The Thief-Takers Apprentice ta-1

by Stephen Deas

  Berren nodded. This was more like it. Four men! Four men with swords! He’d fought them and he’d nearly won. Had won. Like in the alley but even better. ‘I went to get water. When I was coming back, I saw you. You came out of the house on the river docks. The one where Garrent said not to go. That why you were there? Where’s Lilissa?’

  ‘The House of Cats and Gulls.’ The thief-taker laughed, but his face was cold and unfriendly. ‘Funny place to wake up. But if I hadn’t then I would have gone there anyway to find out why I wasn’t dead.’ He lifted his shirt. In the hollow of his arm was a livid scar, as long and as thick as a finger. ‘They didn’t just cut me, boy. They good as killed me. And Lilissa’s gone home, boy. Where she should be, back with her fishmonger’s son and well away from the likes of us.’

  Berren stared at the scar. That was from last night?

  ‘Well? Do you like the rain so much, boy, or are you coming in?’

  ‘The witch-doctor did that?’

  Master Sy rolled his eyes. ‘Witch-doctor? Is that what they’ve told you he is?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll take you to him someday. But no, a snuffer did that. One of them touched me, and badly. Saffran healed a wound that would likely have killed me.’ He straightened his shirt, sat down at the table and gestured to the seat next to him. ‘You want to know about me and the witch-doctor on the docks? Then come in and break some bread with me. I’ll tell you about where we come from. And after that we have work to do.’

  Berren looked at his feet. ‘I took your purse to go and buy some food.’ He showed Master Sy the purse, and then the little bag of spice cakes he’d bought on Godsway for him and Lilissa to eat.

  ‘Well now you can give it back to me. Besides, as you see, I have another. So that being the case, come here and sit down. Do it now.’ He had steel in his voice this time.

  Berren walked in, closed the door behind him and sat at the table with Master Sy.

  ‘Do you remember, when I first brought you back here, I told you that someone had stolen something from me a long time ago? You asked me what had happened to them, and I said that nothing had happened. Nothing at all. Do you remember that?’

  Berren nodded. Behind him, someone shouted something out of a window. The children in the yard yelled and cursed back and then ran away. Everything went quiet.

  ‘They stole my family from me, Berren. They stole my family and my kingdom.’

  Berren stared in disbelief. ‘They stole a kingdom?’ That seemed impossible. How could a…

  ‘How could a poor thief-taker in a city like Deephaven have once been a king? Is that what you’re thinking?’ Master Sy laughed, bitterly. ‘Yes, indeed. How could he? Well I was never a king, Berren. But I was the eldest bastard son of one.’ The thief-taker picked up a knife and cut a strange-looking fruit in two. Red juice ran down his fingers and then his chin as he bit into one half. The other half he put on a wooden plate and pushed it along the table. ‘Dragonfruit. Don’t suppose you’ve ever had one of these before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well you’d best have one now. You might not get another chance and they’re not to be missed. They grow them in the south and ship them up the coast. They don’t reach the markets in Deephaven all that often. Usually they go straight to the tables up on The Peak, or else they go down the river to Varr.’ He shrugged. ‘There must have been a good harvest this year. Food for princes, this. It’s bruised and past its best, but still.’ He took another bite. ‘What do you want, lad? Had enough of thief-taking now you’ve seen the nasty side of it? You want to go back to your Master Hatchet?’

  ‘No.’ Berren shook his head. ‘I can’t. They’d kill me. And…’ he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Even if I could, I thought about it and I don’t want to.’ The three men in the alley, the Bloody Dag’s mudlarks, now the snuffers on the Avenue of Emperors. That’s what he wanted. To be like that. Deadly.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so.’ Master Sy stabbed the knife into the wooden table. For a moment, Berren felt a tremor of doubt, a little voice that told him to run, run away now, that that was the best thing to do. But it was only a little voice, half lost in a crowd. Swords. He wanted to learn swords. A hundred other things, too, but mostly swords. He wanted to be someone who could face down four men in a street and be the one who walked away. And the only person who could ever give him that was sitting down in front of him, offering him the fruit of princes. The thief-taker pushed the plate to him. Berren eyed it hungrily. He could smell its juices, sweet and sharp both at once.

