by Stephen Deas
They’d have more time together. Yes, he’d like that, but not spent in some stinking gloomy old warehouse.
‘We might find where your master is hiding.’
They wouldn’t, but he followed her anyway, out to the practice yard and the dawning sun where a few priests and a dozen temple soldiers were already gathered. The priests gave him hostile stares. One of them was Sterm. That made Berren smile.
‘They will cleanse the house,’ Tasahre told him, which made him wonder why they needed a sword-monk at all, until he realised that they didn’t, what they wanted was him, and because they wanted him, Tasahre had to be there as well. They were most of the way down the Godsway before he’d worked that one out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘For making you be here.’
She laughed. ‘Are you making me be here, Berren? Are there shackles around my feet? Do you lead me in chains? I am here because the elder dragon commands it and because I choose to obey. There is no reason for you to be sorry.’
‘But it’s still my fault. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.’
‘The sun put you in my path, Berren.’ She put a calm hand on his shoulder. ‘Should I rail against the sun? What use is there in that?’
Which made him want to press her even harder. How could anyone be so calm, so accepting of whatever happened? ‘What if I had run away when I had the chance? What if I’d left you there with him, eh? What would have happened to you then?’
‘I don’t know. The abomination would have destroyed me. Turned me against my path, perhaps.’
‘Would that have been the sun’s fault too?’
‘Fault?’ She laughed again. ‘If that was to be my fate then yes, I suppose so. But you didn’t run, Berren.’
‘But I might have.’ She’d never know how close it had been. Or maybe she did and maybe that was why she was smiling at him.
‘But you didn’t,’ she said again, and then they were at the bottom of the Godsway and by the door to the House of Cats and Gulls and the air was full of the stink of dead fish. He watched the priests wrinkle their noses, watched Sterm screw up his face, and tried not to giggle. When you came past the River Gate often enough, eventually you got used to the stink. Sometimes, when he’d been on his way back from Sweetwater with Master Sy’s buckets pressing into his shoulders, he’d even put them down for a quick rest. He had an idea that the cats and the gulls knew when someone was coming out. He’d watch the cats gathering, vying for dominance. The gulls would flock to the warehouse roof, its windows, anywhere they could find purchase; and then someone would come out and leave their basket and hurry away and the frenzy would begin. A short, violent free-for-all between the feral cats while the air filled with gulls, wheeling in to steal whatever they could. The cats hissed and clawed at the gulls and each other alike, and the gulls snapped at anything and everything.
That had been back when he’d carried water up to Master Sy’s house every Abyss-Day morning. He’d come down the Godsway just like this, right about this time of day. Now those days were gone forever.
He took a deep breath. The eyes were there, the cats, skulking in their shadows, watching, the gulls on the window ledges and on the roof. There wasn’t much of a door left after what Tasahre had done to it. There were baskets, though, baskets that hadn’t been there the day before. Like the priests, the warlock had his faithful. How he got them … Berren shivered. He didn’t want to think about that. When he closed his eyes he could still see the web of his own soul, spread out before the golden knife. His life wouldn’t be his own, one way or another, until Saffran Kuy was dead. That alone was a good enough reason to be here, helping these priests.
‘Come.’ Tasahre led the way. There were other smells inside, smells of old and musty clothes, of decay and damp. As Berren and the priests walked cautiously from room to room, a reek of rotting flesh wafted past and then was gone. Berren thought he smelled burnt hair once. Some of the rooms were dark, the windows still shuttered and boarded; once the priests saw that, they mumbled amongst themselves and then had Tasahre and Berren rip off the last remaining boards, flinging open the shutters and letting in the light. In the deeper rooms where there were no windows and no place for the sunlight to enter, they lit candles laden with incense. The warehouse became a feast of smells, burning tallow and sulphur and a hundred scents that Berren couldn’t name adding themselves to the ever-present stink of rot and decay. The richness of the air seemed all the more imposing set against the dullness of any other sensation. Even as the sun rose higher and shone through the warehouse windows, the grime and the gull excrement on the dim glass reduced the light inside to a dull brown glow. Everywhere Berren went the walls were greasy to the touch. They found no sign of any food, any drink, not even any waste. Not even a pisspot.
