The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3)

by Stephen Deas

  The men came back out and stood with Lucama while Berren and Tarn waited a little apart, just far enough away to be out of sword range. They were on the wide road that ran from the docks towards the heart of Kalda, and it wasn’t so late that they were alone. Small groups of men and women made their way past now and then, or else a wagon laden with goods for one of the ships would come the other way. Half a dozen of the harbour watch loitered nearby, quietly watching. Lucama had chosen his spot well.

  Two men approached from the dockside. Berren’s eyes ran over them. One was simply a soldier, quickly dismissed, but the other . . . For one juddering moment he thought it was Saffran Kuy. The man wore the same robes, a hood hiding his face in its shadows. But this man was too tall; he had no limp, and when he drew the hood back, the face was someone else. Yet there were echoes there, and the same tattoos that Berren remembered, and a warlock was still a warlock, and there was something familiar . . .

  That very first day in Tethis when he was looking for what he needed for the potion to save Tarn. Before he’d even started. The Mermaid. The tall man with the elbows who’d been stealing glances at him. And now he was a warlock?

  Berren stared. The warlock was carrying a bundle carefully cradled in his arms. The bundle wriggled and shifted and then settled again. For the second time that night Berren froze, his whole body flushing numb. The warlock was carrying a child!

  Lucama’s hand flew to his sword. Tarn stepped away and did the same. The other soldiers drew back and Berren was shocked to find his own blade already an inch out of its scabbard. He slid it slowly back, reluctant to let it go.

  ‘Berren Crown-Taker,’ said the man in grey.

  ‘Is that my son?’ hissed Berren. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the harbour watchmen eyeing them closely.

  ‘Princess Gelisya sends her salutations,’ said the man in grey. ‘We have heard much about you, Crown-Taker. What a penchant for killing you have.’

  They stared at each other. The watchmen were slowly easing themselves closer. Berren wondered if he could he kill this warlock before they arrived. Probably not. He had too many men around him. If the others fled, he could do it, but if they stayed to fight then he’d never get past them in time. Lucama, he was sure, wouldn’t run. The others . . . would they? And what about Tarn? Would Tarn have his back if he just launched himself at these men out of nowhere?

  But the warlock had his son, and killing a warlock was never easy. He’d seen that. The moment passed. ‘What is it that you want, warlock?’

  ‘Warlock?’ The man laughed. ‘I make soap, Crown-Taker.’

  ‘Then you’re Saffran Kuy’s brother Vallas, and your life hangs by a thread as slender as spider silk.’

  A little smile played around the corner of the warlock’s mouth. He looked into the bundle he carried. ‘We are all Saffran’s brothers. Princess Gelisya of Tethis has not forgotten that you murdered her father. She sends you a warning and the offer of a bargain. She will never, ever sell her bondswoman to you. Never. For all the sun-king’s gold, still you will not own her, nor will you own your son, and if you try to take either by force then she will have them killed, instantly. But she will give you the woman and her child freely and forgive your murderous past if you will perform one small service for her.’

  ‘And what service is that, warlock?’

  Vallas tossed a stone to Berren’s feet. A tiny scrap of paper was wrapped around it. ‘They say you can read and even write. Unusual for a soldier. But it’s your sword and your willingness to use it that Her Highness wishes to purchase. It won’t be difficult for you. It won’t be difficult at all. I think you might even enjoy it.’ He glanced down to the stone lying at Berren’s feet and then pointedly at Tarn. ‘You might not wish to share. But that’s up to you.’

  Slowly Berren nodded. He picked up the stone and unwrapped it. The words on the paper were few and simple, the language plain. It is my will to rule, Crown-Taker. ‘And if I refuse?’

