The King's assassin ta-3

by Stephen Deas

  The other soldier looked Berren up and down. His scowl deepened. ‘Well,’ he said after a bit, ‘I hardly expected a common peasant.’

  He took a couple of steps closer and stared haughtily down his nose. Behind him, Tarn straightened. ‘Um, Hain? Not a good-’

  ‘Why don’t you piss off back home where you came from, dark-skin? Why are you still here?’

  Berren stared back at this soldier he’d never seen before. He cocked his head and then punched him on the nose. Hard. The soldier reeled, clutching his face.

  ‘You cess-eater!’

  Satisfaction spread through Berren. Someone had had this coming from the moment he’d seen Master Sy. He took another step forward. ‘I’m Berren,’ he said. ‘I fought on this beach this morning. I killed six men. Did you?’ He left a moment for his words to sink in while the other soldier stared at him in surprise, both hands clutching at his face. ‘Who are you anyway?’

  The soldier raised a finger at him. ‘You can sit on this, you can, dark-skin.’ He stormed off, wiping the blood from his nose. Tarn let out a great sigh.

  ‘That was Hain of the Yorkan family,’ he said. ‘Probably not the best person to punch in the face. He’s squired to Prince Syannis of Tethis. I thought you two might want to get to know each other. Apparently not.’

  ‘No.’ Berren spat and rubbed his knuckles. He breathed out hard and slumped against the barrel. ‘He was right, though. I should just leave. Get my things and go. Go home, wherever that is. I don’t belong here.’ He glanced across the beach. Master Sy and Talon had two clusters of soldiers around them now. Both were gesticulating angrily. ‘But he’s right here now! I need to know. I need to know why he did it.’ His head was a whirl. First the fight on the beach, then the old woman he’d killed, now this. It was too much. Made him want to run. Run away long and far and just hide.

  Tarn slid down the barrel to sit beside him and offered Berren a wooden beaker half filled with ale. ‘You belong here as much as you belong anywhere, I reckon.’

  ‘No, I don’t. You’re about the only person who doesn’t wish I’d quietly disappear.’

  ‘Not true.’ Tarn shook his head. ‘That might have been so this morning, but not now. Look, I know things have been hard. You don’t mess with warlocks, you just don’t, but you did it anyway, and it’s thanks to you that I’m alive. I’ve seen the others giving you the evil eye, but that was before they saw you fight. You’ve stood with them now. You fought the enemy and some of us died and some of us didn’t, but you didn’t run. You proved yourself. Seen any of those warding signs since?’

  ‘A few.’ He’d felt a change in the air right after the battle, though, that was true. Right in the aftermath. Was that enough? Would they accept him now, the dark-skin, the necromancer’s boy?

  ‘Not from any who were on the beach with you, or I’ll break their heads!’ Tarn looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Hain had a bit to say that you might have liked to know, before you broke his nose.’ He stood up and took another beaker and filled it from the barrel. The ale was good, brought all the way from Kalda, not the horse piss they’d had to endure in Forgenver. Pity to waste it, just leaving it on the beach to make space for some horses. Berren drained his cup and passed it up to Tarn for some more.

  ‘Meridian’s hired two companies to hunt us down. He brought these horsemen from across the ocean.’

  ‘The same soldiers we met in Kalda?’ Berren asked. ‘The ones who tried to kill us with one of those glass balls of fire that the sun-priests make for the Taiytakei to put on the end of their rockets? Or didn’t they happen to mention that.’

  ‘Same ones, but Prince Syannis has turned them to our cause. Or bought them. Same difference, really.’ He shook his head. ‘Meridian must be desperate. Never mind the gold this must have cost him; if word ever reaches the courts of Brons and Caladir that someone is bringing in soldiers from Aria, there’s bound to be trouble. After all, if an upstart like Meridian can hire a few dozen, what’s to stop someone else hiring a few thousand. Or a few tens of thousands. The gods know there’s certainly enough of you over there.’ He chuckled. ‘So you and Talon’s brother — are you going to have a fight or how’s this going to end? You can’t keep looking at him like that and then not do anything about it, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I told you — he killed someone.’

  ‘Yes, you did. Your sword-monk. You loved her. He didn’t know. Harsh. Stop staring at him and do something about it. Say whatever needs to be said.’

