by Stephen Deas
Something odd was happening in Talon’s face, a desperation and a hopelessness that Berren had never seen there before. ‘You’ve changed too, Berren. You’re not the man you were when I found you either. Far, far from it.’
‘You can thank your brother for that.’
‘Are you sure?’ Talon reached out. From beneath Berren’s shirt he pulled the chain and the stone that Gelisya had given him on their first voyage to Tethis, back from the slaver camp. Then he let go and put a hand on Berren’s arm. ‘Try to forgive my brother. He’s not himself.’
‘Then who is he?’
Talon didn’t answer. He stared at the chain and the stone hanging loose around Berren’s neck now. ‘Is it really possible? To cut out a piece of someone’s soul and yet leave them to live? Is that really what Kuy did to you when you were with him?’
‘I was never with Kuy. I was in his house once for a few minutes, that was all. The most terrifying minutes I’ll ever know.’ Berren’s eyes glazed over. He could see the web of his soul right then, as clear as he’d seen it in Deephaven when Saffran Kuy had first cut him with the gold-handled knife. He could see the threads snapping, one after the other. Cut, cut, cut. And then he saw himself in Tethis, making the potion to pull Tarn away from whatever demons held him, filled with a knowledge he should never have had. He pushed the stone back under his shirt. ‘Yeh,’ he choked. ‘Yes, he really did that.’
‘Then why did he give it back to you, Berren?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t mean to. Gelisya never seemed that happy to let it go.’
‘She could have taken it while you were in the Pit. She didn’t.’
‘But Kuy wasn’t there then. You’d sent him packing.’
Talon waved another pitcher of beer to their table. ‘After the accident Aimes didn’t move. He didn’t speak. It was like he was dead except his heart was still beating. Like Tarn was when Gelisya gave that to you. Aimes was like that for three days and then suddenly he was better. No one knew why. Sometimes that’s what happens when you get hit on the head. Except Syannis once told me he saw Kuy go into Aimes’ room late at night. After Meridian killed our father and scattered us, Syannis spent three years making sure we were safe. Then he vanished. He went halfway around the world looking for Saffran Kuy. Why? Why would he do that? We had so many other troubles and he left us to look for that bloody necromancer who’d brought us nothing but pain.’ Talon’s voice was slurring and his eyes were closing. ‘And now . . . we have to do something.’
Minutes later he was asleep, sprawled across the table. Berren lurched up the stairs. Talon had never been anything less than a friend. But Syannis? He looked inside himself to see whether there were any feelings at all. Eventually he found them, frozen in ice, trapped and caged. No, for Syannis he felt nothing. And nothing that Talon had said made any difference either. So what if Syannis was obsessed with Aimes? None of it would help him get Fasha and his son, would it? None of it would help him keep his promise. And if it didn’t help with that then what use was it? None. The thief-taker had made his own troubles and now he could lie with them and be damned, and that was all fine, and . . .
But then unconsciousness picked him up and hurled him into a sea of dreams. He saw himself as Aimes, trapped in a stable full of horses as big as houses, all of them angry and trying to stamp him flat while he desperately scurried out of the way, until one of them finally caught him and squashed him, pressing him down into the ground, ever deeper and ever darker to another place where even the sounds had bright colours running through them. He smelled smoke and incense and fish, and some giant was looming over him with hands that were neither kind nor gentle. He felt them touch his face, felt a sticky, bitter coldness at the back of his throat and a voice whisper in his ear: Fasha, Fasha, Fasha. Then the hands withdrew and clasped a knife between them, Kuy’s knife, and cut him slowly open except there was no pain, no blood, only a numb relief as the tension and the hurt flooded away. Fasha, Fasha, Fasha. The whisper went on, only now the voice had changed; the words were no longer deep and long but high-pitched and childish. The giant hands became small and delicate and he saw that the figure looming over him was Gelisya. She held Kuy’s knife so he could see it, could see himself in the blade as though pressed against a glass. And with him inside it, he saw Fasha too.
I have a piece of both of you now, said Gelisya, and she faded away into a deep and endless void.
The next evening, when Talon had finally sobered up, he told Berren what was really on his mind. ‘I have a new commission,’ he said. ‘For as soon as the company can assemble.’
