The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) (10 page)

Talon surveyed his men. ‘We sail for Tethis then, to return Princess Gelisya to her father. Whatever I think of Meridian, that is what is right. If Saffran Kuy wishes to make a war between us, he can do it when I’m damn well good and ready and when I’ve spent the time to pick our field of battle. I will disembark with one cohort. The rest of you will go directly on to Forgenver and report to the duke. You’ll tell him we have destroyed a slaver camp and freed some of his subjects – that, at least, is both true and will please him. You will say nothing of warlocks or of Princess Gelisya’s presence. If he asks the reason for my delay, you may as well tell him that I have tarried in Tethis and have not told you why. The truth is not to leave this room, not for anyone. I will tell the duke myself when I join you, but he will hear it all from me, not from rumours and whispers. Am I clear?’ Talon met the eyes of each of his men in turn; they nodded, then one by one they stood up and left. As Berren rose too, Talon shook his head. ‘Not you. Nor you, my lady.’ He looked at Berren and grinned warily. ‘Did you really shoot him?’

Berren nodded.

Talon turned to Gelisya. ‘Once again, my lady, what did Kuy tell you? Every word if you please.’

Gelisya pointed at Berren. ‘Master Kuy said he would come,’ she said quietly. ‘He said everything would be all right and you’d take me home. Only he said it would be Prince Syannis, not you.’

Talon snorted. ‘Be thankful it wasn’t, for Syannis would not have taken you home. He would take his warlock-given gift and had his war, whether the rest of us liked it or not.’ He glanced at Tarn and then looked back at her. ‘What did this?’

Gelisya shook her head. Berren sighed. ‘Saffran Kuy did it.’

‘I realise
that
. Can it be undone? Can he be saved?’

Now Gelisya nodded. She pointed at Berren. ‘You have to make a potion.’

Berren snorted. ‘Me? I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Well
one
of us has to do it. You can’t just let him die.’

‘Then do it.’

‘But I don’t
want
to.’

‘Listen, I was in Saffran Kuy’s home in Deephaven for less than half a glass. I spent most of that watching a sword-monk try to kill him.
Helping
a sword-monk try to kill him. He never taught me anything except to be afraid. Certainly not anything about any potions.’

Gelisya pouted. ‘He taught you lots,’ she said. She slipped a hand under her shirt and pulled out a black stone held on a chain around her neck. ‘See? It is a teacher. It shows how to do things.’ She took it off and pressed it into Berren’s hand. ‘It has a piece of a person in it that remembers things for you. So now you
can
do it.’ She looked mournful for a moment, then closed Berren’s fingers over the stone. ‘I did
tell
you that we’d done lots and lots together. He shows you how to do things. I suppose I have to give him to you now. I don’t really want to because he’s my friend. But I suppose you want him back. He is yours after all.’

Berren started to say something, but his mouth fell open and he froze. He could feel a presence in the stone – more than that, it felt familiar. It felt
comfortable
, almost as though it fitted him, quite perfectly, like the missing piece of a puzzle.

Or was that simply what he wanted it to be? Just his imagination, and the stone was nothing but a stone? His fingers tightened around it. Visions flashed before his eyes – he was still sitting in Talon’s cabin, on the edge of the bed with Talon in front of him and Gelisya to one side and Tarn lying behind him, but he was somewhere else too, watching Saffran Kuy at work somewhere that wasn’t the House of Cats and Gulls but was colder, smaller, cramped and dark. The warlock was making potions. He was muttering to himself, and then he turned and seemed to look at Berren.
Watch, little Gelisya! Watch closely! Stir slowly! Heat carefully! Are you wearing the stone?
Then Kuy seemed to forget where he was again. He muttered to himself about this and that, idly throwing handfuls of powders into his cauldron without saying what they were.