  ‘I was born in a city called Tethis. You won’t have heard of it.’ Master Sy chuckled. ‘Kasmin and your witch-doctor Saffran Kuy are probably the only others in Deephaven who have. Tethis had a king. Still does, I suppose. We and the other Small Kingdoms were vassals of the sun-king, but we were so small and so far away that no one much cared about us. I doubt he even knew we existed.’ He laughed again, sad, lost in memories. ‘We used to fight each other a lot. Mercenary armies, since none of us could afford one of our own. And only in the summer months, between planting and harvest. We were all so gods-damned poor. Must seem strange to you, living in this empire of yours, with an emperor grand enough to rival the sun-king himself, and this his second greatest city. Look across the river, over at the mudlarks. That was our world. We didn’t even have any temples, any priests, not any worth speaking of. But still, it was my kingdom, and I was a prince and I lived in a palace, even if it wasn’t a grand one.’ He looked at Berren and then looked at the dragonfruit. ‘I’ve never had one of these before either, but I’m told the air does something to them. After a few minutes they go bland and sour. It’s like eating mulched paper. So are you going to eat that or not?’

  Berren picked up the fruit and sniffed it. It was the best thing he’d ever smelled.

  Which made him think of the perfume seller on Market Square, and his look of disdain as Berren had asked how much a vial of his Servin Lily scent would cost. He bit into the red flesh of the fruit and couldn’t help smile as the flavours of spring and flowers and all the passions he’d ever known blossomed inside his mouth. Deadly. Deadly and rich. That’s what he wanted.

  ‘Good, eh?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Saffran Kuy and his brothers came to Tethis when I was about your age, give or take a year or two. Garrent doesn’t much like him. I suppose you might have noticed that.’ Master Sy paused, watched the blank shrug in Berren’s face, and nodded in satisfaction. ‘That’s just the edge of it. The sun-priests hate him. They’ve tried to drive him away from here more than once. They call him a necromancer and say that he raises the dead. Rubbish, all of it, but that sort of persecution was why they came to Tethis. It was a place where they could work in peace. Or so they thought.’ His voice trailed away. Berren took another mouthful of fruit. The juices made his head buzz.

  ‘What work?’ he asked, without really thinking.

  ‘Oh, I don’t really know.’ The thief-taker’s brow furrowed. ‘Whatever magi do. If there’s a dark side to them then I certainly never saw it. I never really asked too many questions. Saffran saved my life once and now he’s done it again. That’s all I need to know. When a man saves your life, that’s a debt that goes far beyond anything else.’ He winced. ‘I paid that debt once. Now I suppose I shall have to pay it all over again.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Where was I? Oh, Tethis. Yes. I did a terrible thing, back in Tethis. Or rather, Saffran did a terrible thing because I’d asked him to. Such a mistake. And we never had a chance to put it right, either, because they hadn’t been with us for a year before…’

  The thief-taker abruptly got up and walked across the room. ‘I think you know the rest. Soldiers came. Mercenaries hired by the merchantmen of Kalda. The kingdom was taken. Stolen. Come on, lad. Eat your fill and then let’s go.’

  ‘You were really a prince?’ First Garrent and then Kasmin, but he’d never quite believed it. Couldn’t. Not Master Sy the thief-taker.

  ‘I was.’ The
thief-taker shrugged. ‘That was along ago, lad. A past best forgotten.’ The way his eyes flashed told Berren it was anything but. ‘Kasmin, Saffran Kuy, me, plenty of others – fate picked us up and scattered us. Some of us fell here in Deephaven. And that’s all there is; nothing more to know.’

  ‘Master…’ He wanted to ask about the knife up in Master Sy’s room. Was that some king’s treasure he’d stolen as he fled? But the thief-taker was getting ready to leave and Berren knew better than to press his luck. Another time, perhaps. When they’d had their next little victory and the thief-taker let his guard down for a moment. ‘Master, where are we going?’

  ‘I know where the last of our pirates are hiding. Time to put them in irons.’

  ‘You do?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes. Kol’s going to be there, and his soldiers too. It’ll be messy. Worse than Siltside. But I know where they keep their boats now. I know where they come from and how they move through the city, and I know who’s been helping them do it. I didn’t understand before, but now I do, and so now we finish our work. You want to learn about how to be a thief-taker? You want to see it happen, the real truth of it? Then now is the time. You can come, at least for a part of it.’

