by Stephen Deas
‘Time enough later for that, old bones.’ Syannis spoke softly but his words fell like an axe. He smiled a wan sad smile. ‘Serve your prince a drink before he collapses.’
Kasmin forced a laugh. ‘Anything you like, your Highness.’ A space had formed in the crowd around the pair of them. Berren saw it in the faces of the others in the tavern. No one wanted to stand next to a thief-taker.
‘I’d like a bottle of your best Malmsey, old bones. The very best you’ve got, because I’ve heard you’ve got your hands on something very fine indeed.’
For an instant there was a hesitation. For an instant, something wasn’t right. Then Kasmin grinned and nodded and jumped back behind his bar as though nothing had happened. It had, though, and if Berren had seen it, so had the thief-taker.
A moment later, two glasses and a bottle were on the bar. ‘This what you’re looking for?’ Kasmin was all smiles. Everywhere except his eyes. His eyes were wide, nervous, ready to run.
Master Sy picked up the bottle, looked it over. Then he put it down. He nodded.
‘Exactly what I was looking for. Old friend, we need to talk. I’m afraid you’ve crossed my path the wrong way this time.’
The old man still grinned, but underneath he looked terrified. Berren knew all about that look; it was the one that he used to see from people who owed money to Master Hatchet. ‘Sure. Come round tomorrow though, eh? We’ll talk all you like. Chew the fat. Dredge though our memories. Whatever you want.’ There was no conviction in the old man’s words. Not one bit.
‘No.’ Master Sy grabbed the tavern-keeper’s wrist and held it tight. ‘You need to tell me how you came by this and you need to do it right now.’
‘I got customers, Syannis.’ His voice broke, became pleading. Hopeless.
The thief-taker shook his head. ‘Not any more, old bones. Not any more.’
Five minutes and a lot of grumbling and shouting later, the Barrow of Beer was empty and still. Kasmin shut the door and put a bar across it. Then he sat down heavily on a stool. Master Sy settled in front of him. For a long time, neither of them said anything. Berren sat quietly in a corner.
‘I’m looking for pirates, Kasmin,’ said Master Sy at last.
‘I fought some of those a long time ago.’ Kasmin sounded immensely sad. Berren picked up an abandoned tankard and helped himself to a few mouthfuls of beer. It was weak and watery stuff next to the beer from the Eight Pillars of Smoke but nowhere near as bad as the stuff he and the other boys had used to sneak out of the Red Loom when Master Hatchet sent them in to cause some trouble.
The thief-taker stood up. He walked to the bar and picked up the bottle again. This time he poured himself a glass. Then he came back and sat down, bottle in one hand, glass in the other.
‘I remember. Look me in the eye, Kasmin. Tell me you bought this. Tell me this is honest trade. Look me in the eye and tell me that and I’ll be on my way.’
The old man shook with bitter laughter. ‘Can’t tell you that, old friend. You know I don’t have the gold to buy something as fine as that bottle for an honest price.’
‘No, old bones, I know that.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Berren. ‘Lad, get the other glass from the bar. Bring it here. Pour yourself a mug of something and then go wait out the back.’
Berren did as he was asked and wandered through the tavern and out into a little yard, sipping on his mug of beer. Halfway through he wrinkled his nose and tipped the rest onto the dirt. It was starting to make his head fuzzy again and that conjured up all manner of unpleasant memories. And when it came down to it, the beer didn’t actually taste particularly nice. He put the mug on the ground and squatted against the wall, waiting for the thief-taker to finish his business. He waited a long time. Eventually he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the sky was lightening with the first touches of dawn and Master Sy was shaking his shoulder.
‘Come on, lad,’ said the thief-taker gently. ‘Let’s go.’ He sounded sad. As they walked out of the yard and into a tiny dingy alley that ran up the side of the Barrow of Beer all the way down to the docks, Berren kept sneaking glances at him. There weren’t any bloodstains, but that only made him all the more curious. He stopped to peer through a window as they passed the front of the tavern. It was hard to see much through the filth and the way the cheap glass warped the world. He could make out a figure, though, sitting still on his stool, exactly where Berren remembered him.