The vision shifted. They were in the same place but on a different day and it was light outside now and Kuy was making something new. And then that faded too; another came and then another, faster and faster, until one clear memory began to emerge, hauling itself out of some far closet of the stone, shrugging off cobwebs and dusting itself down.
Are you wearing it? Are you wearing the stone? Do you have him, tucked safe and warm around your soft throat, girl? Watch this one carefully careful. The need will be great. It will bring you a friend and it will bring you suspicion and it will bring you hate. More important than any of the others, yet you will use them all when their time comes. I have spoken to you of the first principle of knowledge: that we are beings of two parts. Every man, from the lowest worm to the highest king, has two souls. More important than the light of the sun, to know this, but to know is but a scratch. To understand, yes, to understand, now that is the heart beneath. What priests would exalt, I shall call the Useless Part, the one that departs for far-off ideals, for the Sun or the Moon or the Stars. Or Xibaiya or elsewhere. Delights to taste some other day. What remains we shall call the Useful Part. Mindless thoughtless fodder for the living, but useful, yes, for they are the energy we draw on to work the tiny miracles that fill our lives, consumed and eaten. But what if one were to hold its form and keep its empty aimless hunger? What shall we call such a creature? Dangerous, I name it, and most potent ally too. Ephemeral pet-things, but while they remain they hunger for a life they cannot have, and they will fight to own a new coat of flesh. Men, sometimes, lifeless although they still live. Walking the streets with empty faces as though their spirits have long departed but who have yet to understand that they are dead. Or who lie still and cannot be roused yet do not pass away. In the murky places of this wretched land you will find such as these. Or strong men filled with woes they cannot explain. The housewife sapped of energy by a mystery. Crippled souls who seem as though they must fight a constant battle merely to live, and so, indeed, they do. Now you will know the cure for both. Watch carefully, for I will show you a draught to cast aside these usurpers. They will be your friends, your allies, your servants and your soldiers. One day they will crush worlds for you, little girl
.

Suddenly he turned and seemed to stare straight at Berren.
Listening are you, little ungrateful Berren-piece? Watching us now? Because it is not done between us, yet here I sense your fate is close to mine once more. You will have a want for this one too, I feel it. I see pain in our futures. Savour it! Relish it! Let it soak you through your skin and run ebullient through your veins, for if you hear these words, you have regained that which I took and I have given you a gift by it
.

He saw it all, with absolute clarity. Everything Kuy had done, every ingredient, every motion and every method. And he understood that these things Kuy described,
they
were the terrors he’d seen back among the slavers, the same nightmares that Kuy had called to him as he’d battled Tasahre. Most of all, he understood what lay inside Gelisya’s teaching stone. It was him. It was the piece of his soul that Kuy had taken in the House of Cats and Gulls. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’

Talon frowned. ‘You do what?’

‘I do want it back.’

Gelisya sniffed. ‘Well then
you
have to do it.’

‘Do
what
?’ Talon was close to breaking.

Berren looked him in the eye. ‘She’s right. I do know how to save Tarn.’

12

THE KINDNESSES OF WARLOCKS

T
hree days later, the Fighting Hawks weighed anchor off the city of Tethis. Berren, Talon and half a dozen other mercenaries climbed down into a longboat. Tarn was lowered. Talon placed his little princess cousin carefully on his lap and the soldiers began to row. Before they were halfway to the shore, the ship was on its way back out to sea.

‘How long will this take?’ asked Talon.

In the days they’d been at sea, Tarn had wasted away. He was still alive, but for how much longer? Talon asked the same question at least once every day and Berren always gave the same answer, the only one he could: ‘I don’t know.’ He wished that he hadn’t said anything about it now; most of the time, he even wished that Gelisya had never given him the stone. He could feel how it changed him, how it made him whole and filled the tiny missing piece that had had been cut away in Deephaven. Yet at the same time what good ever came of a warlock’s gift? What would Kuy take from him now? And how had the warlock known he would be there, in that place at that particular time? Had he known it even back in Deephaven? The thought made him shiver. If Saffran Kuy could see so much of the future then what did that mean? How did you fight a man who knew how everything would end before it even started?
Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress!
Kuy even knew how he was going to die.
I saw my apprentice kill me
. That had been the golden-hafted knife, the one that cut souls. That was what showed him these things. The only thing a man could do, Berren thought, was to keep well away, and he’d have been more than happy with that. But he had to find Master Sy first. Had to, for Tasahre and her memory. And now he had to save Tarn.

‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘All I know is that Saffran Kuy is making all of this happen. We’re being moved about like pieces in a game of Hak-Kanad.’