  ‘He let me down.’ Berren stood up. Then he stopped. He still wasn’t sure whether he wanted to murder his old master or cry at his feet. Gods be damned, and he still kept seeing Tasahre, only now she was all muddled with the slave he’d whipped in Tethis and the old woman he’d killed, and he couldn’t see one without the others all piling into his thoughts. He pressed his fists to his head and screwed up his eyes. ‘I was a rubbish apprentice,’ he said. ‘All I wanted to do was learn how to fight. I couldn’t leave things be. Didn’t listen. Didn’t see how good I had it.’

  He downed another cup of beer in one long gulp. ‘I’ve spent the best part of two years thinking about what Syannis did back in Deephaven. I wanted to kill him, slow and painful. Now? I don’t know. Some of the things I blamed him for were more my fault than they were his. Even. .’ He still couldn’t say Tasahre’s name without a pause to force it out. ‘Even what he did at the end, that was Syannis being what he was and fate placing her in his path. All she was to him was another enemy, another thing in his way. I can’t hate him for being evil or malicious because he wasn’t, but that doesn’t make everything right. Gods! Took me long enough to realise that, but when you’re a skag, you have a lot of time on your own to think about how you got there. I still hate him for throwing me aside, but maybe even that’s not fair.’

  He refilled his cup again, thinking of the last time he’d seen Master Sy, standing on the edge of Radek’s ship, one foot over the rail, hand out, calling to him to run. ‘Thing is, the other thing you get to do as a skag is stare at death. I wanted to kill him and I wanted to loathe him, but in the end I couldn’t. I hate him for letting Radek matter more than I did. I despise him for killing Tasahre. I’m afraid of him for the madness that drives him. I never knew, until now, that I wouldn’t fly into a rage if I ever saw him. But we’re not done, him and me. He was the closest thing I ever had to a father, and I need him to hear it, and I need to hear it back.’ He raised his cup to the bemused-looking Tarn.

  ‘Well,’ said Tarn after a moment of silence. ‘I don’t think I really followed any of that. Just go. Say what needs to be said and get it done.’

  Berren shrugged. ‘Have another beer with me, Tarn.’ Getting drunk seemed the best thing. He’d never told anyone except Talon what had happened in Deephaven, and Talon had listened politely but he hadn’t wanted to know, not most of it, not how it felt. When he’d been a skag, the sailors would only have laughed and jeered at him. But Tarn. . for some reason, Tarn needed to know. He filled both cups.

  ‘It’s all changed,’ grumbled Tarn. ‘This whole business with these slavers, that’s not what’s really happening at all. I don’t understand any of this any more. I thought Prince Syannis and Prince Talon had made their peace with Meridian.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I didn’t even know Radek was dead until you showed up. Or rather, I did, but I didn’t know how and I certainly didn’t think Talon or Syannis had had anything to do with it. Now Meridian’s hired two companies to hunt us, we’ve been suckered out here and they’re probably only a day away. The lancers were supposed to take us by surprise and cut us off from the sea and then the others would finish the job. For all I know there never were any slavers and the Duke of Forgenver’s in on it too.’ Tarn scratched his chin. ‘Hain said something else, something about Syannis seeing his future in the blade of a knife. Don’t think that made any more sense to Hain than it does to me. Sounds like more death-magery.’

  Berren sat very still. I’ve seen that knif
e, he thought. He smiled wanly. ‘There are storms out in the deep ocean,’ he said, ‘terrible storms. They don’t move — they’re always in the same place — and to get from here to Aria, you have to pass through them. We did it three times. Always with other ships. Taiytakei ones, because they were the only ones who knew the way through, and we could only follow. They’re not like other storms. Waves and winds, yes, and they got worse and worse, but in the middle the sky went black. Real black. Night-black with no stars or moon or any light at all, even when it should have been the middle of the day. And the worst? There was a calm in there, once you reached the dark, a dead calm as though the sea was flat as a mirror and there was no wind at all, although with it being dark you couldn’t tell if the sea was still even there. Some of the sailors used to see things then, in the middle of that calm. Flashes of things. Flashes of the future they reckoned. But not me, I never saw anything.’

