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

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

T
he 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!’

Talon cocked his head. ‘Really? Syannis said you ran away after you killed Radek. Press-ganged? Explains why he never found you.’ He looked at Berren’s face and scowled. ‘
Did
you run away after you killed Radek? Not that
I
much care but it does seem to trouble Syannis.’

‘Sort of. Well I was going to. After . . .’

‘After . . .?’ Talon’s eyes narrowed as if looking for something inside Berren’s head. ‘Syannis thinks you killed Radek for
him
, but you didn’t, did you? I see no pride in you at all. Just shame and fear.’ He growled. ‘I’m missing a part of this story, aren’t I? Something Syannis never thought to mention. I think you’d better tell me what it is.’

Berren saw Tasahre again, covered in blood. He pinched his lip. ‘Master Sy killed . . .’ He couldn’t make her name come out. A quiver ran through him. ‘Didn’t he tell you what he did?’

‘He killed whom?’

‘My teacher.’ Gods but it was hard to talk about her without screaming, even now.

Talon screwed up one eye and peered at Berren. ‘He didn’t say anything about that. Just that you were the one who’d killed Radek. And that after that you ran away.’

‘I ran because Master Sy . . . killed my teacher.’

‘I see. And he mattered to you, did he?’

Berren couldn’t answer, could only look away and try to will back the tears. ‘She,’ he whispered.

‘
She?
’ Talon blinked. ‘Oh dear gods. Your face . . .’ He sat back into his chair. ‘I think I see.’

‘She was my friend.’ Friend wasn’t the right word but it would do. No reason for anyone else to know any more. ‘She was a sword-monk.’

‘Sun and moon!’ Talon stared at him in wonder. ‘Well, there’s a thing. Syannis has no idea. So Syannis killed your . . .
friend
and you ran away straight into the arms of a press gang? Is that what I’m supposed to think?’