  Berren stuffed the rest of the fruit into his mouth and grabbed a hunk of bread and a slab of cheese. Master Sy smiled.

  ‘Good lad. I’ll keep you safe this time, I promise you. And I promise you I’ll never take Lilissa a-thief-taking again. That was stupid. I never thought Regis was a part of this, but it was stupid anyway. I could have seen you both killed and then where would I be?’

  The thief-taker picked up his belt and his sword and buckled them around his waist. He moved with a smooth, quick purpose, like the Master Sy that Berren had always known. Berren grinned and jumped to his feet.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Master Sy paused for a breath at the door. ‘To Talsin’s Forest, lad. To the canal. Don’t forget your ringmail.’

  36

  THE GRAND CANAL

  They went back the way Berren had come, back out along Weaver’s Row and Moon Street, straight down the Godsway to the River Gate. By the time they got there, the rain had stopped and the clouds had split apart. The cobbles along the waterfront steamed, baked under the summer sun once more. The smell was back too, although muted and dull, as if the worst had been washed away into the river. Berren’s pace picked up as they passed the witch-doctor’s door. He couldn’t help but stare.

  ‘That’s the one, lad. Never you mind what Teacher Garrent tells you, there’s nothing wrong with Saffran Kuy. Maybe there’s no such thing as a mage who’s pure, maybe all wizards have a darkness to them, but then Saffran’s no worse than any other. Go to Kol or the Eight Pillars of Smoke if you ever need some help, but when even that’s not enough, you come here. Wizards, lad, can do most anything they set their mind to.’

  Berren wasn’t so sure of that. There had to be plenty of things that wizards couldn’t do, otherwise the emperor would be a wizard too, right? ‘If wizards can do whatever they like, why does he live here? Why live in a crumbling old warehouse on the stinking riverfront of a city that’s not even his own?’ Or why didn’t he do something when soldiers had come with swords and spears to Master Sy’s home. That was more the question Berren wanted to ask, except he didn’t dare.

  ‘Go and ask him if you like.’ Master Sy must have seen the look of horror on Berren’s face. He laughed out loud. ‘Maybe gold and silks and women and wine bore him, eh lad? He lives here because that’s what he chooses, just like you and me, and that’s all there is to it. Do you still have that knife I gave you?’

  Berren shook his head. He didn’t remember losing it, but it was gone. Maybe in the fight with Jerrin and the mudlark boy. Still had Stealer, though.

  ‘No matter.’ When they reached the gate, Master Sy stopped to talk to one of the guardsmen. They spoke like old friends for a minute or two while Berren fidgeted and cast glances back at the witch-doctor’s house. Then the soldier opened a door into one of the gate towers and went inside. Berren hurried through the gate and out the other side, eager to be going on, but Master Sy didn’t move. A few seconds later, the guardsman came back and gave something to the thief-taker. A crossbow. A big one. They exchanged a few more words and then Master Sy carried the crossbow over to Berren. Up close it looked huge.

  ‘Don’t suppose you’ve ever held one of these before, have you?’

  Berren shook his head.

  ‘Going to learn now, then. This is a military crossbow issued to soldiers in the service of the emperor. Apparently the old emperors preferred their longbowmen from somewhere down south and stationed them everywhere. Your new one doesn’t seem so bothered. When we return through the gate, remember to give it back. Right.’ The thief-taker hoisted the crossbow over his shoulder and sauntered away down the street towards the Grand Canal Bridge, oblivious to the stares he was getting. Walking down the street with a sword on your hip was one thing. A crossbow over your shoulder was quite another. Once they reached the bridge, Master Sy headed for the riverside. He lifted the crossbow off his shoulder and leaned nonchalantly against the parapet wall. He cocked his head across the river.

  Berren looked. Siltside sat straight across the water from where he was standing. The tides were low now. Between Berren and the nearest stilted huts, there were a few hundred yards of sluggish water, and then maybe a quarter of a mile of dead flat mud, gleaming like white gold in the afternoon sun. Berren squinted. The reflections of the sunlight were so bright that he could barely see the ramshackle scatter of houses out there. If he looked hard, though, he could see the holes that the Justicar’s soldiers had burned. The black scars they’d left behind.

