d won. A lot of them had stayed.

  Each time he came to a carriage, he made sure to walk on the other side of the street. Most of what he knew about the men who stood guard up here he’d learned from Master Sy; but that they wouldn’t think twice about gutting him and leaving him to bleed to death was something he’d known for a long time. No one cared what happened to boys like Berren. Even Master Hatchet.

  Except Master Sy.

  He sighed and stopped in the middle of the street. He couldn’t go back to the thief-taker now, could he? Even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t, he reminded himself.

  ‘Hoy!’ He jumped at the sound of the cry. Someone leaning against one of the carriages was looking straight at him. Someone with a sword. The man made a little gesture, waving him away, and then drew a finger across his throat. Berren gulped and nodded. Standing in the middle of Reeper Hill, bare-chested and barefoot so early in the morning was no place to be; and so he hurried on, down the other side of the hill and into the early morning bustle of the sea-docks. At least there he didn’t stand out. The bells from the solar temples were ringing, spewing the devout back onto the wharves after their dawn ceremonies. The temples here did a good trade. Blessings for sailors about to go back out to sea and cures for drunkenness and all-night hangovers. The solar priests did real magic too. Hardly anyone ever saw it but everyone knew, everyone heard stories.

  In your civil war, when Khrozus the Butcher rose up against the Sapphire Throne, the Autarch of the Sun in Torpreah denounced him and called upon his priests everywhere to defy the usurper. Yet when Khrozus took Deephaven and Emperor Talsin laid siege to it, the priests of Deephaven very carefully took no sides at all. Why? Why would they do that, Berren?