The King's assassin ta-3

by Stephen Deas

  ‘You stupid, stupid thing!’ Gelisya was screaming. ‘You do what I say!’

  ‘Princess!’ Saffran Kuy took a step towards her; she waved the knife at him and he shrank hastily back.

  Syannis slowly crumpled. Gelisya watched him fall and stood over him, her chest heaving. Then she dropped to all fours and very slowly pushed the knife up under Syannis’s chin, up, up inside his head, until his eyes rolled back and closed and each twitching finger fell still. She turned to look at Berren. Her eyes were black with rage. She raised the knife again, but Berren leaped at her, lashing out with a foot. He felt his head split open with the same pain as before, but then they crashed together and the knife flew from her hand. As it did, the pain in Berren’s head vanished like the light from a snuffed-out candle. He sprawled to the floor on top of her, rolling through the circle of flickering flames and then away, dazed by the fading sense of an iron spike smashed through his skull.

  ‘Saffran!’ Gelisya squealed. ‘Make him stop!’

  Saffran Kuy smiled. Berren rolled, scrabbling to get to his feet. There was nowhere for him to go, and all the warlock had to do was open his mouth just as he had in Deephaven on the night Tasahre had died. You. Obey. Me.

  Gelisya’s knife! Still with a piece of him inside, she’d said! Berren snatched it up. For a moment he and Saffran Kuy stood still, their eyes locked together.

  ‘Put the knife down, little Berren-piece,’ said Saffran Kuy, still smiling. The force of his words roared in Berren’s head, but this time there was something new. Something that kept them at bay. The knife. This time it was his.

  The warlock’s eyes changed and grew wide. The air around him began to shimmer, a swirling of something that had yet to take form. Berren saw Gelisya rising, saw her glance towards Fasha. He sprang and lunged at Saffran Kuy before either of them could act. The knife buried itself up to the hilt in the warlock’s chest, as though Kuy was made of nothing more than smoke. A look of horror and dismay stretched across his face, while a pulse of fire swept down Berren’s arm. For a moment he was blinded, his vision filled with ghostly faces. He could see one Kuy before him, and he could see another: one made of skin and bone, the other a shimmering spirit made of something else. He could see two Gelisyas too, two Fashas. And someone else, standing next to Syannis’s corpse. Other faces and forms swarmed around his head, ones he’d never seen before. They filled the room, swirling shadows howling in his ears. And inside the ghostly second shape of Saffran Kuy he could see the web of the warlock’s soul, an endless tangle of threads. The knife could do almost anything, almost anything at all. It had the power of a god inside it, lurking just out of reach; not yet his to command but there was one thing he remembered, one thing he knew he could make it do.

  Tell the knife! Make it your promise. And then cut, Berren, cut! Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!

  With each stroke the knife sliced a little piece of Saffran Kuy away. As Berren cut, he could see it working, see how each thread mattered. The knife showed him all of it, exactly as it was and would be, exactly as he’d seen it before.

  He withdrew the knife when he was done. The second Kuy shrank and collapsed into nothing, sucked into the shimmering blade. The ghostly forms faded and he saw clearly again, and what he saw was the Saffran Kuy of flesh and bone staring at him in horror, and Gelisya crouching over Fasha, looking at him with a mad glee. In her hand she held the other knife. She pointed it at him. A terrible smile spread across her face. But then nothing happened. No pain. Nothing at all. For a moment they glared at each other as Gelisya’s grimace of victory crumbled to ash. She had the wrong knife.

  ‘What did you do?’ Berren hissed. ‘What did you do to her?’

  Gelisya shrieked, ‘Saffran!’ but Kuy was already running, wailing, towards the steps from the hold as fast as he could go. Berren snatched up Syannis’s sword. He hurled himself after the warlock and bore him down.

  ‘You. Obey. Me!’

  ‘No!’ The warlock’s scream was silent. ‘You cannot! I have seen my end and it is not you!’

  ‘Then you saw wrong. Now do as you’re told and die.’ He drove Syannis’s sword through the warlock’s heart, and now the warlock’s scream was real. He writhed and arched, every part of him. Black blood ran out of his mouth and became black smoke.

