Stephen Deas: The King's assassin

The shouts from below were getting louder. He thought he heard his name but that couldn’t be right. They spoke with funny accents here; it must have been someone else. For a moment he stopped. If the thief-taker wasn’t here, if the thief-taker had never been here, then what was he doing? If he ran, where to? For what? Why not just turn round and let them take him?

He reached the attic and entered. An arm wrapped around his face and then someone was on his back, bearing him to the ground. He struggled furiously but a second man quickly pinned his legs.

‘We’ve got him!’ shouted the man on his back. Berren struggled to turn and look but he was held fast. We’ve got him? These weren’t slavers simply clearing out the slums. They’d come for him , not for just anyone. Because of the sailor in the Bitch Queen?

‘And the rest?’

‘If they look like they can swing a sword then take them to the arms-master. Otherwise let them go.’ The voice came closer and hissed in Berren’s ear. ‘You! Keep still! I won’t hurt you if you keep still, but I won’t mind if it turns out that I have to. Got that?’

Berren couldn’t even nod. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’ve done nothing!’

‘You were out the back of the Bitch yesterday. You had a knife in your hand with fresh blood on it and you’d just killed a man. You call that nothing, do you?’

‘I. . No! Not me!’ No, he didn’t call that nothing. He might have called it a mistake. Might have.

The man on his back pushed down harder, twisting Berren’s arm. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘So that was some other dark-skin boy with his first fluff on his face who happened to look exactly like you and talks the same funny way, was it? Pillock.’

Sailors got stabbed in the Bitch Queen every week. Maybe their shipmates came looking for you but not a gang of snuffers. Sailors didn’t have the money to buy snuffers. ‘No! I don’t. . I didn’t. . I wasn’t. .’

The man squeezed and Berren whimpered. ‘You count your lucky stars that we’re not city men. The prince doesn’t get on with the people who rule here.’

A fearful understanding gripped him. This wasn’t about Klaas — these were the snuffers he’d met outside with the man he’d mistaken for Master Sy!

Another voice joined the first. The one he remembered. ‘Tarn! Let him up.’

‘You sure about that, Prince? He’ll run.’

‘No, he won’t. Get off him.’

The weight came off Berren’s back and then his arms were free. He started to get up, already glancing left and right for the quickest way out. There were two men behind him and then the snuffer who looked like Master Sy in front. From this close, even in the dark, it clearly wasn’t his old master, but there was something familiar about him. Berren rose slowly to a crouch. He’d have to bolt past not-quite-Master-Sy. Then he could jump the alley between the bakery and the next row of run-down old houses. With a good lunge he’d get straight onto the roof. These snuffers with their armour and their swords, they wouldn’t make it. If they jumped, they’d fall. He’d lured men to their deaths that way before. That wasn’t killing though, not like in the Bitch Queen. No accounting for people being stupid.

Not-quite-Master-Sy was giving him a strange look. Intense. ‘Syannis is right. You do look exactly like him.’

‘I look like who, sir?’ His legs tensed ready to bolt, but waited now. Syannis? The man didn’t just look like the thief-taker, then? He knew him!

Not-quite-Master-Sy shook his head. ‘If you want to run then run. Otherwise answer my questions and then maybe I’ll answer yours. Tell me who you are.’

Berren hesitated. He had to ask. Had to. ‘You know Syannis, sir?’

‘Do you? ’

‘Is he. . is he alive?’

‘Stop dancing with me, boy. You’re Berren. From Deephaven. You can’t be anyone else. But why are you here in Kalda? Why are you looking for him all of a sudden?’

All of a sudden? Berren shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you mean, sir. I’m Jerrin. Jerrin Nine-Fingers.’ He held up his hands so Not-quite-Master-Sy could see where the tip of one of his fingers was missing. It was the first name that came into his head.

The man looked past him. ‘Tarn? Think you can find a good price for a slave? A slave who can handle a sword but happens to be really stupid? Apparently I made a mistake.’ He turned away. Berren still didn’t run; if he squinted then he could almost believe he was face to face with his old thief-taker master. Why? Why did you kill Tasahre? And then he’d either throw his arms around the thief-taker’s neck with relief or stab him there and then and kill him. He just didn’t know which it would be.

Not-quite-Master-Sy started to walk past him back towards the steps.

‘You’re right, sir,’ said Berren slowly. ‘My name is Berren, sir. Not Jerrin.’

‘Imagine that. The surprise overwhelms me.’ A grim smile spread across the man’s face. It made him look even more like Master Sy, but he had a playfulness that the thief-taker had never had, and there was no anger there, no bitterness. ‘I don’t know how you got here and I don’t know how you found us, but I do know who you are, Berren. What matters to me most of all is that yesterday you had a knife in your hand when you called Syannis’s name. What did you mean to do with it?’

Berren couldn’t look him in the eye. He stared at his feet. ‘I. . I don’t know.’

‘I think you need to do a little better than that.’

‘Honestly! Sometimes I. .’ Berren shook his head. ‘I just don’t know any more.’

‘Syannis is my brother, Berren. I hope you’ll understand. It wasn’t easy or cheap tracking you back here after that nice little surprise you gave us outside the Bitch Queen. What am I to do with you, eh?’

‘I have no quarrel with you, sir.’

‘Really? But I might have one with you. So tell me again about that knife you were holding and what you meant to do with it.’ He glanced behind Berren’s back, mouth twitching. Berren sprang. He almost reached the edge of the open attic where he could have jumped but an arm caught him around the waist. He struggled, but there were three snuffers now and they were all stronger than him. He still managed to land a good punch or two. The man who looked like Syannis reeled away, his nose bloodied.

‘Gods, man! Tarn, bag him! If he gives you any more trouble, hit him until he stops.’ He shook his head. ‘That what Syannis taught you, or was that your sword-monks?’

‘Who are you!’ Berren fought and squirmed but it was no use.

‘Some people call me the Prince of Swords. Question is, Berren, who are you ?’

The snuffers forced a bag over Berren’s head and tied it round his neck. When he kicked at them, they held him and punched him until he stopped; then they carried him down the steps of the bakery. On the street outside they put a rope around him and led him away. The night was quiet and everyone else had fled; the people who lived in the slums kept to themselves after dark and knew well enough to stay away from gangs of armed men. Still, even blind Berren could tell something about where they were taking him. They turned uphill, the roads growing steeper and steeper while the smell of the sea turned into the smell of smoke from the wood and the dung that the city folk burned to keep warm through the winter. The higher slopes then, where the rich folk lived.

They stopped. He was pushed across a threshold, almost tripping on it, then manhandled across a floor and up some steps. They sat him on a chair and took the bag off his head and he was sitting across a table from the man who looked like Master Sy. There were two snuffers beside the prince and two more standing by the only door. A lamp burned on the table. Lanterns hung around the room.