Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

He couldn’t be that terrible, could he? The witch-doctor was a friend to Master Sy, and the thief-taker was hardly evil. Angry sometimes, and gods help you if you were on the wrong side of his steel, but he was still a servant of the city and Berren had seen kindness in him more often than spite.

They were both soaked now. Their light clothes clung to their skin. Most of the time, Tasahre looked more like a boy with her short cropped hair and the sunburst tattoo breaking the lines of her face; most of the time, but not now.

The prince’s token around his neck seemed to burn, urging him away. Rain ran in rivers down his face, down his arms, and suddenly it was there, the opening he’d been looking for. Maybe Tasahre caught an inkling of what was on his mind, or maybe even sword-monks made mistakes from time to time. Whatever it was, Berren didn’t care, because for an instant he was inside her guard. He dropped his waster, lunged and rammed her with his shoulder. He grabbed her arm, jabbed at her ribs with his elbow and reached a foot between her legs to sweep her over, all at once. She staggered, and then his foot caught her and she went down with Berren on top of her. He grabbed her other arm. She was still as quick as a snake, every bit as strong as him and he wasn’t even much heavier, but this was what Master Sy had shown him, and he’d meant it to work on men twice his size. She almost wriggled free, but then he had her down flat on her back, sitting astride her, pinning her arms with his knees and his hands. Rain dripped from his hair into her face. She looked furious.

‘What are you doing?’

His hands wanted to touch her, but that meant letting go and he didn’t dare. ‘Concede.’

She almost laughed at him. ‘What?’

‘Concede. Surrender!’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got you.’

‘You are as paralysed as I.’

‘I’m on top.’

‘If you move, I will be free. If this were a fight, how would you kill me?’

‘I could bite your face off I suppose.’

‘If you come close enough, I will bite yours first.’

He tried not to think about that. His heart was racing.

Beneath him, Tasahre bucked, heaving him upwards. The next thing he knew, she had her legs around his chest and a bear-like force had grabbed him, tearing him backwards, and then he was flat on his back and Tasahre was on top of him , arms and legs all tangled together, with two fingertips at his throat. ‘If that was a fight then this is a knife and you are dead. Now get up.’

She seemed to pause for a moment more than needed before she sprang away. For the rest of their practice time she fought with cold unforgiving precision. The rain came down and made no difference at all. But afterwards, in the steamy evening twilight before sunset prayers, she took him back with her to the yard.

‘Show me again how you did that,’ she said.

Being a true novice, it turned out, was nothing like taking paid-for lessons in the day and then going home at sunset. Being a true novice meant you worked for your keep. He hadn’t expected much by way of kindness or sympathy, but between his lessons with Sterm and his time with Tasahre, there didn’t seem much time left in the day for more work .

He was wrong. Straight after practice with the sword-monks came twilight prayers — he had to go to those now. After prayers, the novices worked in the kitchens chopping vegetables, fetching, carrying, cleaning and sweating, serving the priests and the sword-monks with their supper; afterwards, they all sat together on long hard benches and got to eat whatever was left. There were a lot more novices than Berren had realised; a lot of them he’d never seen before, who’d never shared his class with Sterm the Worm or any of the others.

By the time he sat down, Berren was ravenous, but he barely managed to take a sip of gruel before a novice he didn’t know banged into him, spilling it.

‘Oops.’

‘Oi!’ Berren rounded on him. The boy must have been almost twice his size. He picked up Berren’s bowl off the table and tipped it over Berren’s head.

‘Oops,’ he said again. Then he looked at Berren. And? Berren knew that look. The What are you going to do about it, runt? look. None of the priests had seen it happen. The other novices were all staring, eyes a-glitter. They hated him, they always had.

‘Stupid!’ they sniggered. ‘Can’t even drink from a bowl.’

Berren’s face burned. This was what used to happen with Master Hatchet whenever a new boy was taken. He could see exactly where this was going. It was a challenge and it couldn’t go unanswered; the years with Hatchet had taught him that.

As they filed out of the eating hall, he held back. Sure enough, when he went out, as soon as they were out of sight of any priests, there was the boy who’d emptied his gruel over him. Oops, or whatever his name was. He had a couple of friends with him too, just in case, but Berren didn’t bother worrying about them. He threw himself straight at the big one, fists and feet flying. In the first second, he’d kicked the boy’s legs out from under him and stamped on his knee to keep him down. Then he was on the ground too, all over the other novice, punching and kicking him while his friends were suddenly nowhere to be seen. ‘Oops,’ he said.

When the priests arrived with Tasahre to pull him off, everyone assumed it was all his fault. He was the one still standing, after all. Tasahre made his apologies to the priests, promised she would punish him harshly, and then she took him back out into the practice yard in the dark.

‘Foolishness.’ She shook her head. ‘Words, not fists, Berren. That is the correct way.’

‘Then why do you exist?’ he asked.

‘The threat of a sword so deadly means there is no need for it to be drawn.’

‘Then that’s what I was doing,’ said Berren flatly. ‘Showing off my sword. And now I won’t ever have to do that again.’

She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes bored into him, searching for something, but her face gave him no clue as to what it was or whether she found it. ‘I’m not finished with you,’ she said in the end. ‘Show me again how you threw me.’

So he did, and they wrestled and threw each other in the dark until she understood exactly how he’d beaten her and could do what he’d done with an ease and grace and speed that he’d never have. By the time they finished, he was battered and bruised and full to the brim with the touch of her, the smell of her. Afterwards he lay awake at night in the dormitory he shared with the other boys, listening to their snores, thinking of her and thinking of other things too. He’d been in a place like this before and the memories were of horrors and hurt and fear. What if Master Sy was wrong? What if he was killed? What then? Stay and fight his corner and spend half his days learning stuff he didn’t care about, letters and gods? Or did he run?

The token around his neck felt cool against his skin. Run away from the sword-monks? From Tasahre?

As soon as he was sure everyone was asleep, he slipped out of the dormitory. Getting out of the temple was easy. Getting into Master Sy’s house was easy too, but the thief-taker wasn’t there. It was tempting to climb into his old bedding, with its familiar feel and its familiar smell and fall asleep, safe and away from the snores and the taunts, but that’s what a boy would do, not a man, and so he crept back out the way he’d come, all the way back to his temple bed. He’d try again tomorrow, and again the day after that, and again and again until he found Master Sy once more, over and over until the thief-taker gave in and understood he wasn’t a boy any more, that he was a thief-taker too and that whatever Master Sy was trying to do, he could help.