Stephen Deas1 - The Thief-Takers Apprentice

Berren walked in, closed the door behind him and sat at the table with Master Sy.

‘Do you remember, when I first brought you back here, I told you that someone had stolen something from me a long time ago? You asked me what had happened to them, and I said that nothing had happened. Nothing at all. Do you remember that?’

Berren nodded. Behind him, someone shouted something out of a window. The children in the yard yelled and cursed back and then ran away. Everything went quiet.

‘They stole my family from me, Berren. They stole my family and my kingdom.’

Berren stared in disbelief. ‘They stole a kingdom?’ That seemed impossible. How could a…

‘How could a poor thief-taker in a city like Deephaven have once been a king? Is that what you’re thinking?’ Master Sy laughed, bitterly. ‘Yes, indeed. How could he? Well I was never a king, Berren. But I was the eldest bastard son of one.’ The thief-taker picked up a knife and cut a strange-looking fruit in two. Red juice ran down his fingers and then his chin as he bit into one half. The other half he put on a wooden plate and pushed it along the table. ‘Dragonfruit. Don’t suppose you’ve ever had one of these before?’

‘No.’

‘Well you’d best have one now. You might not get another chance and they’re not to be missed. They grow them in the south and ship them up the coast. They don’t reach the markets in Deephaven all that often. Usually they go straight to the tables up on The Peak, or else they go down the river to Varr.’ He shrugged. ‘There must have been a good harvest this year. Food for princes, this. It’s bruised and past its best, but still.’ He took another bite. ‘What do you want, lad? Had enough of thief-taking now you’ve seen the nasty side of it? You want to go back to your Master Hatchet?’

‘No.’ Berren shook his head. ‘I can’t. They’d kill me. And…’ he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Even if I could, I thought about it and I don’t want to.’ The three men in the alley, the Bloody Dag’s mudlarks, now the snuffers on the Avenue of Emperors. That’s what he wanted. To be like that. Deadly.

‘No, I didn’t think so.’ Master Sy stabbed the knife into the wooden table. For a moment, Berren felt a tremor of doubt, a little voice that told him to run, run away now, that that was the best thing to do. But it was only a little voice, half lost in a crowd. Swords. He wanted to learn swords. A hundred other things, too, but mostly swords. He wanted to be someone who could face down four men in a street and be the one who walked away. And the only person who could ever give him that was sitting down in front of him, offering him the fruit of princes. The thief-taker pushed the plate to him. Berren eyed it hungrily. He could smell its juices, sweet and sharp both at once.

‘I was born in a city called Tethis. You won’t have heard of it.’ Master Sy chuckled. ‘Kasmin and your witch-doctor Saffran Kuy are probably the only others in Deephaven who have. Tethis had a king. Still does, I suppose. We and the other Small Kingdoms were vassals of the sun-king, but we were so small and so far away that no one much cared about us. I doubt he even knew we existed.’ He laughed again, sad, lost in memories. ‘We used to fight each other a lot. Mercenary armies, since none of us could afford one of our own. And only in the summer months, between planting and harvest. We were all so gods-damned poor. Must seem strange to you, living in this empire of yours, with an emperor grand enough to rival the sun-king himself, and this his second greatest city. Look across the river, over at the mudlarks. That was our world. We didn’t even have any temples, any priests, not any worth speaking of. But still, it was my kingdom, and I was a prince and I lived in a palace, even if it wasn’t a grand one.’ He looked at Berren and then looked at the dragonfruit. ‘I’ve never had one of these before either, but I’m told the air does something to them. After a few minutes they go bland and sour. It’s like eating mulched paper. So are you going to eat that or not?’

Berren picked up the fruit and sniffed it. It was the best thing he’d ever smelled.

Which made him think of the perfume seller on Market Square, and his look of disdain as Berren had asked how much a vial of his Servin Lily scent would cost. He bit into the red flesh of the fruit and couldn’t help smile as the flavours of spring and flowers and all the passions he’d ever known blossomed inside his mouth. Deadly. Deadly and rich. That’s what he wanted.

‘Good, eh?’

He nodded.

‘Saffran Kuy and his brothers came to Tethis when I was about your age, give or take a year or two. Garrent doesn’t much like him. I suppose you might have noticed that.’ Master Sy paused, watched the blank shrug in Berren’s face, and nodded in satisfaction. ‘That’s just the edge of it. The sun-priests hate him. They’ve tried to drive him away from here more than once. They call him a necromancer and say that he raises the dead. Rubbish, all of it, but that sort of persecution was why they came to Tethis. It was a place where they could work in peace. Or so they thought.’ His voice trailed away. Berren took another mouthful of fruit. The juices made his head buzz.

‘What work?’ he asked, without really thinking.

‘Oh, I don’t really know.’ The thief-taker’s brow furrowed. ‘Whatever magi do. If there’s a dark side to them then I certainly never saw it. I never really asked too many questions. Saffran saved my life once and now he’s done it again. That’s all I need to know. When a man saves your life, that’s a debt that goes far beyond anything else.’ He winced. ‘I paid that debt once. Now I suppose I shall have to pay it all over again.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Where was I? Oh, Tethis. Yes. I did a terrible thing, back in Tethis. Or rather, Saffran did a terrible thing because I’d asked him to. Such a mistake. And we never had a chance to put it right, either, because they hadn’t been with us for a year before…’

The thief-taker abruptly got up and walked across the room. ‘I think you know the rest. Soldiers came. Mercenaries hired by the merchantmen of Kalda. The kingdom was taken. Stolen. Come on, lad. Eat your fill and then let’s go.’

‘You were really a prince?’ First Garrent and then Kasmin, but he’d never quite believed it. Couldn’t. Not Master Sy the thief-taker.

‘I was.’ The thief-taker shrugged. ‘That was along ago, lad. A past best forgotten.’ The way his eyes flashed told Berren it was anything but. ‘Kasmin, Saffran Kuy, me, plenty of others – fate picked us up and scattered us. Some of us fell here in Deephaven. And that’s all there is; nothing more to know.’

‘Master…’ He wanted to ask about the knife up in Master Sy’s room. Was that some king’s treasure he’d stolen as he fled? But the thief-taker was getting ready to leave and Berren knew better than to press his luck. Another time, perhaps. When they’d had their next little victory and the thief-taker let his guard down for a moment. ‘Master, where are we going?’

‘I know where the last of our pirates are hiding. Time to put them in irons.’

‘You do?’

He smiled. ‘Yes. Kol’s going to be there, and his soldiers too. It’ll be messy. Worse than Siltside. But I know where they keep their boats now. I know where they come from and how they move through the city, and I know who’s been helping them do it. I didn’t understand before, but now I do, and so now we finish our work. You want to learn about how to be a thief-taker? You want to see it happen, the real truth of it? Then now is the time. You can come, at least for a part of it.’

Berren stuffed the rest of the fruit into his mouth and grabbed a hunk of bread and a slab of cheese. Master Sy smiled.