The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) (27 page)

Talon leaned closer. He glanced around as though he was worried they might be overheard. ‘A couple of years later, there was the accident. Syannis has it in his head that Kuy somehow made it happen, that one of the warlocks did it so that Syannis could be king after all, but I know better. Aimes had a pony. He was starting to learn to ride. He loved the ponies and the foals. The big horses scared him, but he used to play around the stables, and that’s where they found him. The stable master said he must have climbed through to the king’s hunting horses and then slipped. Fallen over and cried out and spooked them. They knocked him down and one of them kicked him. After a decade of soldiering, I’ve seen enough people go funny from being thumped on the head.’

He covered his eyes. ‘Syannis wasn’t there but he always thought that Saffran Kuy had made it happen, and that he’d made it happen so that Syannis could be king. Thing is,
he
wasn’t there but
I
was. I saw it all. I told Syannis too, but he never shook the idea that Kuy had cast some sort of spell on Aimes, or on the horses, or maybe on both. But there was one part I never told Syannis. See, it wasn’t Saffran Kuy who arranged it so that Syannis could be king, it was me. My fault. Aimes didn’t crawl in with the hunting horses at all. He was there because I put him there. He didn’t fall; he was screaming because he was scared, and that was what spooked them. I saw him go down. Watched it and did nothing. I couldn’t tell you which one kicked him. I never liked Aimes. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I can’t say as I was ever particularly sorry.’

He stared into his ale and then drained it. ‘It’s all gone wrong, Master Berren. Syannis always said that once Meridian was gone and we had our kingdom back, he’d be able to fix it. Make it right, or else Kuy would. And then something happened. I don’t know what, but it was before we fought Meridian. Something changed. When Aimes sent Kuy away, I thought it wouldn’t be long before he was back. I would have killed the bastard too. But he went and he stayed gone for a long time and Syannis did nothing to stop it, and yet nothing is any better than it was before, and he can’t make it right because no one can. Aimes is still a child inside and he always will be. There’s no cure for that. Tethis is falling apart and Syannis too. He’s so lost, Berren.’

Talon shook his head. Then he laughed. ‘He had some wild idea, from the moment he first saw you in Deephaven, that Saffran Kuy had cut a piece of Aimes’ spirit away to make him the way he is, and that whatever part of Aimes he’d had taken out, you had it. Just because you looked like him. Thought that for years, for all that time you were together in Deephaven and in Forgenver too, even when the two of you went to Tethis together. But in the Pit something changed. When he came out, he didn’t believe it any more. He never talked about it, just said it had been a stupid fantasy and that he’d never really believed it in the first place, but I know Kuy got to him while he was in the Pit. Kept him alive, if you take Syannis’s word for it, but there was a price for that, because there always is. Kuy took Syannis’s hope.’

Something odd was happening in Talon’s face, a desperation and a hopelessness that Berren had never seen there before. ‘You’ve changed too, Berren. You’re not the man you were when I found you either. Far, far from it.’

‘You can thank your brother for that.’

‘Are you sure?’ Talon reached out. From beneath Berren’s shirt he pulled the chain and the stone that Gelisya had given him on their first voyage to Tethis, back from the slaver camp. Then he let go and put a hand on Berren’s arm. ‘Try to forgive my brother. He’s not himself.’

‘Then who is he?’

Talon didn’t answer. He stared at the chain and the stone hanging loose around Berren’s neck now. ‘Is it really possible? To cut out a piece of someone’s soul and yet leave them to live? Is that really what Kuy did to you when you were with him?’

‘I was never
with
Kuy. I was in his house once for a few minutes, that was all. The most terrifying minutes I’ll ever know.’ Berren’s eyes glazed over. He could see the web of his soul right then, as clear as he’d seen it in Deephaven when Saffran Kuy had first cut him with the gold-handled knife. He could see the threads snapping, one after the other. Cut, cut, cut. And then he saw himself in Tethis, making the potion to pull Tarn away from whatever demons held him, filled with a knowledge he should never have had. He pushed the stone back under his shirt. ‘Yeh,’ he choked. ‘Yes, he really did that.’

‘Then why did he give it back to you, Berren?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t mean to. Gelisya never seemed that happy to let it go.’

‘She could have taken it while you were in the Pit. She didn’t.’

‘But Kuy wasn’t there then. You’d sent him packing.’

