Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

Tasahre was waiting for him in the morning. Oops, whoever he was, wasn’t forgotten. There was a long lecture from the priest in charge of discipline in the dormitory. Berren got a whipping in front of all the other novices while another priest delivered a short sermon on obedience and humility. The whipping wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared, a ritual humiliation more than anything else, a bit of pain but no real injury — he’d had worse beatings from Master Hatchet every week back before the thief-taker. After that, instead of lessons with Sterm and practice with the sword-monks, he spent the rest of the day with a grumpy old priest who growled at him and showed him around the parts of the temple where the other novices lived, fed him a dry crust and then gave him chores until his knees were raw from scrubbing floors. The old man hardly said a word. When Berren asked how long he would be punished, all he got was a clip round the ear.

‘Stupid boy,’ said the priest, and that was that. No one said anything more, but the meaning was clear. Train with sword-monks or scrub floors. Your choice .

That evening the other novices kept away. He saw them watching him. They eyed him up with fear and, here and there, a flicker of nervous interest. No one tipped food over him. When he finished eating, Tasahre was waiting for him again.

‘You missed training,’ she said.

He shrugged. She knew why.

‘The presence of the sword is enough now, is it?’

This time he bowed. Not that he had a sword, but if Master Sy had taught him anything at all, it was when to keep his mouth shut. For that night and the two nights that followed she took him to the practice yard after dark, after supper and prayers. Away from the other monks, she battered him, taking what Master Sy had taught him and making it even better. Something had changed between them. He was catching her, slowly, and now when she spoke to him, he heard a quiet respect that hadn’t been there before.

After four nights practising in the yard, Tasahre used what Berren had shown her to win two of her fights with the other monks. They looked bemused, uncertain of how they’d been beaten, while the elder dragon wore a frown deep enough to sink a ship.

‘The teacher can learn from the pupil,’ Tasahre said as she bowed, and Berren didn’t know which pupil she meant — him or her.

He slipped away again that night, back to Master Sy’s house. There was a lock on the thief-taker’s door this time, shiny and new, which made him pause. Master Sy had never bothered much with locks before. Locks mean keys and keys are always stolen and Master Sy had shown that he knew all about stealing keys. Better to keep with you everything you value . That was another of the thief-taker’s mantras, always trotted out with a twinge of bitterness; but here it was — a lock. Berren stood and stared at it. Then he climbed onto the handcart they’d taken to Wrecking Point, still resting against the kitchen wall, and pulled himself onto its low roof. From there it took all of a few seconds to wriggle open the catch on the shutters to his old room. He crawled inside and stood and listened. The house was silent, which meant the thief-taker wasn’t asleep in his bed. Master Sy snored like a wounded donkey.

He crept down the stairs. The thief-taker’s table was still covered in papers, dozens and dozens of them, spilling onto the floor, the papers they’d stolen from the Headsman’s strongbox in the House of Records. Berren picked them up and leafed through them again, holding them up to the little windows at the front of the thief-taker’s parlour, and to the moonlit sky beyond, peering at them. They were full of numbers and names and places, the same as before.

He frowned. They were inventories, he saw that now. The numbers talked about swords and arrows and spears. They weren’t about ships, either, they were talking about places. He knew some of the names, parts of Deephaven where the Emperor’s soldiers were barracked: The Old Fort, the Emperor’s Docks and places along the coast, Mirrormere and Bedlam’s Crossing. Torpreah. The City of Spires. There were other places whose names were dimly familiar and others he didn’t know at all.

The more he looked, the more they started to make sense. The lists made a map, a map of the imperial armies.

He sniffed the air and smelled a slight whiff of tallow. Someone had burned a candle here not long ago. Then he checked the kitchen, looking for the crumbs and the fruit peelings and stones and where Master Sy would spit them. They were there and they were fresh. The thief-taker had been here, and not long ago.

He put the papers back and returned to the window, peering outside and wondering what to do. The yard was empty. This time, he decided, he was going to wait. He’d stay here until Master Sy came home again. He made his way back up the stairs, slow and careful so as not to creak the steps. Maybe he’d doze the night away in his old room, waiting for his master.

The door to the thief-taker’s room was open. Berren stopped. It had been closed when he’d come down, he was sure of it. He couldn’t bring himself to go in, but couldn’t help but look either. Everything was there. The table, the bundle of letters tied with a ribbon, the box … Oh gods, the box and the cursed ghost-knife inside it, only tonight, the box was open and he could see the knife, it’s cleaver-blade naked, gleaming in the moonlight that crept between Master Sy’s shutters. Point glittering, curling patterns shimmering.

Downstairs, the front door opened. Berren froze. Footsteps moved though the parlour. He heard Master Sy’s voice, muttering to himself. He started to move, but then he heard a second voice, a soft whispering.

‘Tonight. Done and finished, Syannis. You really think so?’

‘He’s in the Two Cranes. We’ve waited long enough. We can get to him tonight. You lure him out. I’ll be waiting for him.’

‘And then?’

‘Then Radek, that’s what. Look!’ Paper rustled.

‘Someone has been here, Syannis. I smell them.’

‘You’re imagining things. Look! It’s not proof, but when Radek comes it’ll be enough to bury him.’

The voices receded, back outside. The door closed. After a few moments, Berren started to breathe again. He tip-toed to the window and peered down into the yard in time to see the thief-taker vanish into the gloom of the alley at the far end outside. He had someone with him too, cloaked in swirling darkness. Could have been anyone, but the voice wasn’t one that Berren knew.

He took a deep breath and counted to fifty, enough time for Master Sy and whoever was with him to get to the end of the alley. Then he ran to the door, crept outside and listened. Silence. He paused a while longer and then slipped down the alley, following Master Sy’s steps. At the end, where the thief-taker would have turned right towards Four Winds Square, Berren turned left for Weaver’s Row. He started to run. It wasn’t the quickest way to get to the Two Cranes, but an instinct told him that if Master Sy knew he was about, nothing would happen. This way he could still get there first if he ran, and then he could watch and no one would be any the wiser. He jogged up towards the night market and then cut into The Maze, darting from shadow to shadow, taking his chances with the press gangs. He passed the Barrow of Beer, Kasmin’s old place before the Headsman had killed him. It was quiet and dark, its door closed and the windows all shuttered. Here and there he saw other shadows flitting through the dark. They left him to his business and he left them to theirs. That was the quiet rule of The Maze. After dark, you made sure to pay careful attention not to see anyone else who might be about and, if you could, you made quite sure that they saw you not seeing them. You left them alone and they didn’t bother you. Still, he wished he had the sword with him tonight, the one that he’d buried up at Wrecking Point.