‘Was there another place?’ Tasahre asked Berren. ‘Did he live somewhere else?’
Berren could only shrug. He watched the priests gather papers and put them into piles. They burned most of it and they never asked Berren if he recognised a single sheet; then they took artefacts and skulls and bones and smashed them methodically to powder. They sprinkled salt in circles on the floor and bathed the walls in sunlight. Several times, Berren saw one of the priests glowing the way Tasahre had flared two days before, though not as bright. After a bit, he wandered away. Tasahre came with him – she was always beside him, his watcher, his keeper, his minder. He wasn’t sure whether she was there to keep him safe or to keep him honest or whether it was both, but he didn’t mind. He wouldn’t have wanted to wander a place like this on his own. He wouldn’t have dared.
‘Is there anything we should look for?’ she asked him.
‘There’s that golden knife he had. Did more than cut my finger. Worth a bit, too.’ Maybe if they found the knife, the priests would know a way to undo what the warlock had done. ‘There’s that head he threw at you. Could tell you a bit, if any of your priests really can talk to the dead.’
She gave him a hard look and shook her head, and then it crossed Berren’s mind that the Headsman’s secrets were all about some sun-priest and so the temple was hardly likely to go digging after them.
He stood where he and Tasahre had last seen the warlock, where shadows had swirled around him just before they’d turned and run. There wasn’t any sign of him now, but Berren could feel Kay’s presence, watching him. It didn’t seem to bother Tasahre so he supposed it must have been only in his head, but that didn’t make it any better. After a bit, he had to go back to the door, out to the docks outside, just to be in the light and away from the smells. The dead fish stink didn’t bother him – you got used to that, growing up in Shipwrights’ – but the rest, the rest made him want to be sick. The incense that the priests were using. It was so … rich. It was making his head spin.
He could make the Headsman talk. Whatever those symbols were that he’d drawn, he was certain he could make them again. He could make the Headsman talk and make Tasahre listen and understand the truth.
Or he could run – some part of him still wanted that. He didn’t even know why except that running was what he’d always done. Running was how a boy from Shipwrights’ stayed safe. Old habits died hard.
He must have dozed, leaning against the warlock’s wall in the summer sun, because the next thing he knew, it was Saffran Kuy standing in front of him, just his head and his shoulders, his arms and the rest of him crumbling into a fine white powder. Berren jumped with a start and a scream, and then Tasahre was there, hands on his shoulders, staring into his eyes.
‘What did you see?’
‘I saw …’ He gulped. ‘I saw Kuy.’
She nodded. ‘I smell it. A bitterness on the air.’
‘Please can we go back? Please!’ If he comes, I have to do what he wants. He’ll make me!
Tasahre nodded pensively. ‘I must defer to the priests,’ she said after a moment, ‘but I can ask.’
She went
back inside and Berren was alone again. He took in a deep breath and forced a smile. It was the middle of the morning. The sun was shining and there was a slight wind brushing his hair. For a moment, he imagined he was free, that Kuy was gone and Radek too and everything was finished. No Master Sy, no nothing. He could just get up and head out the River Gate, off to the Poor Docks where the little fishing boats that plied the river mouth were moored. He had enough silver to buy a trip to the City of Spires. After that it would be walking. Maybe he’d get to Varr before winter and maybe he wouldn’t, but no journey ever got anywhere without a start, right?
His eyes slipped over the nearer jetties of the river docks, looking at the barges, the lightermen who might carry him all the way. Then across the glittering water with its smattering of estuary boats going back and forth, to what lay beyond, a low line of stilted houses built on the tidal mudflats. Siltside, home to the mudlarks, the people who scraped a living through whatever they could dig out of the mud or what they could steal from the ships anchored on the city side of the river.
He frowned and fingered the token around his neck. Siltside was a refuge for people who had nowhere and nothing. Really nowhere and nothing. And that wasn’t him.
