Stephen Deas - The Thief-Takers Apprentice

‘I’m making banners for the wedding festival.’ She let him lean on her as she led him through the front room of the house and into a second tiny room at the back. There was one blanket on the floor, a few more rolled up in a corner and space for nothing else. Berren slumped down. He lay back until his head was resting on the floor. He doubted he could have gotten to his feet again even if his life depended on it.

‘I’d forgotten about that.’

Lilissa laughed. She sat on the floor beside him. ‘How can you have forgotten about that? I thought people talked about nothing else!’

‘Master Sy didn’t like to…’ He choked on the words. ‘Don’t tell him I’m here, will you?’ He turned, managed to focus his eyes on her face. It was a very lovely face, he thought, when you stopped to look at it. Not really beautiful, not like Club-Head’s women, but nice. Friendly. Would have been pretty if it wasn’t for the freckles, but still…

She smiled again and looked away for a moment. ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said.

‘Am I?’

‘To have a master like Master Syannis.’

Berren shrugged. ‘I don’t feel lucky.’ He tried to grin. ‘What I feel is a lot of pain, and I reckon I’m tired enough to sleep through a whole solstice celebration.’

She laughed. For a moment, her fingers brushed his hand. ‘Master Syannis is probably the most honest, most honourable man in this whole city. Probably the whole empire. He’s like a prince.’ She squeezed down beside him and whispered in his ear, so close that her lips almost brushed his skin and he felt the wet warmth of her breath. ‘I heard once that he really is a prince, run out of his home by wicked sorcerers.’

‘He’s not a prince.’ Lying beside him, Lilissa had somehow paralysed him. He’d forgotten about how tired he was; instead, he had a strong urge to turn towards her and kiss her. Except he couldn’t move, not even a muscle. Isn’t that what Garrent called him too? The thief-taker prince?

‘Maybe not, but he’s a good man. He looked after my ma and now he looks after me. He never asked for anything and he’s never lifted a hand against an honest man.’ She smiled. ‘He’s teaching me to be a lady.’

His cheeks were burning. She was so close. He grunted.

‘There’s other thief-takers in the city,’ Lilissa murmured. ‘Plenty of them, but you and Master Syannis are different. The rest aren’t much different from the thieves they take, but Master Syannis, it makes no difference to him whether his thieves are street urchins or princes, whether they steal a loaf of bread or a kingdom. To him, a thief is just a thief. You’re so lucky that he’s your master.’

Berren’s eyes closed. He felt Lilissa shift beside him, felt her hair brush across his face and then a warm touch of skin on his cheek. And then he was asleep.

The daylight outside was gone when he woke up again, turned into grey twilight. The afternoon rains had come and gone – he could smell it in the air. Lilissa was gone too. He could hear her in the next room, though. Two hushed voices arguing about something. He froze, fearing the other voice must be Master Sy, but the voice was that of a woman. When he made out the words, they were talking about banners and dyes and sheets. He sighed and sat up.

‘Easy, lad.’

Berren almost jumped out of his skin. Even though he knew the thief-taker was there, he could barely see him. Master Sy sat in the pool of shadows beneath the tiny open window, still as a statue.

‘Nasty scratch you got yourself there.’

Berren scrambled to his feet and lunged for the door, but that was like treacle trying to outrun lightning. The thief-taker caught him around the waist and hefted him over one shoulder as though he was a sack of firewood.

‘Hope you haven’t been making a nuisance of yourself. Mistress Lilissa is someone I call friend, and I’m always good to my friends.’

Yeah? How good? he wanted to ask, but he didn’t dare. The thief-taker carried him easily out of the bedroom and deftly picked his way between the hanging sheets outside. He nodded and smiled at the two women. Berren glared at Lilissa. I hate you, he mouthed, but if she saw, she pretended she hadn’t. Then they were out, in warm evening air that smelled of damp stone and roasting nuts. Berren’s stomach rumbled.

‘Not had much to eat while you were out and about, eh lad?’ There, right outside the entrance to the yard where Master Sy lived, stood a brazier. An old man shuffled to and fro beside it, roasting nuts. The old man’s back was so bent that his head was permanently staring at his feet. He must be daft, Berren decided, to set up here. No one came down this alley in the evenings.

The thief-taker paused. ‘Evening, Master Jux.’

The bent-in-half man gave a nod. ‘Master thief-taker.’

‘I’ll have a handful for my supper if you don’t mind.’

The old man swept most of the nuts off the fire and into his hand. They must have been scalding hot, but he didn’t seem to notice. He tossed them clattering into a pan.

‘Keep them for me for a moment, Master Jux.’ The thief-taker walked on past, into the yard. He went into his house and up the stairs. Then he dumped Berren into his room and bolted the door.

The last thing Berren smelled before he drifted back to sleep was roasted nuts, wafting up through the gaps in the floor.

He awoke in the morning to find the thief-taker sitting over him again. He had a battered bowl of warm water, some strips of cloth and a needle and thread beside him. Without a word, he set to cleaning the wound on Berren’s arm. When he was done washing, he picked up the needle.

‘This is really going to hurt quite a lot, lad. My little brother was always much better at this than me, so I’m afraid it’s going to be an ugly scar too.’ Then he jammed a piece of cloth into Berren’s mouth, sat on his chest, wedged Berren’s arm between his knees and set to work. No hesitation, no more warning, straight into Berren’s skin with the needle. Berren screamed. The needle had looked almost as big as Jerrin’s knife. Now it felt like Master Sy was driving a burning spear-shaft into his flesh. The screaming didn’t stop, even as he bit on the cloth; he tried to tear himself free, but the thief-taker had him fast. Wave after wave of agony raged up from his arm. Tears came, forced out of his eyes. He started to think his head was going to explode, even as he kicked and kicked, trying to gain some sort of purchase to lever himself free.

And then, mercifully, the pain started to ease. The needle finished its work. Berren tried to catch his breath. His heart was hammering like a galloping horse and he was breathing like a dying man.

‘Oh… Gods…’

‘Thinking about it, Talon usually used to get his man blind drunk before he set to work.’ Master Sy frowned. ‘Oh well. Can’t be stopping now.’ For some reason, Master Sy wasn’t letting him get up. It was over, wasn’t it? His arm hurt like someone had taken an axe to it, but at least it was going to get better now, right?

The thief-taker grinned at him. ‘One stitch done. I reckon another six or seven should do it.’

‘Whu…?’ He didn’t get any further before the needle came again. Berren’s scream probably reached as far as the sea.

Yes. He was right. It did hurt. It hurt a lot.

When he was done, Master Sy tied a knot in the thread and stood up. ‘Thought you’d faint, lad.’ He shrugged. ‘Later you can tell me how you came to get that. Oh, and when the stitches need to come out, I’m going to ask Lady Lilissa to do it, so you’d best be nice to her when you see her. She did you quite a favour taking you in. Young lady on her own takes a lad back to her house, people start to talk.’