The Thief-Taker's Apprentice

by Stephen Deas

  Berren decided to try and push his luck one more time. ‘He called you a prince,’ he said, which wasn’t quite true, but close enough.

  ‘No he didn’t.’

  ‘Well he called you something like that.’ Yes, and it wasn’t the first time either.

  Behind Master Sy’s eyes, the shutters had come down. Berren had gone too far; or else the thief-taker had realised that he’d said too much. Master Sy shook his head and took another swig of beer. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, lad. We used to call each other all sorts of things.’

  Which might have been true, but certainly wasn’t the truth he’d been looking for. Something to remember for the next time he ever saw his master drunk, perhaps. But enough for now. Instead, Berren waved his fork at Master Sy’s plate.

  ‘Can I have your pie then?’ He put on his best grin, showing off his teeth. Master Sy didn’t smile though. He merely pushed the plate across the table.

  ‘Go ahead, lad. I think I should go to sleep. You’re in the stables, in the hayloft.’

  ‘Master? When I woke you up on the boat, you said something. I didn’t understand. What did you mean?’

  ‘Said something?’ Master Sy shook his head, and there came that forced half-smile again. ‘No, lad. I didn’t say anything. If you really want to know, I was dreaming I was back home again. Some time years from now. And nothing had changed for the good.’ He grunted and shrugged. ‘Seeing Kasmin, you see. Brings it all back.’

  Berren watched him go. The thief-taker walked steadily, no sign that he was half in his cups. For a few seconds, Berren even wondered if it had all been an act, whether Master Sy hadn’t been drunk at all. But that was foolish and didn’t really make much sense when you came to look at it.

  With a happy sigh, he turned back to the remains of the thief-taker’s pie. His master might have gone to sleep, but the night was yet young and he had every intention of making the best of it.

  20

  BEDLAM’S CROSSING

  Berren yawned and rubbed his eyes. The lightermen worked around him, oblivious. Now and then they threw him a sly glance. He’d spent half the night with them. They hadn’t known anything much about Master Sy or thief-taking, but they’d known a lot about Bedlam’s Crossing, and about the river, too. And they’d known a lot about how to prize pennies out of Berren’s purse. He’d listened to their stories with eager ears and marvelled, paying for each of them with more flagons of pale ale. Stories of the City of Spires with its five curving towers of gleaming white stone, so tall that they scratched the sky. Of Varr and its palaces and temples, all carved from lumps of solid gold as big as a ship. Of swamp-hags who swam across the river from the other side at night and lured men away to a watery grave. Of the river mermaids who sometimes saved them and who were more beautiful even than the emperor’s new queen. Of the strange lands further up the river, of three-headed lions and giant snakes with the faces of men and witches who turned sailors to stone. Of sea-monsters that swallowed entire ships.

  They were laughing at him now but he didn’t mind. After he’d left them, he’d crept back through the way station and found the last few drunks, hopelessly in their cups. He’d quietly cut their purses. Master Sy would probably throw him in the river if he ever found out, but he wouldn’t and old habits died hard. No, on the whole the night had gone well.

  ‘There’s a thing I’ve learned,’ whispered a voice at his shoulder. Berren jumped a full foot into the air, spun around, lost his balance and almost fell over the side of the barge. When he finally gathered himself together, the thief-taker stood over him. His face looked bleak. Berren’s heart raced. The lightermen had left at the crack of dawn, when the way station drunks were still snoring at their tables. He couldn’t know what Berren had done. Can’t possibly know.

  Didn’t matter what he told himself, though. Believing it was something else.

  But the thief-taker’s thoughts were somewhere else. He sat down beside Berren and stared at the water, at the rippling waves rolling steadily by.

