by Stephen Deas
Habit made him pause, but it was raining. The harbour vanished into a murky grey haze. If any ships had weighed anchor since yesterday, they’d still be there tomorrow. Berren’s prince, on the other hand, might not.
Stopping to look at the ships wasn’t the only old habit that refused to die. He snatched a hot dough-ball while no one was looking and ate it, laughing, as he ran on.
2
PENNIES AND PRINCES IN A POOL
By the time he reached the Watchman’s Arms he was soaked. His shirt and breeches stuck to him like a second skin. He ran straight through the commoners room up the stairs to the rooms above, dived through a door, slammed it closed and had already pulled his shirt half off when he realised that he wasn’t alone.
‘Hello, Berren.’
‘Master Mardan.’ Berren paused. On the one hand, Mardan was a thief-taker like Syannis, his own master. Whenever he went with Master Sy to the Eight Pillars of Smoke, the tavern behind the city Courthouse where the thief-takers gathered, Mardan was always there. He and Master Sy were old friends.
On the other hand, as far as Berren knew, Mardan wasn’t supposed to be here. He finished taking off his shirt and then stood, tense, holding it, idly twirling it. A wet shirt all twisted up tight made a fine enough weapon in a pinch. At least it did when you had nothing else.
‘Syannis is down below.’ Mardan was watching the shirt too closely not to have realised what Berren was doing. He chuckled and looked down at the floor. There were three mattresses where this morning there had been two. ‘The justicar still isn’t happy that His Highness has enough of us around him. Me, I try telling him – the more people you put here, the more chance one of them has itchy pockets. I try telling him he should keep Syannis here and send everyone else away, but he just doesn’t listen.’ Mardan gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Or maybe Kol sent me here for my wit and charm. I hear His Highness finds Syannis a tad dismal and dull. Who’d have thought, eh?’ He shrugged. ‘Trouble is, doesn’t matter how many thief-takers and so forth you pack together, it doesn’t change how many rooms they have.’
Berren dropped his shirt. Still wary, he dried himself and dressed in his best clothes, the one set he had that didn’t make him look like what he was – an orphan boy from Shipwrights’ who happened to fall out the right side of the ship. A white shirt with frills around the bottom and dark blue breeches with a bright strip of yellow down either side. Master Sy had gone on and on about how hard it had been getting the colours right. Picking ones that wouldn’t mean something. Apparently that was extraordinarily difficult around this particular prince.
‘Have you … Have you met him?’
‘Syannis? Yes, he’s down …’
Berren shook his head. ‘The Prince, Master Mardan.’
Mardan laughed. ‘His Highness, I think you mean. No, not me. Syannis gets the special treatment because he knows his manners. The rest of us, we guard the doors and frisk the commoners.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, from what I hear His Highness was up for most of the night. I imagine he’s nursing a crippling hangover. I think he might have a couple of ladies from up on Reeper Hill helping him to get his strength back too.’ Mardan smirked. ‘Mind, from what I’ve seen, I reckon I’m going to enjoy frisking some of the commoners here.’ He wiggled his fingers suggestively. ‘Come on, lad. Let’s see if we can’t find your master down below. And if we can’t, let’s see if we can’t find us a bedwarmer or two, eh?’
Berren shrugged. Truth was, he didn’t much like Master Mardan. He didn’t much like the justicar or Teacher Sterm either, but Mardan was different. Mardan was creepy. The rest of them treated him like he was still a child. Mardan did that too, but he kept acting like he was trying to be friends as well.
‘Are you ready?’ When Berren nodded, Master Mardan bounded to the door and flung it open. ‘Then I’ll show you the way. Come on, lad! Let’s find your master.’
Berren muttered something rude under his breath. He followed Mardan across the landing outside and up to a door guarded by a pair of stiff soldiers, ramrod straight. They wore heavy sleeved brigandine armour, with metal greaves and vambraces protecting their lower legs and arms. Over the armour they wore pale moonlight-silver cloth and on their chests was a black triangle. Within the triangle, the tips of its wings and its claws poking out, was the design of a flaming red eagle. Red, black and silver, the colours of the Imperial Throne, of House Falandawn, raised for the first time over the palace of Varr by Khrozus the Butcher not long before Berren had been born. Probably. Everyone – Berren included – simply assumed that Berren was one of Khrozus’ Boys, the unwanted bastards that Khrozus’ army had left behind after the siege of Deephaven. If that was true, then Berren was fifteen years old, give or take, and by any reckoning almost a man.
