The Thief-Taker's Apprentice

by Stephen Deas

  No time to think about that. Somehow he’d gone right through the middle of them and no one had been quick enough to land a blow on him. See. That’s what you get for carrying the wrong sword to a street-fight. His off-hand pulled a knife out of his belt. He spun around to face the three that were left. They were closer together now. Hesitant. Nervous. All good. He didn’t wait to see what they’d do next, but threw the knife straight at the one in the middle. It was supposed to take him in the neck, but his aim was a bit high and it caught the man in the head instead, glancing off his temple. The man shrieked and dropped his sword. There was a lot of blood. Good enough. With a bit of luck that’s an eyeball gone.

  Which left two. They had quite a crowd now. Just as well the Avenue of Emperors is so wide, eh? Wouldn’t want to be stopping the traffic. Still, he took a moment to glance around for places to run. The docks’ militiamen could hardly ignore something like this, and the coins in their pockets came from the harbour-masters. There wasn’t much doubting which side they’d be on. Go on you two. You’ve seen your friends go down and I’m all out of tricks. Run away, damn you! He could hope. They didn’t look old enough to have actually fought in the war. With a bit of luck they’d never actually fought anyone who might kill them. With a bit of luck they were all for show . . .

  They launched themselves at him, both of them at once. They were good, too, in a schoolyard sort of way. Held their swords just so, good footwork, that sort of thing. Not a clue how a real fight actually worked though; what they ought to have done was danced out of his reach and pricked him to death. Presumably whatever sword-school had spawned them didn’t teach that sort of thing. While he’d been taught by Shalari, the best swords-woman in the small kingdoms, who’d probably killed pushing a hundred men on the battlefield and whose famous first rule of sword-fighting had always been don’t get stabbed.

  He parried the first sword and deliberately left himself open to the second. The swordsman obligingly lunged and stabbed him in the chest. His sword bent and the impact hurt like a kick from a horse, but the thin ringmail vest under Syannis’ coat didn’t give. Syannis grinned at him. Time seemed to freeze for a moment.

  ‘Oops,’ he said. He could see the dismay in his enemy’s eyes. This was more like it. This is what we should have been doing years and years ago. This, not running away. He drove his own sword into the man’s throat and that was that.

  Except it wasn’t. Blood sprayed straight at his face. He turned his head, screwed his eyes shut, jumped away from where the last swordsman had been, but for a moment he was blind. A moment too long. He felt a horrible stabbing pain in his armpit, just above the line of his mail. He gasped. That was deep. That was bad. Not his sword-arm though. Stabbed. By a cavalry sword. How utterly mortifying. He spun around, keeping his wounded arm close but not hugging it tight. Don’t let him see how bad it is. Never let them see how bad it is. He gripped his sword tight and set his face for murder. Sometimes when they cut you and you don’t go down, they run. Go on, run!

  He bared his teeth and stepped slowly towards the last swordsman. ‘Go on!’ he screamed. ‘Stand and fight! I want to play!’

  29

  ALONE IN THE DARK

  Berren ran. Up the Avenue of Emperors towards the square, but that was no good. He grabbed Lilissa’s arm and pulled her off towards one side. ‘This way!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This way!’ He pulled harder and dragged her off the Avenue and down into a pitch black alley that wove its way into The Maze.

  ‘I can’t see!’

  ‘Then hold my hand.’ Lilissa’s fingers slipped into his own without protest or question. He was running for his life, and yet her touch made him feel like the strongest man in the world.

  ‘He gave me a knife! Master Syannis gave me a knife!’

  ‘He gave me one too. Come on!’ Berren led her deeper. These streets were his home. Even in the dark, he knew exactly where he was. He knew their twists and turns, he knew their dead ends, he knew which parts were safe and which parts to avoid – although dressed up as they were in their rich clothes, which parts to avoid extended to almost everywhere.

  Most of all, though, he knew where the empty houses were. The places they could hide.

  Voices. Footsteps. He dived into a doorway and pulled Lilissa close to him.

