Stephen Deas: The Thief-Taker's Blade

Orimel muttered something under his breath, something that sounded more like an assertion of the Justicar's poor parentage than anything else. Kol's hands started to glow with a silvery light, the same moonlight as the halo around the witch-breaker.

“Obliged to you priest. Remind me to come and help out with the collection plate one day.”

The Justicar turned back. Syannis had been on enough ships in his time — more than he cared to remember, usually fleeing from one of the Small Kingdoms to the next and then finally crossing the ocean to Deephaven. Sloops, brigs, schooners, he'd never taken the time to learn the difference nor particularly cared. In one respect, they'd all been the same. They all had a raised deck at the back and the captain's cabin, where all Kol's precious charts would be, lay beneath it. Bigger ships had other cabins, smaller ships had just the one. He'd never been on a Taki ship before, but in the dark and with its sails cut and lying scattered across the deck, it looked much the same. Back and centre, a door led into the aft of the ship. Kol reached and paused. The door was open. As far as Syannis could remember, doors on ships stayed closed, always, unless someone was actually using them.

Then again, sails usually stayed on masts and sailors usually stayed out of the sea.

Kol went inside. One by one, Syannis and the other thief-takers followed him inside. Only the witch-breaker stayed behind. In the passageway beyond they stopped. Kol opened his hands, let the light from them softly settle on the debris underfoot.

“We really should have brought a lantern,” grumbled Kasmin. Syannis shrugged. Yes, a lantern would have been a fine idea. So would all sorts of other things if anyone had told him before he'd left the Four Horses that he'd be spending the night on an abandoned ship.

There were doors on either side of the passageway, one each. There was a door at the end, too. Or rather, space where a door had been. Now all Syannis could see was a gaping black hole, one with some ragged edges that suggested that both door and frame had been smashed to flinders. The floor beneath their feet was covered in shards of wood. A lot of little ones and a few good big ones the size of his arm.

“Something hit that hard then,” said Kol. He was trying to sound cheerful and unconcerned and not quite managing.

“Something wanted out , Justicar.”

“Yes.” Kol took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “Which means it's probably not in there any more. So let's go.”

“Is it still on the ship?” Kakrim glanced over his shoulder and looked straight at Syannis.

“That's what the witch-breaker's out there for,” shrugged Kasmin. He elbowed Syannis. “I say we get Kol's precious charts and get out of here. If he wants to go down below-decks, let him do it without us.”

As they reached the shattered door-frame, Syannis peered at it. You could clearly see that it had been barricaded from both sides. Someone on the outside had wanted to keep something in, and so had someone on the inside. Which was strange.

“Moon and Sun!”

The tension in Fennis' voice had Syannis' sword an inch out its scabbard before he even knew he was reaching for it. His eyes struggled in the dim light, a few beams of moonlight coming through the small stern windows and the glow of Kol's hands. For a second he didn't spot whatever Fennis had seen. Then he saw. There was a body on the floor. Too dark to make out any more, but there were arms and legs and a head, if you looked hard enough.

“There's another one over here,” said Kakrim. His voice was brittle, like ice about to crack.

“And another one.” Kol stepped gingerly over a shape on the floor. He walked to the table in the middle of the room. “Never mind. They're dead, so they're not going to complain while we help ourselves.” There were papers on the table, more scattered around the floor. He started picking them up. Quickly, without bothering to see what they were. “A hand here would be good.”

Fennis went to help him. The other thief-takers moved slowly about the cabin, anxious and on guard. “Can we just go once we've got these?”

“Yes.” Kol only hesitated for a moment, an unusual triumph of caution over greed for once. Syannis crouched beside one of the bodies. Dead for several days, judging from its swollen belly. Kasmin went to sit on a chest pushed up against the side of the room.

“Searching its pockets?”

“Can't even tell if its a Taki in this light.” The Taiytakei were black-skinned, which made them unique among all the realms whose people mingled in Deephaven. “Nothing in it's. . Holy Sun!” Syannis jumped away. Startled, Kasmin stepped back and fell onto the chest behind him. “Kol?” The dead man on the floor had a gaping hole in his chest. He'd had his heard ripped out. “Kol, you've got what you want, and now we leave. Right now.”

“Seen a ghost, Taker Syannis?”

“This man had his heart torn out of his chest. Whatever did that, it wasn't a man.”

“Oh, so what was it then? Sea-monster?”

Behind Syannis, Kasmin was making groaning noises, trying to pull himself upright. The chest apparently either didn't have a lid or else didn't have one strong enough for him to sit on.

Syannis glowered at the Justicar, who stood in the middle of the cabin with a handful of papers. “I don't know and I don't want to find out.”

“Thing is, Syannis, I've hunted thieves and killers in this city for twenty years now. I was here when Khrozus let his general Kyra loose on us and I was here right through the siege. I've seen men killed in every way you can imagine, a good few that you can't, and one or two that you simply wouldn't believe if I told you. And you know what killed them? Other men, every time. I've seen more monsters than you could count, Syannis, and every one of them looked just like you or me.”

“Then you've never seen whatever did this.” Syannis hauled Kasmin back to his feet. “Come on. We're done. We'll stay with Orimel. . Sun and Moon!”

What Kasmin had been sitting on had been no chest. It was a stone casket. The sort for burying sorcerers. It was empty. He peered inside. Couldn't help himself.

No. Not empty. There was dust in the casket, a lot of dust, and then his fingers found something else. Something hard. A pair of knives. He blew the dust away. The knives were alien, strange, shaped more like cleavers, yet too small for butcher's work. Their handles gleamed golden.

Alien, and yet familiar. He'd seen them before, or something like them once before. In a book maybe, back before Tethis had fallen and books had become a thing of the past.

He picked one up and started at it. There were patterns in the steel of the blade, patterns he could barely make out in the moonlight, but they were there. They almost moved. “Kas. .”

Outside, a hideous wail echoed across the water. And then both Justicar Kol and Kakrim swore.

The corpses were rising.

1 stMoon Day, Month of Lightning

Sanct, you bloody fool, what have you done?

“Oh no you bloody well don't!” Kol landed a kick in the head of the nearest corpse, spinning it across the floor. The dead man beside Syannis grabbed his ankle and started clawing at his leg, trying to rise. Syannis whipped out his sword and split its head in two. When that didn't stop it, he chopped off its hand. It was still moving, but at least it wasn't clutching at him any more. Yanking at Kasmin, he backed towards the door. He wasn't the only one. Fennis was swearing as only a northerner could swear, already backing out towards the passage. Out of all of them, Kakrim and the Justicar were the ones who weren't panicking. Kol was slashing and hacking at the one nearest to him, systematically chopping it into pieces. Kakrim was scampering away from the third while reaching into his coat.