Talon waved another pitcher of beer to their table. ‘After the accident Aimes didn’t move. He didn’t speak. It was like he was dead except his heart was still beating. Like Tarn was when Gelisya gave that to you. Aimes was like that for three days and then suddenly he was better. No one knew why. Sometimes that’s what happens when you get hit on the head. Except Syannis once told me he saw Kuy go into Aimes’ room late at night. After Meridian killed our father and scattered us, Syannis spent three years making sure we were safe. Then he vanished. He went halfway around the world looking for Saffran Kuy. Why? Why would he do that? We had so many other troubles and he left us to look for that bloody necromancer who’d brought us nothing but pain.’ Talon’s voice was slurring and his eyes were closing. ‘And now . . . we have to do something.’

Minutes later he was asleep, sprawled across the table. Berren lurched up the stairs. Talon had never been anything less than a friend. But Syannis? He looked inside himself to see whether there were any feelings at all. Eventually he found them, frozen in ice, trapped and caged. No, for Syannis he felt nothing. And nothing that Talon had said made any difference either. So what if Syannis was obsessed with Aimes? None of it would help him get Fasha and his son, would it? None of it would help him keep his promise. And if it didn’t help with that then what use was it? None. The thief-taker had made his own troubles and now he could lie with them and be damned, and that was all fine, and . . .

But then unconsciousness picked him up and hurled him into a sea of dreams. He saw himself as Aimes, trapped in a stable full of horses as big as houses, all of them angry and trying to stamp him flat while he desperately scurried out of the way, until one of them finally caught him and squashed him, pressing him down into the ground, ever deeper and ever darker to another place where even the sounds had bright colours running through them. He smelled smoke and incense and fish, and some giant was looming over him with hands that were neither kind nor gentle. He felt them touch his face, felt a sticky, bitter coldness at the back of his throat and a voice whisper in his ear:
Fasha, Fasha, Fasha
. Then the hands withdrew and clasped a knife between them, Kuy’s knife, and cut him slowly open except there was no pain, no blood, only a numb relief as the tension and the hurt flooded away.
Fasha, Fasha, Fasha
. The whisper went on, only now the voice had changed; the words were no longer deep and long but high-pitched and childish. The giant hands became small and delicate and he saw that the figure looming over him was Gelisya. She held Kuy’s knife so he could see it, could see himself in the blade as though pressed against a glass. And with him inside it, he saw Fasha too.

I have a piece of both of you now
, said Gelisya, and she faded away into a deep and endless void.

The next evening, when Talon had finally sobered up, he told Berren what was really on his mind. ‘I have a new commission,’ he said. ‘For as soon as the company can assemble.’

‘I thought you were going back to Tethis.’

‘Yes. That’s the commission. I’m offering it to myself. I think I might accept it too.’

‘We’re going to fight for Syannis again?’ Berren snorted. ‘No, thanks.’

Talon looked sad. ‘We’re . . . we’re going to fight against him.’

Now every part of Berren was suddenly awake and listening. ‘Against him? For whom?’

Talon sighed. ‘I want you to get rid of Aimes. Let him be dead.’

‘You want to get rid of Aimes, let Syannis do it. All he needs is a bit of poison.’

Talon glared and growled. ‘The
last
thing that
Syannis
wants to do is kill him. Sun and Moon, you can be a cold fish sometimes. Syannis wants to make him better, always did! He can’t, but that won’t stop him from trying. There are warlocks in Tethis again, Berren. He has it in him to be a good king, but not while Aimes is there, because at every turn the warlocks whisper to him. So I want you to kill Aimes, and I will deal with these warlocks once and for all. He can’t just die, because then Syannis will fall to bits. He has to be killed. Murdered. You could do that. You killed a king for Syannis; you can do it for me. He’ll hate you beyond words, but you can just get on that ship to Deephaven I kept promising all those years ago. He’ll never reach you.’

‘And why in the name of the four gods would I do that? What’s Aimes ever done to me?’

‘You’ll do it for your slave and for your son and for all the gold you have and a sackful more, and because if you don’t do it then I will, and then I cannot be there to make Syannis whole again. Aimes isn’t fit to be a king and never was.’ He shook his head. ‘It has to end, and unless I turn my sword on my own brother, I can think of no other way.’ He looked across at Berren. Half a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be asking you this, but I don’t know who else might do it.’