‘Hello, Berren.’
He jumped. There he was, thinking of running away when no one was looking, and now here was Sterm the Worm, almost as if he knew, as if he had a sixth sense. Sterm didn’t have his cane out here but his tongue could be quite sharp enough.
‘Teacher.’ A while back he wouldn’t have said it was possible for Sterm to think any less of him, but that was before he’d been found consorting with a warlock.
Sterm gave Berren an awkward pat on the back. ‘If there’s anything you need, anything that Tasahre cannot give, I promise not to make you answer questions about Saint Kelm.’
Tasahre came back outside. She smiled at Berren. ‘It is agreed. There is too much here to be addressed in one day. We will find crates and summon wagons and take this wickedness back to our temple where it can be properly examined and destroyed. We will do as we intended, but we will do it in our sanctuary.’ She stretched and tipped her head up to the sun, soaking up its warmth and its light. ‘Finding wagons will surely be a simple matter so close to the river docks.’
‘What happens after that?’ What happens to me? That’s what he was thinking.
‘Another sunrise, Berren. And with every sunrise comes another hope. Come!’ And before he could say anything else, she’d grabbed his arm and was bounding away with him up the Godsway.
28
AND WITH EVERY SUNRISE
In the second week of the month of Lightning, a ship came from Helhex, the closest port in the far south to the holy city of Torpreah. Sunburst flags flew from its masts and word swept through Deephaven like a fire: the Autarch had come at last! But no. The ship stayed in the harbour for two weeks and then it slunk away again. Some said the Autarch had been aboard but had been too afraid to step ashore. Others that it was just a ship, that the Autarch had never left his sacred island at all. Berren wasn’t sure he cared much one way or the other, but a disappointed gloom fell over the novices and the priests, while the sword-monks were even more tense than ever. The city rumbled and grumbled. No Autarch, no holy teeth of Kelm, nothing at all except a company of fire-dragon monks who were slowly wearing out their welcome. In the temple, Berren learned swordplay and letters as before. Master Sy had vanished and the warlock had disappeared too, and without anyone quite saying it, he knew he was expected to stay within the temple walls until Kuy had been destroyed. And that was fine. He was safe there from whatever the warlock had done to him, and he knew in his heart that Kuy hadn’t lied about Syannis. He might find the thief-taker on the night before the Festival of Flames, but he wouldn’t find him before.
The relics from the House of Cats and Gulls were laid out on sheets in the same rooms where the monks kept their weapons, their Hall of Swords where Tasahre had bandaged Berren’s hand. No one stopped Berren from going in to look, although he was somehow never alone there for long. There were all sorts of things he didn’t understand. Most of it he didn’t even want to. The golden knife wasn’t there, and that was all he needed to know. None of the priests understood what Kuy had done to him. He wasn’t sure that any of them even believed him, any of them except Tasahre.
They had the Headsman, shrivelled and lying in a corner. His dead staring eyes and his gaping mouth were always there, always the first thing Berren saw every time he went inside. Hideous.
Kol came once more. Berren told him everything this time. The priests had been through the papers salvaged from Kuy’s house by then, but there was no sign of whatever Master Sy had stolen from the House of Records.
‘Watch them for me boy,’ Kol hissed, before he left. ‘That Headsman fellow, I know he had dealings with this lot. The Emperor and the Autarch have been circling each other like gladiators all year. There’s another war coming. I can smell it. You keep your eyes open.’
Berren watched him go. Keep his eyes open for what, exactly? But Kol didn’t come back.
In time the month of Lightning gave way to the month of Flames. The mornings were full of fierce summer heat; the afternoon rains grew heavier, the evenings became long, the air thick and humid. Master Sy had been gone for four weeks, then five, then six, with no word, no sign, no sound, nothing. The priests still searched for Saffran Kuy and Berren still felt the hole inside him where the golden knife had cut a piece of him away. Was it healing? He wasn’t sure. The priests told him that whatever the warlock had done, it could be undone with prayer, which Berren didn’t believe for a second. Tasahre suggested long days of hard and honest work and a truthful tongue, which sounded more likely. Thing was, though, how would he ever know? It was always there, a scar inside him.
