Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

He took a deep breath. The eyes were there, the cats, skulking in their shadows, watching, the gulls on the window ledges and on the roof. There wasn’t much of a door left after what Tasahre had done to it. There were baskets, though, baskets that hadn’t been there the day before. Like the priests, the warlock had his faithful. How he got them … Berren shivered. He didn’t want to think about that. When he closed his eyes he could still see the web of his own soul, spread out before the golden knife. His life wouldn’t be his own, one way or another, until Saffran Kuy was dead. That alone was a good enough reason to be here, helping these priests.

‘Come.’ Tasahre led the way. There were other smells inside, smells of old and musty clothes, of decay and damp. As Berren and the priests walked cautiously from room to room, a reek of rotting flesh wafted past and then was gone. Berren thought he smelled burnt hair once. Some of the rooms were dark, the windows still shuttered and boarded; once the priests saw that, they mumbled amongst themselves and then had Tasahre and Berren rip off the last remaining boards, flinging open the shutters and letting in the light. In the deeper rooms where there were no windows and no place for the sunlight to enter, they lit candles laden with incense. The warehouse became a feast of smells, burning tallow and sulphur and a hundred scents that Berren couldn’t name adding themselves to the ever-present stink of rot and decay. The richness of the air seemed all the more imposing set against the dullness of any other sensation. Even as the sun rose higher and shone through the warehouse windows, the grime and the gull excrement on the dim glass reduced the light inside to a dull brown glow. Everywhere Berren went the walls were greasy to the touch. They found no sign of any food, any drink, not even any waste. Not even a pisspot.

‘Was there another place?’ Tasahre asked Berren. ‘Did he live somewhere else?’

Berren could only shrug. He watched the priests gather papers and put them into piles. They burned most of it and they never asked Berren if he recognised a single sheet; then they took artefacts and skulls and bones and smashed them methodically to powder. They sprinkled salt in circles on the floor and bathed the walls in sunlight. Several times, Berren saw one of the priests glowing the way Tasahre had flared two days before, though not as bright. After a bit, he wandered away. Tasahre came with him — she was always beside him, his watcher, his keeper, his minder. He wasn’t sure whether she was there to keep him safe or to keep him honest or whether it was both, but he didn’t mind. He wouldn’t have wanted to wander a place like this on his own. He wouldn’t have dared.

‘Is there anything we should look for?’ she asked him.

‘There’s that golden knife he had. Did more than cut my finger. Worth a bit, too.’ Maybe if they found the knife, the priests would know a way to undo what the warlock had done. ‘There’s that head he threw at you. Could tell you a bit, if any of your priests really can talk to the dead.’

She gave him a hard look and shook her head, and then it crossed Berren’s mind that the Headsman’s secrets were all about some sun-priest and so the temple was hardly likely to go digging after them.

He stood where he and Tasahre had last seen the warlock, where shadows had swirled around him just before they’d turned and run. There wasn’t any sign of him now, but Berren could feel Kay’s presence, watching him. It didn’t seem to bother Tasahre so he supposed it must have been only in his head, but that didn’t make it any better. After a bit, he had to go back to the door, out to the docks outside, just to be in the light and away from the smells. The dead fish stink didn’t bother him — you got used to that, growing up in Shipwrights’ — but the rest, the rest made him want to be sick. The incense that the priests were using. It was so … rich. It was making his head spin.

He could make the Headsman talk. Whatever those symbols were that he’d drawn, he was certain he could make them again. He could make the Headsman talk and make Tasahre listen and understand the truth.

Or he could run — some part of him still wanted that. He didn’t even know why except that running was what he’d always done. Running was how a boy from Shipwrights’ stayed safe. Old habits died hard.

He must have dozed, leaning against the warlock’s wall in the summer sun, because the next thing he knew, it was Saffran Kuy standing in front of him, just his head and his shoulders, his arms and the rest of him crumbling into a fine white powder. Berren jumped with a start and a scream, and then Tasahre was there, hands on his shoulders, staring into his eyes.

‘What did you see?’

‘I saw …’ He gulped. ‘I saw Kuy.’

She nodded. ‘I smell it. A bitterness on the air.’

‘Please can we go back? Please!’ If he comes, I have to do what he wants. He’ll make me!

Tasahre nodded pensively. ‘I must defer to the priests,’ she said after a moment, ‘but I can ask.’

She went back inside and Berren was alone again. He took in a deep breath and forced a smile. It was the middle of the morning. The sun was shining and there was a slight wind brushing his hair. For a moment, he imagined he was free, that Kuy was gone and Radek too and everything was finished. No Master Sy, no nothing. He could just get up and head out the River Gate, off to the Poor Docks where the little fishing boats that plied the river mouth were moored. He had enough silver to buy a trip to the City of Spires. After that it would be walking. Maybe he’d get to Varr before winter and maybe he wouldn’t, but no journey ever got anywhere without a start, right?

His eyes slipped over the nearer jetties of the river docks, looking at the barges, the lightermen who might carry him all the way. Then across the glittering water with its smattering of estuary boats going back and forth, to what lay beyond, a low line of stilted houses built on the tidal mudflats. Siltside, home to the mudlarks, the people who scraped a living through whatever they could dig out of the mud or what they could steal from the ships anchored on the city side of the river.

He frowned and fingered the token around his neck. Siltside was a refuge for people who had nowhere and nothing. Really nowhere and nothing. And that wasn’t him.

‘Hello, Berren.’

He jumped. There he was, thinking of running away when no one was looking, and now here was Sterm the Worm, almost as if he knew, as if he had a sixth sense. Sterm didn’t have his cane out here but his tongue could be quite sharp enough.

‘Teacher.’ A while back he wouldn’t have said it was possible for Sterm to think any less of him, but that was before he’d been found consorting with a warlock.

Sterm gave Berren an awkward pat on the back. ‘If there’s anything you need, anything that Tasahre cannot give, I promise not to make you answer questions about Saint Kelm.’

Tasahre came back outside. She smiled at Berren. ‘It is agreed. There is too much here to be addressed in one day. We will find crates and summon wagons and take this wickedness back to our temple where it can be properly examined and destroyed. We will do as we intended, but we will do it in our sanctuary.’ She stretched and tipped her head up to the sun, soaking up its warmth and its light. ‘Finding wagons will surely be a simple matter so close to the river docks.’

‘What happens after that?’ What happens to me ? That’s what he was thinking.

‘Another sunrise, Berren. And with every sunrise comes another hope. Come!’ And before he could say anything else, she’d grabbed his arm and was bounding away with him up the Godsway.