  ‘Hey!’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘Shhh!’ Even though the moon was up, down here in The Maze he could barely see her. He could feel her, though. Feel the warmth of her right beside him, almost but not quite touching. He could smell her breath, the lingering taste of the glass of wine she’d had while he’d dozed.

  The voices came closer. They were round a corner but still coming closer.

  ‘Why are we . . . ?’

  This time he pressed his free hand over her mouth. She was pressed against him now. She grabbed his hand and then froze.

  ‘Shh,’ he whispered, quiet as the breeze, straight into her ear.

  ‘I’m going to burn his pig and goat if he don’t pay up.’ The voices were in the same alley now. Berren counted footfalls. Sticks had taught him to do that, years back. Men. Big men. Three or four of them. Accents, too. Not quite right. Not quite local. Mudlarks, from their rhyming. Not that that meant much. Mudlarks got everywhere. These ones stank, too. A real bad smell of city sewage.

  ‘Yeh? And then what? How’s he going get us our three ladies if he can’t sail. A good kick in the loaf ought to be enough.’ The footsteps stopped. One of them sniffed the air.

  ‘You smell something?’

  Laughter. ‘I smell you, you rancid oaf.’

  ‘Perfume. Yeh. Khrozus!’ Berren tensed. They could always run. No, he could run. He’d have to drag Lilissa behind him.

  ‘You’re right. Some ground-floor girl been working here I reckon.’

  Someone hawked up some phlegm, spat, and then let out a loud belch. Another voice joined in.

  ‘Now everything smells of rotting fish. Thanks, Dree.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ The footsteps started again. They walked straight by where Berren and Lilissa were hiding. Close enough that if Berren had reached out an arm, he could have tugged on their coats as they passed. He waited a long time, until he was sure they were gone, before he let himself breathe again.

  Lilissa pulled his hand away, gently this time. ‘Who were they?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. No one comes in here at night unless they’re up to stuff they don’t want others to see.’ He took a tentative step back out into the alley, then strained his ears and peered up and down. Mostly pointless in the dark, but his instinct was driving him. ‘All right. Let’s go!’ He pulled on Lilissa’s hand but she didn’t move.

  ‘Berren! What are we doing here?’

  He stopped. He hadn’t thought too much about what he was doing. Only that The Maze was where he ran whenever he got into trouble.

  ‘We can’t go back to Master Sy’s house,’ he said slowly. ‘Not in the dark.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What if they got there first? What if they’re waiting for us? What if we got back and then they came?’ He didn’t even know who they were. No, they were the harbour-master’s men. What he didn’t know was what Master Sy had said to make the harbour-master suddenly want to kill them. Not beat them and warn them off, but kill them. Straight out and just like that.

  Or was it even worse? Had he been planning this even before they’d sat down and broken bread together. He must have, mustn’t he?

  ‘I want to go home, Berren.’

  ‘How come those snuffers were so right and ready? They were going to kill us.’ He had to keep saying it to believe it. You just didn’t do that. Even One-Thumb with his knife probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. Would have scared him too much to live with what came with being a killer. But the men who’d come out of the Captain’s Rest . . . He’d seen the way they moved. They’d have gone through with it and then some.

  ‘Be
rren, I want to go home!’ Lilissa wasn’t whispering this time. Berren huddled back into the doorway next to her, shushing her.

  ‘So do I, but we can’t. What if the whole thing was a trap? They could be waiting for us.’

  She pushed him away. ‘What if it wasn’t? Besides, it wasn’t about us, was it? It wasn’t about me.’

  ‘I saw the way he was looking at you. Looking right at your . . . Well, put it this way, if I’d have looked at you like that even when you wouldn’t notice, I’d have got a clip round the ear. And he was doing it right in front of all of us.’ Somehow the thought of leaving the streets he knew made him quake with fear.

  Lilissa snorted. ‘Don’t be stupid. It’s not about me. It’s about whatever business Master Syannis has. Something he’s found out about that horrible man.’

  ‘Look, I know a place we can hide for the night. Not far. No bother. We’ll be left alone. In the morning, when it’s light, we’ll go up Weaver’s Row. It’s not far. Then you can go home. We can take a look when the sun’s out.’ After they’d been to the moon temple and told Teacher Garrent all about what happened. But no need to mention that. ‘Look, this place, it’s only a few minutes away. Let’s get there and be safe. Then we can talk about what we’re going to do.’ The ‘few’ was more like ten and he didn’t know what he’d do if she still wanted to go home once they got there, but it was all he could think of to say.