  ‘Do you know what wisdom is, lad? They say that wisdom is something you get as you age. Improved by the years like a fine wine. Wisdom is spending your effort on the battles that matter and having the grace to smile at defeat in the ones that don’t. Trouble is, lad, wisdom comes too late for some. Look at Kasmin. He was a fine swordsman in his time. He was a soldier, a captain in the King’s Guard. He had a fine life, filled with everything a young man wants. Wine, women, song, swords.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure you can imagine. Everyone loved him. And then he lost it all, and in the end, instead of fighting for what mattered, he gave up. Now look at him. A drunk old man, slipping slowly towards oblivion without even knowing it. Give it another few years and you’ll find Kasmin crawling in the gutter, begging from scraps, with everything he ever had, even his dignity, stripped away. Or you’ll find him in that same gutter with a knife between his ribs.’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned, lad, one thing that matters more than anything else, one thing I’d like to teach you more than letters or manners or swords, it’s not to regret what you can’t undo. I’m afraid, though, that that’s something you’ll have to learn from someone else.’

  ‘Wisdom is knowing what is beyond your power to change,’ said Berren, parroting Teacher Garrent. The thief-taker smiled and nodded.

  ‘So you do listen. No, there’s no shame in making a mistake as long as you can put it right. For the ones you can’t, learn what you can learn and then let them go. Go to a priest and find a penance if you have to and then leave it be.’

  Berren nodded. ‘But master, how will you know that you truly can’t change something if you give up trying?’

  ‘You can’t bring back the dead, lad.’

  ‘But what if it’s something about the living?’

  ‘Then you listen to your heart, lad. Your heart will tell you when it’s time to stop.’

  ‘But what if it never does?’

  The thief-taker stood up. ‘Kasmin’s heart told him to give up a long time ago, lad.’

  ‘But what if it didn’t?’

  The thief-taker shrugged. ‘Then don’t.’ He shuffled away down the deck, back to his stool in the prow. Berren watched him sitting there, staring out across the water, lost in memories. It was only then that he realised the thief-taker hadn’t been talking about Kasmin at all. He’d been talking about himself.

  He frowned. Did he have any regrets? Did he regret leaving Master Hatchet? Not really. Was he sorry for all the purses he’d cut? He had a good long think about that one. The beatings had hurt, when he’d been caught, but when it came to remorse . . . No. Not a trace. Did he wish he’d been born to a rich merchant prince with ships full of gold? Yes, he did, but it was hard to feel particularly resentful that he hadn’t. Did he wish that the whore in Club-Headed Jin’s brothel had let him touch her? Well yes, he did. A part of him did still smart from that. But he hardly thought about her any more, so maybe that was the sort of thing that Master Sy had been talking about. Maybe that was wisdom, letting that go.

  He smiled to himself and stretched out across the top of the deck on his back, squinting at the sky. No, he hardly thought about Jin’s women at all any more. A cloud crossed the sun, stealing the heat off his face. What he thought about was Lilissa. Lilissa, who never came around any more. Lilissa who had a special friend who was a fishmonger’s son. Lilissa, who lived alone with no one to watch over her and no one to tell her what she couldn’t do. Now, could that be something he could change . . . ?

  Abruptly he jerked awake. The sky was grey and filled with cloud. The wind was cool and full of noise and smelled of fish again. The middle of the morning had become the middle of the afternoon. The barge shifted beneath him. He sat up, eyes wide, and looked around. The river had changed; they were right up against the edge, bumping a little wooden jetty. The bank here was covered with hastily made wooden buildings, scrambling over each other to be close to the water. The river i
tself was full of boats.

  The thief-taker jumped onto the roof beside him and slapped him on the back. ‘Bedlam’s Crossing, lad. Shake a leg. They won’t wait, you know. Sleep any more and you’ll find yourself in the City of Spires.’

  After all the stories he’d heard from the lightermen, Berren wasn’t sure that would have been so bad. He rose unsteadily and stumbled along the side of the barge, following in the thief-taker’s wake until he scrambled up onto the wooden docks. Almost at once, the barge pulled away, back into the channel of the river.

  ‘I will admit, lad, that I don’t take too kindly to being on the water. It feels good to be on dry land again.’

  Berren shrugged. The truth was that he’d rather liked the gentle movements of the barge. They felt restful and sleepy and easy. Master Sy, though . . . Well, you could see at a glance how glad he was to be ashore. The darkness that had followed him since the Barrow of Beer had vanished. He was the thief-taker again, the thief-taker who danced through knives and laughed at swords and always knew the answer. Berren definitely liked this thief-taker better. If nothing else, you always knew where you stood.