‘I thought you were going back to Tethis.’
‘Yes. That’s the commission. I’m offering it to myself. I think I might accept it too.’
‘We’re going to fight for Syannis again?’ Berren snorted. ‘No, thanks.’
Talon looked sad. ‘We’re . . . we’re going to fight against him.’
Now every part of Berren was suddenly awake and listening. ‘Against him? For whom?’
Talon sighed. ‘I want you to get rid of Aimes. Let him be dead.’
‘You want to get rid of Aimes, let Syannis do it. All he needs is a bit of poison.’
Talon glared and growled. ‘The last thing that Syannis wants to do is kill him. Sun and Moon, you can be a cold fish sometimes. Syannis wants to make him better, always did! He can’t, but that won’t stop him from trying. There are warlocks in Tethis again, Berren. He has it in him to be a good king, but not while Aimes is there, because at every turn the warlocks whisper to him. So I want you to kill Aimes, and I will deal with these warlocks once and for all. He can’t just die, because then Syannis will fall to bits. He has to be killed. Murdered. You could do that. You killed a king for Syannis; you can do it for me. He’ll hate you beyond words, but you can just get on that ship to Deephaven I kept promising all those years ago. He’ll never reach you.’
‘And why in the name of the four gods would I do that? What’s Aimes ever done to me?’
‘You’ll do it for your slave and for your son and for all the gold you have and a sackful more, and because if you don’t do it then I will, and then I cannot be there to make Syannis whole again. Aimes isn’t fit to be a king and never was.’ He shook his head. ‘It has to end, and unless I turn my sword on my own brother, I can think of no other way.’ He looked across at Berren. Half a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be asking you this, but I don’t know who else might do it.’
‘No, you shouldn’t.’ Berren shook his head. He closed his eyes and pinched his nose.
‘Then say no and let it fall to me and forget that I asked. I’ll not judge you harshly for that. I might even admire you for it.’
Berren looked up again. ‘What you should be doing is the one thing you can’t. You’d make a good king, Prince Talon. Get rid of them all, that’s what you should do.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing against Aimes.’
‘You had nothing against Meridian either.’
‘You’re asking me to murder your brother.’
‘Half-brother.’ Talon spat. ‘And that’s between me and my conscience, and I did tell you that I never liked him. You’re the Bloody Judge, Berren. You’ve become that. Why is Aimes any different to all the other men you’ve killed? This time you could save a few.’
‘Fine. I’ll do it then. For Fasha and for my son, and for all the gold I have and a sackful more. A big sackful.’ And for Tasahre, twisted as it was. Let Syannis feel the same pain.
‘And then you’ll be gone. Vanish. Back to where you came from. Too far away even for my brother to come looking. Because he will.’
‘Like a ghost.’ Casually, Berren smiled and leaned in towards Talon. ‘You never did me any wrong, not yet. But like you said, I’m the Bloody Judge of Tethis now. If you cross me like Syannis did, you’d better kill me, because if you don’t, I will cut my way through every single last one of you.’
‘I have something for y
ou.’ Talon unbuckled his sword belt and passed it across to Berren, sword and all. ‘Take it. I have others.’
Berren looked at Talon’s sword. It was a fine blade, a proper Dominion fencing sword, a little longer than the blades he usually carried, but light, neatly balanced, with a basket hilt of curling coils of metal. ‘Worth a bit, that.’
‘As much as your bondswoman. Probably more. Think of it as part of your payment.’ He closed his eyes. ‘How did it come to this, Berren?’
Berren took the sword and the belt. ‘Killing Aimes isn’t what really needs to be done. But you know that.’
Talon only looked sad. ‘You may be right.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’m not my brother. Either of them.’ He got up and left, and Berren watched him go. He tried to see himself chasing through Tethis castle, slashing with Talon’s sword at anyone who got in his way until he found the room where Fasha was waiting for him with his son, cowering in a corner and full of hope. But it wasn’t Aimes he saw dead when he closed his eyes. What he saw was Syannis, with Talon risen in his place. Talon couldn’t do it? Fair enough. Then Talon wouldn’t have to.