  Lilissa made a sceptical sound, but she let him lead her out into the alley again. ‘I’m starting to wonder if I should believe any of this. Letting you take me into some dark alley in the middle of the night. Ma would kill all three of us if she could, paths bless her.’ There was a tremor in her voice. Anxious, however much she tried to pretend she wasn’t. Not as scared as she should have been, though.

  ‘Yeh.’ Berren tried a nervous laugh. It helped a bit. ‘Well. Like old Master Hatchet said: Dead tomorrow is alive today.’

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t seen where your eyes look either. You’re every bit as bad as that horrible VenDerren or whatever his name was.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m not as ugly for a start.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m not as fat; I’m sure about that.’

  She giggled. ‘His bows were better, though.’ They were moving. For the moment they had this bit of The Maze to themselves. Berren started to walk more quickly, until they were almost running. ‘Dragging me off to a place like this. Bet you’ve been thinking about it all evening. What would your master say?’

  ‘It was his idea.’ Sort of. His idea I should drag you off.

  ‘Ah. Tonight was all a big show, was it? All for me?’ She giggled again. ‘I suppose I’d better go along with it, then, after all that effort. I imagine I should feel flattered.’

  You should feel scared and you should be quiet and so should I. That was what Berren wanted to say. Instead he stopped. Paused. Listened. There was still no one about.

  ‘We’re here.’ He crept into an opening he couldn’t even see and listened again. Then he knelt down. Low down in the wall was an old wooden door about three feet high and wider than it was long. His hands traced its shape until he found an awkward hole in the bottom. He lay down and reached through, undid the latch, and the door swung open. Inside was an even deeper darkness than the alley. It was silent, too. Silent as death. He sat on the ground by the doorway and dangled his feet over the drop beyond. There was no way to see how far it was down to the floor.

  ‘What is this?’ hissed Lilissa.

  ‘We’re round the back of the Sheaf of Arrows.’ Berren turned around and carefully lowered himself into the void. The floor was about four feet below him. ‘This is the cellar.’

  Lilissa didn’t move. From where he was now, he could just about see her, silhouetted against the night sky. ‘Won’t we be caught?’

  Berren shook his head and beckoned her down, both gestures lost in the dark. ‘Nah. It burned down three years ago. They built it up again, but this bit’s full of rubble. No one ever comes down here. That door’s the only way in and out.’ That’s what other boys had told him, anyway.

  Lilissa carefully lowered herself to sit on the edge. Berren took her hands, warm and soft in his, and eased her down; but it was only as he closed and barred the door behind her that he realised he had Lilissa to himself in the dark. And that despite everything she’d said, she’d still come with him. The lump on his head thrummed with pain, but with Lilissa beside him he didn’t care. What would a fishmonger’s son say now, he wondered?

  30

  WHERE OLD THIEF-TAKERS GO

  Syannis screamed: ‘Come on!’ He couldn’t remember that ever actually working. To his amazement, this time it did. He watched the last of the four swordsmen turn and race down the Avenue of Emperors back towards the Captains’ Rest. He stayed very still, watching the man go. Then he swayed and staggered. His coat and the darkness probably hid it well enough, but he was bleeding, and badly. Wounds like the one he’d taken killed people. There was a good chance he was dying.

  People were staring. Well if I’m going to die, it’s not going to be in the middle of the street surrounded by a hundred gawping onlookers. It’s going to be somewhere where no one ever finds the body so no one can be quite sure I’m gone.

  Had to be gone before the watch showed, too. He gritted his teeth and started to jog up the Avenue of Emperors. Important that VenDormen doesn’t know I’m hurt. Except he really was hurt, and badly, and running was making it a lot worse. He lurched into the next dark alley and stumbled up against the wall. His breathing was much too hard and he could taste iron. No. Not iron.