‘Come on, lad.’ The thief-taker pulled him away. ‘He’s got ghosts enough without needing us as well. Leave him be.’
Berren twitched impatiently. ‘Master, where are we going?’ The whole night looked like it had been an enormous waste of time. Now he was tired and irritable and just wanted to go back to sleep.
‘Yes, yes.’ Master Sy shook his head. ‘We’re going home, and then we’re going to pack our bags and go down to the river docks and find ourselves passage up the river. Once we’re moving you can sleep all you like.’
Berren scowled. ‘Where are we going, master?’
‘Wherever we’re needed, lad. Wherever we’re needed.’
PART TWO
AN EXPEDITION AND A FEW LESSONS ON TAKING A THIEF
19
DRIFTING ON THE RIVER AND EATING PIE
Berren lay sprawled out in the sun, eyes closed and half asleep. A gentle wind blew across his arms and his face. The midday heat was like a warm blanket wrapped over him. He dozed, on and off, lulled by the sounds of lapping water and creaking wood. Deephaven was an hour down the river behind them, and the quiet was staggering. Sometimes one of the lightermen would call out; a sail would flap, the barge would shift a little, and then it was back to the rhythm of the water and the wood. The sounds were like someone breathing in and out; slow, deep and restful.
And then there was the smell. The sweet, fresh smell of the river. The way the air smelled up past Sweetwater, except even sweeter still. Filled with trees and grass and flowers from the farms and the woods on the city side of the river. Berren had never ventured much further out of the city than the edges of the River District, and even then only the once and with Master Sy as his guide. They were well beyond that now. He stared at the vast openness, at the swathes of green, the huge trees and the forests they made up on the Haven Hills that overlooked the city. Other smells came and went, too. More familiar smells drifting in wisps off the road that ran beside the river, the great wide River Road that ran out of the River Gate, through Sweetwater and right on to the other end of the world, as far as Berren knew. To the City of Spires and the imperial capital of Varr and maybe even further than that. Sometimes, when he wasn’t snoozing, Berren watched the road for a bit just to see what he could see. He tried to count the wagons and the carts but quickly lost track. Once he saw a black-clad galloping horseman racing towards the city. An Imperial Messenger! He stared, enraptured, then jumped up and pointed and shouted out, because even Master Sy, surely, must want to see… But when Berren scampered over to wake him, the thief-taker screamed and stared at Berren wide-eyed, and Berren recoiled as though he’d been stung. The thief-taker stared at him, glassy-eyed and far away. ‘You haven’t the tools,’ he said. Then he blinked and came back from wherever he was and swore and cursed and swatted Berren away, and by then the messenger was gone. The lightermen had laughed and shaken their heads, as though this was something they saw every day.
‘Sorry, lad,’ said the thief-taker a minute or so later. ‘Dreams.’ He was looking at Berren hard, though, wearing his sad face, as though he’d dreamed of something bad that had yet to come.
Berren scowled. An Imperial Messenger was what every city boy wanted to be and he’d missed some of seeing one because of Master Sy. Racing with the wind from one side of the world to another, always moving, stopping for nothing except the next change of horse. Some people said they had secret powers, granted to them by the emperor’s new sorcerers. That they could freeze a man to the spot simply by looking at him, that they moved so fast th
at they could vanish in a blink. Berren wasn’t sure about that, but they certainly got to learn swords and he was willing to bet they didn’t have to learn their letters first. Or have stupid dreams. Bad dreams were for children. Babies. Not for men who carried swords.
Way stations, farms, hamlets and villages dotted the road, all with their own small jetties out into the water. On the other side of the barge, more little boats pottered up and down the river. Tiny rafts, dozens and hundreds of them, not much more than a few poles lashed together, bobbing about and covered with squawking black fishing birds. Sailing boats, not much bigger than the rafts, wove between them, deft and agile. And then there were the barges like the one where Berren dozed. Big and clumsy, lumbering against the current with a sail barely big enough to keep them moving.
