Stephen Deas: The King's assassin

Syannis looked at his knife. His face was an abyss. ‘I thought I needed this to put Aimes back together. That’s all I ever wanted. To make up for wanting him dead.’ He shoved Berren back, knocking him to the floor, and then he turned away and faced Gelisya again. ‘And now, finally, he is,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she cooed. ‘And I know how much Aimes meant to you. I know your pain.’ She gripped her knife. ‘I feel it, beloved.’

‘Dead and gone.’

Gelisya’s face turned petulant. She waved her knife at Berren. ‘Yes, and he killed him! And you were there, right there, and you didn’t stop it. You failed ! Now make him suffer for it!’

‘He killed Aimes. And you told him to.’ He took a step forward and then shuddered to a halt as Gelisya shifted the point of the knife and squeezed.

‘Kill my slave!’ she hissed. ‘Kill her or you will never touch me again!’

‘No.’ Syannis breathed a little sigh and stepped forward again. ‘I love you more than life,’ he whispered, ‘but not more than my brother.’

One hand still held the knife. The other suddenly held a sword, swinging in a blur towards Gelisya’s face. He struck downwards, but before he could finish the blow, every muscle in his arms and back froze solid. His left hand went limp and the gold-handled knife dropped to the floor.

Berren scrabbled back into the shadows. Gelisya lunged. She didn’t dive away, as she might have done; instead she stabbed forward. The knife in her hand ripped into Syannis’s belly. He staggered. His sword faltered. For seconds it seemed they simply stood there, Syannis with his sword in the air, Gelisya on one knee with her knife in his guts.

Gelisya pulled away and stabbed him again and then again. He began to sway. Then she was on her feet, stabbing and shrieking, but there was no blood, none. For this is no knife that you would understand, Berren. This blade cuts souls and now I will show you how . .

For a moment it seemed that everyone had forgotten Berren. He curled up into a ball and struggled and strained at the ropes around his hands until he wriggled his wrists around his feet and had his arms in front of him. He looked for the knot so he could work on it with his teeth.

‘You stupid, stupid thing!’ Gelisya was screaming. ‘ You do what I say! ’

‘Princess!’ Saffran Kuy took a step towards her; she waved the knife at him and he shrank hastily back.

Syannis slowly crumpled. Gelisya watched him fall and stood over him, her chest heaving. Then she dropped to all fours and very slowly pushed the knife up under Syannis’s chin, up, up inside his head, until his eyes rolled back and closed and each twitching finger fell still. She turned to look at Berren. Her eyes were black with rage. She raised the knife again, but Berren leaped at her, lashing out with a foot. He felt his head split open with the same pain as before, but then they crashed together and the knife flew from her hand. As it did, the pain in Berren’s head vanished like the light from a snuffed-out candle. He sprawled to the floor on top of her, rolling through the circle of flickering flames and then away, dazed by the fading sense of an iron spike smashed through his skull.

‘Saffran!’ Gelisya squealed. ‘Make him stop!’

Saffran Kuy smiled. Berren rolled, scrabbling to get to his feet. There was nowhere for him to go, and all the warlock had to do was open his mouth just as he had in Deephaven on the night Tasahre had died. You. Obey. Me .

Gelisya’s knife! Still with a piece of him inside, she’d said! Berren snatched it up. For a moment he and Saffran Kuy stood still, their eyes locked together.

‘Put the knife down, little Berren-piece,’ said Saffran Kuy, still smiling. The force of his words roared in Berren’s head, but this time there was something new. Something that kept them at bay. The knife. This time it was his.

The warlock’s eyes changed and grew wide. The air around him began to shimmer, a swirling of something that had yet to take form. Berren saw Gelisya rising, saw her glance towards Fasha. He sprang and lunged at Saffran Kuy before either of them could act. The knife buried itself up to the hilt in the warlock’s chest, as though Kuy was made of nothing more than smoke. A look of horror and dismay stretched across his face, while a pulse of fire swept down Berren’s arm. For a moment he was blinded, his vision filled with ghostly faces. He could see one Kuy before him, and he could see another: one made of skin and bone, the other a shimmering spirit made of something else. He could see two Gelisyas too, two Fashas. And someone else, standing next to Syannis’s corpse. Other faces and forms swarmed around his head, ones he’d never seen before. They filled the room, swirling shadows howling in his ears. And inside the ghostly second shape of Saffran Kuy he could see the web of the warlock’s soul, an endless tangle of threads. The knife could do almost anything, almost anything at all. It had the power of a god inside it, lurking just out of reach; not yet his to command but there was one thing he remembered, one thing he knew he could make it do.

Tell the knife! Make it your promise. And then cut, Berren, cut! Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!

With each stroke the knife sliced a little piece of Saffran Kuy away. As Berren cut, he could see it working, see how each thread mattered. The knife showed him all of it, exactly as it was and would be, exactly as he’d seen it before.

He withdrew the knife when he was done. The second Kuy shrank and collapsed into nothing, sucked into the shimmering blade. The ghostly forms faded and he saw clearly again, and what he saw was the Saffran Kuy of flesh and bone staring at him in horror, and Gelisya crouching over Fasha, looking at him with a mad glee. In her hand she held the other knife. She pointed it at him. A terrible smile spread across her face. But then nothing happened. No pain. Nothing at all. For a moment they glared at each other as Gelisya’s grimace of victory crumbled to ash. She had the wrong knife.

‘What did you do?’ Berren hissed. ‘What did you do to her?’

Gelisya shrieked, ‘Saffran!’ but Kuy was already running, wailing, towards the steps from the hold as fast as he could go. Berren snatched up Syannis’s sword. He hurled himself after the warlock and bore him down.

‘You. Obey. Me!’

‘No!’ The warlock’s scream was silent. ‘You cannot! I have seen my end and it is not you!’

‘Then you saw wrong. Now do as you’re told and die.’ He drove Syannis’s sword through the warlock’s heart, and now the warlock’s scream was real. He writhed and arched, every part of him. Black blood ran out of his mouth and became black smoke.

‘Not. Good. Enough,’ he hissed. His fingers and feet were starting to dissolve. Berren watched, transfixed. Tasahre had done the same with swords made of sun-steel, driven both of them right through him, and the same thing had happened. And he was right: it hadn’t been enough.

Gelisya bolted. She ran like a deer chased by a leopard, jinking back and forth, careening off crates and stacks of boxes. Berren chased after her but his hands were still tied. They slowed him and she jumped up the steps, a moment too quick for him, and was gone. On the floor Kuy was a writhing black mass.

The knife. Without thinking, Berren plunged the golden knife into what was left of the warlock, ripping open his soul for a second time. He cut and cut and cut again, and slowly he shredded the warlock into ribbons until there was nothing left at all, and the last black smoke wafted and thinned and vanished.

‘Good enough now, warlock?’ But Saffran Kuy was gone. Ended, and now the hold was dark and still.