The two imperial soldiers held naked steel in their hands. It wasn’t any ordinary steel either. The swords glowed faintly in the gloom and sometimes seemed to flash with colour, a slight shimmer of gold or a deep red, depending how they caught the torchlight. Sunsteel, forged by the priests of Torpreah, a holy metal if Teacher Sterm was to be believed. It might even have been enchanted. Master Sy had a light mail shirt made of the stuff and swore it would turn anything.
The soldiers hadn’t moved. They were looking at Berren. Mardan frowned.
‘It’s not like you don’t know who both of us are,’ he grumbled.
One of the soldiers growled and tried to look fierce. He might have done a better job of it if he hadn’t been sweating so much under all that armour that he was bright red in the face. Berren thought he looked a bit like a lobster. They were the prince’s soldiers from Varr, where winter locked everything in snow for months on end. No one who’d lived here through a Deephaven summer would ever think of dressing like that.
The other one sniffed. ‘Ser Syannis’ squire – does he know how to behave, Ser Mardan? His Highness is present.’
‘Er … Yes.’ Mardan beamed brightly. ‘Yes he does. He knows exactly how to behave. Master Syannis is the best teacher in the city when it comes to behaving.’
Berren nodded. That was certainly true. Most days it seemed like Master Sy spent more time teaching him how to hold his cutlery than teaching him how to hold his sword.
The soldiers moved aside. ‘Ser Syannis is in there,’ grunted the sniffy one. ‘He’s in one of his moods.’
Berren nodded. He walked on behind Mardan, past the soldiers and down some stairs into a part of the Watchman’s Arms he hadn’t seen before. It was a lot nicer here; it reminded him a bit of the Captain’s Rest down the end of the Avenue of Emperors near the sea-docks. That was supposed to be the richest tavern in town. Odd that a prince would stay here instead.
The stairs led them out into another hall. It was empty except for a pair of soldiers by an arch into an open courtyard. There were voices, several, wafting in from outside, and laughter, the too-loud braying of drunk people. The soldiers stood aside and then Berren was through, into the fresh damp air. He looked about. He couldn’t see Master Sy but then it was hard to tear his eyes away from the centre of the yard. A shallow circle of water sat there, enclosed by a wide stone wall about as high as Berren’s knees and engraved with the phases of the moon. A moonpool. Throwing a penny into the reflection of the moon, even in a puddle on the street, was supposed to bring good luck, and there were hundreds of pools like this one dotted around the city. Penny collectors from those who could afford to throw pennies away. Most temples had them, priests claimed they were holy places, but as far as Berren was concerned they were free money.
Apparently what got thrown into this one was people rather than pennies. A man sat in the water, stripped to the waist with a bottle of wine in one hand and the other up the dress of some expensive ground-floor girl from the brothels of Reeper Hill. There were two other women in the pool with him, all of them laughing and splashing and wearing flimsy white cotton that was soaking wet and left next to nothing to the imagination. As Berren stared, the man in the water
pulled the closest of the woman down beside him and tipped his wine over her neck, lapping it up as it ran down her skin.
Mardan leaned over and whispered. ‘Your luck’s in, Berren. There he is. The prince. His Imperial Highness Prince Sharda. Second in line to the throne. From what I’ve heard this looks like it’s one of his better days.’
Berren stared. The women in the water were mesmerising. He hadn’t seen anyone look this gorgeous since … since Lilissa.
Best not to think about her. Her and her fishmonger’s son. He shivered.
‘Berren, lad.’
‘Master Mardan?’
‘You’re gawping.’
‘Huh?’
‘Mouth, lad. Close it.’
Someone landed him a heavy cuff round the back of the head. Berren staggered and spun around and there was Master Sy. They were almost the same height now, neither of them particularly tall for men of Deephaven. Master Sy came from some land far across the sea where they were probably all short, but it sometimes made Berren wonder who his own father was. Most likely he’d been some soldier in the army of General Kyra, a soldier who’d sired him in exchange for a crust of mouldy bread during the siege. The sad truth was that he was never going to know.