Beyond all those, the far side of the river stretched out towards the horizon. It faded into a maze of mud-islands and channels and creeks and swamps that went on for days. Or so Master Sy had said. The only people who went in there, he said, were the most desperately wanted men with nowhere else to hide, and the thief-takers sent to catch them.
They stopped towards the end of the day at one of the riverside way stations. Master Sy waited while the lightermen made their boat secure. He bought them a flagon of ale each and then a gammon pie which he cut in half and split with Berren.
‘Ever been out of the city before, lad?’
Berren shook his head. The pie was a good one, with thick crusty pastry and big juicy chunks of ham. The sort of thing Master Hatchet would have bought his boys as a treat, except done properly, with soft meat instead of gristly bits and proper thick gravy instead of brown water.
‘I don’t come out here often,’ said the thief-taker. He was picking at his pie as though he didn’t really want it. And he was drinking. He finished one flagon and waved for another. ‘I’d like to go to Varr one day. Just to see the palace and the Kaveneth and the bridge they built over the river there. Or the City of Spires.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, his mind clearly somewhere else. ‘Never even got as far as Tarantor.’
‘Where we going tomorrow?’ asked Berren from behind a faceful of pie.
‘Bedlam’s Crossing. Kasmin bought his bottle of Malmsey from a trader in Bedlam’s Crossing. I know him.’
‘Bought his what?’
The start of a smile played around the corner of Master Sy’s mouth, but it didn’t get very far. ‘Wine, lad. The bottle of wine he had. I’ll teach you about wine one day. I’m afraid that’s something I know rather more about than is useful. ’ He sighed, picked up his beer and took another deep draft before staring at what was left. ‘Malmsey is a strong sweet wine, usually from the vineyards around Helhex. They don’t make very much so it’s quite rare. One of the first ships to be attacked in the harbour had ten thousand bottles in its hold and they all vanished. I knew they’d start to show up again one day.’ He shook his head. He’d still hardly touched his pie. Berren eyed it hungrily while the thief-taker drained his second flagon and waved over a third. Berren had never seen him drunk and had no idea what it would look like. Master Hatchet mostly liked to hit people. The thief-taker, Berren thought, would be one of those morose and moody drunks who got miserable and talked too much about stuff no one else cared about.
‘Was that man a friend of yours?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Which man, lad?’
‘The old bloke in the Barrow of Beer. I thought you’d kill him, what with him being a thief.’ Belatedly he remembered the look on Master Sy’s face as they’d come away from Kasmin’s tavern. Too much pie was making him bold. He tried to look shamefaced, ready for the rebuke, but it didn’t come. Master Sy simply looked sad again.
‘I didn’t kill you, did I?’ he asked, gently.
Berren bowed his head. ‘Sorry, master.’
‘Lad, what you saw when we met wasn’t something that happens every day. A thief-taker doesn’t fight. Not unless he has to, and even then, you don’t kill a man without a very good reason.’ The thief-taker took a long swallow from beer number three and smacked his lips. His face was starting to glisten. Berren didn’t know much about getting drunk himself, except for his one disaster in the Eight, but he’d learned how to spot it in other people. Drunks had always been his first bet for lifting a few pennies. The only trouble being that they often didn’t have any.
‘When you first met me in that alley, what you saw then is not a thief-taker’s life.’ Master Sy was starting to slur his words. Only very slightly, but enough to notice. ‘You can’t win every fight, lad, and you only have to lose one to be dead. No, you don’t fight unless you have no choice.’ He patted his chest, rattling the ringmail under his shirt. ‘Of course, I do try to make sure that any fight I’m in I’m going to win.’ He tried grinning again, but it didn’t really work.
‘I seen people go funny like that,’ Berren said. He was treading on dangerous ground and chose his words carefully. ‘Like he knew he was in big trouble the moment you came in. Seemed like you knew him pretty well, though. Like you were friends for a real long time.’
