‘Please can we go back? Please!’ If he comes, I have to do what he wants. He’ll make me!
Tasahre nodded pensively. ‘I must defer to the priests,’ she said after a moment, ‘but I can ask.’
She went back inside and Berren was alone again. He took in a deep breath and forced a smile. It was the middle of the morning. The sun was shining and there was a slight wind brushing his hair. For a moment, he imagined he was free, that Kuy was gone and Radek too and everything was finished. No Master Sy, no nothing. He could just get up and head out the River Gate, off to the Poor Docks where the little fishing boats that plied the river mouth were moored. He had enough silver to buy a trip to the City of Spires. After that it would be walking. Maybe he’d get to Varr before winter and maybe he wouldn’t, but no journey ever got anywhere without a start, right?
His eyes slipped over the nearer jetties of the river docks, looking at the barges, the lightermen who might carry him all the way. Then across the glittering water with its smattering of estuary boats going back and forth, to what lay beyond, a low line of stilted houses built on the tidal mudflats. Siltside, home to the mudlarks, the people who scraped a living through whatever they could dig out of the mud or what they could steal from the ships anchored on the city side of the river.
He frowned and fingered the token around his neck. Siltside was a refuge for people who had nowhere and nothing. Really nowhere and nothing. And that wasn’t him.
‘Hello, Berren.’
He jumped. There he was, thinking of running away when no one was looking, and now here was Sterm the Worm, almost as if he knew, as if he had a sixth sense. Sterm didn’t have his cane out here but his tongue could be quite sharp enough.
‘Teacher.’ A while back he wouldn’t have said it was possible for Sterm to think any less of him, but that was before he’d been found consorting with a warlock.
Sterm gave Berren an awkward pat on the back. ‘If there’s anything you need, anything that Tasahre cannot give, I promise not to make you answer questions about Saint Kelm.’
Tasahre came back outside. She smiled at Berren. ‘It is agreed. There is too much here to be addressed in one day. We will find crates and summon wagons and take this wickedness back to our temple where it can be properly examined and destroyed. We will do as we intended, but we will do it in our sanctuary.’ She stretched and tipped her head up to the sun, soaking up its warmth and its light. ‘Finding wagons will surely be a simple matter so close to the river docks.’
‘What happens after that?’ What happens to me? That’s what he was thinking.
‘Another sunrise, Berren. And with every sunrise comes another hope. Come!’ And before he could say anything else, she’d grabbed his arm and was bounding away with him up the Godsway.
28
In the second week of the month of Lightning, a ship came from Helhex, the closest port in the far south to the holy city of Torpreah. Sunburst flags flew from its masts and word swept through Deephaven like a fire: the Autarch had come at last! But no. The ship stayed in the harbour for two weeks and then it slunk away again. Some said the Autarch had been aboard but had been too afraid to step ashore. Others that it was just a ship, that the Autarch had never left his sacred island at all. Berren wasn’t sure he cared much one way or the other, but a disappointed gloom fell over the novices and the priests, while the sword-monks were even more tense than ever. The city rumbled and grumbled. No Autarch, no holy teeth of Kelm, nothing at all except a company of fire-dragon monks who were slowly wearing out their welcome. In the temple, Berren learned swordplay and letters as before. Master Sy had vanished and the warlock had disappeared too, and without anyone quite saying it, he knew he was expected to stay within the temple walls until Kuy had been destroyed. And that was fine. He was safe there from whatever the warlock had done to him, and he knew in his heart that Kuy hadn’t lied about Syannis. He might find the thief-taker on the night before the Festival of Flames, but he wouldn’t find him before.
The relics from the House of Cats and Gulls were laid out on sheets in the same rooms where the monks kept their weapons, their Hall of Swords where Tasahre had bandaged Berren’s hand. No one stopped Berren from going in to look, although he was somehow never alone there for long. There were all sorts of things he didn’t understand. Most of it he didn’t even want to. The golden knife wasn’t there, and that was all he needed to know. None of the priests understood what Kuy had done to him. He wasn’t sure that any of them even believed him, any of them except Tasahre.
They had the Headsman, shrivelled and lying in a corner. His dead staring eyes and his gaping mouth were always there, always the first thing Berren saw every time he went inside. Hideous.
Kol came once more. Berren told him everything this time. The priests had been through the papers salvaged from Kuy’s house by then, but there was no sign of whatever Master Sy had stolen from the House of Records.
‘Watch them for me boy,’ Kol hissed, before he left. ‘That Headsman fellow, I know he had dealings with this lot. The Emperor and the Autarch have been circling each other like gladiators all year. There’s another war coming. I can smell it. You keep your eyes open.’
Berren watched him go. Keep his eyes open for what, exactly? But Kol didn’t come back.
In time the month of Lightning gave way to the month of Flames. The mornings were full of fierce summer heat; the afternoon rains grew heavier, the evenings became long, the air thick and humid. Master Sy had been gone for four weeks, then five, then six, with no word, no sign, no sound, nothing. The priests still searched for Saffran Kuy and Berren still felt the hole inside him where the golden knife had cut a piece of him away. Was it healing? He wasn’t sure. The priests told him that whatever the warlock had done, it could be undone with prayer, which Berren didn’t believe for a second. Tasahre suggested long days of hard and honest work and a truthful tongue, which sounded more likely. Thing was, though, how would he ever know? It was always there, a scar inside him.
The Festival of Flames drew closer, weeks away and then mere days, and Deephaven prepared itself to celebrate as only Deephaven could. Every night, Berren fingered the Prince’s token around his neck. He felt restless. No one had said anything, but the monks would leave before long. They’d only been there for the Autarch, the Autarch had never come and so they had no reason to stay. And, as Kol had predicted, the city was tiring of their honesty.
‘After the summer,’ Tasahre said, when he finally plucked up the courage to ask when she was going. ‘With the Harvest Tides.’
‘Can I come with you?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘I would not mind it myself, but the elder dragon would never allow such a thing. Dragon-monks are chosen as children. You are quick, I will admit, and you will make a fine swordsman if you practise with discipline. But there is more to us than swords, as you have seen. The priests here will look after you. Your master was once a friend to many here and they will easily believe that the abomination drove him to his crimes. They will keep you safe. Now. Guard yourself!’ She drew a waster.
‘I don’t want keeping safe! I want …’ I want you, he was about to say, but then what? A smile and a shake of the head, that’s what. ‘I want to learn swords.’
‘There are other teachers,’ she said, and then showed him why none of them would ever be good enough.
‘I want …’ There was more to it than simply how to fight with a sword. He was beginning to see that now. All those things Master Sy had tried to tell him. Learning about how to use a sword, that was one thing. The grip, the stance, the footwork, the cut and thrust and parry and riposte, how to read your opponent’s blade and how to read their eyes and how to watch both at once without ever giving anything away — he’d been learning all that from Master Sy for years, he could see that now. But there was more. There was something Tasahre was teaching him that no other sword-master ever could. Not the how of how to fight, but the why. But he couldn’t think of a way to put it into words, not in some way that wouldn’t make Tasahre laugh and smile — which was all for the good — and then tell him that a priest could teach him that far better than a monk — which was not so good, and also happened not to be true.