  ‘Not. Good. Enough,’ he hissed. His fingers and feet were starting to dissolve. Berren watched, transfixed. Tasahre had done the same with swords made of sun-steel, driven both of them right through him, and the same thing had happened. And he was right: it hadn’t been enough.

  Gelisya bolted. She ran like a deer chased by a leopard, jinking back and forth, careening off crates and stacks of boxes. Berren chased after her but his hands were still tied. They slowed him and she jumped up the steps, a moment too quick for him, and was gone. On the floor Kuy was a writhing black mass.

  The knife. Without thinking, Berren plunged the golden knife into what was left of the warlock, ripping open his soul for a second time. He cut and cut and cut again, and slowly he shredded the warlock into ribbons until there was nothing left at all, and the last black smoke wafted and thinned and vanished.

  ‘Good enough now, warlock?’ But Saffran Kuy was gone. Ended, and now the hold was dark and still.

  Without haste, Berren cut the bindings that held his wrists. He gathered his sword — the one Talon had given him — and the one gold-handled knife that was left, and then his eyes turned to Fasha and to his son, lying still and peaceful on the floor. He almost didn’t dare to look. Were they dead or quietly dreaming? How could they be made to sleep through all this? Would they wake up again and if they did, who would they be? Gelisya had done something, he knew, in the moment when he’d first struck Kuy. He’d seen it in her eyes as she crouched over her bonds-maid. He lifted Fasha’s veil. She was still breathing. Something, at least. They were all alike now, every one of them. When he’d cut Saffran Kuy and the air had filled with spirits, he’d seen the hole in Gelisya’s soul. A tiny one, but still a hole. Someone had cut her too, once, and now Fasha would be the same. Each one of them with a piece missing.

  He looked at her face and almost wept. She was a stranger, a woman who had given herself to him for one night so that he would kill for her, and finally, after all this time and far, far too late, he’d honoured that promise. All these years he’d thought of her, and yet he knew almost nothing about her. He stroked her cheek and her hair. She could have been anyone. Maybe that was the point.

  He let her down gently to lie on the wooden deck and squatted for a moment beside Syannis instead. The thief-taker was dead. More than dead, if such a thing was possible. He was slumped against a crate, tipped over sideways. It looked an ungainly way to lie. Awkward and uncomfortable, even if you were dead. Berren shook his head. Stupid, after everything else, but he had tears in his eyes. He dragged the thief-taker away from his crate and laid him flat. Closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. There was no blood anywhere. Now he looked almost as though he’d died in his sleep.

  ‘You were a right selfish arrogant prick.’ The tears were rolling down his face now. He knelt beside Syannis and took the dead thief-taker’s hand and pressed it to his cheek. ‘She got away, but I’ll not go after her. I’ve seen what that’s like. That’s a lesson you taught me well.’

  He looked away and shook his head, trying to clear his eyes, trying to clear his thoughts. Two deep breaths, one after the other, and he replaced the thief-taker’s hand on his chest. Berren turned and rose and went to look at the face of his son for the very first time. He’d be another dark-skin, but he’d be handsome and strong, that was what mattered. The boy looked peaceful, sleeping in whatever stupor Gelisya had put him. They would wake up. He suddenly had no fear of that.

  Above him, on the deck of the sloop, the dozen guards were still there, and he couldn’t fight that many at once. So, in the gloom of the hold, he clung on to Fasha and her warmth, cradling the son he’d never seen until today and listened to th
e creaking of the wooden hull. He waited as the candles, one by one, flickered and guttered and died. Sooner or later, someone would come. And then they would see.

  EPILOGUE

  It seemed to Talon that everything had started well enough. The castle fell. The Thousand Ghosts swarmed through the streets making mayhem — late, but they did it. He had them sack a few houses of people he didn’t like. When he led the Hawks to drive them valiantly out of the castle and seize it for himself, word quickly came that Aimes was dead. Eventually the lancers brought back his body.

  And then it started to go wrong. He searched the castle but there were no traces of the warlocks he’d come to kill. He dashed back out to the city and joined the Hawks, rounding up the last of the Thousand Ghosts and noisily chasing them away. Still no warlocks. And Berren, where was Berren? Nowhere, and suddenly Talon had a terrible knot of doubt growing in his gut. He muttered silent curses to himself. A pall of smoke sat over the market. That was never meant to happen. His soldiers were scattered. He screamed and shouted at anyone he happened to see, trying to restore some order before the whole town sank into looting and anarchy, or else simply burned to the ground. He thought he saw Berren running through the streets once, but when he looked again it was only smoke, and he had bigger problems than one missing sword.