  Tarn poured them both another cup. ‘Can we talk about something else? Women, maybe. Or. . I don’t know. I know some nice women. Big. .’ he held out his hands as if testing the weight of something.

  Berren shook his head. That meant talking about Tasahre. ‘And then the dark would break and you’d be right back in the heart of the storm with its waves and the lashing wind again, and you’d think that you’d only been inside that calm for a heartbeat or two, but the sun had always moved hours.’ He shrugged. ‘I spent the last two years a skag. Not much else to talk about, not that you’d want to hear. Certainly not any women. Before that?’ He shrugged. ‘Not a good idea. Oh, and the lightning in the storms, just before the calm. It was purple. Unnatural.’ His head was buzzing from the beer now.

  Tarn stretched his arms over his head. ‘Prince Syannis ever tell you about his sword-mistress? Shalari? They shared a bed more than once before Radek and Meridian and their mercenaries came to Tethis, or so I hear. She died in the fighting. Whispers say that Prince Syannis never forgave Radek for that.’

  ‘He was always a bit funny about women,’ muttered Berren. He laughed, the drink in his head making his thoughts fuzzy. ‘I thought this was all about losing his family and his kingdom and his birthright. On the whole that did seem enough.’ He laughed again. ‘Gods!’ Maybe Syannis would understand then. Maybe, if he’d lost someone of his own, he’d understand why Berren could never forgive him for killing Tasahre. ‘There’s one lady I can tell you about.’ He drained his cup again and grinned. ‘I can tell you about the lady that gave birth to me. The lady of Deephaven.’

  The evening wore on. Boats scurried back and forth from ship to shore and men ran about their business around them. Berren talked about Deephaven and everything that had happened there, of the older, happier times before Tasahre and the warlock. By the time he was done, the sun had set and it was dark and Berren’s head was spinning and stuffed full of wool. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d told Tarn and what he hadn’t, but they were laughing and leaning against one another like two drunk old men.

  ‘I need a piss,’ slurred Tarn. He stumbled up the beach, ignoring the grumbles from the men around them already trying to sleep in their tents.

  ‘Me too.’ Berren followed. ‘Then I think I want to punch something.’

  ‘Find yourself a new woman.’ Tarn nodded sagely. ‘Clear all that old rubbish out.’ He lurched into a tree, staggered sideways and dropped his breeches. ‘Ahhh. Better! Sunfire! I think I need to go to sleep now. Did I have a tent somewhere? I don’t think I did. Bugger. And don’t punch Hain again. It’s not his fault he’s a prick.’

  ‘No, brother, no!’ A raised voice cut through the quiet of the woods. Tarn wobbled. He put his fingers to his lips and made an exaggerated gesture to Berren. ‘Shhh! What was that?’ The two of them stood still, swaying gently from side to side. Then, with the clumsy stealth of the drunk, they tiptoed between the trees towards the voices. As Berren drew closer, he recognised them. One was Talon. The other, the quiet one, was Master Sy.

  Tarn leaned against a tree. He flashed Berren a huge grin and set about making a great show of listening. Berren simply stood where he was, swaying.

  ‘You know my opinion. Everything in our lives started to go wrong when father let that man into our kingdom.’ Talon.

  ‘He saved Aimes, remember.’

  ‘Did he really? And even if he did, so what? He saved the idiot! Do you ever stop to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t?’

  There was a long pause. When Syannis spoke again, his voice was low and Berren only heard pieces of it. ‘I know. . hated. . but. . ever speak like that again.’

  ‘You can’t have an idiot for a king! It doesn’t work! But that aside, I’m talking about the here and now. I’m telling you that your warlock has been poking his nose around our homeland again. I thought he was gone, across the ocean for good, but no! And he’s right up to his neck in this.’

  ‘He came back, did he?’

  ‘Yes! And have you not seen him?’ Talon’s voice rang with accusation, but if Syannis replied at all, Berren didn’t hear. ‘You have, haven’t you? Don’t! Don’t say anything, brother! I can see it in your face. You sought him out when he crossed the ocean, and now that he’s back, you’ve done so again!’

  ‘He sought me.’

  Talon was snarling like a wolf in chains. ‘What hold does he have over you? Does he promise you that you’ll be king one day? Is that what it is?’

