Stephen Deas: The King's assassin

He paused beside a wagon that had been turned on its side. Broken boxes and hundreds of cabbage leaves littered the cobbles. He was hungry; but everything worth eating had already been taken and all that was left was crushed and trampled. He climbed up onto the wagon instead. The rain was getting worse, driving into his face. The iron-grey sky grew steadily darker. The storm blowing in off the sea and over the cliffs was a big one, the ships anchored in the river already putting up lights although it was still the middle of the afternoon. He shielded his eyes. In his rags he looked like one of the mob, but it wasn’t the mob he was afraid of. At least one company of soldiers was already down from its barracks, laying waste to any rioters in its way.

The worst of the fighting was still around the gallows. Three men hung there, dead for five minutes now. The officers who’d hanged them had brought half a company of soldiers for protection. Now, too late, they knew they should have brought the other half too. The soldiers were breaking away from the scaffold in little knots of swinging swords, trying to force their way though the mob to somewhere safe, scared enough to simply butcher anyone who got in their way. Berren kept well clear. He had no interest in any of this. From the top of the wagon he looked for where the worst of the fighting was to be had, and when he jumped down he did his best to avoid it. He had no idea who the three hanged men had been or why they were so important, nor did he care; what he cared about was the tavern, the Bitch Queen, where men of the waves said their prayers to the fickle sea in songs and ale and bawdy laughter. For that, here and now, was where the thief-taker would be.

A gang of men raced across his path, away from the gallows and towards the sea. Berren ran with them for a few seconds and then split away and resumed his course.

Master Sy. Memories filled his head and so did the anger he’d carried in him ever since Deephaven, the flames of fury that had smouldered in the dark for all this time. He let them. If there was one thing he’d learned as a skag, it was patience. Master Sy was supposed to be dead — or lost or drowned, or a slave in the imperial mines of Aria or something worse — anything, but not here , not alive . Yet today he was both of those things, and Berren had come to hunt him down.

The shops and the taverns and the storehouses at the edge of the docks gave a little shelter from the wind and the slanting rain. He eased his way along towards the Bitch Queen. Despite the downpour the rioters had set fire to something. Smoke drifted among them and out to sea. The gallows were rocking back and forth, about to be torn down. He couldn’t see where the soldiers had gone and it was impossible to hear anything useful over the shouts and screams of the fighting, over the howl and hiss of the wind and rain.

A trio of snuffers lounged by the tavern doors. They were pressed against the wall and taking shelter as best they could. They looked bored, barely aware of the anarchy around them, but underneath their heavy leather coats Berren caught the flash of metal breastplates. They wore those coats loose too, the way Master Sy used to, and Berren could see where hidden scabbards bent their shape. Whenever anyone from the mob staggered too close, they tensed very slightly, and that was all that was needed. Men still came and went through the Bitch Queen’s door but they walked slowly and upright and with their hands empty and easily seen. The snuffers glanced at Berren as he hurried in, but his rags were so torn he could barely have hidden a peeling knife. They gave a faint nod. Inside, warm stuffy air wrapped itself around him like a blanket. With the door closed behind him, the din of laughter and shouted conversation was almost as loud as the riot on the dockside.

A knife. He hadn’t brought one because he didn’t have one but there were knives everywhere in here. Daggers in scabbards, blades stuck into people’s belts, knives cutting bread and meat, knives used for drinking games or simply sitting on tables. Berren moved among the knots and clusters of men looking for one that he could take. There were swords too, hatchets and makeshift clubs. He picked someone who was the worse for drink, waited until the man was jostled from the other side and, unseen, snatched the knife from the man’s belt and melted away into the crowd. He clutched it tight. A cheap thing, blunt and savage, and for a moment he wondered what he meant to do with it; but then he closed his eyes and he could see the thief-taker’s face again on that terrible last day as Tasahre lay bleeding on the deck of Radek’s ship. He’d seen her face every night for nearly two and half years. The thief-taker had called Berren’s name. To come with him? To flee? Or was it simply a cry of surprise at what each one of them had just done?

He should never have gone to the Emperor’s Docks that day. Tasahre would be alive and maybe he’d have seen the thief-taker again or maybe not, but it could hardly have ended worse.

He looked about. The thief-taker was here somewhere. Today and only today. Berren’s heart was already racing. He’d had fights, more than his share of them. He’d taken beatings and he’d given them too. He’d broken men’s bones and scarred their faces but he’d never killed, not until he’d smashed his waster into Radek of Kalda’s head, and it had been the warlock Saffran Kuy who’d made him do that . His hands hadn’t been his own. Today he would have no such excuse.

Across the floor and through the crowd he glimpsed the face he was looking for. The face of the thief-taker, the one-time Prince of Tethis. Master Sy. And now he couldn’t move. He was back in Deephaven again and Tasahre was bleeding in his arms and Master Sy was on the edge of Radek’s ship with a waiting boat below him and no other place to go, sword-monks and city soldiers closing in a ring around them both. The monks would take his head for what he’d done. The thief-taker of Deephaven was dead, he had to be!

The face shifted and vanished and now all he could see were sailors and a crowd of snuffers, all moving together as though they were about to leave. He started to push his way towards them, his fingers gripping his stolen knife too tightly.

A hand clamped onto his shoulder, spinning him around.

‘Well well. If it isn’t our wandering skag.’

Berren tried to pull away but the hand on his shoulder held him fast. ‘You made a fool of me, little bitch-boy. You know what we do to deserters, skag?’

Berren stared up into the face of a sailor. The sailor grinned and showed off his rotten teeth. Klaas. Klaas had been on watch the night Berren had slipped over the side with his empty barrel and floated and bobbed and half-drowned his way to shore. It took Berren a second to remember, and yes, he knew exactly what they did to deserters. They flogged them. A hundred lashes, and if by some miracle their man was still alive after that, they cut the tendons in his ankles and his wrists and threw him over the side to watch him drown. His eyes darted around the tavern. Klaas turned too, looking for his friends — sailors came ashore in packs and if Klaas was here then there would be others from Berren’s old ship.

As Klaas moved, Berren caught sight of a silver token around his neck. It made him think of another, long lost now but made of gold and with the imperial eagle of Aria stamped on one side and a sword and shield on the other. A prince had given it to him once and it was the most precious thing he’d ever had. For months he’d seen it move from one sailor to the next as they’d gambled together, and in all that time he’d never lost the hope that he might somehow get it back. And then one day it was gone. Stolen from a sailor by a pickpocket in some port Berren couldn’t even name. After that he’d toyed at nights with the thought of slipping through the decks in the dark, of finding a knife and slitting the throat of every man left aboard. A fantasy but they deserved it, the lot of them. There wasn’t a single sailor on his ship that he would have spared or even given a second thought.