Stephen Deas: The King's assassin

‘You were going to kill him?’

‘It was all his fault, everything that happened to me.’

‘Really?’

‘And then I stabbed that man in the Bitch Queen. He was from my ship and he deserved it, but now. .’ He stared across the city. He could run. Run right from here. Leap across the rooftops and down to the streets, into the alleys and away. They’d never catch him. But he didn’t. Not yet. ‘Now I don’t know any more.’ He bit his lip.

‘It won’t change anything.’

‘I know.’

‘They caught him. I’ll tell you that much. Syannis, I mean. You were right: they did hunt him and they caught him and they sent him to the mines. He told me that and told me he deserved it too. I didn’t understand what he meant and he wouldn’t say, but I suppose perhaps now I do. Anyway he never got there. Someone helped him escape and put him on a ship and sent him back to me. He won’t say who but I know it was Kuy. Warlocks.’ He spat. ‘The sooner someone puts an end to them the better.’

Berren nodded. ‘Give me a sword and tell me how.’ Them? There’s more than one?

Orange fire burst across the horizon and the first brilliant rays of the sun struck the city. ‘He’s sorry,’ said Talon after a while longer. ‘Sorry for the way things ended between you.’ Out across the estuary, the waves began to glitter. ‘He doesn’t say it, but I see it in his face.’

‘That doesn’t change anything either. She’s still dead.’

‘I suppose it doesn’t.’ Talon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘What now, Berren? I wish I’d never seen you. I wish I’d left you where you were. But I did neither of those things and so here we are. Syannis is my brother. I can’t simply let you go, not if it’s going to be with a knife in your hand. I could murder you — that would be simple and quick but I think that would haunt me. If I could then I would make things back as they were, but I can’t bring the dead back to life. I don’t think anyone can do that. So what, then? What would be fair, do you think?’

Berren didn’t answer. Talon was right about not bringing the dead back to life. Past that, he couldn’t think.

‘I’ll send you home,’ Talon said after a while. ‘That’s what I should do. I should put you on a ship back to Deephaven and in return you will swear to me that you will never cross the seas again.’

‘There’s nothing in Deephaven for me any more,’ said Berren.

‘There’s nothing for you here either. I’ll get you some proper clothes and send you off with a purse full of silver and the rest will be up to you. That’s as right as I can make it. Start a new life and forget the old one. Yours if you want it. Otherwise I give you to Tarn and the sea.’

Berren shrugged. A purse and a set of clothes? Couldn’t argue that wasn’t better than being dumped in the sea with a rock tied around his ankles. As to what he did once he’d taken Talon’s gifts, well, that was up to him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But thank you.’

‘No. Not “I don’t know.” I want your oath, boy, and I want it now.’

‘Then I swear. When you send me away, I’ll never come back.’

‘Swear on the memory of your sword-monk.’

Berren swallowed hard. ‘I swear. On her memory. I will not come back.’ He clenched his fists.

‘There won’t be any ships crossing the ocean until spring now.’ Talon turned to look at him. He met Berren’s eyes with a stare that Berren couldn’t answer. ‘You’ll be one of us for now, Berren of Deephaven, but understand this: I will be kind to you while you are here. I will look after you because it is a little right to set against what you have suffered. But do not mistake my kindness for trust. My brother is still my brother, and if you run from me with a knife in your hand then I will send Tarn and his company after you and I will not ask them to be kind.’ The steel in his eyes twinkled to a grin and he slapped Berren on the shoulder. ‘Now, in the name of the four gods, let’s share a drink and get some damned sleep. Unless you’d prefer to return to where I found you?’

Berren tried to sleep. He tossed and turned restlessly on a pallet of straw tucked in a tiny storeroom full of shelves and empty jars. The blankets Talon had given him scratched his skin. Light filtered in under the door. The silence of the early morning nagged at him and cold draughts of winter air danced across his face. Everything was wrong and all he could do was doze. Before long he heard the noises of men moving elsewhere in the house, and then the first smells of cooking slunk through the gap under the storeroom door and wrapped themselves around him. Hot fat! Warm bread! Butter! He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten well.

No, that wasn’t true. He could remember it exactly. It had been two years ago, give or take. The afternoon before the Festival of the Flames in Deephaven with nothing much to do and a pocket full of pennies. He’d eaten pickled fish and warm sour-bread and it had been delicious.

He got up and followed the smell. His nose led him to a hall with a table long enough to sit twenty men, although it was mostly empty. Talon was already there with a few others. They were tucking into the biggest breakfast Berren had ever seen.

‘Berren! Berren of Deephaven!’ Talon clapped his hands and waved Berren over. ‘Sit! Eat! I bet it’s been a while since you had a meal that left your belly bulging.’

Berren met his eye. ‘Years.’ He sat down at the end of the table.

‘No, no, come over here.’ Berren got up again. A part of him still wondered whether he should be running away, but a larger part was certain that, whatever the answer, it could wait until after breakfast. ‘We’re going to have to do something about you,’ Talon said. ‘Look at you!’

Berren looked. His feet were bare; so were his legs below the knees and his arms below the shoulders. The rest of him was covered with a mishmash of whatever he’d managed to get hold of, patched together with pieces of sacking. ‘I look like a beggar,’ he said. He’d not really thought about it before. All sailors looked worn and battered, didn’t they?

‘No,’ said Talon. He pushed a trencher towards Berren and piled it with sliced sausage and pieces of fried fish, then waved at the pitchers on the table. ‘There’s goat milk and ale. And no, you don’t look like a beggar, you look like what you are — a ship’s skag. Beggars dress better. We’ll have to do something about that if you’re going to be one of us, and I can hardly send you back to Deephaven looking like that. Tarn, you can help.’

Tarn glowered at Berren. One of us — what did that mean? Who were us ? Because the men he saw breakfasting around him were surely snuffers. Half a dozen were sitting here at the table, but Talon had had more with him in the night. What did a man do with so many snuffers?

He shrugged the question away. Whatever Talon wanted from him, it couldn’t be worse than being a ship’s skag. If it got him a good breakfast and some new clothes, so much the better. He gnawed at the slices of dried sausage. The last time he’d had sausage it had been a Mirrormere Hot, the day before Master Sy had sent him to live in the temple. The memory of its burn made his mouth water even more.

Tarn was giving Talon a dirty look. ‘I have to buy him clothes now?’ he grumbled. ‘What am I, his mother?’

Talon paused between mouthfuls of egg mixed in with strips of meat and some sort of deep green vegetable that Berren had never seen before. ‘Fine, fine. I’ll take him.’ He glanced up at Berren. ‘You can tell me how Kalda compares to Deephaven. I travel a lot in this part of the world but I’ve never been across the Ocean of Storms. I hear they do things differently in Aria. Syannis told me some of it, but I’m sure he missed all the best parts. How many taverns did he take you to? Not one, I bet.’