  He coughed. Frothy blood filled his mouth. He clenched his fists and screwed up his eyes, furious with himself. Oh well done, Syannis. Well done. Now you really have gone and got yourself killed. And for what? For a city that isn’t even your home? For a gang of greedy merchants who have more in common with the . . . No. He wasn’t going to think about that. That was the past.

  The urge to sit down was a strong one. Or maybe lie down. Curl up on the cobbles and rest for a while. Maybe that would help him find the energy to walk the rest of the way up the hill. Up into Four Winds Square, across the other side, down the Godsway to the House of Gulls by the River Gate. Yes. That was a long way. A little rest first . . .

  Syannis coughed again and spat out another gobbet of blood. Rest meant death. He didn’t have time. He needed to walk, and quickly, and he needed to do it now, and how much it hurt or how hard it seemed really didn’t matter. One foot at a time, he compelled himself to move, staring grimly ahead. When the alley emptied him out into the Kingsway, he hardly noticed the people who came the other way. He staggered on up the hill towards Four Winds Square. The River Gate might as well have been in Varr. Maybe he could get as far as the Eight. Someone would be there. Maybe they could send for a priest. Or that Tigraleff fellow. Whoever he was.

  No. Kuy. He needed Kuy. He needed a magician. A healer. His old friend. One step at a time, that was all that mattered.

  He was almost at the top of the Kingsway when his legs finally failed him. They simply stopped and buckled and pitched him forward and that was that. He managed to roll over, onto his back, pressed up against a wall, away from the middle of the road. Into the thickest of the shadows, where no one would tread on him. That was the least a man could ask wasn’t it? To get on and bleed to death quietly in a corner somewhere and not be trodden on?

  Syannis, once a prince, now a thief-taker, thought about this for a while. A pair of green eyes stared at him, a stray cat. It stopped beside him and started to lick his face. And then, for a time, the thinking stopped.

  31

  KNIFE WORK

  At some point, Berren fell asleep. When he woke up, he could hear Lilissa’s breathing, soft and rhythmic, beside him. He could feel her warmth. For a long time he lay there, still, savouring the moment. He wanted to reach over and touch her, and found himself wondering what her skin would feel like a
gainst his fingers. His head, mercifully, was clear.

  Light was filtering in through the cellar door. Silently, he rose and crept across to it. Peering through the hole, he could see that there was light in the alley too. Which meant the sun was up in the sky and some hours had already passed since dawn.

  ‘Lilissa?’ he whispered. He crouched beside her. In the womb of the cellar, even a whisper sounded loud. ‘Lilissa! Wake up!’

  She stirred, but didn’t wake. In the little light that filtered through the cracks of the door, he could just about make out her face. Very gently, he reached out and touched her cheek.

  ‘Lilissa!’

  When she stirred again, his hand jumped away. This time she opened her eyes and sat up.

  ‘I’m cold.’ She yawned and stretched. Berren considered saying something about warming her up and then thought better of it. As if in reward, Lilissa wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. ‘Those men who came after us had swords, didn’t they?’ She shivered. ‘They were city men and they were after us and Master Syannis, weren’t they? What are we going to do? Where can we go?’

  Having Lilissa with him, he’d made everything seem like a grand adventure, trying to keep the truth of what had happened pushed to the back of his mind. Now he stopped to think about what it really meant. Men with swords. Not city watchmen or district militia, but snuffers. Even Hatchet had had nothing good to say about snuffers. You keep away from men with swords, my boys. I ain’t got no sway with those sort. You cross ’em and they snuff you out like a candle, and all that’ll happen next is you’ll get swept up and thrown away with the rest of the shit. So just leave ’em be.

  ‘We need to find Master Sy,’ he said. ‘He’ll know what to do. He’ll keep you safe.’

  ‘What if he’s dead?’ Lilissa shivered again. ‘What then? What do we do then?’

  Berren shrugged. ‘He won’t be dead. Master Sy’s probably the best swordsman in the whole city. He can fight four men. I bet he could fight forty.’ He saw the fight in the alley again, flashing in front of him. Three against one, and the cut-throats hadn’t stood a chance. Remembering made him feel powerful. ‘Come on. We can go back home now.’