Stephen Deas - The King's assassin

They led their mules from the market square, over the bridge and up the other side of the river valley and then back along the top of the cliffs. The open ground within the castle walls and palisades was filled with tents and makeshift huts and soldiers now. Even the castle itself had changed since Berren and Talon had come by some two months before. The buildings had been made gaudy with a riot of coloured paint and were festooned with flags and banners, as though some fading rainbow had fallen out of the sky and spilled its guts everywhere. As their mules picked a path between the tents, Berren spotted three different uniforms among the soldiers. He’d seen the castle soldiers before, the king’s guard, but now there were also soldiers who looked like the two horsemen they’d met on the road, and then there were soldiers in polished silver and bright green with the strange double-headed pikes he remembered from Deephaven and Radek’s ship.

They found a sergeant from one of the mercenary companies and Syannis begged for work. The castle was full. Berren could feel the tension in the air, too many men with too many swords, all pressed together with nothing much to do. The sergeant promised them a penny and a supper and set them to work. They filled old privies and dug new ones, cleaned boots, polished armour and stayed as far from the castle as it was possible to be. Berren looked up from time to time, but he never saw any sign of Gelisya or her bonds-maid, nor even Meridian or Prince Aimes or any of the rest of the court. The work was dull and dirty, but after years of being a ship’s skag, he bore it easily enough. Simple hard work suited him. It let him empty his head, or it would have if Syannis hadn’t been right there beside him. But Syannis was there, and Berren didn’t know where to start.

‘Stealing your half-brother sounds like a stupid idea,’ he said at last, when he couldn’t think of anything else. ‘If you can get that close to him, you should just kill Meridian.’ Come the evening, he thought he might just walk away and head back down to the docks and take up being a seaman again. Sail somewhere far away. Anywhere, really.

‘And how is that any better?’ whispered Syannis.

‘You kill a man, he doesn’t shout out, call for guards, raise the alarm, kick and struggle and scream. That’s how.’

Syannis snorted. ‘You sound like me. Well then maybe we will, but we can’t kill Aimes. You know the only reason I took you was because you looked like him. Nothing else. I didn’t want an apprentice. But there you were, my little brother, standing right in front of me, and this time I could actually do something. Later. . well, later there were other reasons. You weren’t such a bad apprentice. Mostly.’

He is Aimes . Berren remembered that from the woods by the beach, the night after the battle against the slavers. Master Sy had meant something more than skin-deep. Berren couldn’t imagine what, but the thought made the hairs on his arms prickle. ‘This brother of yours, he’s some sort of idiot, right?’ He watched carefully as a cloud crossed the thief-taker’s face.

‘He was after he got kicked in the head by a horse.’ Syannis sat down and wiped the sweat off his brow and took a sip of water, fresh from the river outside. In Deephaven the river stank. Master Sy had sent Berren two miles every day, along the riverside to Sweetwater where the river was clean, but most people drank beer or weak wine. Here, though, they kept their rivers so you could drink from them.

Syannis passed the water skin to Berren. ‘Talon and I are both bastards. Aimes was the true heir to Tethis. When Radek and Meridian came and our father was killed, Talon and I fled but I left Aimes behind. I just couldn’t get to him. Everyone knew there was something wrong with him and maybe that’s what saved him. Anyway, they didn’t kill Aimes, even though they tried hard enough to get rid of me and Talon.’ He leaned closer. ‘Meridian declared Aimes king and then promptly sat on the throne and called himself regent. I suppose it gives him more of an air of authority in the kingdom. Meridian rules but strictly it’s Aimes who wears the crown.’ The thief-taker pursed his lips. ‘He’d be a few years older than you. To look at him, he’s in perfect health. They say he’s a good rider and would probably be handy with a sword if he had the first idea what it was for. It’s like something inside him is missing.’

‘Something missing?’ Berren almost choked. ‘Like someone cut out a piece of his soul, maybe?’

Syannis looked at him long and hard. ‘He was kicked in the head by a horse. It happens. He shouldn’t have been playing in the stables.’

Berren took a long swig of water and burped loudly. That was one of those thief-taker answers he’d grown used to over the years. Yes, there’s more to it, but you’d better stop asking questions . He laughed. Fine. He didn’t care about Aimes and he didn’t care about Syannis’s stupid war either. He went back to digging. ‘Sorry doesn’t bring her back,’ he said. ‘Nice trick getting me to leave my sword outside the town though. Why did you tell me she was still alive?’

‘I never said any such thing.’

‘I didn’t dream it. In the woods by the beach. You asked me if I saw her actually die and I said yes, and then you asked if I was sure as though you knew something that I didn’t. Like maybe that other sword-monk got to her in time and did that thing that one of them did to you when she smashed up your knee. Why did you tell me that if it’s not true?’

‘I’ve told you before: I didn’t tell you anything. If you didn’t dream it then it must have been someone else.’ Master Sy spat into the dirt and picked up his shovel.

‘Did you see her die?’

‘I saw the same as you. No one lives through a cut like that. She’s dead, Berren. I’m sorry I had to kill her but I did. I didn’t know she meant so much to you. Actually I thought you didn’t like her.’

‘Would it have changed anything?’

Syannis shook his head. ‘In the heat of the moment? No, I don’t think it would.’

‘I’d never seen so much blood.’ Berren looked away. He could see her again now, lying on Radek’s ship with her throat torn open. He’d be able to see that moment whenever he wanted for the rest of his life. Everything else, the times they’d spent together in her fighting circle, the moments alone, the touch of her cheek on his hand, all those were slowly fading, but the last memory stayed as clear as though it was yesterday.

‘Why did you stay here, Berren? Why didn’t you go back to Deephaven?’

Berren stopped. He turned on the thief-taker and glared. ‘Back to what? You took everything!’ He shook his head. ‘Being a soldier, even if it means digging privies for a twelvenight, is better than being a thief, never knowing where your next meal is coming from, never knowing when you might be caught and what will happen when you are — a beating, a branding, maybe a broken bone or two; maybe they’ll take your hand off, or maybe they’ll just stick a knife in you and roll you into the river. You don’t know what it’s like, because you’ve never had to do it.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m a foreigner, a dark-skin from across the sea and a warlock’s boy too, so the other soldiers here don’t like me much, but I still hear their stories. They’re people who lost their homes, lost their families or never had anything in the first place. They dream of saving enough silver to buy a piece of land, build a home, raise a family. .’ He chuckled, thinking of the Hawks who had other dreams. Tarn wanted to start his own fighting school and there were a couple who were set on buying their own forges. And then there was Divan, who wasn’t quite right in the head, and who was firmly convinced that he’d stop being a Hawk one day and travel to the sandy wastes at the southern end of the world to live in a palace of gold and marble and be waited on by exactly three hundred and twelve concubines. The smile faded from his face. ‘Even Talon’s lost his home,’ he said. ‘They’re wanderers. I fit.’