The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) (24 page)

The bolt hit the king square in the back of the head. Berren didn’t see Meridian fall; by then, he was already gone, out of sight between the houses. He hurled the crossbow away, drew his sword and then gave in to the tautness inside him and ran, as far and as fast has he could. He had no idea where he was going. Away, as though there were a dozen men hard on his heel, maybe more. At first, he didn’t even dare to look back over his shoulder.

And then he realised that no one was following him, no one at all. If anyone had even seen him go, they hadn’t given chase. Behind him in the rain the hamlet was already nothing more than hazy shapes. He kept running anyway, until he couldn’t see it any more, and then he ran further, in a different direction this time, until he was sure that no one who was looking for him could find him. Finally he stopped and caught his breath. Every part of him was shaking, trembling uncontrollably. He could hardly feel his fingers. They’d already been numb when he’d pulled the trigger.

I killed a man. He never saw me coming
.

He saw Tasahre again, Master Sy cutting her down, face twisted with rage. And Radek, paralysed by Saffran Kuy’s shadow around his neck as Berren smashed in his skull. The sailor, Klaas, the woman who’d earned him his name and the nameless soldier Syannis had killed beneath Meridian’s castle.

After a bit he found a tree that gave him a vestige of shelter. He huddled under it, cold and wet and shivering. The rain finally began to ease away as the early winter darkness fell. He could see the farmhouses again by then, or rather he could see the fires being kindled beside them. He could soon hear the men around them too, their rowdy singing and shouting. For a time he thought these must still be Meridian’s men, camping for the night. But the fires grew more numerous, spreading out into the fields all around until Berren understood. This was Talon’s army, not Meridian’s. Talon had won.

He tried to run again then, to get back among them and back where there was warmth and friendship, but the best he could do was a stumbling lurch. He collapsed in their midst, sitting himself down beside one of the fires, rocking slowly back and forth, shivering. Someone passed him a bottle of something strong. He took a swig and stared into the spiralling flames. He could see his sodden clothes steaming, but he still felt cold and the shivering got steadily worse. Hunched under his cloak he watched the sparks from the fire rising up into the sky, mingling with the stars. A strange music started to fill his head. He looked around to see where it was coming from and everything began to blur together. He thought he saw Tarn grinning at him, and then the grin fading and a strange look in Tarn’s eye. Someone passed him another drink, one that burned his throat. A soldier wrapped a blanket over his shoulders, and then another and another, layers and layers like sheets on an emperor’s bed, but he was still achingly cold. The words and the conversations around him twisted into a blur of noise. He closed his eyes.

A smell of smoke and incense and fish and some giant was looming over him with hands that were neither kind nor gentle. He felt them touch his face
. . .

Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress!

Daylight. He staggered along in line. They were going somewhere. He saw Tethis. He remembered the place where he and Hain had buried their swords.

Gasping, watching a reflection of himself. The golden knife clasped in both hands. It rose and fell but there was no pain, no blood. In its swirling patterns he could see his other self, clutching and clawing, his face contorted with agony
. . .

He remembered shouts. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but afterwards there was a warm place to lie down, and far off he heard men cry,
The king is dead! Long live the king!

You have to keep it closed. Otherwise something will come through. He’s making us ready. To let it in when the Ice Witch makes the Black Moon fall
.

Someone whispering in his ear in the dead of night. A terrible smell of dead fish.
A true master makes a few tiny cracks in the stone just so, and then leaves time and wind and rain to finish his work
. And he saw them again, the faces of the dead – of Tasahre and of all the men he’d killed – and in his fever he was gazing through a tiny window out over the sea from the stern of a ship, watching Tethis as it receded into the distance, savouring a dull pang of regret. Not for anything he’d done, but simply to be leaving, and for what he knew would await him. He held a handful of sand and slowly let it trickle through his fingers to the floor.

See
, whispered the voice of the warlock.
This is what happens to us all in the end
.

26

CRACKS IN THE STONE

B
erren woke with a start. The last thing he remembered, the last thing that didn’t feel like a dream, was sitting on sodden earth, staring into the flames of a campfire with half an army around him. Now he was alone in a big room, maybe a barn, but the roof was too low, lying on a hard pile of old straw. It was uncomfortable and scratched his skin. The room stank of sweat. When he tried to stand, his legs had no strength. He threw off his blankets and looked to see if he had some injury he didn’t remember, but no. No blood, no bandages.

