Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

‘Nothing! I don’t know anything about that! He doesn’t tell us!’

‘That’s very hard to believe. Very hard to believe.’

‘It’s true!’ The man’s voice grew shrill. ‘But he’s been to see the grey wizard too! They got their own thing going. I can tell you all-’

‘You’re a liar!’ Berren couldn’t see Master Sy’s face, couldn’t see much of anything in the gloom of the hall, but he heard the rage biting into every word. The thief-taker took a step forward and raised his sword.

‘Don’t! Don’t!’ The man’s cane lay on the floor near Berren’s feet. It gleamed golden in the moonlight. ‘There’s things you don’t know. It’s all different now. Listen to me! Gold! Sackfuls of it. Plenty enough to share. You could be a part of it!’

‘With you?’ A high-pitched tone of disbelief crept into the thief-taker’s voice. ‘Be a part of something with you and the Headsman and Radek? After what they did?’

‘Listen, damn you! You kill me, your life won’t be worth shit.’ He glanced at Berren. ‘You kill me, you’re dead, prince. Dead. Both of you are dead.’

The thief-taker leaned forwards and spat in the man’s face. ‘Even now you can’t help but show yourself for the turd that floats to the top of the sewer.’ He drew his sword back, ready to strike. ‘Besides, you said I was dead already.’

‘Radek knows you’re here! The Headsman already sent word! Kill me and you’re a dead man! But listen to me! It’s the black powder. Everything’s changed!’

‘Not for me!’ The thief-taker screamed something else, something that sounded like a name but was so contorted with fury that it came out as an animal sound. Then he drove the short blade of his sword down through the soft flesh between the man’s neck and his collar bone, with all his strength behind it. The Weasel lurched, gurgled, rolled his eyes and then fell forward, the weight of him tearing the sword out of Master Sy’s hand.

‘Boy,’ he hissed without looking round, ‘go find somewhere else to be.’

Berren backed away and crept up the stairs to the dead snuffers. For something to do he finished taking the sword-belt off the lanky one and put it on. He fumbled his sword back into its scabbard. Then he stood, imagining how he looked. The belt was definitely too big and the scabbard dragged on the floor however he tried to wear it. He could still take the sword, though, couldn’t he? No one else needed it.

Slowly, he drew it out of its scabbard again. This turned out to be a lot harder than it looked.

‘You want to start with something lighter,’ said Master Sy from the top of the stairs. He was leaning against the wall, watching. ‘It’s too heavy for you,’ he said.

‘Can I keep it?’

He could see the answer in Master Sy’s face at once. There were a hundred good reasons why he shouldn’t.

‘I’ll grow,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll get stronger.’

And then, to his surprise, Master Sy nodded. ‘Maybe you can trade it for one you can actually hold.’

‘They said something about a strongbox.’ He kept seeing the man with the cane die, kept hearing what he’d said. It wasn’t that it troubled him. Rather, it had thrilled him just as the time he’d seen Master Sy kill three men in an alley over a purse that had turned out to be filled with nothing but rusty iron and a few pennies. But priests? Black powder? A grey wizard? What did it all mean?

‘So he did.’

They went downstairs. Master Sy ran his hands over the dead body by the door. When he stood up, he had another key in his hand and a gleam in his eye. He led Berren back to the stone passage with the heavy doors. One of them was open now and the thief-taker moved slowly inside. The room beyond was pitch black, with no windows. They felt their way around, blind in the darkness. Pushed up against the far wall was a wooden chest bound in metal. It was too big and heavy for even two men to lift and carry away. Master Sy fumbled with the key he’d taken from the dead man with the cane. There was a click. Berren reached to open it.

‘Careful.’ Together they lifted the lid. Berren was sure it would be laden with gold and treasure, but when he reached inside, all he felt were bundles of parchment. Underneath those were round cases, hard and leathery, the sort you might use to store a map. Then his fingers finally closed on something hard and metallic. He couldn’t see what it was in the darkness but it felt like a buckle for a belt or a cloak. He imagined it to be silver or even gold, maybe even covered in gems! He slipped it into his pocket.

‘Come!’

At the far end of the strongroom passage there was another door. It was a heavy thing bound in iron, impossible to see in the dark until you walked right into it. Master Sy fiddled with his ring of stolen keys once more until he found the one that opened it. Berren sighed with relief — he could see his feet again. Shadows were one thing; shadows were for hiding and watching and he liked shadows. But full pitch dark where a man couldn’t even see where he was treading, that was a different matter.

He stepped out. They must have been in one of the myriad alleys that ran around the back of the docks and Reeper Hill, one that he didn’t know. He looked for the moon but it had dipped below the warehouses. The door, he saw, had no keyhole and no handle on the outside. In fact, from the outside, you’d barely know it was a door at all.

‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’ Master Sy trotted away down the alley. He was limping again, quite badly. When he came back, he was pushing an enormous handcart. A tarpaulin lay bundled up inside.

‘You’ll have to help me,’ he said. ‘We’re going to move the bodies.’

‘The bodies? Why, master?’ No one had seen the killings. ‘What if the watch stop us?’

Master Sy went inside. Berren followed.

‘Khrozus Blood! What a mess!’ The thief-taker started to laugh.

Three men dead on the floor downstairs, two more upstairs, blood everywhere and papers strewn about the place. ‘The soldiers and the snuffers — they saw us, master! They’re going to know!’

‘They saw Weasel and his men too.’ The thief-taker rounded on Berren. ‘Listen, lad: When the harbour-masters find this, they’re going to have fits. And yes, they’re going to know who was here, and yes, they’re going to want us all strung up — you, me, the Headsman, the lot of us.’ He pointed at the bodies. ‘One way or the other, we have to disappear now, lad. We leave them all behind us, everyone knows how it turned out. We all vanish, no one knows but us.’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘With a bit of luck, people will think we’re dead. Maybe the Headsman might start wondering about Weasel and his snuffers, and how much can he trust them? Uncertainty makes for fear, Berren, and fear is always the thief-taker’s friend.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘We can get Kol doing our work for us — your monks would string the Headsman up as quick as look at him. What business has he got at a temple though?’ He looked at the bodies again and sucked air between his teeth. ‘Kol could take the bodies to his catacombs and then try and get a priest to talk to them, but …’ The thief-taker was frowning furiously. ‘Or Kuy could do it. I dare say he’s not the only one. But these ones don’t know anything. Except about us.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘No, they’ve all got to go.’

Kuy! He meant Saffran Kuy, the witch-doctor from the House of Cats and Gulls. ‘So it’s true then? The witch-doctor can really make dead people talk?’ He’d never seen the witch-doctor in the flesh, but that was what the city whispers had always said: if the dead had secrets to spill, take them to the witch-doctor.