The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3)

by Stephen Deas

  And now his lover suddenly wasn’t with him. He’d stabbed a man – killed him – and vengeance was nowhere to be found. He felt suddenly small and stupid and very afraid that he was about to die.

  I killed a man. No warlock this time, no Saffran Kuy screaming in his head. Just him and a knife and his own hand holding it. The old instincts of a boy thief took over. He kicked Klaas between the legs as hard as he could. As Klaas doubled over, the silver token around his neck dangled free in the air. Berren snatched it and tore it away and screamed, ‘That’s what you get, fat man! That’s what you get.’ He pushed his way between the sailors who were beginning to turn and stare; as soon as he had space around him, he ran. The crowd of snuffers and the thief-taker were gone now, out through a door into the streets behind the Bitch Queen. Berren followed. He didn’t look back. Behind him Klaas had found his voice again and was screaming his lungs out. Klaas was a bastard and he’d deserved it. But then if you looked at it like that, so did every sailor on his ship. So did an awful lot of people.

  I killed a man. His own hand. He’d been thinking it for weeks, thinking of Master Sy, turning the idea over and over in his head and seeing what it looked like, and all the time he knew that when he came face to face with the thief-taker, he’d never really do it.

  Or so he’d thought.

  The streets at the back of the Bitch Queen were quiet. Noise echoed from the riot on the docks; now and then clusters of people came running past, fleeing from whatever was happening there. The snuffers were ahead of him, seven of them. Master Sy was in the middle but all Berren could see of him was the back of his head.

  He’d seen a man flogged to death for stealing once. Klaas was a bastard and Klaas had deserved it. But all that blood . . . and Tasahre kept coming at him, lying on the Emperor’s Docks in Deephaven after Master Sy’s sword had ripped open her throat. She would have told him that what he’d done was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

  He quickened his pace. Master Sy was a murderer. Master Sy had killed Tasahre. He still had the knife, fingers clenched around it, Klaas’s blood on his hands. He had no idea what he was going to do now, none at all.

  One of the snuffers cracked a joke. Master Sy threw back his head and laughed and the sound of him laughing filled Berren with a rage. The thief-taker didn’t deserve to laugh, not any more, not after what he’d done! Berren started to run. ‘Syannis!’ he screamed. The snuffers’ pace faltered. They all turned to see him racing towards them, the bloody knife in his outstretched hand. But the man wasn’t Syannis after all. Whoever he was, he stared at Berren in amazement and then mouthed some word that Berren didn’t hear. The other snuffers drew their swords. Their blades were short. Familiar. Berren skidded to a stop, but too close. Two of them sprang at him. He turned and tried to run away but the first one tackled him and then the second one piled on top, pinning him down. ‘Who are you, boy?’ hissed one in his ear. ‘Answer me before I fillet you like a herring!’

  ‘Wait!’ The man he’d thought was Master Sy spoke. He was younger than the thief-taker and looked far less bitter. His voice was different too. More commanding. ‘Let him up! Let me see him!’

  ‘He could be working for Meridian, Prince.’ The soldiers got off and Berren scrambled to his feet. He stared at the men around him.

  Sailors were spilling out of the Bitch Queen behind him. One of them pointed. ‘Him!’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the man who looked like Master Sy but wasn’t. Berren pushed past and raced away down the street, fleeing the mob that was spilling out of the tavern and howling for his blood. The snuffers didn’t try to stop him.

  Who are you? The question chased him down the alleys as he ran with a dozen murderous sailors at his heels.

  3

  THE PRINCE OF SWORDS

  He’d stolen to stay alive. He’d picked pockets, he’d cut purses, he’d been chased by more angry sailors than he could count. He’d done what it took to keep himself from starving while he looked: Syannis of Tethis, where can I find him? But he’d never killed a man, never, not of his own free will. Never even cut one with a knife.

  Until now.

  And after all that, Syannis hadn’t been Syannis at all. Maybe that meant he hadn’t seen Syannis on the ship either. Perhaps the thief-taker was the ghost he was supposed to be.