For a few seconds he couldn’t think where he was. He’d killed a king, or what passed for one anyway. He’d run away and hidden shivering in the rain, getting colder and colder until he could barely feel his skin. Then he’d found the Hawks and their camp, the delicious warmth of their fires, and that was where his memories began to fray.

What came after that were fragments. Marching and marching and feeling tired enough to die. ‘You’ve gone grey,’ someone had said to him. There might have been another battle, but if there was then he didn’t remember any of it. If there was, he was surprised he was still alive, because his arm barely had the strength to lift a sword, never mind wield it. But they must have won because the next things he remembered were more songs and drinking and more delicious fire. At some point he’d crawled away from the rest of them, stolen as many blankets as he could find and found a place to sleep, struggling to be warm.

Everything ached. When he walked to the door and opened it, he cringed at the brightness of the sunlight. He was standing in the yard outside Tethis castle, tents everywhere, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the Fighting Hawks. He sneezed. The winter sun shone through the clouds, warming his skin a little; still, he shivered.

‘Berren!’ Someone was waving at him. ‘Light of the Sun! You were sleeping for the dead!’ Berren squinted. Talon. The Prince of War came over and clapped him on the back. ‘You missed all the fun!’

‘What happened?’ Berren sat down on a log. The ground was cold and soft under his feet from all the rain.

‘You had the shivers.’ Talon smiled and shook his head. ‘Most of the lancers are down with it too. You Deephaveners can’t take a bit of cold and rain, eh? So was it really you who killed Meridian?’

Berren nodded.

‘You ranted something about it but you were all over the place. Stuff about Syannis and Saffran Kuy and a knife. Didn’t make much sense. But we did find Meridian with a bolt through his head.’

‘Kuy?’ Berren shivered. Yes. In Forgenver he’d been set on hunting the warlock. He remembered that. Now . . . Now all he wanted to do was to sleep. ‘I don’t know
what
I said.’ He could barely keep his eyes open. ‘But he was here, wasn’t he?’

‘I’m afraid so. But he’s gone now.’ Talon wore a big happy-cat smile. ‘Aimes took one look at him and threw a fit. I didn’t know he had it in him, but if Syannis hadn’t been there to hold him back, I think Aimes would have ripped him apart with his bare hands.’ He shook his head and laughed again. ‘Aimes wanted his head and I’d have been more than happy to hand it to him too, but Syannis calmed him down until Aimes banished him instead. Syannis blames me, of course. He says Kuy won us the war and we should all be grateful. But he’s gone, either way. No need to go hunting him after all.’

‘Master Sy . . . Syannis? He’s alive?’

Talon’s smile stayed where it was. ‘Yes. Meridian kept him in the Pit. They weren’t exactly kind but they didn’t kill him. He’s thinner than he was but he’s not missing any limbs or fingers. After Meridian died in the battle and with us coming on to the castle, no one dared touch him, and in the end they let him out. If Meridian hadn’t been killed then things might have gone differently. Syannis owes you for that.’

‘Yeh.’ He thought of Fasha, of what the thief-taker had promised. ‘Yes, he does. But then I owe him too.’

‘It’s all over now. Radek and Meridian are dead. Tethis is ours. Aimes will be king in name, but now our father’s sons will guide him, not some fat shopkeeper from Kalda.’ His smile faded. ‘Do you still want to go after him? Kuy, I mean. You don’t have to. As long as he’s far away, that’s good enough for me.’

Berren shook his head, quietly happy. ‘If he’s gone, he’s gone.’ If he was gone then Gelisya was free of him and his promise to Fasha was met.