The Festival of Flames drew closer, weeks away and then mere days, and Deephaven prepared itself to celebrate as only Deephaven could. Every night, Berren fingered the Prince’s token around his neck. He felt restless. No one had said anything, but the monks would leave before long. They’d only been there for the Autarch, the Autarch had never come and so they had no reason to stay. And, as Kol had predicted, the city was tiring of their honesty.
‘After the summer,’ Tasahre said, when he finally plucked up the courage to ask when she was going. ‘With the Harvest Tides.’
‘Can I come with you?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘I would not mind it myself, but the elder dragon would never allow such a thing. Dragon-monks are chosen as children. You are quick, I will admit, and you will make a fine swordsman if you practise with discipline. But there is more to us than swords, as you have seen. The priests here will look after you. Your master was once a friend to many here and they will easily believe that the abomination drove him to his crimes. They will keep you safe. Now. Guard yourself!’ She drew a waster.
‘I don’t want keeping safe! I want …’ I want you, he was about to say, but then what? A smile and a shake of the head, that’s what. ‘I want to learn swords.’
‘There are other teachers,’ she said, and then showed him why none of them would ever be good enough.
‘I want …’ There was more to it than simply how to fight with a sword. He was beginning to see that now. All those things Master Sy had tried to tell him. Learning about how to use a sword, that was one thing. The grip, the stance, the footwork, the cut and thrust and parry and riposte, how to read your opponent’s blade and how to read their eyes and how to watch both at once without ever giving anything away – he’d been learning all that from Master Sy for years, he could see that now. But there was more. There was something Tasahre was teaching him that no other sword-master ever could. Not the how of how to fight, but the why. But he couldn’t think of a way to put it into words, not in some way that wouldn’t make Tasahre laugh and smile – which was all for the good – and then tell him that a priest could teach him that far better than a monk – which was not so good, and also happ
ened not to be true.
He still hadn’t worked out the right words when a gong sounded. Over Berren’s shoulder, the temple gates swung open and a company of armed men marched in. They came two by two, dressed in the Emperor’s colours, the flaming red imperial eagle on their chests framed in black and moonlight silver, with breastplates and pouldrons polished until they shone like the sun. Strutting behind them came a man in golden robes, then more soldiers and a spread of rich-looking men like the ones Berren had seen in the Golden Cup with Master Sy, each flanked by their own guardsmen. Behind followed a small cart covered in a shroud with a man walking beside it, and then more of the Emperor’s soldiers. They all marched in with their heads held high, into the centre of the temple yard. The rich folk made a show of inspecting the statues.
Berren’s eyes went back to the man who was walking beside the cart. It was Justicar Kol.
Tasahre paused from smacking him in the ribs. One of the soldiers started to shout at the sky. ‘His Imperial Highness Prince Furyondar, Overlord of Deephaven, Marshall of the Seas, Commander of the Seventh Legion, Regent in the Emperor’s Name and Speaker of the Emperor’s Word!’
Berren froze on the spot. Overlord? The Overlord? He turned and stared at Tasahre. Her eyes were as wide as his. As they stared, a priest came running out of the temple. He stopped in front of the soldiers and bowed. The soldiers parted and the Overlord in his golden robes stepped between them. Whatever was said, the words were too quiet to reach Berren.
‘Why is the Overlord here?’ He couldn’t stop looking. He’d never seen the city Overlord before, not even half-glimpsed from a distance.
Tasahre shrugged. ‘I do not know. Now attend! They are no concern of yours.’
Berren burst out laughing. How could she say that? ‘But … But that’s the Overlord! He’s the next thing to the Emperor!’
‘I am aware, Master Berren, but you are blades drawn against a disciple of the fire-dragon. Until our time is done and I let you go, nothing short of the sun falling out of the sky should be of more concern to you than the point of my sword. Now guard!’ She jabbed him in the ribs.