  He wandered through the alleys behind the docks, among the slums all piled on top of each other, with blood still on his hands and no idea what to do any more. His feet took him unasked to the abandoned bakery where he’d sheltered for the last few weeks. A dozen more of Kalda’s homeless had claimed the place for as long as it took for the city soldiers to find them and flush them out. The others turned away as he washed the blood off his hands in a bucket of rainwater. They were all as lost as he was, but they’d learned, since he’d taken a place among them, not to be fooled by his size. Small means quick, Master Sy used to tell him. Big men think they’re going to win because they’re big. Big men are easy. The rags of skin and bone sheltering here were more desperate than big, but they still looked at Berren with hungry eyes. He wasn’t one of them. He was a dark-skin from across the sea, a sailor weathered by the sun and they were afraid of him.

  He hadn’t eaten today but he wasn’t hungry. Others dribbled back in ones and twos, flushed with spoils from the riot on the docks. Some were grinning, pleased with their work. Others limped or had the red weals of a beating on their backs. Berren sat apart, listening to their talk. It had been bloody towards the end by the sound of it. The city could thank the rain that half the port hadn’t gone up in flames.

  He stared at his hands. Even clean, all he saw was the blood. When he closed his eyes to sleep he saw Tasahre again, dying in front of him. Eventually he drifted away with the old silver token he’d taken from Klaas held tight in his fingers. That was money, that was. Silver, a crown at least. Food for a week and maybe some old shoes. Priceless now. If any of the others saw it, they’d kill him to take it if they could.

  Shouts woke him up in the black of night, ripping him away from his restless dreams. A door smashed and he heard a strangled cry: ‘Slavers!’ And in a flash he was on his feet, running again. He pushed the silver token into his mouth and bolted for the roof. Kalda made no bones about selling its unwanted to Taiytakei slavers when they came. A cruel death at the oars, long and slow and hard; but he’d spent half his life running from men like these and he knew how to escape them. They’d come through the doors and he’d leave across the rooftops and it would be as easy as that because it always was. No one slept up in the old bakery attic because half the roof was missing. In the wind and rain of a Kalda winter you’d get better shelter sleeping in an alley. Half the roof missing had made for cold nights too, but it also made for an easy way out.

  The shouts from below were getting louder. He thought he heard his name but that couldn’t be right. They spoke with funny accents here; it must have been someone else. For a moment he stopped. If the thief-taker wasn’t here, if the thief-taker had never been here, then what was he doing? If he ran, where to? For what? Why not just turn round and let them take him?

  He reached the attic and entered. An arm wrapped around his face and then someone was on his back, bearing him to the ground. He struggled furiously but a second man quickly pinned his legs.

  ‘We’ve got him!’ shouted the man on his back. Berren struggled to turn and look but he was held fast. We’ve got him? These weren’t slavers simply clearing out the slums. They’d come for him, not for just anyone. Because of the sailor in the Bitch Queen?

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘If they look like they can swing a sword then take them to the arms-master. Otherwise let them go.’ The voice came closer and hissed in Berren’s ear. ‘You! Keep still! I won’t hurt you if you keep still, but I won’t mind if it turns out that I have to. Got that?’

  Berren couldn’t even nod. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’ve done nothing!’

  ‘You were out the back of the Bitch
yesterday. You had a knife in your hand with fresh blood on it and you’d just killed a man. You call that nothing, do you?’

  ‘I . . . No! Not me!’ No, he didn’t call that nothing. He might have called it a mistake. Might have.

  The man on his back pushed down harder, twisting Berren’s arm. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘So that was some other dark-skin boy with his first fluff on his face who happened to look exactly like you and talks the same funny way, was it? Pillock.’

  Sailors got stabbed in the Bitch Queen every week. Maybe their shipmates came looking for you but not a gang of snuffers. Sailors didn’t have the money to buy snuffers. ‘No! I don’t . . . I didn’t . . . I wasn’t . . .’