‘Eyes to the floor,’ hissed Master Sy through clenched teeth. ‘And bow your head. You are in the company of a prince.’ Berren did as he was told. He saw Master Sy kick Master Mardan in the ankle. There were some angry whispers but Berren wasn’t paying attention. He was still peering through his eyelashes at the women in the water. He understood now what Master Mardan had meant about the frisking.
The prince swivelled his head and gave Berren and the two thief-takers a languid look. He sat up straight. For a moment he might have been about to say something; then, with a great splash, he toppled over backwards. Everyone stood in shocked silence; Master Sy took a step forward, but then the prince reared out of the water, shaking his hair and laughing fit to burst. He pulled himself to his feet, staggered sideways and leaned heavily on two of his ladies. He cocked his head and screwed up his eyes and looked vaguely around the yard. ‘What I would like to see is … They say the … whoever they are. The ones who come across the sea in the sharp ships. With the …’ He frowned and growled something to himself. ‘Anyway, whoever they are, I hear they make black powder rockets that fill the sky with coloured stars. Someone told me that. I want to see them. If they could do that … They had them for Ashahn and Arianne. I missed it.’ He slipped then and nearly fell over. Beside Berren, Master Sy was almost rigid, fists clenched.
The prince and his women stumbled out of the pool and walked away, lurching from side to side. Berren stared after them, transfixed. Even after they vanished through a door on the other side of the yard, he still couldn’t move. Master Sy stayed where he was, head bowed until the prince was out of sight. Then he took a deep breath and sighed and slowly began to relax.
‘Oh. My. Gods,’ moaned Master Mardan. ‘Now was that a sight or was that a sight?’ He grunted as Master Sy elbowed him in the ribs. Then the thief-taker had Berren’s ear between his fingers, practically tearing it off as he dragged Berren away.
‘Ow!’
‘Sit down, boy.’ Master Sy pushed him back onto an ornate carved stone bench. Around the yard were at least a dozen soldiers, most of them standing stiffly to attention and acting as though they hadn’t seen anything, although Berren thought he heard a snicker or two. There was no way to know whether they were snickering at him or at the departed prince.
‘Sorry, master.’ Berren bowed his head. That was always the best way to start. Arguing with Master Sy only made him even more angry. Looking penitent always seemed to catch him off-guard.
‘Boy, do you know who that was? That was His Imperial Highness Prince Sharda of Varr. So: What do you think?’
3
THE SCENT GARDEN
Berren kept quiet. Saying that yes, thanks, he’d already guessed it was the prince probably wasn’t going to take the conversation anywhere useful. Instead he stared at the flagstones on the floor. The rain had stopped but it had left puddles. The stones were carved in some faded motif, worn down by countless booted feet. The thief-taker looked him up and down, frowning fiercely, straightening a fold in his clothes here, brushing away a fleck of dirt there. ‘He’s dangerous, that one. Unpredictable. A drunk. Prone to be morose and violent. You don’t want to catch his eye, boy. He’ll rip you to pieces.’
Unpredictable? Prone to be morose and violent? Sounds familiar, that does. Berren wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but certainly it hadn’t been a drunkard, stripped to the waist like some dock-worker, someone only a few years older than him, full of swagger and yet with enough chips on his shoulder to start a fire. Not someone who had staggered off almost too drunk to stand with three of the prettiest ladies of Reeper Hill. Impressed? Disappointment and envy in roughly equal measure, that was more like it. He shrugged. ‘I didn’t …’
Master Sy’s glare shut him up. ‘Look and listen but say nothing. Everyone here has wealth and power far more than us. You see those soldiers?’ He pointed to the men by the door, sweating under their armour. ‘You think they’re nothing more than snuffers?’
Berren shook his head. Snuffers were mostly relics of the war, the remnants of Khrozus’ army who’d never gone home after the siege. Men who’d stolen swords and maybe a bit of mail from the corpses of their comrades and now hired themselves out to whoever would pay. The ones that had lasted were the brutal ones, the savage, the murderous. No, Justicar Kol would never hire a snuffer for something that actually mattered. Snuffers served whoever held the biggest bag of gold and that was that, not like a thief-taker.
