Stephen Deas - The Thief-Takers Apprentice

They were laughing at him now but he didn’t mind. After he’d left them, he’d crept back through the way station and found the last few drunks, hopelessly in their cups. He’d quietly cut their purses. Master Sy would probably throw him in the river if he ever found out, but he wouldn’t and old habits died hard. No, on the whole the night had gone well.

‘There’s a thing I’ve learned,’ whispered a voice at his shoulder. Berren jumped a full foot into the air, spun around, lost his balance and almost fell over the side of the barge. When he finally gathered himself together, the thief-taker stood over him. His face looked bleak. Berren’s heart raced. The lightermen had left at the crack of dawn, when the way station drunks were still snoring at their tables. He couldn’t know what Berren had done. Can’t possibly know.

Didn’t matter what he told himself, though. Believing it was something else.

But the thief-taker’s thoughts were somewhere else. He sat down beside Berren and stared at the water, at the rippling waves rolling steadily by.

‘Do you know what wisdom is, lad? They say that wisdom is something you get as you age. Improved by the years like a fine wine. Wisdom is spending your effort on the battles that matter and having the grace to smile at defeat in the ones that don’t. Trouble is, lad, wisdom comes too late for some. Look at Kasmin. He was a fine swordsman in his time. He was a soldier, a captain in the King’s Guard. He had a fine life, filled with everything a young man wants. Wine, women, song, swords.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure you can imagine. Everyone loved him. And then he lost it all, and in the end, instead of fighting for what mattered, he gave up. Now look at him. A drunk old man, slipping slowly towards oblivion without even knowing it. Give it another few years and you’ll find Kasmin crawling in the gutter, begging from scraps, with everything he ever had, even his dignity, stripped away. Or you’ll find him in that same gutter with a knife between his ribs.’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned, lad, one thing that matters more than anything else, one thing I’d like to teach you more than letters or manners or swords, it’s not to regret what you can’t undo. I’m afraid, though, that that’s something you’ll have to learn from someone else.’

‘Wisdom is knowing what is beyond your power to change,’ said Berren, parroting Teacher Garrent. The thief-taker smiled and nodded.

‘So you do listen. No, there’s no shame in making a mistake as long as you can put it right. For the ones you can’t, learn what you can learn and then let them go. Go to a priest and find a penance if you have to and then leave it be.’

Berren nodded. ‘But master, how will you know that you truly can’t change something if you give up trying?’

‘You can’t bring back the dead, lad.’

‘But what if it’s something about the living?’

‘Then you listen to your heart, lad. Your heart will tell you when it’s time to stop.’

‘But what if it never does?’

The thief-taker stood up. ‘Kasmin’s heart told him to give up a long time ago, lad.’

‘But what if it didn’t?’

The thief-taker shrugged. ‘Then don’t.’ He shuffled away down the deck, back to his stool in the prow. Berren watched him sitting there, staring out across the water, lost in memories. It was only then that he realised the thief-taker hadn’t been talking about Kasmin at all. He’d been talking about himself.

He frowned. Did he have any regrets? Did he regret leaving Master Hatchet? Not really. Was he sorry for all the purses he’d cut? He had a good long think about that one. The beatings had hurt, when he’d been caught, but when it came to remorse… No. Not a trace. Did he wish he’d been born to a rich merchant prince with ships full of gold? Yes, he did, but it was hard to feel particularly resentful that he hadn’t. Did he wish that the whore in Club-Headed Jin’s brothel had let him touch her? Well yes, he did. A part of him did still smart from that. But he hardly thought about her any more, so maybe that was the sort of thing that Master Sy had been talking about. Maybe that was wisdom, letting that go.

He smiled to himself and stretched out across the top of the deck on his back, squinting at the sky. No, he hardly thought about Jin’s women at all any more. A cloud crossed the sun, stealing the heat off his face. What he thought about was Lilissa. Lilissa, who never came around any more. Lilissa who had a special friend who was a fishmonger’s son. Lilissa, who lived alone with no one to watch over her and no one to tell her what she couldn’t do. Now, could that be something he could change…?

Abruptly he jerked awake. The sky was grey and filled with cloud. The wind was cool and full of noise and smelled of fish again. The middle of the morning had become the middle of the afternoon. The barge shifted beneath him. He sat up, eyes wide, and looked around. The river had changed; they were right up against the edge, bumping a little wooden jetty. The bank here was covered with hastily made wooden buildings, scrambling over each other to be close to the water. The river itself was full of boats.

The thief-taker jumped onto the roof beside him and slapped him on the back. ‘Bedlam’s Crossing, lad. Shake a leg. They won’t wait, you know. Sleep any more and you’ll find yourself in the City of Spires.’

After all the stories he’d heard from the lightermen, Berren wasn’t sure that would have been so bad. He rose unsteadily and stumbled along the side of the barge, following in the thief-taker’s wake until he scrambled up onto the wooden docks. Almost at once, the barge pulled away, back into the channel of the river.

‘I will admit, lad, that I don’t take too kindly to being on the water. It feels good to be on dry land again.’

Berren shrugged. The truth was that he’d rather liked the gentle movements of the barge. They felt restful and sleepy and easy. Master Sy, though… Well, you could see at a glance how glad he was to be ashore. The darkness that had followed him since the Barrow of Beer had vanished. He was the thief-taker again, the thief-taker who danced through knives and laughed at swords and always knew the answer. Berren definitely liked this thief-taker better. If nothing else, you always knew where you stood.

‘Bedlam’s Crossing,’ said the thief-taker again. ‘The last river crossing before Deephaven and the sea. Take a boat over to the other side and you can get a coach that will take you to Tarantor, Torpreah, wherever you like. The north road will lead you up to Mirrormere. The river reaches off to the City of Spires and beyond. No one stays in Bedlam’s Crossing, but a lot of people come through.’ He bared his teeth. ‘A lot of goods too. Come on, this way.’

Berren followed. In Deephaven, the river docks were a maze of wooden bridges and platforms. Some of them sat on piles sunk into the river bed, but a lot of them simply bobbed up and down on the water on big wooden floats, held in place by ancient ropes and sheer bloody-mindedness. In a good strong storm, whole strips of the docks were sometimes torn away and blown halfway up the river or else washed out to sea. Both docks were little realms unto themselves, with their own rules and order and Berren knew well enough to keep away. Hatchet always told his boys that the docks had a magic of their own, powerful and old and vindictive. You go out there, boys, you be sure to make your sacrifices to the old gods of the sea and the river spirits, otherwise that old wood will split apart and close over your head again and they’ll take your soul to their inky depths. The docks at Bedlam’s crossing might have been a lot smaller, but they had the same simmering hostility to them. They rocked and swayed under Berren’s feet as though trying to tip him over, and he was glad to be off them. Master Sy might not have liked his boat, but to Berren’s mind, ground that was supposed to stay where it was but actually shifted under your feet was a thousand times worse.