He fingered the gold token on the chain around his neck. What else could he do? If he ran, he’d run to Varr, that was obvious. To the court of the Imperial Prince. But he could do that whenever he wanted. Maybe Master Sy would be right, maybe this business with the Headsman would be over soon and everything would be back the way it had been before. Maybe.
‘If it helps, I’ve got a present for you,’ called the thief-taker from the parlour. ‘Should keep you amused while you’re stuck in the temple.’
‘Master?’ A present?’ Berren poked his head out of his room.
The thief-taker was at the bottom of the stairs. He forced a smile. ‘Yeh, a present. Come with me and bring that sword of yours.’
‘What? Where we going?’
‘Wrecking Point. Make sure those bodies have gone. And it’s a good place for what I have in mind. Out of sight where no one will see.’ Master Sy stood there, waiting for him. ‘I promised I’d show you a trick or two to take down those sword-monks, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘And I always keep a promise.’ As Berren came down the stairs, the thief-taker threw him a waster. ‘Until dusk, I’m going to teach you swords. My way. And it’s going to hurt.’
20
‘You’re late.’ Tasahre held her sword perfectly still. Berren matched her. Now and then they both glanced at the sky. The seasons were changing. The clouds above warned of afternoon summer rains come early.
The sword-monk’s face was bruised. She had an ugly brown and purple splodge on her left cheek where someone had punched her. Berren knew better than to ask how she’d come by it.
‘Yes. I’m living in the temple now. I had things to do.’ Which was another way of saying that he’d nodded to his master as he’d left and and the thief-taker had nodded back, just like on any other day, and then he’d made his way slowly across the city, taking in the dawn sights and the sun, ambling at his own pace to The Peak and the new life that was waiting for him. It felt like he was being sent to prison. He stared hard at the bruise on Tasahre’s face. Maybe he could make her feel conscious of it.
‘I have heard.’ Tasahre didn’t blink. If she noticed him staring, it didn’t show. ‘The temple does you and your master a great honour. I hope you both deserve it.’
‘Master Sy has many friends among the priests here. He’s done a lot for them.’ Not that Berren knew exactly what the thief-taker had done. Whatever it was, it had obviously been enough to survive Prince Sharda forcing them to teach Berren, despite his master’s grumbles.
They looked at each other across the circle in the dirt. Eight minutes gone. Tasahre still had the hourglass balanced on the flat of her blade, still held it perfectly still. Berren had a waster again. His precious sword had stayed at Wrecking Point. There were hiding places galore up there. At the end of the path where they’d tipped the bodies only the night before, he and Master Sy had finally practised, steel against steel. As night-time fell, they’d looked over the edge one last time. The sea and the tides had done their job and there was no sign of the men they’d killed. He’d held the blade he’d taken from the dead snuffer and looked at it for a while; then he’d clambered among the rocks away from the path, wrapped it carefully in a sheet that Master Sy had brought for him and slid it between a pair of boulders. He’d covered it with sand and earth and taken a good look at where he was. It would be a while, he knew, before he could go back. At least until then, it was somewhere safe. Until he needed it. And for one glorious day, he’d been a true swordsman …
‘This is something to do with the people who drove your master here, is it not?’
Berren stared at the bruise.
‘I’ve heard his story. An unusual one. Do you believe what he tells you?’
Mute, Berren nodded. He glanced hopefully at the hourglass. Eight and a half minutes. He could already feel the first twitches in the muscles that ran along the top of his shoulder. ‘He told me bits.’ There had to be a way to distract her, didn’t there?
Tasahre raised her eyebrows the tiniest fraction. ‘The priests have told me that your master is the bastard son of a king from a province on the far reaches of the sun-king’s dominion. They say that a cabal of death-mages fleeing from the sun-king’s witch-breakers took up residence there and that the king was foolish enough to welcome them, for whatever reason. I am told that the princes of the great city of Kalda raised an army, broke the cabal and scattered them. I know that in war, tragedies fall upon the innocent and the guilty alike.’
Berren’s arm was shaking. Half a minute to go. Anger, that would do him. The thief-taker’s anger, the rage that simmered beneath the surface whenever he talked about the past. They were an invading army. Imagine you’d been here in the civil war, Berren. Imagine you were Pelean’s brother, seeing him crucified over Pelean’s Gate, listening to his screams. Then you’ll see what happened in Tethis as I see it … The shaking reached his blade, but his arm still held it level and there were only a few more grains left to go.
Tasahre blinked. ‘How did he come to be a thief-taker? It seems an unusual choice. Do you know?’
No, he didn’t, he didn’t have a clue, that was the simple answer. But Berren couldn’t even shake his head now. His shoulder screamed at him. The last grain of sand tumbled to the bottom of the hourglass. Gritting his teeth, he kept his sword exactly where it was. Tasahre stayed quite still for a few seconds more, then flipped the hourglass into the air and caught it as she sheathed her steel.
‘Well done.’ She almost smiled.
Berren let his sword down slowly. What he wanted was to hug his arm to his chest and hop in circles wailing and moaning until his shoulder forgave him, but he wasn’t going to let her have that.
‘Guard.’ She walked around him in a circle and adjusted the angles of his wrist and his elbow.
‘He wasn’t the only one who came here, though,’ said Berren. ‘I know that much.’
Tasahre stood in front of him. She picked up a waster and they settled into the usual routine of slow cuts and thrusts to start with, all easily parried.
‘He had a friend, a real friend, called Kasmin. He came to Deephaven a year or two earlier. He was a thief-taker too and then he used to run an alehouse in The Maze. Someone killed him, just before you came.’ Berren watched her closely for any sign that she recognised the name but her face gave nothing away.
‘Your justicar told us this. They, too, were friends once it seems. I’m sorry for your master’s loss,’ she said as they stood apart for a moment. ‘Who is the Headsman?’
The question caught him off-guard. ‘Master Sy’s going to kill him.’ The words blurted out without him thinking. Tasahre cocked her head as Berren cursed himself. He was supposed to be catching her out, not the other way around!
‘The elder dragon tells us that great swordsmen never kill. They do not need to. Their presence is enough.’ She frowned, as if she didn’t quite understand how that could work. Berren had seen it, though. It was the same thing that Master Sy always said, that a good thief-taker never needed to draw his blade, that the thieves should always be too scared to do anything except what the thief-taker wanted them to do. Yes, he’d seen plenty of that over the years. He’d seen Master Sy at work and the fear that followed him.
On the other hand, he’d seen Master Sy kill men too. They set to work again, faster now.
‘Is it true that a sun-priest can talk to the spirits of the dead?’ Velgian. He was thinking of Velgian again, dead and desiccating in the city catacombs. ‘They caught the man who tried to kill Prince Sharda.’
Again her face gave nothing away. ‘Yes.’ She cocked her head. ‘This was some weeks ago was it not? And your justicar wishes to know who the paymaster was. But as for what a priest can and cannot do, you must ask one of them, not me. Sometimes it is not a matter of what is possible, but of what is right. Your justicar keeps a dead man hidden beneath the earth where the sun cannot reach him to take his soul. That is not right.’