‘I saw him onto the ship myself and then watched until it sailed to make sure he didn’t get off again. Can’t promise he won’t come back one day of course. But if he does then I’ll be waiting for him.’ Talon sat for a while longer and talked about the battle. Meridian’s army had broken before the storm of fire-globes. Hundreds of soldiers and king’s guard had been killed or scattered, but half the army had eventually managed a retreat back to Tethis. The next day, as Talon prepared to assault the castle, they’d found Meridian’s body. The mercenaries had quietly looted the castle and left. Outnumbered ten to one and with no one to tell them what to do, the last of the king’s guard had melted away too. Talon and the Hawks had walked into the castle to find the doors hanging open for them, Syannis with the keys in his hands. ‘The Black Sword cohorts and what’s left of the Panthers are camped a little way outside the city,’ Talon said. ‘They don’t have much interest in fighting. Syannis told me you were going to poison Meridian. Is that true?’

Berren shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about any poison. I shot him in the back of the head with a crossbow. He owes me for that and so do you. The woman you had me flog. You owe me her.’

‘I suppose we do. Are you going to sell her?’

‘No, I’m going to let her go.’

Talon raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? I’ve seen more of her now. She’s probably worth more than most men would get in half a dozen seasons with the company. A well trained lady’s bonds-maid, one who was trusted to royalty, no less . . . Sell her and you could buy yourself a farm or a shop in the city, or a passage back to Aria if that’s what you wanted.’

‘I’m going to set her free. It’s wrong for one man to own another. That’s all that matters. That and that men keep their promises.’ He shuddered. Saffran Kuy’s voice in his head was still as clear as a bell.
Kill him! Kill him now!
And he’d had no choice. Not a jot.

‘She must have made quite an impression on you.’

‘I hardly know her.’ Berren held his head in his hand. He ached and he still felt terribly weak. ‘Syannis had to give me some reason not to walk away and get on the next ship, and I couldn’t think of anything else, and now I’ll be damned if I’ll let him break his word. Not this time.’

‘Your sword-monk. This is for her, isn’t it?’

Berren didn’t answer. He didn’t know how. Not that the two of them looked much alike, not once you stripped Fasha of her veil and saw her face. But he’d seen them both stand up for what they believed was right with no fear for consequence, one of them a sword-monk, one of them nothing more than a slave. ‘Yeh.’ He laughed at the irony. ‘Probably is, too.’

Talon stood up. ‘People sometimes do very strange things once they get what they want,’ he said. ‘They turn out to be not quite the people they were pretending to be.’ A strained look flashed across his face. ‘Go and tell Tarn you’re fit to fight. King Aimes wants to see you – he’s heard of the fearsome mercenary swordsman who looks like him – but that can wait a few days. We’ve all got plenty to keep us busy and I think it’s time you joined your comrades. The Hawks are letting the taverns of Tethis know they’re here.’

The days that followed were delicious, like his first days with Talon in Kalda but without the doubt and the fear. As soon as his strength was back, he worked for as long as the sun was up; in rain or snow, he didn’t care. They built defences of earth and wood around the castle, preparing for the next summer when the merchant princes of Kalda would surely raise an army to avenge Meridian. In the evenings he drank with men who were now his friends, his sword-brothers, the men who’d stood beside him at the battle on the beach and in the shield wall outside Tethis. They’d seen who he was. They’d spilt blood together. He was the warlock’s boy no more, but the Bloody Judge of the Fighting Hawks who’d crept inside the enemy’s camp and killed their king and put an end to the war. The trouble still writ plain on Talon’s face, shouting loud that all was not said and done, that was no longer Berren’s problem. One thing alone was missing: Fasha. With every day he found himself thinking of her more and more, of their one night in Forgenver together, and what he hoped she might choose when she was free.

The summons came to bring him to the king’s hall. The new king’s guard – mostly Deephaven lancers – took his sword from him as he entered. He walked into what had once been Meridian’s hall, the king he’d killed, and bowed before four thrones. At one end sat Talon, at the other sat Syannis, between them, Gelisya, fidgeting on her chair, and beside her . . . Berren simply stared in disbelief. The king. Aimes.

‘Berren of Deephaven, Your Majesty,’ said Talon, loudly.

‘You
do
look like me,’ said the king happily. ‘I thought you’d be giant or something like that.’

Berren couldn’t answer. He’d never worn bright rich clothes like the ones the king had on. Nor had his hair ever been so long and lustrous. But beneath all that, stripped down to skin and bone, he might have been looking at his own reflection. Except for the eyes, for where Berren’s eyes sparkled, the king’s were dull and dead.