Master Sy took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Kasmin? Yes. I’ve known Kasmin since I was a boy, maybe since I was half your age. He was a soldier. He worked…’ The thief-taker frowned. ‘He helped my father from time to time. He was a brave man once. A strong one, too, and a leader. When the… When I was forced to leave my home, Kasmin came with me. I’d lost most of my family. I was a bit older than you, but not much. I had a younger brother to look after. And another…’ He stared at Berren long and hard. Stared right through him, off into some other place and time. ‘Yes, another brother, who looked a bit like you do now. We had lots of friends. Or people who said they were our friends. People who should have been. Kasmin came with us. He helped me for a while. When things were at their worst, he was always there.’ Master Sy smiled. ‘Truth is, he probably saved my life more than once and I never even knew anything about it. He was a good man, but the wandering broke him. He so wanted to go back home, and he could have, too. He had family, but that would have meant leaving us and abandoning his duty. Eventually we heard that they’d been killed, months later. Robbers. He always drank too much, Kasmin. One day he just vanished. Had enough. Walked out into the night and didn’t come back. Years later I washed up in Deephaven. I started thief-taking, and then one day there he was, on the wrong end of my sword. I was afraid for a moment, because I knew he knew how to fight. But he didn’t. He gave himself up to me; and for all the things he’d done for me and mine before he left us, I let him go. I even helped him a bit to buy the Barrow. It’s not the first time he’s fallen in with the wrong sort and I don’t suppose it’s going to be the last.’
Berren decided to try and push his luck one more time. ‘He called you a prince,’ he said, which wasn’t quite true, but close enough.
‘No he didn’t.’
‘Well he called you something like that.’ Yes, and it wasn’t the first time either.
Behind Master Sy’s eyes, the shutters had come down. Berren had gone too far; or else the thief-taker had realised that he’d said too much. Master Sy shook his head and took another swig of beer. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, lad. We used to call each other all sorts of things.’
Which might have been true, but certainly wasn’t the truth he’d been looking for. Something to remember for the next time he ever saw his master drunk, perhaps. But enough for now. Instead, Berren waved his fork at Master Sy’s plate.
‘Can I have your pie then?’ He put on his best grin, showing off his teeth. Master Sy didn’t smile though. He merely pushed the plate across the table.
‘Go ahead, lad. I think I should go to sleep. You’re in the stables, in the hayloft.’
‘Master? When I woke you up on the boat, you said something. I didn’t understand. What did you mean?’
‘Said something?’ Master Sy shook his head, and there came that forced half-smile again. ‘No, lad. I didn’t say anything. If you re
ally want to know, I was dreaming I was back home again. Some time years from now. And nothing had changed for the good.’ He grunted and shrugged. ‘Seeing Kasmin, you see. Brings it all back.’
Berren watched him go. The thief-taker walked steadily, no sign that he was half in his cups. For a few seconds, Berren even wondered if it had all been an act, whether Master Sy hadn’t been drunk at all. But that was foolish and didn’t really make much sense when you came to look at it.
With a happy sigh, he turned back to the remains of the thief-taker’s pie. His master might have gone to sleep, but the night was yet young and he had every intention of making the best of it.
20
BEDLAM’S CROSSING
Berren yawned and rubbed his eyes. The lightermen worked around him, oblivious. Now and then they threw him a sly glance. He’d spent half the night with them. They hadn’t known anything much about Master Sy or thief-taking, but they’d known a lot about Bedlam’s Crossing, and about the river, too. And they’d known a lot about how to prize pennies out of Berren’s purse. He’d listened to their stories with eager ears and marvelled, paying for each of them with more flagons of pale ale. Stories of the City of Spires with its five curving towers of gleaming white stone, so tall that they scratched the sky. Of Varr and its palaces and temples, all carved from lumps of solid gold as big as a ship. Of swamp-hags who swam across the river from the other side at night and lured men away to a watery grave. Of the river mermaids who sometimes saved them and who were more beautiful even than the emperor’s new queen. Of the strange lands further up the river, of three-headed lions and giant snakes with the faces of men and witches who turned sailors to stone. Of sea-monsters that swallowed entire ships.