Stephen Deas - The Thief-Takers Apprentice

For a long time she didn’t answer. Finally he stopped, turned around, ready to get it over with.

Except she wasn’t there. She was twenty yards back up the street, standing still. She wasn’t even looking at him at all. Dragging his feet across the cobbles, he walked slowly back to join her.

‘Look!’ She pointed down a street that led back into The Maze. ‘It’s the upside-down temple!’

She hadn’t heard him.

Berren stood beside her and looked. It was true. At the end of the street was what looked exactly like a very small temple, turned upside down so that it was standing on the tops of its dome and its towers. As he looked, Lilissa slipped her arm into his and pulled him close; later, if Berren had been asked, he wouldn’t have been able to say a thing about what he’d seen as he stood in the middle of Weaver’s Row and stared at Deephaven’s most unlikely monument, but he could have talked for hours about how absurdly lucky he had felt.

They walked back in silence, hand in hand, until they reached the thief-taker’s yard. As soon as he opened the door to the house, Berren could smell that someone else had been there. The air carried the taint of rotting fish, much stronger than the yard outside, and of something else. Something cold and dead. Upstairs, a board creaked.

‘Master?’ Berren had Stealer in his pocket and now he gripped it tight. Snuffers? Could there be snuffers here, lurking in wait? Most likely it was Master Sy, but better safe than sorry. He crept up the stairs, quiet as a ghost, and pressed his ear to Master Sy’s door.

Lilissa watched him from the open door to the yard. Berren pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Master?’ he whispered again. From inside he heard the knocking of a window shutter against the wall. Caught in a breath of breeze perhaps.

‘Master?’ he said again, louder this time. There was no answer. The shutter fell silent. Berren’s fingers settled on the handle of the door and then paused. He’d never been into the thief-taker’s room. The door had no lock; sometimes it was even ajar, and he’d sneaked a peek. But he’d never gone in. Never dared.

He took a deep breath. Quiet as he could, he eased the door open.

The inside of the thief-taker’s room was plain enough. An empty bed, a wooden rack for hanging clothes, and beside them, a table. In another room the table would have seemed perfectly ordinary. Here, though, it looked almost like an altar. Short squat candles were arranged around three sides in a semi-circle. There was a quill and a pile of papers and a bundle of letters, tied in ribbon. And there was a closed box. A plain wooden thing almost as long as his arm.

That was all. No chests, no closets, no space under the bed, nowhere for someone to hide. There was no one here.

He stepped across the threshold, still poised to run. A purse hung from one end of the wooden clothes-rack – he couldn’t help but notice that. The shutters of the window that looked out over the yard were open. A faint wind drifted in through the room and down the stairs, carrying the smell of the city. He went to the window and peered outside into the yard, but it was empty.

‘Berren?’ Lilissa’s voice came at him from the window and the door, both at once. ‘Are you all right?’

He frowned and scratched his head. He was sure he’d heard someone in the room when he’d come in, but where were they now? He peered down out of the window. It was a long drop. You couldn’t simply jump out and expect to just run away. And Lilissa would surely have seen…

‘Yeh,’ he called. His eyes moved restlessly about. Maybe he was imagining things. Maybe the creak of the floor had been nothing. Old houses did that sometimes; yet he couldn’t shake the sensation that he wasn’t alone, even now. He shivered.

He was about to leave when his gaze stopped again on the table and its temptations. He paused. The box was open. Berren stared. He was certain, as certain as he could be, that the box had been shut when he’d come in. Yet now it wasn’t. Inside it was a knife. A strange thing; the blade was an unusual shape, more like a cleaver than a knife.

For some reason he couldn’t fathom, his hand reached out and he picked it up. When he took the knife out of its sheath, the blade shone like polished silver. Strange curling patterns marked it. Berren noticed all these things, but most of all, he noticed that the hilt was made of pure, carved gold. He weighed the knife in his hand. It was heavy, much heavier than it looked.

It was solid.

He tried to think about how much it must be worth. Then he tried not to. Next to this, ten emperors was nothing. And yet here it was, in Master Sy’s room, next to his bed. Unguarded.

‘Berren!’ Lilissa again. Her voice had an urgent ring to it.

He wanted to put the knife back but his hands wouldn’t move.

‘Berren!’

Berren… whispered the air. He stared at the blade, his eyes wide. It seemed that the patterns in the steel had begun to shift and swirl…

‘Berren! Please!’

With a shudder he threw down the knife. It clattered on the floor, loud and accusing. Biting his lip, half closing his eyes, he picked it up again and quickly put it away. As an afterthought, he closed the box. Just in case. Just in case of what, he wasn’t sure, but he did it anyway. Then he snatched the thief-taker’s purse and ran down the stairs.

Lilissa looked at him, eyes wide. ‘What’s up? You look pale as a ghost!’

‘He’s not here.’

She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s just wait. I’m sure he’ll be back.’ She smiled, but Berren barely noticed. He needed space, that’s what he needed. Space and to be away from the thief-taker’s house for a bit.

‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Ought to get some bread. Need some clean water too. You want to come? Or do you want to wait? In case he comes back?’

‘One of us should stay.’ Lilissa let out a deep sigh. ‘You come back quick, all right? Please?’

Berren nodded vigorously. ‘Yeh. Back as quick as I can.’ On impulse he stopped and turned, pulled her to him with one hand and cupped her face with the other. He kissed her, sharply aware of the warmth of her against him from his chest down to his thighs. For a moment, all he wanted was to pick her up and run, somewhere far far away. He kissed her again, looking for a sign, the slightest sign that she felt the same.

No sign came. He let go. He couldn’t read her expression at all. Amused, maybe. A little surprised, perhaps? Definitely not overwhelmed with desire, that much was for sure. He scowled and then nodded.

‘I’ll bring you back a spice cake,’ he said, and hurried out the door before either of them could say anything more. That was it. His head was full now. Completely full. Between Master Sy and Lilissa and One-Thumb and being chased by snuffers and now some weird knife, there was a good chance it was going to burst, or at least that was how it seemed. He got as far as the Godsway before he even noticed where he was. He paused there and bought spice cakes like he’d promised. He treated himself to one there and then. After the night they’d had, they deserved it, he thought. Both of them. Then he tried to think, tried to work out what he should do, but it was all too difficult, all too complicated. Wait, that’s what he ought to do. Probably go to teacher Garrent and stay there until Master Sy came back, which he surely would. And if he didn’t…

For some reason he couldn’t make himself think about that.

He sighed. Water, then. Whatever happened to the thief-taker, he was going to need fresh clean water when he came back. And that, at least, was something Berren could get. As soon as he’d finished gobbling down his spice cake, he ran on down to the river docks, to the Rich Docks, to the sprawl of wooden jetties that reached out into the water like the remains of some nest of monsters. The usual Tower-Day market was set out on the cobbles along the riverside. The combination of the market and the frantic loading and unloading of boats gave a crushing weight of people, all trying to move in different directions. When he’d been living with Master Hatchet, the Rich Docks had been one of his favourite haunts. Even when someone caught him picking their pocket or snatching their purse, they could never catch him. He’d simply slip away. It was a comfortable place. Felt like home.