  ‘Bedlam’s Crossing,’ said the thief-taker again. ‘The last river crossing before Deephaven and the sea. Take a boat over to the other side and you can get a coach that will take you to Tarantor, Torpreah, wherever you like. The north road will lead you up to Mirrormere. The river reaches off to the City of Spires and beyond. No one stays in Bedlam’s Crossing, but a lot of people come through.’ He bared his teeth. ‘A lot of goods too. Come on, this way.’

  Berren followed. In Deephaven, the river docks were a maze of wooden bridges and platforms. Some of them sat on piles sunk into the river bed, but a lot of them simply bobbed up and down on the water on big wooden floats, held in place by ancient ropes and sheer bloody-mindedness. In a good strong storm, whole strips of the docks were sometimes torn away and blown halfway up the river or else washed out to sea. Both docks were little realms unto themselves, with their own rules and order and Berren knew well enough to keep away. Hatchet always told his boys that the docks had a magic of their own, powerful and old and vindictive. You go out there, boys, you be sure to make your sacrifices to the old gods of the sea and the river spirits, otherwise that old wood will split apart and close over your head again and they’ll take your soul to their inky depths. The docks at Bedlam’s crossing might have been a lot smaller, but they had the same simmering hostility to them. They rocked and swayed under Berren’s feet as though trying to tip him over, and he was glad to be off them. Master Sy might not have liked his boat, but to Berren’s mind, ground that was supposed to stay where it was but actually shifted under your feet was a thousand times worse.

  About a dozen yards further along the cobbled waterfront, Master Sy stopped at a door. ‘Well, lad,’ he said, ‘are you ready to meet your first real thieves?’

  Berren steadied himself, still on edge. He looked the shop-front up and down. Barswans’ Winery, it said, on a fancy sign that had clearly been paid for with gold rather than silver. There were windows in the front with dark glass, expensive ones, with good oak shutters reinforced with iron bands. It looked like the sort of shop that belonged on the fringes of The Peak. The sort of place where rich folk went to spend their money on wine shipped in from Brons and Caladir instead of the local hills.

  Not like a den of thieves at all. He wrinkled up his nose and scowled.

  ‘Well?’

  Berren took a deep breath. Then he sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do I need to have a sword or something?’

  ‘Little tip, lad. If you ever go into a thieves’ den looking for a fight, do it with at least a dozen city militiamen at your back. If it comes to fighting in there, what you do is run. But it won’t come to that.’

  Berren scowled some more. Thieves and watchmen mixed together only ever meant one thing, and that was a fight. It was hard to see why thieves and thief-takers should be any different. But he nodded anyway to show he was ready. If there was one thing he was good at, it was running.

  21

  ON THE TAKING OF THIEVES

  ‘So.’ The thief-taker rubbed his hands together. ‘Here we are. Us on the outside, thieves on the inside. What do you suppose we do? Kick down the door and charge through, swords in hand, screaming our heads off?’

  Berren made a face. ‘Um?’

  ‘In some parts of the city, probably once or twice a year,’ said the thief-taker cheerfully, ‘what we do when we meet a door is exactly that. There’s a little trick about throwing a lantern full of oil inside ahead of you, too. The rest of the time, what we do is this.’ He walked up to the front of the shop and rearranged his belt, apparently to make his sword as obvious as possible. Then he waited for a few seconds and banged loudly on the door. Berren tensed, ready to run, but nothing happened. Master Sy didn’t move. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispered: ‘Give them plenty of time to have a good look at you, lad. If they don’t want to talk, come back later with a posse of Justicar Kol’s militiamen. But they will. If they don’t, that means they’re not scared of you. If they’re not scared of you, you’ll be a very poor thief-taker.’

  Almost as if the people inside had been listening, the door swung open. A portly man with grey hair stood on the threshold. He was clutching an elegantly carved staff made of black wood. Behind him was a gloomy room half shrouded in shadow. Beyond that, through another set of rather cheaper windows, Berren could see sunlight and a yard, and some blurry shapes that were probably a few barrels and a wagon. He could see some movement in the shadows behind the man at the door, too. Men, lurking back in the darkness.