30
LUCAMA
In the days that followed, Berren became surly and impatient, eager to return to Tethis and be done with it all. The fear he’d felt on the way to Kalda had grown, congealed into something solid that he carried inside him like a ball of ice wrapped up in his belly. As the winter went on, he dreamed of Fasha and Gelisya and Saffran Kuy and his knife. They haunted him more and more, sometimes night after night, and when they let him be, then it was the woman he’d killed after the battle on the beach. Over and over. Just her, lying on the ground and blood everywhere, and the wondering of why he’d done it.
‘Do you have dreams?’ he asked Tarn one evening. Tarn gave him a sour look.
‘Depends what I’ve been drinking,’ he said. ‘Mostly not.’
‘But when you do, what are they?’
Tarn cackled. ‘Mostly women, and what happens is none of your business, dark-skin.’ His face softened. ‘Ships sometimes. If I dream of anything, I dream of sailing. A good strong wind, a sturdy ship, sails full, waves a little choppy, salt in my face. Moving swift and strong and sure.’ He nodded. ‘Nice dreams. I think maybe I’m meant to be a sailor if not a soldier. Pity, because I rather liked the idea of setting up my own little school and teaching people how to fight.’
Berren snorted. ‘Sailing? Can’t say I thought much of it myself.’ But then maybe it wasn’t so bad when you weren’t the skag. Maybe if you were the one giving the orders it was just fine.
After two winters in the south Kalda felt cold and bitter. The days ran together in a blur of impatience. Talon talked endlessly of Syannis and Aimes, about the times they’d had together as children and ever since. He told Berren about the war, of how when Radek and Meridian had invaded Tethis a strange illness had afflicted the king’s guard. Some sort of poisoning, Talon thought. How after the war was won, Radek had scoured the world looking for Saffran Kuy and anyone who’d had anything to do with him. Mostly, though, he talked about Syannis and his obsession with the necromancer. Berren listened, not because he was interested, but because Talon was paying for the beer and their food and lodgings.
The weeks wore on and Berren found himself walking up to the rim of the city, one day, to the house of Silvestre the sword-master.
‘I don’t want you to teach me,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a new sword. I need to get used to it. I need to practise.’ Against someone who fights like Syannis, he added to himself.
‘I’ve seen that sword before,’ said Silvestre, but he didn’t ask anything more. He set Berren against a few of his students but they were pitiful. Slow and clumsy and desperately predictable. In the end Berren trailed up the slope each evening and sparred with the sword-master himself, while Tarn, resting after his own day of fighting, looked on. After the fights Berren and Tarn walked back down in the dark together, filled with warmth, chattering idly about the old times in Kalda. Berren could feel his sharpness, the speed and power of his arm, the quickness of his thoughts; but more, he felt at peace, as he ever did when his sword was in his hand. It was a pity that the sword-master was old and past his prime. Silvestre tired too quickly to challenge him for long.
The first glimmers of spring broke through the winter air. The days grew longer, the air warmer, the last flurries of snow came and went, and the Hawks began to return. In another week they would be at sea and on their way. Berren hungered for it, for the day they would leave. As he walked back down from the sword-master, swapping jokes with Tarn about the other students Silvestre had this year, he wasn’t even aware of the three men following until they were right behind him.
‘Berren, aincha?’
The voice cut like a knife. The three of them stood a few paces away, two of them carrying long knives drawn and ready to fight, but he could see from their stance that fighting wasn’t what they were here for. The third man was Lucama. He had his drawn sword in his hand. Tarn nodded to him. ‘I remember you.’
Berren pointed to the man who’d spoken. ‘Do I know you?’
The man shook his head. ‘No. But I know you.’
‘We’re not here to fight,’ said Lucama.
Tarn grinned at him. ‘That’s good for you, boys.’
Berren’s eyes flicked across their naked steel. ‘You have a strange way of showing it through.’
‘We know who you are,’ said the first man. ‘You’re the Bloody Judge.’
‘What of it?’
‘They’re afraid of you,’ said Lucama. He put his sword away. ‘Very afraid. I wasn’t sure I’d know you any more. The stories about you seem . . . unreal.’
