Stephen Deas: Warlock's shadow

Apparently what got thrown into this one was people rather than pennies. A man sat in the water, stripped to the waist with a bottle of wine in one hand and the other up the dress of some expensive ground-floor girl from the brothels of Reeper Hill. There were two other women in the pool with him, all of them laughing and splashing and wearing flimsy white cotton that was soaking wet and left next to nothing to the imagination. As Berren stared, the man in the water pulled the closest of the woman down beside him and tipped his wine over her neck, lapping it up as it ran down her skin.

Mardan leaned over and whispered. ‘Your luck’s in, Berren. There he is. The prince. His Imperial Highness Prince Sharda. Second in line to the throne. From what I’ve heard this looks like it’s one of his better days.’

Berren stared. The women in the water were mesmerising. He hadn’t seen anyone look this gorgeous since … since Lilissa.

Best not to think about her . Her and her fishmonger’s son. He shivered.

‘Berren, lad.’

‘Master Mardan?’

‘You’re gawping.’

‘Huh?’

‘Mouth, lad. Close it.’

Someone landed him a heavy cuff round the back of the head. Berren staggered and spun around and there was Master Sy. They were almost the same height now, neither of them particularly tall for men of Deephaven. Master Sy came from some land far across the sea where they were probably all short, but it sometimes made Berren wonder who his own father was. Most likely he’d been some soldier in the army of General Kyra, a soldier who’d sired him in exchange for a crust of mouldy bread during the siege. The sad truth was that he was never going to know.

‘Eyes to the floor,’ hissed Master Sy through clenched teeth. ‘And bow your head. You are in the company of a prince.’ Berren did as he was told. He saw Master Sy kick Master Mardan in the ankle. There were some angry whispers but Berren wasn’t paying attention. He was still peering through his eyelashes at the women in the water. He understood now what Master Mardan had meant about the frisking.

The prince swivelled his head and gave Berren and the two thief-takers a languid look. He sat up straight. For a moment he might have been about to say something; then, with a great splash, he toppled over backwards. Everyone stood in shocked silence; Master Sy took a step forward, but then the prince reared out of the water, shaking his hair and laughing fit to burst. He pulled himself to his feet, staggered sideways and leaned heavily on two of his ladies. He cocked his head and screwed up his eyes and looked vaguely around the yard. ‘What I would like to see is … They say the … whoever they are. The ones who come across the sea in the sharp ships. With the …’ He frowned and growled something to himself. ‘Anyway, whoever they are, I hear they make black powder rockets that fill the sky with coloured stars. Someone told me that. I want to see them . If they could do that … They had them for Ashahn and Arianne. I missed it.’ He slipped then and nearly fell over. Beside Berren, Master Sy was almost rigid, fists clenched.

The prince and his women stumbled out of the pool and walked away, lurching from side to side. Berren stared after them, transfixed. Even after they vanished through a door on the other side of the yard, he still couldn’t move. Master Sy stayed where he was, head bowed until the prince was out of sight. Then he took a deep breath and sighed and slowly began to relax.

‘Oh. My. Gods,’ moaned Master Mardan. ‘Now was that a sight or was that a sight?’ He grunted as Master Sy elbowed him in the ribs. Then the thief-taker had Berren’s ear between his fingers, practically tearing it off as he dragged Berren away.

‘Ow!’

‘Sit down, boy.’ Master Sy pushed him back onto an ornate carved stone bench. Around the yard were at least a dozen soldiers, most of them standing stiffly to attention and acting as though they hadn’t seen anything, although Berren thought he heard a snicker or two. There was no way to know whether they were snickering at him or at the departed prince.

‘Sorry, master.’ Berren bowed his head. That was always the best way to start. Arguing with Master Sy only made him even more angry. Looking penitent always seemed to catch him off-guard.

‘Boy, do you know who that was? That was His Imperial Highness Prince Sharda of Varr. So: What do you think?’

Berren kept quiet. Saying that yes, thanks, he’d already guessed it was the prince probably wasn’t going to take the conversation anywhere useful. Instead he stared at the flagstones on the floor. The rain had stopped but it had left puddles. The stones were carved in some faded motif, worn down by countless booted feet. The thief-taker looked him up and down, frowning fiercely, straightening a fold in his clothes here, brushing away a fleck of dirt there. ‘He’s dangerous, that one. Unpredictable. A drunk. Prone to be morose and violent. You don’t want to catch his eye, boy. He’ll rip you to pieces.’

Unpredictable? Prone to be morose and violent? Sounds familiar, that does . Berren wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but certainly it hadn’t been a drunkard, stripped to the waist like some dock-worker, someone only a few years older than him, full of swagger and yet with enough chips on his shoulder to start a fire. Not someone who had staggered off almost too drunk to stand with three of the prettiest ladies of Reeper Hill. Impressed? Disappointment and envy in roughly equal measure, that was more like it. He shrugged. ‘I didn’t …’

Master Sy’s glare shut him up. ‘Look and listen but say nothing. Everyone here has wealth and power far more than us. You see those soldiers?’ He pointed to the men by the door, sweating under their armour. ‘You think they’re nothing more than snuffers?’

Berren shook his head. Snuffers were mostly relics of the war, the remnants of Khrozus’ army who’d never gone home after the siege. Men who’d stolen swords and maybe a bit of mail from the corpses of their comrades and now hired themselves out to whoever would pay. The ones that had lasted were the brutal ones, the savage, the murderous. No, Justicar Kol would never hire a snuffer for something that actually mattered. Snuffers served whoever held the biggest bag of gold and that was that, not like a thief-taker.

‘These are the Imperial Guard, boy. To be in the Imperial Guard you have to be the son or daughter of land and a title. Every one of them has sat in the imperial court. These will be lords and ladies of the empire one day. Now imagine having all that power and having to stand here all day as though you’re one of that prince’s pet monkeys. So mind your tongue. Watch the way they act, the way they dress. Listen to the way they talk. Learn from that but do it silently and with your head bowed. You understand me?’

Berren nodded, secretly rolling his eyes. He’d come from the temple to the Watchman’s Arms full of excitement; now it was starting to look as though he might as well never have left. Silently with your head bowed? If he closed his eyes, he could hear those exact words coming out of Teacher Sterm’s mouth.

‘And for the love of the sun, don’t steal anything!’

‘Master!’ Berren made a good show of looking shocked and hurt. Old habits did die hard, but as far as Master Sy knew, he hadn’t stolen anything for more than a year. Ever since …

He glanced wistfully back at the archway where the prince and his three ground-floor girls had gone. Ever since Lilissa had gone and married her fishmonger’s son. He’d hated her for that. Hated the fishmonger’s son, too. Dorrm. Dorrm the dumb, Berren called him, quietly when no one was listening. Dorrm was four years older than Berren, probably about twice his bulk, dim as a plank and disgustingly amiable. If he’d been anyone else, Berren would probably have liked him. Things being as they were, he quietly hated Dorrm and wished he’d die. Or get grabbed by the voracious press-gangs that festered down by the sea-docks these days.