  By the time the early spring sun was a yard over the horizon, he was back in the castle and a little more sanguine. The mockery that was the Thousand Ghosts had fled and a good part of the Hawks were off across the countryside, making a big show of pursuit. A ragtag militia of angry citizens and a few of the king’s guard had coalesced towards the end and gone after them too. Talon left them to it: if they wanted to wander aimlessly across the fields and hills around the city for a day or so, that was their business. The Thousand Ghosts would vanish back into everyone’s imagination just as easily as they had sprung forth.

  He turned his mind to Saffran Kuy and the warlocks, the real reason he was here. If they weren’t in the castle then he’d just have to winkle them out of their holes. He dragged Tarn into a quiet corner and asked him about Berren, because if anyone would know about warlocks and where they might hide, it would be the Judge.

  ‘He was looking for the princess.’ Tarn was all frowns today. He didn’t care for this, any of it. ‘Didn’t like the look on his face either. Far to eager.’

  ‘Princess? You mean Gelisya?’

  ‘Yes.’

  No one knew where Berren had gone after he’d left the castle. No one had seen Syannis either, but the king’s guard knew enough for Talon to know where to start. He glanced across the harbour to the ships anchored there. Yes. He knew exactly where to look, for Berren and for his warlocks too, and so he grabbed a handful of soldiers and marched them straight through the town into a pair of longboats and out to Gelisya’s sloop. He’d half expected to have to fight his way on board, but the guards on the deck lowered a ladder without any fuss. If anything, they seemed happy to see him. He thought he heard Crown-Taker whispered once or twice, and perhaps the Bloody Judge, which brought a nasty smile to his face. With a bit of luck he’d find Syannis here too. They could end all this right now. They could have a trial, here on the ship. Some warlocks would die and then maybe he and Syannis could at last put everything behind them.

  He marched into the cabin at the back of the ship and there was Gelisya. She flung herself at him, clinging to him as though for dear life. ‘Prince Talon, thank the gods you’re here!’

  Talon ripped her off him and flung her away. ‘Get off me, you witch!’ he spat. ‘Where’s my brother?’

  A flash of fury crossed her face, quickly hidden behind her mask of frightened little girl, but not quickly enough. ‘In the hold, Prince Talon. With the Crown-Taker. I’m scared. I think the Crown-Taker has killed him.’

  Talon snapped out orders to his men to search the hold. As he did, Gelisya slipped her hand into a pocket and pulled out a tiny vial. Blood of the Funeral Tree. When Talon turned back, her face was downcast. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded.

  Gelisya sniffed and rubbed her eye. She stared at the floor, her hair cascading down to hide her face. ‘Syannis found out what the Crown Taker did. After that. .’ She started to sob and shake. ‘Aimes meant everything to him.’ Through her curtain of hair, she watched Talon’s shoulders slump a fraction. He looked flustered.

  ‘No one leaves this ship,’ he said.

  Gelisya nodded again and watched as he paced round the cabin. His soldiers were out on the deck. She waited for a minute or two. With a bit of luck, the Crown-Taker would kill the men Talon sent down to the hold. She idly took a few steps to where a jug of wine stood on a small rimmed table and poured a goblet for herself. She took a sip, careful that Talon saw her do it, although he would never see her swallow.

  Enough to kill six men. And it was no secret that Talon liked his wine. She didn’t look at it though, nor at the remaining goblet beside the jug. Just looked at Talon and cowered like a little girl from his anger, lifting her own shaking goblet to her lips and yet never drinking, until at last he poured one for himself without even thinking and drained it. He was in the middle of waving his fist, telling her how everything was going to change and be put right — she nodding because yes, that was exactly what would happen — in the middle of telling her how she was a witch and how she had brought ruin on Syannis, when his eyes went very wide. His mouth fell open. His face turned a shade blue and his fingers grew limp. His cup slipped between them and fell to the floor.