  ‘Have you ever seen a piece of wood that’s just started to rot, Berren? Tiny white-capped shoots grow out of the deep brown of the wood. If you catch the rot then, scratch it away, cut out the roots and treat it with tar, the wood can be saved. But if you don’t, then the rot quickly spreads. You might still only see a few shoots on the outside, but the roots will run everywhere. Then your wood is only good for burning.’ Master Sy glared out over the glittering water. ‘That’s what they are, boy. They’re this city’s rot, but they’re just the bit you see, and Justicar Kol, for all his talk, is too scared to cut out the root. Well if that’s what he wants…’ The thief-taker clenched his teeth. He had a mad look in his eye and he was grinning. Berren wasn’t at all sure he liked the look of that. He was quite certain that if he was a mudlark, now would be the time to be scared and run away. Right now, while the thief-taker was still stoking up his fire. ‘They come from there,’ he said. ‘Our pirates. They come from over there in the middle of the night. Right beneath us.’ He pointed at the bridge under their feet. ‘Then they go up there.’ The other side of the bridge and Talsin’s Forest. ‘And then they vanish under the stinking streets beside the old wall. I reckon they must go all the way along the wall in their little boats, all the way under the roads and the houses, but I reckon they can’t go all the way to Pelean’s Gate, because that means coming through the Shipwright District and out into the open again. No, they must hide their little boats down there and then they scuttle through the streets and back into the tunnels under Reeper Hill. Must have other boats there. Then they muffle their oars, row out a couple of hours before dawn, rob whatever they can rob and slip back again before it gets light. But they’d have to stay there, that’s the thing. They’d have to spend the day in the tunnels and then come out when it’s dark again.’ The thief-taker frowned furiously. ‘How do I know all this? Because the Bloody Dag told me back in Siltside after I cut off his hand and threatened to take the other one. Now Kol’s got him and claims he won’t say a word. Strange. I wish he’d told me how they were getting through Shipwrights without anyone seeing them, even in the middle of the night, but it doesn’t really matter.’ He gave another savage grin. ‘We’ll find that out the easy way. By asking. Do you want to know why I’m the best thief-taker in thi
s city? It’s because I wait and I wait and I wait.’ He took the crossbow and unhooked a metal bar from underneath it. Then he stuck the metal bar into another part, braced the crossbow with his feet and cranked the string back. ‘Are you watching? Yes. I wait until I know everything, and then I strike. I cut out the rot, root and all. I burn the wound and seal it with tar.’ He picked up the crossbow and squinted at it. ‘Our friend the Justicar knows a lot more than he’s telling, and something’s got him rattled. I reckon he’s known our friend Regis is up to his neck in it for some time and wants to leave him be. Well I can’t be doing with that. Here.’ He passed the crossbow to Berren. ‘Point it out over the water. They attacked another ship last night. I knew they would, Bloody Dag or no Bloody Dag. Too obvious a prize to miss. I’ve been waiting for this one for more than a month. That’s why we went to the Captains’ Rest last night, why it had to be exactly last night. I didn’t think it was Regis, and I certainly didn’t think he’d be quite as mad and bold and arrogant as to have us cut down in the street outside, but I knew it was someone. My mistake. It won’t happen again. Now we have to finish it the bloody, messy way. Did you see any mudlarks in The Maze last night?’

  Berren nodded. ‘Stank of the canal they did, too.’

  ‘Well there you go. Might even have been our pirates then.’ He stood behind Berren and showed him where to put his hands on the weapon, how to hold it, how to stroke it with his fingers and press it against his cheek. ‘Hold it steady but not tight. The emperor’s crossbows aren’t the best in the world by any means but they’re made well enough. Right. Got it steady?’

  There was a moment of stillness and then Master Sy carefully fitted a bolt in front of the crossbow string. ‘What you’re holding, lad, is the most powerful weapon in the world, in its way. It takes a man about a year of constant practice to become any good with a blade and another ten to truly master it. The same goes for a longbow. Now I’ll admit that either is a better weapon than what you’ve got, once it’s mastered, but that’s not the point. The point is, lad, that with a crossbow, all you have to do is hold it steady, find your target, point it and then a little click on the trigger and if you hit a man out to fifty paces or even more, it doesn’t much matter what armour he’s wearing, down he goes. A vulgar weapon for thugs if you ask me, but no one did. Go on. Point it at something and pull the trigger.’