  Vallas Kuy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then Princess Gelisya will have you hunted down and killed for the murderer that you are, and your son will fall to me.’ With that, the warlock, soap-maker, whatever he was, turned his back and walked away, taking his men with him. For a moment Lucama remained. He hesitated, then approached Berren and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I like to think we were friends, back when Sword-Master Silvestre was teaching us both.’ He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment. ‘I know the child he means. I suppose everyone does. He’s back in Tethis, fit and feisty. I don’t know where the one he’s carrying came from and I don’t think I want to, but we brought no children with us when we sailed. Perhaps it’s best you know that.’ He stepped away, saluted and followed the others.

  31

  THE SACKING OF TETHIS

  Berren crushed the paper in his fist. Later he threw it into the fire. It was something Talon could never see, nor Tarn, nor the other Hawks he called his friends. He stared on into the flames long after the paper was ash. It won’t be difficult for you. Berren watched the embers flicker and die and begged to differ. There would be a price, there always was. I think you might even enjoy it. He had no illusions as to what she meant. She wanted Syannis dead.

  ‘Why me, though? Why ask me?’ The flames and the embers that followed them had no answer.

  ‘I’m afraid of what will happen,’ he said to Talon one night. Talon had seen the change in him as clearly as if his skin had turned red.

  ‘As am I, Master Berren, as am I.’ He looked far away and Berren knew they were talking about utterly different things. He felt a sudden urge to take Talon by the shoulders and shake him and tell him that this was all wrong. Tell him that no one was to be trusted, not even him. Tell him of the warlock and of Gelisya’s offer, everything, and then make him stop, or else do the one thing that would save them all and take the crown of Tethis for himself. But he couldn’t. When he opened his mouth, the words refused to come. Why? Because of Fasha? Because of a woman he barely knew who’d shared his bed for one night three years ago? Because of a child he’d never seen? He should walk away, just as he should have walked away years ago, but he couldn’t, and still for the same reason. Syannis and all that lay between them. Even Talon, who was so astute on the battlefield, whose tactics and strategies were the stuff of legend among the free companies, had a blindness when it came to his own brother.

  Three days after Vallas Kuy had given Berren his choice, sixteen cohorts of men sailed for Forgenver, and Berren was with them. The old camp outside the town was still there. The tents were gone but the wooden huts remained and a tiny shanty town had sprung up. The place stank and Berren felt a wild urge to race into its midst and burn it to the ground, to chase off everyone who would flee and slaughter the ones who would not and give it back to the ghosts of all the men he’d once known but would never see again.

  They marched from Forgenver down the south road towards Galsmouth and Tethis. Berren rode at the front of the army on a horse he’d stolen from some officer of the sun-king who’d found himself on the wrong end of a javelin. He could have had his own cohort if he’d asked for it but he never did, preferring his own company. In the south he’d fought with Tarn, or with Talon, or wherever else he thought he could make a difference. Where the enemy was strongest, or weakest, or simply the easiest to reach. Today he rode with what was left of the Deephaven lancers. There were a dozen of them now, the rest dead or drifted away, and he was as much one of them as he was anything else after the last season in the south. And besides, he didn’t want to be with Tarn for this. Not with a friend he might see killed for such a sour and selfish business. Everywhere he looked, he saw reminders of the last time he’d come this way. The anger, the hunger, the hope, the desire. They’d come to free Syannis, to free Fasha and Gelisya and to kill Saffran Kuy, and for all their victories they’d done none of that.

  At least there was no endless rain this time, no need for carefully prepared caches of food; now they
lived off the land. As they reached Galsmouth, half the company, the half made up of the veterans who had fought against Meridian, marched openly towards the town, welcomed with open arms by the soldiers that now made up the garrison there. The rest, Berren, the other foreigners and southerners, the men with strange faces and sun-darkened skin, skirted the town and vanished into the hills. They left behind their colours and their badges, took on new ones and became the Thousand Ghosts. A forgery of renegades whispered in the winter winds in Kalda, masquerading beneath carefully planted stories of brigands and rapists, of looters and pillagers.