  The man squeezed and Berren whimpered. ‘You count your lucky stars that we’re not city men. The prince doesn’t get on with the people who rule here.’

  A fearful understanding gripped him. This wasn’t about Klaas – these were the snuffers he’d met outside with the man he’d mistaken for Master Sy!

  Another voice joined the first. The one he remembered. ‘Tarn! Let him up.’

  ‘You sure about that, Prince? He’ll run.’

  ‘No, he won’t. Get off him.’

  The weight came off Berren’s back and then his arms were free. He started to get up, already glancing left and right for the quickest way out. There were two men behind him and then the snuffer who looked like Master Sy in front. From this close, even in the dark, it clearly wasn’t his old master, but there was something familiar about him. Berren rose slowly to a crouch. He’d have to bolt past not-quite-Master-Sy. Then he could jump the alley between the bakery and the next row of run-down old houses. With a good lunge he’d get straight onto the roof. These snuffers with their armour and their swords, they wouldn’t make it. If they jumped, they’d fall. He’d lured men to their deaths that way before. That wasn’t killing though, not like in the Bitch Queen. No accounting for people being stupid.

  Not-quite-Master-Sy was giving him a strange look. Intense. ‘Syannis is right. You do look exactly like him.’

  ‘I look like who, sir?’ His legs tensed ready to bolt, but waited now. Syannis? The man didn’t just look like the thief-taker, then? He knew him!

  Not-quite-Master-Sy shook his head. ‘If you want to run then run. Otherwise answer my questions and then maybe I’ll answer yours. Tell me who you are.’

  Berren hesitated. He had to ask. Had to. ‘You know Syannis, sir?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Is he . . . is he alive?’

  ‘Stop dancing with me, boy. You’re Berren. From Deephaven. You can’t be anyone else. But why are you here in Kalda? Why are you looking for him all of a sudden?’

  All of a sudden? Berren shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you mean, sir. I’m Jerrin. Jerrin Nine-Fingers.’ He held up his hands so Not-quite-Master-Sy could see where the tip of one of his fingers was missing. It was the first name that came into his head.

  The man looked past him. ‘Tarn? Think you can find a good price for a slave? A slave who can handle a sword but happens to be really stupid? Apparently I made a mistake.’ He turned away. Berren still didn’t run; if he squinted then he could almost believe he was face to face with his old thief-taker master. Why? Why did you kill Tasahre? And then he’d either throw his arms around the thief-taker’s neck with relief or stab him there and then and kill him. He just didn’t know which it would be.

  Not-quite-Master-Sy started to walk past him back towards the steps.

  ‘You’re right, sir,’ said Berren slowly. ‘My name is Berren, sir. Not Jerrin.’

  ‘Imagine that. The surprise overwhelms me.’ A grim smile spread across the man’s face. It made him look even more like Master Sy, but he had a playfulness that the thief-taker had never had, and there was no anger there, no bitterness. ‘I don’t know how you got here and I don’t know how you found us, but I do know who you are, Berren. What matters to me most of all is that yesterday you had a knife in your hand when you called Syannis’s name. What did you mean to do with it?’

  Berren couldn’t look him in the eye. He stared at his feet. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you need to do a little better than that.’

  ‘Honestly! Sometimes I . . .’ Berren shook his head. ‘I just don’t know any more.’

  ‘Syannis is my brother, Berren. I hope you’ll understand. It wasn’t easy or cheap tracking you back here after that nice little surprise you gave us outside the Bitch Queen. What am I to do with you, eh?’

  ‘I have no quarrel with you, sir.’

  ‘Really? But I might have one with you. So tell me again about that knife you were holding and what you meant to do with it.’ He glanced behind Berren’s back, mouth twitching. Berren sprang. He almost reached the edge of the open attic where he could have jumped but an arm caught him around the waist. He struggled, but there were three snuffers now and they were all stronger than him. He still managed to land a good punch or two. The man who looked like Syannis reeled away, his nose bloodied.

