Stephen Deas - The King's assassin

‘Your slave is alive and well,’ he said to Berren one day as they prepared for battle once more. ‘The child too. When this season is over, I promise you will see them again. It’s been long enough now.’

See them , Berren thought bitterly. Not touch them or hold them or feel them or talk to them. See them. Like promising a cup to man dying of thirst, but only the cup, not the water that should go in it .

The battle-priests and the officers returned for that last year, and fresh legions came with them. The rebels crumbled and the sun-king’s armies swept through them like fire. Berren saw cities that dwarfed Tethis burned to the ground, their entire populations crucified as a warning to others. The roads were lined with crosses; the air stank of death and decay, but he found it didn’t bother him. At night, when there was nowhere better to seek plunder, he would cut down the corpses and search, in case the soldiers who had strung up the bodies had missed something. One late summer evening, with the war done and behind them, as the Hawks began the long road to the ships that would take them home again, Berren caught sight of himself in a puddle by the roadside. For a moment he paused, bemused. The man staring back at him was a stranger. Gaunt, with lines on his face that he’d never seen before and a badly trimmed beard. He had a dozen scars from three years of fighting and his whole shape had changed. But most of all he didn’t recognise the eyes. They were cold soulless things. He looked at his hands, the calluses around his palm. They were forged for killing now, and when he tried to imagine them against Fasha’s silky-soft skin, he could only see the horror in her face as she recoiled from their senseless touch. The feeling passed, but it was a while before he understood its meaning. He was afraid. After three years of fighting, a score of battles, after killing more men than he could count, he was afraid that something inside him had changed and was lost and would never be found again.

‘Do I have enough?’ he asked Talon as they made their way home, standing together at the prow of Talon’s ship. The sun-king and his armies were gone, and Kalda was drifting towards them. It was exactly how he remembered it, how he’d seen it when he’d been a ship’s skag four years earlier. It had even been the same time of year.

‘I hope so.’ Talon laughed bitterly. ‘When Syannis takes one look at what you’ve become, he’ll give her away for free if there’s any sense left in him.’ He looked Berren up and down. ‘The Bloody Judge, the King-Slayer, the Crown-Taker. How many men have fallen to your swords? You have become terrible to behold, my friend.’

Yet beneath the Bloody Judge lay Berren, not long a man. And Fasha? And my son? What will they see?

They disembarked from the ship. Before the Hawks dispersed and went their separate ways, Talon took a roll-call of his men, of who would return to fight again next year and who would not. Most boarded new ships to take them home, wherever home happened to be. Others, like Talon and Tarn and Berren, let the city swallow them up, each finding his own comforts for the winter months. Talon took Berren and Tarn to the taverns they’d visited years ago. They got blind drunk together, passed out together, woke up the next day and did it again. Berren drank to numb the fear inside him. Talon. . Talon drank a lot when he wasn’t fighting at the best of times, but there was something different now, some shared desire for oblivion that drew them together. Tarn drank to keep them company. Berren and Tarn had been tight as a sailor’s cleat in the years of fighting; now Berren felt him slipping away from both of them. He and Talon each carried a burden that the other understood, ones that Tarn could never share.

‘Did Syannis ever tell you what happened to Aimes?’ Talon slurred one night, when they were both well into their cups.

Berren shook his head. Aimes wasn’t right in the head, and if Berren hadn’t known that already, it would have been obvious from the moment they’d met in the flesh. ‘Didn’t you say he was kicked in the head by a horse?’ There was more, though, and it had something to do with Saffran Kuy. Syannis had let that much slip.

‘Syannis always thought it was his fault. He’d been so used to the idea that he was going to be king one day. When Aimes arrived I suppose he couldn’t help but be jealous. Then Kuy came. He always made the hairs on my skin prickle, but I was only a boy while Syannis was into his changing years. I couldn’t tell you whether Kuy sought Syannis out or whether it was the other way around, but they became like thieves, always together, always skulking apart from the rest of us. I used to follow them around the castle, secretly so they didn’t know I was there, but I wasn’t very good at it and they usually caught me.’ He laughed. ‘It used to drive Syannis wild.’

Talon leaned closer. He glanced around as though he was worried they might be overheard. ‘A couple of years later, there was the accident. Syannis has it in his head that Kuy somehow made it happen, that one of the warlocks did it so that Syannis could be king after all, but I know better. Aimes had a pony. He was starting to learn to ride. He loved the ponies and the foals. The big horses scared him, but he used to play around the stables, and that’s where they found him. The stable master said he must have climbed through to the king’s hunting horses and then slipped. Fallen over and cried out and spooked them. They knocked him down and one of them kicked him. After a decade of soldiering, I’ve seen enough people go funny from being thumped on the head.’

He covered his eyes. ‘Syannis wasn’t there but he always thought that Saffran Kuy had made it happen, and that he’d made it happen so that Syannis could be king. Thing is, he wasn’t there but I was. I saw it all. I told Syannis too, but he never shook the idea that Kuy had cast some sort of spell on Aimes, or on the horses, or maybe on both. But there was one part I never told Syannis. See, it wasn’t Saffran Kuy who arranged it so that Syannis could be king, it was me. My fault. Aimes didn’t crawl in with the hunting horses at all. He was there because I put him there. He didn’t fall; he was screaming because he was scared, and that was what spooked them. I saw him go down. Watched it and did nothing. I couldn’t tell you which one kicked him. I never liked Aimes. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I can’t say as I was ever particularly sorry.’

He stared into his ale and then drained it. ‘It’s all gone wrong, Master Berren. Syannis always said that once Meridian was gone and we had our kingdom back, he’d be able to fix it. Make it right, or else Kuy would. And then something happened. I don’t know what, but it was before we fought Meridian. Something changed. When Aimes sent Kuy away, I thought it wouldn’t be long before he was back. I would have killed the bastard too. But he went and he stayed gone for a long time and Syannis did nothing to stop it, and yet nothing is any better than it was before, and he can’t make it right because no one can. Aimes is still a child inside and he always will be. There’s no cure for that. Tethis is falling apart and Syannis too. He’s so lost, Berren.’

Talon shook his head. Then he laughed. ‘He had some wild idea, from the moment he first saw you in Deephaven, that Saffran Kuy had cut a piece of Aimes’ spirit away to make him the way he is, and that whatever part of Aimes he’d had taken out, you had it. Just because you looked like him. Thought that for years, for all that time you were together in Deephaven and in Forgenver too, even when the two of you went to Tethis together. But in the Pit something changed. When he came out, he didn’t believe it any more. He never talked about it, just said it had been a stupid fantasy and that he’d never really believed it in the first place, but I know Kuy got to him while he was in the Pit. Kept him alive, if you take Syannis’s word for it, but there was a price for that, because there always is. Kuy took Syannis’s hope.’