  Gelisya stood a little straighter. She smiled and offered him her goblet, and then dropped that one to the floor too, still full. A dark stain of wine spread over the wood. ‘Yes,’ she whispered in Talon’s ear. ‘You’re right.’ She put her arms around him and caught him as he sank to his knees. ‘All gone now. All done. All finished.’

  His eyes rolled back. She dropped him onto the floor and screamed. ‘Murder! Help! Hawks! Guards!’

  The first men into the room were three of the Hawks Talon had brought with him. They stared dumbfounded, stunned for just long enough for two of her own guards to arrive before they understood what they were seeing. One drew his sword.

  ‘Help!’ Gelisya looked straight at the onrushing king’s guard and pointed at the mercenaries. ‘They’ve come to murder me!’

  As the room filled with fighting, she slipped away, not waiting to see who would win. She ran out onto the decks. ‘King’s men!’ She called. ‘To me! The mercenaries are traitors and murderers! Take them all!’

  And then she watched as the Hawks and her guards killed each other, and her heart raced with the thrill of it. Saffran would have chided her for this, but the sight excited her. The Hawks didn’t die easily either and she lost half of her guards before it was done; and then more of Talon’s men emerged, the ones he’d sent to the hold, the ones the Crown-Taker hadn’t killed after all. They rushed out, swords drawn, and for a fleeting moment she tasted fear. One of them broke through and ran at her. She drew out the golden knife to cut his soul and make him hers. It fumbled through her hasty fingers and dropped to the deck.

  But the soldier paused as a flicker of doubt crossed his face; she was barely more than a girl, after all. And then blood bubbled out of his mouth and he collapsed. Lucama offered her a little bow. Gelisya steadied herself against him. She liked this one, she thought. A quick count — three of her guards left standing, that was all — but Talon’s soldiers were dead now, every one of them. She started to laugh. Aimes gone, Syannis gone, Talon gone, all of them out of her way.

  Then she saw him: Berren. The Crown-Taker. The murderer. Standing on the deck by the hatch to the hold with a sword in one hand, her bonds-maid over his shoulder and the little bastard boy tucked under his other arm. She flinched away, even though the whole length of the sloop was between them. She looked over her shoulder for her warlocks. ‘Vallas! Saffran!’ But Saffran Kuy was dead and the soap-maker was nowhere to be seen.

  Lucama forced himself to breathe stead
ily, the way Silvestre had taught them. Nice and slow and pushing the fear and the bloodlust both away. Three of them left, one on either side and him in the middle. And here was his old friend the Bloody Judge, staring back at them, cold and unyielding. The Judge bared his teeth and hissed. Either side of Lucama, the two other guards stepped back a pace.

  ‘My name is Berren!’ he said. ‘They call me the Crown-Taker. I’ve killed more men than I can remember, and I took joy in none of it!’ He took a pace towards them.

  Lucama saluted and took up his guard. ‘I don’t want to fight you, Berren,’ he said.

  ‘I bet you don’t.’

  ‘But you will not pass.’

  ‘Kill him!’ screamed the princess. ‘He killed the king! Do your duty!’

  ‘Stand aside, friend,’ the Bloody Judge growled. ‘No need for you to die.’

  One of the other soldiers moved forward. Lucama put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. ‘I was there in Kalda, Berren. I know what the queen’s message said. I brought it to you after all. You should go. You have what you were promised. Take them and leave.’

  Princess Gelisya screamed again. ‘Kill him! King’s guard! Obey me!’

  For second after second Lucama and Berren stared each other down. Then the Bloody Judge stepped back one pace and then another, and with each step Lucama backed away in turn, taking the other soldiers with him. Behind him his princess howled, screaming curses.

  She’s afraid of him. We’re all afraid of him.

  Without taking his eyes off them for a moment, Berren Crown-Taker, the Bloody Judge of Tethis, backed away to the ladders still slung over the side, to where Prince Talon’s longboats bobbed in the water. He sheathed his sword and climbed carefully down, carrying his burdens with him. Lucama watched him go. We could rush him, he thought. One man carrying a body over his shoulder and another under his arm, and he’s only got one sword, even if he really is that quick. But he didn’t move. Instead, he let his eyes linger on the ladder, watched it shudder with each step that Berren took towards the water, until it finally went limp.