Stephen Deas - The Thief-Takers Apprentice

‘Someone in the harbour-master’s office is up to his neck in it.’

The Justicar’s face changed again. He looked hungry now. The sort of face a leopard might make as it circled its prey. Berren slouched back on his stool, sipped at his beer, which was still delicious, and listened. His head was humming nicely now. This was probably the best place he’d ever been. Certainly the best he’d been to with Master Sy.

‘Can you prove that?’

The thief-taker shook his head angrily. ‘Not yet. But I will.’

‘You do it soon, Syannis. I have the guild on my back. They’ll take matters into their own hands if things get much worse.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And you’re not the only thief-taker who’s after my gold. Who knows? Maybe one of the others will get there first.’

Master Sy shrugged, unconcerned. ‘I’ll tell you what I know and you can share it with whoever you like. I’ve spent nights out on Pirates’ Point and they don’t come around into Fisherman’s Bay. I’m certain they row out from the inside of Wrecking Point but I’ve searched and I can’t find their boats. So far the goods they steal haven’t found their way back into the city. I’m guessing they go south, out through Siltside, but I don’t know that for sure and I don’t know how they get there.’

Justicar Kol wrinkled his nose. ‘And what’s this about the harbour-masters?’

Master Sy snorted. ‘Hiding boats somewhere in Deephaven Bay? Someone in the docks knows who and where.’

Berren’s head was starting to feel thick and fuzzy on the inside. He grinned. ‘Master Hatchet. He knows lots. Lots and lots.’

The two men stopped talking and looked at him. ‘He thinks he does,’ said Master Sy.

‘I think you’d better get your apprentice home. First time for proper beer, young Master Berren?’ Berren leered back. Amazing to think that he’d found Justicar Kol so frightening at first, when he was just a small old man with creases in his face and no hair on his head.

‘It’s the best!’ Berren smiled. He looked in his tankard and was surprised to find it was empty. He stood up, swayed. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea to bow to someone important like bald Justicar Kol. And he knew how. He was really good at bowing now. Really, really good.

He bowed, stumbled, banged his head on the edge of the table and sprawled across the floor. For a minute or so he lay there, too apathetic to move. Then he giggled. There was a puddle on the floor and beer was dripping from somewhere.

‘Nice, Syannis,’ said a faraway voice. ‘I’ve met him now. Don’t bring the boy back here again.’

Arms reached under his shoulders and hauled him up into the sky. He was in a room full of lots of people and they were slowly spinning around him. He closed his eyes, but the spinning didn’t seem to want to stop. He was starting to feel a bit sick.

‘Boy, you’re going to hate the world this evening.’

‘Are we going to fight pirates now?’ he slurred. His tongue was suddenly too big for his mouth and none of his words came out properly.

‘No, boy. You’re going to bed. You’re going to be sick and then you’re going to clean it up. And then in the morning, we’re going to start you on learning your letters. When you’ve done that, you can fight as many pirates as you like.’

They marched in sullen silence away from the Eight Pillars of Smoke. Berren staggered in the thief-taker’s wake, occasionally pausing to retch. His stomach was empty before they even reached the other side of Four Winds Square, and yet just when he was sure there was absolutely nothing left, the next wave of nausea would hit him. They barged through Weaver’s Row and back into the thief-taker’s yard. Someone from a neighbouring window leaned out, shouted a warning without bothering to look and then emptied a chamber pot as they passed, spattering the thief-taker’s boots. He didn’t flinch, but when they got back he tore them off and threw them at Berren.

‘Sit outside and make them clean, boy!’

Berren had already polished Master Sy’s boots once that day. First thing before breakfast, one of his daily chores, and yet here they were, covered in mud again. Mud and worse. Master Sy disappeared into his room and came out wearing a second pair. ‘Spotless,’ he growled, and then he stormed away back into the city, leaving Berren sitting on the doorstep on his own. He hardly dared to move. Alone in the thief-taker’s house for a second time, left to look and pry as he pleased. Left to take whatever caught his fancy and run away… except this time he felt so sick that he couldn’t bring himself to move. Hands trembling, he picked up the thief-taker’s dirty boots. The smell of sewage wafted over him and his stomach began to heave again. He turned away, took a deep breath and then stayed exactly where he was, cleaning and polishing until the thief-taker’s boots gleamed like the golden towers on The Peak. When he was done, he crawled back inside and stumbled into his room and lay down. He thought he might doze for a few minutes and then sneak a peek into the thief-taker’s room, but he must have fallen fast asleep. The next thing he knew, Master Sy was back, stomping on the floor, tearing off his second pair of boots and throwing them across the house.

‘Those too,’ he snapped as Berren emerged, hollow-eyed, peering down from the doorway of his room. The thief-taker didn’t even look at the first pair. Instead, he threw down a stack of pieces of paper, most of them torn and all of them written on. Then he took out a pot of ink, fumbled, and spilt half of it over the floor. He let out a violent curse, threw Berren a grimace of unfettered rage; then he took a deep breath and stormed out into the yard in his stockings.

Berren crept down the stairs, wincing at every creak from every step. He still felt like he was going to be sick at any moment and now his head had joined in too. Some slave-galley drum-master was thumping away on the inside of his skull. Even his eyes had largely given up. He stumbled to the outside door and peered into the yard. Master Sy was leaning against the wall a few feet away, pulling furiously on a pipe. Without a word, Berren cleaned up the ink, slowly and painfully. Then the thief-taker came back inside, and that was when the real horror started. The horror of Master Sy trying to teach letters. He stuffed a quill into Berren’s shaking hand and told him to write his name. Berren hadn’t the first idea how. Master Sy snatched the pen off him and wrote on the paper, in a perfect script that would have made a scribe weep: Berren.

‘Like that.’ He handed back the quill. Berren dipped it in the ink pot and dripped ink all over the paper. He tried to ignore how Master Sy clenched his jaw and how the veins stood out on his temple. He did his absolute best to copy what Master Sy had done. The result was such a blotted mess that neither of them had any idea how well he might have done.

‘Again.’

Berren tried again. Second time around was, if anything, slightly worse. So was the pounding in his head.

‘Again.’

This time Berren made absolutely certain that he didn’t take too much ink. The result was that he didn’t take nearly enough and kept running out halfway through each stroke. Still, he thought he’d done quite well. You could see some of the letters were almost the same as some of the letters Master Sy had drawn. Admittedly it looked as though someone had cut his name up into lots of different pieces and then put them back together in slightly the wrong order, but at least there were lines this time, instead of just blobs.

Master Sy closed his eyes and swallowed.

‘Again.’

Berren tried again. Too much ink again. By now his hand was trembling too much to draw a straight line.