  Talon’s plan was absurdly simple: the Thousand Ghosts were a story carefully made and spread over months. For one night they would become real. They would throw themselves on the city of Tethis and for a few perilous hours it would seem as though the town stood on the edge of destruction; then Talon and his Hawks would arrive in the nick of time, the wicked brigands would flee and all would be safe once more. Everything would happen in a blur of confusion, too quick for anyone to count the Thousand Ghosts and realise they were more like a hundred. It would be over in a night. In the chaos Talon would sweep away the warlocks, and in that blur kings and princes would die.

  On the last day out from Tethis Talon slipped away from his men too. He put on a helm that covered his face, hid his colourful cloak and banner behind leathers and furs, and joined the Thousand Ghosts. They waited all through the night, until before the first gleam of dawn on the horizon. From the light of the stars and the moon, they could all see the castle where king Aimes was doubtless sleeping, little more than a bow shot away.

  ‘You know where to go.’ Berren nodded. Talon turned to the three men who would lead the charge on the castle. ‘And you? Sure you know what to do?’ They nodded too. ‘Smoke and noise, friends, no more. This is my home.’ Maybe it was the moonlight, but Talon seemed to have turned pale, almost white as though he’d seen a ghost. Finally the Prince of War took a deep breath. He gave the sign and the Thousand Ghosts began to creep in silence towards Tethis and the castle that loomed before them.

  ‘Let it begin.’ He sounded grim.

  Berren mounted his horse. He waved to the lancers and rode towards the river and its gorge. In the time it took for the Thousand Ghosts to rouse the castle guard, Berren would come from another way. They would leave their horses at the top of the gorge and slide silently into the castle, following the same path that he and Syannis had used years ago. He had no key this time, but he had a dozen men and he had a small ram. They’d appear inside just as he had done before. He’d slip through the darkness and find Aimes and kill him for Talon and then open the gates and the castle would fall. Except his own plan was a little different. He would not search for Aimes but for Gelisya and for Fasha and for his son. He’d take them all, and then, and only then, decide who he would allow to live and who would die.

  They reached the top of the gorge and there everything started to go wrong. There were king’s guard, a dozen of them, maybe more, already making their way along the river and into the fields. They couldn’t possibly have come so far from the castle unless they’d already left before the attack had begun, and there was only one thing that could mean.

  Syannis knew.

  The soldiers sent up a cry of alarm; the lancers, who knew no better, rode them down. Berren screamed after them and charged in their wake. The lancers scythed down half the guards on their first pass and turned hard for a second. Berren watched, lost for words. Most of the survivors broke and ran. The horsemen chased them down. In the middle someone was still standing. Whoever it was had his back to him. Berren lowered his spear and cut him down.

  The lancers dismounted and drew their throat-cutting knives. For all Berren knew, Aimes might be among the dead here, Syannis too, perhaps both of them. When the Deephaven soldiers were done, he forced himself to stare into the faces of the fallen, and there was Aimes with his head smashed in. King Aimes. Dead. He wasn’t wearing anything to mark him out, no crown, no golden sword, nothing. If he hadn’t had Berren’s face, he could have been anyone.

  But no sign of Syannis. Berren wasn’t sure whether to feel glad or afraid; all he wanted right now was the same as he’d wanted for years: Fasha and their child. And then he’d be gone, away with the gold he’d saved from the seasons in the south. The dead staring back at him made it possible. For better or for worse, more by accident than intent, he’d done what Talon had wanted of him. There would be no more killing. He’d take his son and go somewhere far away, where Syannis and Talon and Gelisya would never find him. To Deephaven, or to some other part of the empire. Syannis might chase him to the ends of the world for what he’d done here, but however far he went Berren would simply go further.

  He took a moment to look at Aimes, that face that was so nearly his own, the face that had changed his life beyond all reason, and closed the dead king’s eyes, glad that he’d not been the one to deliver the killing blow. Then he turned away, because what mattered now was to get into the castle, to find Fasha and do it quickly; and then to the harbour and away, never to see Tarn or Talon or any of the others again. He’d miss them, he knew. Some of them.