‘No, you shouldn’t.’ Berren shook his head. He closed his eyes and pinched his nose.

‘Then say no and let it fall to me and forget that I asked. I’ll not judge you harshly for that. I might even admire you for it.’

Berren looked up again. ‘What you should be doing is the one thing you can’t.
You’d
make a good king, Prince Talon. Get rid of them all, that’s what you should do.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing against Aimes.’

‘You had nothing against Meridian either.’

‘You’re asking me to murder your brother.’

‘Half-brother.’ Talon spat. ‘And that’s between me and my conscience, and I did tell you that I never liked him. You’re the Bloody Judge, Berren. You’ve become that. Why is Aimes any different to all the other men you’ve killed? This time you could save a few.’

‘Fine. I’ll do it then. For Fasha and for my son, and for all the gold I have and a sackful more. A big sackful.’ And for Tasahre, twisted as it was. Let Syannis feel the same pain.

‘And then you’ll be gone. Vanish. Back to where you came from. Too far away even for my brother to come looking. Because he will.’

‘Like a ghost.’ Casually, Berren smiled and leaned in towards Talon. ‘You never did me any wrong, not yet. But like you said, I’m the Bloody Judge of Tethis now. If you cross me like Syannis did, you’d better kill me, because if you don’t, I will cut my way through every single last one of you.’

‘I have something for you.’ Talon unbuckled his sword belt and passed it across to Berren, sword and all. ‘Take it. I have others.’

Berren looked at Talon’s sword. It was a fine blade, a proper Dominion fencing sword, a little longer than the blades he usually carried, but light, neatly balanced, with a basket hilt of curling coils of metal. ‘Worth a bit, that.’

‘As much as your bondswoman. Probably more. Think of it as part of your payment.’ He closed his eyes. ‘How did it come to this, Berren?’

Berren took the sword and the belt. ‘Killing Aimes isn’t what really needs to be done. But you know that.’

Talon only looked sad. ‘You may be right.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’m not my brother. Either of them.’ He got up and left, and Berren watched him go. He tried to see himself chasing through Tethis castle, slashing with Talon’s sword at anyone who got in his way until he found the room where Fasha was waiting for him with his son, cowering in a corner and full of hope. But it wasn’t Aimes he saw dead when he closed his eyes. What he saw was Syannis, with Talon risen in his place. Talon couldn’t do it? Fair enough. Then Talon wouldn’t have to.

30

LUCAMA

I
n the days that followed, Berren became surly and impatient, eager to return to Tethis and be done with it all. The fear he’d felt on the way to Kalda had grown, congealed into something solid that he carried inside him like a ball of ice wrapped up in his belly. As the winter went on, he dreamed of Fasha and Gelisya and Saffran Kuy and his knife. They haunted him more and more, sometimes night after night, and when they let him be, then it was the woman he’d killed after the battle on the beach. Over and over. Just her, lying on the ground and blood everywhere, and the wondering of why he’d done it.

‘Do
you
have dreams?’ he asked Tarn one evening. Tarn gave him a sour look.

‘Depends what I’ve been drinking,’ he said. ‘Mostly not.’

‘But when you do, what are they?’

Tarn cackled. ‘Mostly women, and what happens is none of your business, dark-skin.’ His face softened. ‘Ships sometimes. If I dream of anything, I dream of sailing. A good strong wind, a sturdy ship, sails full, waves a little choppy, salt in my face. Moving swift and strong and sure.’ He nodded. ‘Nice dreams. I think maybe I’m meant to be a sailor if not a soldier. Pity, because I rather liked the idea of setting up my own little school and teaching people how to fight.’

Berren snorted. ‘Sailing? Can’t say I thought much of it myself.’ But then maybe it wasn’t so bad when you weren’t the skag. Maybe if you were the one giving the orders it was just fine.

After two winters in the south Kalda felt cold and bitter. The days ran together in a blur of impatience. Talon talked endlessly of Syannis and Aimes, about the times they’d had together as children and ever since. He told Berren about the war, of how when Radek and Meridian had invaded Tethis a strange illness had afflicted the king’s guard. Some sort of poisoning, Talon thought. How after the war was won, Radek had scoured the world looking for Saffran Kuy and anyone who’d had anything to do with him. Mostly, though, he talked about Syannis and his obsession with the necromancer. Berren listened, not because he was interested, but because Talon was paying for the beer and their food and lodgings.