‘I never kill without a reason,’ murmured Berren. He could see it now – Lucama was as tense as a bowstring, and the other two men were ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. ‘What do you want?’
Tarn cocked his head. ‘Who are you fighting for now? From what Berren here tells me, you’ve turned your coat a few times since we last properly met.’
Lucama shrugged. ‘Not your business, is it? There’s someone here who wants to meet the Bloody Judge.’
‘Who?’
‘He can see for himself.’
Berren waved them away with a sneer. ‘You want me to wander off with you to some dark alley where the rest of your friends are lurking? I saw you in Tethis before I left, Lucama. You were one of Syannis’s guard then. Has that changed? Because I don’t think he has much love left for me.’
A flash of anger crossed Lucama’s face. ‘The message I carry is from Princess Gelisya. And I’m here because I know you, and Her Highness wanted someone who wouldn’t be killed before he could even open his mouth. She sends me to make you an offer.’
Fasha. His son. What else could it be? And for a moment, if one of the men had lifted their knives and run at him, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything except watch himself be killed. When he found his voice again, the words came out slowly, dripping with danger. ‘What offer? What have you done to my son?’
Lucama edged back a step. ‘The message I have for you is this: Her Highness will give you what you want and give it freely if you will do one thing for her. She reminds you that whatever promises Prince Syannis has made, they are worthless, because what you want is not his to give. It is hers, and if you wish to have it, it is Her Highness with whom you must bargain.’ Lucama paused, watching Berren closely, looking for any glimmer of understanding.
Berren gave a slight nod. Lucama shook his head. ‘It’s just the message, Judge, and I’m just the one carrying it. There’s more, but . . .’ He glanced at Tarn. ‘You’ll have to come with me. There’s someone else who carried the rest. You have my word you’ll not be harmed.’
Tarn snorted. ‘No, he won’t, because I’ll be coming with him, and you won’t be taking our swords either.’
Lucama’s eyes narrowed a little. ‘You may keep your swords, and if anyone lifts a weapon against you, you wi
ll have mine as well.’ Something in Lucama had changed since they’d been students together. He was master of his own temper now, and if he hadn’t been one of Syannis’s king’s guard, Berren thought he might like him better than when they’d once sparred together. So he followed, with Tarn at his side, as Lucama and his two nervy henchmen led the way to the harbour. They took him to one of the fine guest houses that promised to keep visiting sea captains and merchants and other travellers of quality away from the riff-raff of the docks, and stopped outside. It reminded Berren a little of the Captain’s Rest in Deephaven, although not as grand.
‘Is she here?’ he blurted.
‘Princess Gelisya?’ Lucama laughed. ‘Prince Syannis would never let her out of his sight. I don’t think she’s been allowed to leave his side since they were wed.’
‘Syannis married her?’
‘Oh yes, almost as soon as you and Prince Talon were gone.’ He snorted. ‘Well that’s what kings are like, I suppose. Maybe she was still a child when you last saw her. Not any more.’
Lucama took a deep breath. He turned to face Berren and a half-smile twitched around the edges of his mouth. The other men slipped into the guest house. ‘Quite a name you’ve made for yourself. The Bloody Judge. The Crown-Taker. They say you’re fearsome and terrible. They say you killed Meridian. If I’d known, I might have watched you a little closer when it was just us and Blatter. Bet he’d shit his pants if he met you now.’
Berren didn’t reply. Every soldier lived with fear and each one dealt with it in his own way. Lucama had been the sort to deal with it by going into a frenzy. Others talked to themselves as they fought, or took tokens from the men they killed, or whispered prayers to their gods. Older soldiers learned to put their fear away until later, until after the battle; and then when all was said and done they could be found squatting among the corpses, weeping or drinking or dancing. For Berren, none of these things mattered. Fear had abandoned him in Syannis’s pit. He remembered the axeman in the turnip field, remembered puking his guts up because he’d been so scared and the panic after he’d killed Meridian, but all those memories were distant, as if they belonged to someone else. In the south he strode across the battlefields with a strange sense of calm, as if he no longer cared whether he lived or died. In the sun-king’s wars nothing had mattered except the plunder he took from the bodies of the fallen.