  They left the bodies where they lay and cantered back to the gorge, dismounted at the top and ran down the path that Syannis had once shown to him. He missed the cave at first and wasted ten minutes searching for it. They lost another five smashing down the grate. By now he was late, terribly late – the sun was rising and he should have been inside the castle almost an hour ago – but there was nothing to be done about that. They stripped off their armour and swords and swam the sump, Berren first. The Pit lay beyond, empty and dark today. They paused long enough to arm themselves again and then ran up the steps, through the cellar and into the guardroom, to the place where he and Syannis had last raised their blades together.

  It was empty. The king’s guard were out on the walls. In Talon’s scheme Berren and his lancers would take the castle gates from behind and let the Thousand Ghosts inside. They’d ransack the place and Aimes would die. And then, in the thin light of the dawn, the Hawks would come. But Aimes was already dead, and Berren was afraid of what else that might mean.

  He knew we were coming.

  He tore open the door to the armoury, but the secret panel at the back had been bricked shut. No way through. He cursed. ‘Out. Quietly. Take down anyone in your way and get the gate open. Quick now.’

  He left the lancers to it and ran from the guardroom deeper into the castle. The place was deathly quiet. No soldiers anywhere. No shouting. He kicked down the doors to the kitchens. Empty too. Except for the soldiers out on the walls, the castle seemed abandoned.

  And then it came to him: Gelisya wasn’t here! And why would she be, when she knew what was coming? The Hawks had made no secret of their march south from Forgenver. She’d known days ago. Syannis had known too. That was why he’d found the king’s guard taking Aimes away to safety. They knew it all, Talon’s whole charade, and now it was just a farce.

  No. Not all. They hadn’t known that he’d come down the gorge with a squadron of horsemen. They obviously hadn’t know that part.

  The lancers did their job. The gates were opened and the Thousand Ghosts poured in. The surrounded guards threw down their swords and surrendered without a fight. Berren counted. Sixteen of them left. Sixteen men to defend a castle? He pushed through them, looking for Lucama, but Lucama wasn’t there.

  No Gelisya. No Syannis. No slave. No son. And he would go after them, and Syannis would stand in his way, and one of them would have to kill the other after all. There was no other way any more. ‘Princess Gelisya?’ he asked, breathless.

  A guard glared at him. ‘Not here.’ That was all he got.

  ‘Where? Where’s Syannis? Where are the servants?’

  ‘Gone. All gone.’

  Gone. But the Bloody Judge of Tethis didn’t lose that easily. Gelisya would be near. He could almost feel her presence. She’d be here to see everything happen as she des
ired it. And Syannis too – he could have held off a dozen men on his own and rallied the rest – yet the guards had thrown down their swords as soon as the gates were opened. As though they knew what was coming and it was what they’d been told to do.

  There was a clenched fist inside him. He paced the castle, desperate with frustration, trying to work out where Syannis and Gelisya might be, then climbed the wall overlooking the city. He stared down as if hoping to see them somewhere, staring back at him, but nearly all of Tethis was hidden beneath the cliffs. Where the coastline curved away he could see some of the fishing villages on the edge of the town, little more than grey shapes in the early morning light. Too far. No one there would be able to see what was happening; probably they wouldn’t even be able to see the smoke. No, Gelisya would be closer than that, but where? The only part of the city he could see was the market, where it spread up the far side of the gorge, and even there all was still.

  As he stared out across the sea, he suddenly knew the answer was right in front of him, in the dull shapes out among the waves. He couldn’t see the harbour from the castle, but he remembered how it had been, sailing into the city, sitting in a longboat and looking up at the cliffs. She wasn’t in the city at all. She was on a ship. Safe and out of reach and there to see it all.