  A burst of scornful laughter. ‘Is that what you think?’

  Talon was almost growling. ‘I will rejoice to see you on the throne, brother, and well you know it, but I will kill him if I see him, however much he is a friend of yours. Whatever he did, he did it for his own reasons, not for love of you or of anyone but himself!’

  Tarn turned and mouthed something at Berren. Do you know what they’re talking about?

  ‘And what about my little protege? Will you suffer him to live? Kuy has touched him too.’

  Berren’s blood quickened. Syannis was talking about him!

  ‘I’ve kept him close and watched him well and I see no sign of taint in him. Which is more than I can say for you, brother. I begin to wonder, how did you find him? What made you choose him to be your apprentice all those years ago? Is it really just because he looks a bit like Aimes?’

  ‘A bit like Aimes? I could find you a dozen men in Kalda who look a bit like Aimes. Probably a dozen in Tethis. I don’t know what drew him to me.’ Syannis paused. He muttered something too quietly for Berren to make out. ‘But it’s more than that. It’s not what he looks like; it’s what he is, inside. He is Aimes.’

  Whatever else Talon and Syannis had to say, Berren missed it as Tarn tugged at his elbow, pulling him away. ‘Hey! I’ve got an idea!’

  Berren growled at him. ‘Shh!’

  Tarn lurched a little. ‘There’s still some barrel in that beer. Maybe if we empty it, we can sleep in it? Because I don’t know where my tent is.’ Syannis and Talon had fallen silent. Berren heard their footsteps moving away through the woods.

  ‘I think it’s on the ship,’ muttered Berren. ‘Because you never put it up.’

  ‘Oh no, they took all the tents off to make space for the bloody horses.’

  The two of them walked slowly back through the trees and staggered to Tarn’s barrel. All around them the sands rang with snores in the darkness. The Hawks, drunk and happy, asleep.

  ‘Oh, it’s not so bad out here.’ Tarn slumped down and yawned and a moment later he was snoring. Berren looked around the beach. There were men everywhere, soldiers lying in their bedrolls. There were piles of blankets, also evicted from the ship. He picked up a couple and threw one over Tarn, then walked back towards the woods. The trees would keep the wind off. He could already hear other snores coming from among them. He stumbled on, looking for a quiet place to call his own. He was about to throw his blanket down when a twig snapped behind him.

  ‘Hello, Berren.’ There was just a shape but the voice was unmistakeable. ‘Just one thing: did you actually s
ee her die?’

  He shook his head. He was so drunk he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you see her die, boy? Your sword-monk. Did you actually see her die? Did you see the moment her heart stopped?’

  ‘Yes.’ And now he could see it all over again and tears rolled down his cheeks. Stupid beer, making him cry.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The apparition turned and walked away through the trees, silent. Berren stared after it.

  There was a faint whiff of rotting fish in the air.

  PART THREE

  TETHIS AND THE LOST KING

  18

  JUST ON A GRANDER SCALE

  He crawled and dragged himself out of a hut he’d never seen, inch by inch out of a village he didn’t know, to the reed beds on the edge of a lake he couldn’t name. He was going to die and he wanted it to be outside under the stars, not in the dark. He reached the water’s edge, rolled onto his back and waited. One by one the stars winked out. Tears filled his eyes. He wanted to live, not to die. He wanted to live but the choice had been taken away.

  A man stood over him. The man’s face, where it wasn’t lost among the shadows of his cowl, was pale. One half was ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire, with one blind eye milky white. He wore pale hooded robes the colour of moonlight.

  ‘Are you death?’ Berren asked.

  ‘I bring the Black Moon,’ the stranger said.

  Berren woke up covered in sweat. For a moment he couldn’t work out why he was in a room and in a bed instead of shivering on the beach. The hangover was real enough, though. Beside him Hain was snoring loudly.

  He sat, head in his hands, wincing at the pain, putting the last few days back together, piece by piece. They’d returned to Forgenver. Master Sy had been on the same ship. They couldn’t possibly have avoided each other and yet somehow they did. When they were back, Talon had come and dug him out of his tent. My brother is heading south. He wants you with him. I think he’s stupid and I think you shouldn’t go. If you do, then you’re stupid too. And you’re not. He’d sounded angry.