‘These are the Imperial Guard, boy. To be in the Imperial Guard you have to be the son or daughter of land and a title. Every one of them has sat in the imperial court. These will be lords and ladies of the empire one day. Now imagine having all that power and having to stand here all day as though you’re one of that prince’s pet monkeys. So mind your tongue. Watch the way they act, the way they dress. Listen to the way they talk. Learn from that but do it silently and with your head bowed. You understand me?’
Berren nodded, secretly rolling his eyes. He’d come from the temple to the Watchman’s Arms full of excitement; now it was starting to look as though he might as well never have left. Silently with your head bowed? If he closed his eyes, he could hear those exact words coming out of Teacher Sterm’s mouth.
‘And for the love of the sun, don’t steal anything!’
‘Master!’ Berren made a good show of looking shocked and hurt. Old habits did die hard, but as far as Master Sy knew, he hadn’t stolen anything for more than a year. Ever since …
He glanced wistfully back at the archway where the prince and his three ground-floor girls had gone. Ever since Lilissa had gone and married her fishmonger’s son. He’d hated her for that. Hated the fishmonger’s son, too. Dorrm. Dorrm the dumb, Berren called him, quietly when no one was listening. Dorrm was four years older than Berren, probably about twice his bulk, dim as a plank and disgustingly amiable. If he’d been anyone else, Berren would probably have liked him. Things being as they were, he quietly hated Dorrm and wished he’d die. Or get grabbed by the voracious press-gangs that festered down by the sea-docks these days.
Yeah, and after Lilissa had chosen Dorrm instead of him, he’d started stealing again and buying her presents that Dorrm could never afford. When that didn’t work, he got to showing off, trying to goad Dorrm into a fight. Stupid, now he looked back on it. Embarrassing. Humiliating. Worst of all, Dorrm had never made anything of it. That had made Berren hate him even more.
Master Sy had taken him away across the river, into the maze of mud-islands and channels and creeks and swamps where no one lived except the most desperately wanted men with nowhere else to hide and the thief-takers sent to catch them. They were away for a month. When they came back, Lilissa and Dorrm were married. She was living with him in his father’s
shop somewhere on the eastern edge of The Maze. As far as Berren knew, she still was. Master Sy wouldn’t tell him where and he’d somehow never found the time to go and look. And that was the end of that.
Yes, as far as Master Sy knew, Berren had stopped stealing.
‘Come on, lad. I’ll show you around.’ There were arches leading away from the yard in all four walls. One led back to the rooms where Berren and the other thief-takers were staying. One led to the prince’s wing. Master Sy picked the nearest of the other two, where another pair of imperial soldiers stood on guard. Beyond the arch lay a second square yard. Here, instead of open space, everywhere was overgrown. Tiny paths wound through leaves and flowers, punctuated by little marble benches like the ones in the yard before.
‘Look familiar?’
Berren blinked. ‘Yes!’ Yes, suddenly it did. ‘It’s like the Captain’s Rest.’
Master Sy half-smiled and nodded. ‘Yes. Built and owned by the same guild-master.’ He started to wander the paths. ‘I’ve heard there are gardens like this in Varr too but much bigger. Scent gardens, they call them. Use your nose. I imagine they’ll be at their best about a month from now.’ Berren looked around. Scented and flowering bushes and even two small trees grew up from the ground, masking the usual city-smell of bad fish. Variegated ivies competed for domination of the walls. There were no birds here, though. The Captain’s Rest, he remembered, had had birds.
‘You have to be a sea captain or one of their ilk to make your business in the Captain’s Rest. Everyone else comes here. Or they did, until His Highness took over the place.’ He pointed back the way they’d come, through the archway to the yard and on through to the other side. ‘Those are the rooms and lodgings for the Imperial Guard. We don’t go there.’ He gestured up at the windows overlooking the scent gardens. ‘Up there is where the prince sleeps. We don’t go there either.’ He walked closer until they were on a path right underneath the windows, one so crowded by greenery that it brushed Berren’s legs as he walked. Berren stopped. One of the windows was open. He could hear a gentle moaning and soft throaty laughter wafting out of it. Master Sy pursed his lips. ‘That’s where he has his rooms. There are baths in there and, well, the usual other diversions.’