Talon shook his head and frowned. He didn’t want to hear. And who would? What did you do with knowledge like that except weep?

Word had spread among the other mercenaries that Berren and the warlock at the camp had known each other once. The soldiers looked at him differently now, with suspicion and mistrust. More memories had begun to surface from the stone too. Memories of other potions, of Kuy brewing them, explaining carefully and clearly exactly what he was doing as if to a dullard apprentice. Sometimes the room around Kuy was empty, sometimes Gelisya was there, sometimes another boy – the boy from the slaver camp. Always Kuy spoke to his
little Berren-piece
. Mostly what he made were cures for this, that or the other; but there were other potions, and even knowing the ones that seemed harmless left Berren with a sense of dread. There would be a price for this, he was sure, a price heavier than he cared to imagine.

But he was going to save Tarn.

He shuddered. For
that
potion he didn’t even know what half the ingredients did; all he could remember were the names. In Deephaven he might have known how to find some of them, but here he had no idea where to even begin; then, if he
did
manage to lay his hands on everything, how would he know if he’d made the potion properly? He wouldn’t. For all he knew, he’d end up feeding Tarn poison. How long would it take to work? What
else
might it do? What other marks might it leave? He didn’t know anything except that it would cast the hungry spirit out, and that Saffran Kuy was leading him by the hand, step by cursed step. He was sinking inexorably into deep black water. Talon was right. He should have gone back home.

But still, he
was
going to save Tarn.

They reached the shore and men and women stopped to stare. The waterfront constables huddled together, wondering what to do. Talon tossed a purse full of money at Berren.

‘At least
you
can make yourself useful. When you’re done, I’ll see to it that you’re expected at the castle. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.’

Berren snatched the purse out of the air and darted away into the thick of the town. Out of sight of Talon, he slowed to a walk and soaked in the air of the place. For once he was glad to see the back of the others. Princess Gelisya haunted him. She made him think of Saffran Kuy and Tarn and potions; or else she made him think of Radek, and
that
made him think of Deephaven and Tasahre and the sun-temple and Master Sy. And then he’d be thinking of all these things and Gelisya would turn and look at him with her child’s face and her black hair and her wide unblinking eyes that seemed weary with knowledge. Talon took it for granted that Saffran Kuy had abducted her for his own ends, but Berren wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t shake the notion that Gelisya had been more a willing apprentice than a helpless hostage. A bit of both, perhaps?

He stopped in the street and looked around and, for a moment, forgot about everything else. He’d been here before! Not actually into the city, but as far as the harbour. When he’d been a skag, and there’d been some sort of drink that the sailors had found when they’d gone ashore. Califrax, or something like that. He’d heard it for weeks.
It’s Califraxed. He was Califraxed
. The word had stuck to the ship like a limpet.

He stopped sailors in the street and asked what it was and his questions led him to a sleazy sailors’ hole, the Mermaid, a bit like the Bitch Queen of Kalda except a tenth of its size. The inside was gloomy, but made up for it through a vicious assault on all his other senses. Berren pushed his way through the crowd around the door. Lanterns were burning and the windows, such as they were, had heavy curtains drawn across them and a layer of black grime on their sills. The sun outside was high in the sky but inside it might just as easily have been midnight. As he moved through the crowd, he was bumped and battered and shouted over and occasionally splashed by raucous seamen. His nose registered the usual smell of cheap drink and drunks, but also something else. A fragrance that seemed quite out of keeping, but that he couldn’t quite place. Califrax, he found, was a vicious brown ale. After what he’d grown used to in Kalda with Talon, it was cheap and vile; still, he felt better for a glass of it. Something he’d done for himself, at last. His choice, just his. When he was done, he raised the empty glass to all the sailors of his old ship and quietly hoped they were dead.

People were watching him. One tall man in particular, all elbows, bones sticking out of his wrists, long fingers that couldn’t stay still and with restless darting eyes, but what Berren noticed most were the tattoos on his cheeks and his neck that ran down under his shirt. Berren couldn’t see one, but he was quite sure the man was carrying a knife. People like this used to come to Master Hatchet with sacks full of things that weren’t theirs. Old times, old ways. They would never quite leave him.