  ‘Gods, man! Tarn, bag him! If he gives you any more trouble, hit him until he stops.’ He shook his head. ‘That what Syannis taught you, or was that your sword-monks?’

  ‘Who are you!’ Berren fought and squirmed but it was no use.

  ‘Some people call me the Prince of Swords. Question is, Berren, who are you?’

  4

  BROTHERS

  The snuffers forced a bag over Berren’s head and tied it round his neck. When he kicked at them, they held him and punched him until he stopped; then they carried him down the steps of the bakery. On the street outside they put a rope around him and led him away. The night was quiet and everyone else had fled; the people who lived in the slums kept to themselves after dark and knew well enough to stay away from gangs of armed men. Still, even blind Berren could tell something about where they were taking him. They turned uphill, the roads growing steeper and steeper while the smell of the sea turned into the smell of smoke from the wood and the dung that the city folk burned to keep warm through the winter. The higher slopes then, where the rich folk lived.

  They stopped. He was pushed across a threshold, almost tripping on it, then manhandled across a floor and up some steps. They sat him on a chair and took the bag off his head and he was sitting across a table from the man who looked like Master Sy. There were two snuffers beside the prince and two more standing by the only door. A lamp burned on the table. Lanterns hung around the room.

  ‘More light!’ said the man who looked like the thief-taker. ‘And get some bread and some clean water. We can at least be civilised about this.’ He took a deep breath and then stared hard at Berren. ‘Well. What to do, eh? What to do? I thought about leaving you be, but Syannis wouldn’t have it. You ran right past him in the Bitch Queen. Close enough to touch, he said. He thought you were a ghost.’

  ‘He’s really here?’ Berren blurted out.

  Not-quite-Master-Sy frowned. ‘He was. He’s gone now – left the city on the evening tide – but before he left he was kind enough to ask me to find you. So here we are, stuck with each other. I know who you are, Berren of Deephaven. You were once his apprentice. As for me, I’m his brother. Prince Talon of Tethis.’ He paused. ‘I would say “at your service” but under the circumstances,’ he shrugged, ‘probably not.’

  Berren’s mouth fell open. ‘I knew he had a brother.’ One door and he had to get past two men to be through it, plus the two snuffers behind the desk and the prince himself. His eyes searched for other ways.

  ‘He had . . . has . . . two.’ Prince Talon’s brow furrowed; he shook himself. ‘What in the name of the four gods, Berren of Deephaven, am I supposed to do with you?’

  ‘Let me go, sir. I’m nothing to you.’

  Talon laughed. ‘Maybe so, but I can’t just set you free. Tarn here thinks I should dump you in the sea with stones around your ankles and frankly I’m inclined to agree. But you did kill Radek of Kalda and I could kiss you for that. So. What do I
do with you?’

  Beside him the snuffer called Tarn scowled. ‘He came at you with a knife, Prince.’

  ‘He did. Be fair though – he thought I was Syannis.’ Then he frowned. ‘As if that really makes a difference.’

  ‘But I was right! Master Sy really is alive then?’ asked Berren.

  ‘Well you seemed to think so.’ Talon raised an eyebrow. ‘You and your knife. The one that I keep coming back to in the hope you’ll say something useful about what it was for.’

  Berren hardly heard. ‘I didn’t believe it, not really. I didn’t see how he could get away. And after what he did . . . Even if they didn’t catch him there and then, they’d never let him escape. They’d have chased him to the end of the world. They’d have taken his head or sent him to the mines or something. They couldn’t let him go, not after . . .’ He couldn’t finish. ‘And then I saw him on a ship and so I came looking, and I was looking and looking for months, and then people said he’d be in the Bitch Queen, and there he was, only then outside it wasn’t him, it was you. I thought I’d been seeing things. Ghosts. None of it real. But he is alive. Right?’

  Talon sighed. ‘Yes, he is. Syannis left Deephaven just like you did.’ He exchanged a glance with Tarn. ‘There was some . . . trouble, he said.’

  ‘I didn’t leave. I was jumped by a press-gang!’