  The fat man with the staff smiled a sickly smile that barely made it past his lips. His eyes gleamed with anger. ‘Thief-taker Syannis.’ He leaned on his staff and held out his free hand. ‘It’s been a long time since you came our way. What can I do for you? Nice case of the Sun-king’s red? Or his brandy, perhaps.’ The man with the staff made no move to step aside and let the thief-taker in. Master Sy smiled back and peered past him. Berren sidled sideways, trying to look past as well.

  ‘Not inviting me in, Barswan?’

  ‘What is it, thief-taker?’

  ‘Well, since you’re inquiring as to my taste in wine . . .’ Master Sy reached behind him and rested a hand firmly on Berren’s head. ‘Don’t pry, Berren, it’s rude. We have no interest in whatever business Master Barswan is engaged in back there. Yet.’

  The last word came with the crisp edge of a finely honed blade. Berren saw it wasn’t lost on the wine-seller.

  ‘Wine,’ smiled Master Sy. ‘What’s drawn me to your door, Master Barswan, is a fine Helhex Malmsey. A vintage to which I happen to be particularly partial. One I’ve been looking for for quite some time. Quite rare at the moment, since the only shipment into Deephaven was stolen three months ago. Yet you appear to have some, Barswan.’

  The old wine-seller scoffed and shook his head. He took a half-step back into the darkness and began to close the door. ‘You’re in the wrong place, thief-taker. This isn’t Deephaven. You got the wrong wine-seller.’

  He got the door halfway closed before it ran into Master Sy’s boot. Berren tensed, ready to run. In the shadows beyond the door, shapes began to move.

  Master Sy pulled an empty bottle out of his satchel and thrust it at the wine-seller. ‘This is what I’m talking about, Barswan. I know it came from here. I know you’re not the one running the pirate gang who stole it. Do I have to come in and have a look around for the rest? Or are you going to tell me where you got it?’

  For several seconds, the wine-seller didn’t move. Then he growled something under his breath, stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He put a hand in Berren’s face and shoved him away. ‘Piss off, runt,’ he snapped. ‘This isn’t for you.’

  Berren was halfway to whipping out Stealer and jamming it into the fat man’s leg, but he caught sight of the thief-taker’s face and a slight shake of the head. So he settled fo
r growling and spitting at the fat man’s feet, and backed away. As he did, the wine-seller started to talk in a fast, low voice. It lasted a few seconds, that was all, and then the fat man disappeared back into his shop and slammed the door. The thief-taker looked at Berren. Then he beamed and strode away, slapping Berren on the back as he did.

  ‘See how easy that was,’ he said. ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Berren couldn’t help himself, even if a part of him was still steaming, all ready to slip back after dark and burn the place down.

  ‘He said he got it from an old friend in Siltside. Calls himself the Bloody Dag. I’ve heard of him. He fits. He’s a fat mudlark prick who’s forgotten that he was born in shit, lives in shit and will die in shit. You know a man’s getting too big for his hat when he starts calling himself “the” something.’ Master Sy was rubbing his hands together, full of glee. ‘I’ve been half expecting to find out that he had his fingers in this ever since it started. He was always fond of a bit of piracy. Just never thought he’d be clever enough to find a way to do it in the sea-docks.’ He started to wander back towards the river. As he did, he threw back his head and laughed. ‘That’s it, lad. That’s our job done. Now we go home, pat ourselves on the back and open up a bottle of something good. In the morning I’ll go over to Justicar Kol and give him what he wants.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it, lad. Siltside isn’t a place for people like us. Not unless we’ve got a small army at our backs. Goes one of two ways with people who have nothing. People with nothing always want to be people with something, and you can use that. But people with nothing have nothing to lose, either. That’s the way it is in Siltside. They’re not scared of thief-takers there, never will be.’ Master Sy walked on past the docks to a tavern. There were a lot of them, Berren noticed. All called The Boatman’s Rest or The Waterman, or A Piece of Dry Land and so forth. It slowly dawned on him what Master Sy had meant about Bedlam’s Crossing. Without the boats on the river, the town wouldn’t be there. Simply wouldn’t exist at all.