Stephen Deas - The Thief-Takers Apprentice

The thief-taker stood up. He walked to the bar and picked up the bottle again. This time he poured himself a glass. Then he came back and sat down, bottle in one hand, glass in the other.

‘I remember. Look me in the eye, Kasmin. Tell me you bought this. Tell me this is honest trade. Look me in the eye and tell me that and I’ll be on my way.’

The old man shook with bitter laughter. ‘Can’t tell you that, old friend. You know I don’t have the gold to buy something as fine as that bottle for an honest price.’

‘No, old bones, I know that.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Berren. ‘Lad, get the other glass from the bar. Bring it here. Pour yourself a mug of something and then go wait out the back.’

Berren did as he was asked and wandered through the tavern and out into a little yard, sipping on his mug of beer. Halfway through he wrinkled his nose and tipped the rest onto the dirt. It was starting to make his head fuzzy again and that conjured up all manner of unpleasant memories. And when it came down to it, the beer didn’t actually taste particularly nice. He put the mug on the ground and squatted against the wall, waiting for the thief-taker to finish his business. He waited a long time. Eventually he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the sky was lightening with the first touches of dawn and Master Sy was shaking his shoulder.

‘Come on, lad,’ said the thief-taker gently. ‘Let’s go.’ He sounded sad. As they walked out of the yard and into a tiny dingy alley that ran up the side of the Barrow of Beer all the way down to the docks, Berren kept sneaking glances at him. There weren’t any bloodstains, but that only made him all the more curious. He stopped to peer through a window as they passed the front of the tavern. It was hard to see much through the filth and the way the cheap glass warped the world. He could make out a figure, though, sitting still on his stool, exactly where Berren remembered him.

‘Come on, lad.’ The thief-taker pulled him away. ‘He’s got ghosts enough without needing us as well. Leave him be.’

Berren twitched impatiently. ‘Master, where are we going?’ The whole night looked like it had been an enormous waste of time. Now he was tired and irritable and just wanted to go back to sleep.

‘Yes, yes.’ Master Sy shook his head. ‘We’re going home, and then we’re going to pack our bags and go down to the river docks and find ourselves passage up the river. Once we’re moving you can sleep all you like.’

Berren scowled. ‘Where are we going, master?’

‘Wherever we’re needed, lad. Wherever we’re needed.’

Berren lay sprawled out in the sun, eyes closed and half asleep. A gentle wind blew across his arms and his face. The midday heat was like a warm blanket wrapped over him. He dozed, on and off, lulled by the sounds of lapping water and creaking wood. Deephaven was an hour down the river behind them, and the quiet was staggering. Sometimes one of the lightermen would call out; a sail would flap, the barge would shift a little, and then it was back to the rhythm of the water and the wood. The sounds were like someone breathing in and out; slow, deep and restful.

And then there was the smell. The sweet, fresh smell of the river. The way the air smelled up past Sweetwater, except even sweeter still. Filled with trees and grass and flowers from the farms and the woods on the city side of the river. Berren had never ventured much further out of the city than the edges of the River District, and even then only the once and with Master Sy as his guide. They were well beyond that now. He stared at the vast openness, at the swathes of green, the huge trees and the forests they made up on the Haven Hills that overlooked the city. Other smells came and went, too. More familiar smells drifting in wisps off the road that ran beside the river, the great wide River Road that ran out of the River Gate, through Sweetwater and right on to the other end of the world, as far as Berren knew. To the City of Spires and the imperial capital of Varr and maybe even further than that. Sometimes, when he wasn’t snoozing, Berren watched the road for a bit just to see what he could see. He tried to count the wagons and the carts but quickly lost track. Once he saw a black-clad galloping horseman racing towards the city. An Imperial Messenger! He stared, enraptured, then jumped up and pointed and shouted out, because even Master Sy, surely, must want to see… But when Berren scampered over to wake him, the thief-taker screamed and stared at Berren wide-eyed, and Berren recoiled as though he’d been stung. The thief-taker stared at him, glassy-eyed and far away. ‘You haven’t the tools,’ he said. Then he blinked and came back from wherever he was and swore and cursed and swatted Berren away, and by then the messenger was gone. The lightermen had laughed and shaken their heads, as though this was something they saw every day.

‘Sorry, lad,’ said the thief-taker a minute or so later. ‘Dreams.’ He was looking at Berren hard, though, wearing his sad face, as though he’d dreamed of something bad that had yet to come.

Berren scowled. An Imperial Messenger was what every city boy wanted to be and he’d missed some of seeing one because of Master Sy. Racing with the wind from one side of the world to another, always moving, stopping for nothing except the next change of horse. Some people said they had secret powers, granted to them by the emperor’s new sorcerers. That they could freeze a man to the spot simply by looking at him, that they moved so fast that they could vanish in a blink. Berren wasn’t sure about that, but they certainly got to learn swords and he was willing to bet they didn’t have to learn their letters first. Or have stupid dreams. Bad dreams were for children. Babies. Not for men who carried swords.

Way stations, farms, hamlets and villages dotted the road, all with their own small jetties out into the water. On the other side of the barge, more little boats pottered up and down the river. Tiny rafts, dozens and hundreds of them, not much more than a few poles lashed together, bobbing about and covered with squawking black fishing birds. Sailing boats, not much bigger than the rafts, wove between them, deft and agile. And then there were the barges like the one where Berren dozed. Big and clumsy, lumbering against the current with a sail barely big enough to keep them moving.

Beyond all those, the far side of the river stretched out towards the horizon. It faded into a maze of mud-islands and channels and creeks and swamps that went on for days. Or so Master Sy had said. The only people who went in there, he said, were the most desperately wanted men with nowhere else to hide, and the thief-takers sent to catch them.

They stopped towards the end of the day at one of the riverside way stations. Master Sy waited while the lightermen made their boat secure. He bought them a flagon of ale each and then a gammon pie which he cut in half and split with Berren.

‘Ever been out of the city before, lad?’

Berren shook his head. The pie was a good one, with thick crusty pastry and big juicy chunks of ham. The sort of thing Master Hatchet would have bought his boys as a treat, except done properly, with soft meat instead of gristly bits and proper thick gravy instead of brown water.

‘I don’t come out here often,’ said the thief-taker. He was picking at his pie as though he didn’t really want it. And he was drinking. He finished one flagon and waved for another. ‘I’d like to go to Varr one day. Just to see the palace and the Kaveneth and the bridge they built over the river there. Or the City of Spires.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, his mind clearly somewhere else. ‘Never even got as far as Tarantor.’