The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) (9 page)

It was dark, windowless, lit only by dim curtains of sunlight that crept between the cracks in the walls. The air stank, the rancid stench of too many men in too little space, covered in their own filth. Berren had smelled it before, when his ship had carried a hold full of slaves for a few weeks. The smell had lingered for months, but here there was something else as well, something even more familiar, the old smell of rotting fish that he knew from Deephaven.

His eyes began to adjust. The soldiers had stopped. They were right in front of him, clustered in the centre of the room, formed up in a semicircle. They looked like men who’d cornered a tiger and now weren’t sure what to do with it. Each still had a swirl of dark mist coiling around him, and now that he was closer Berren could see the mist for what it was – the terrors that Kuy had summoned in Deephaven, the ones that he’d thrown at Tasahre until she’d called down the light of the sun and banished them.

Berren shivered. Couldn’t they see what was wrapped around them? But if they did, they didn’t show it.

His eyes shifted. Dozens and dozens of filthy naked men were fettered to the walls. In the corner the warlock was pressed among them. He had one hand reached out towards Tarn while the other clutched one of the prisoners. The boy and the girl in their robes – apprentices? – huddled next to him.

‘No closer.’ Kuy’s voice was thin. The strength and the venom that Berren remembered were gone. ‘Dance in the darkness with me and this life will be mine!’

‘You!’ One of the soldiers poked at Berren. ‘Watch the door! Keep them out!’

‘Sun and Moon protect us,’ muttered another.

Tarn shook his head. ‘Death-mage!’ he hissed. He raised his sword and took one lunging step.

The shadow around Tarn’s neck that only Berren could see drew tight. Tarn fell as though he’d been struck by an axe. A surge of anger swept over the others, but before they could throw themselves on Kuy and tear him to pieces, their terrors sprang to life too. The prisoner Kuy was clutching screamed. He began to spasm, twitching as black blood dribbled and then poured out of his mouth, until he finally slumped silent. A sudden darkness filled the room and a terrible keening wail began. Berren bolted, stricken with terror, too full of the memories of what he’d seen once before; but outside in the light a dozen slavers were waiting now, clustered together with swords and axes and spears drawn, watching from a distance. He skittered to a stop, not knowing which way to run. Behind him, the shouts and screams of soldiers and the chained slaves alike filled the room.

One of the slavers held a crossbow. He raised it. Berren dropped his sword. He didn’t mean to, but his hands were shaking so much that it happened on its own.

Move
, he told himself.
Move!
But his feet stayed frozen to the ground.

A soldier staggered out of the door. He had one hand stretched out in front of him, the other clutching at his throat. Two of Saffran Kuy’s terrors were throttling him. He barged blindly into Berren, knocking him aside. The crossbow fired and the soldier fell to the ground. He hauled himself forward on his belly for a few feet, and then slumped over on his back, an arrow sticking from his chest in the middle of a circle of red. The terrors uncoiled themselves. The slaver with the crossbow bent forward to reload.

Berren ran now, as fast as his legs would carry him. He heard another crack as the bow fired again, heard the fizz of the bolt through the air, but he was still running and the slaver had missed – that was all that mattered. He looked over his shoulder as he reached the trees. No one was following him. He ran on until he was deep into the woods and then crouched down among the ferns to catch his breath. He’d thrown away his memories of Saffran Kuy long ago, wrapped them up and locked them down; now they were back, the full force of them, and they had him as helpless as he’d been back on that day in Kuy’s House of Cats and Gulls, the old terror writhing like a snake inside him.

No. He couldn’t just run, though. Couldn’t. Couldn’t leave Tarn and the others, but he couldn’t go back either, not after what the warlock had done to him in Deephaven. If Kuy saw him here, one snap of his fingers was all it would take and Berren would be his slave, his puppet.
Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!
Did wounds like that ever heal? He had no idea. The priests at the temple had said yes, they did, but they’d never seemed entirely sure.

He looked back up the slope towards the ridge over which Talon and the rest of the Hawks would come. He could run for help, but it would take ages to climb back up, to explain to Talon what had happened and then get down again. By the time he did, Tarn and the rest might well be dead.

He skirted the edge of the camp and crept closer once more. Tarn and the other soldiers were out in the open now, in the space between the three buildings, grouped together and on their knees. Saffran Kuy was there too. As long as the warlock didn’t see him, that was what mattered. Or maybe the years at sea had changed him enough – maybe Kuy wouldn’t recognise him?

The smallest of the three buildings had a door that opened away from the middle of the camp. A path ran towards the sea where the ship was anchored. There was no one there. Berren slipped inside. The slavers clearly slept here. He counted the sets of bedding. Fifteen. And then he saw what he was looking for. Another crossbow. As quietly as he could, he loaded it and then peered through the door out into the central compound. Tarn’s soldiers knelt in a circle, all together now, all except for Tarn himself who lay still on the ground. The slavers stood cautiously apart while Saffran Kuy paced in slow circles. Kuy was talking, but Berren couldn’t hear what he was saying. The terrors were still there, wrapped around everyone’s throats.

He held the crossbow tight. He’d never been good with one, never had much chance to learn, but Master Sy had taught him the basics. Now he aimed at the warlock. Until he fired, he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, or why, except that he wanted Saffran Kuy to be dead; but when he pulled the trigger, the bolt flew low and hit the warlock in the thigh, not killing him at all. Kuy lurched and shrieked and then his leg buckled under him and he fell. The slavers looked around, saw Berren and charged towards him, shouting and waving their swords. Berren fled down the path towards the ship. As he did he caught a glimpse of the terrors unwrapping themselves from Tarn’s soldiers and flying back to the warlock. It seemed they shared his pain.

He glanced up at the slopes high above as he ran, hoping again to see the rest of Talon’s men swarming down, but there was nothing. The slavers behind him were yelling dire threats and urging each other on. Somewhere not far ahead would be the beach, and that was no good. Out in the open they might catch him, but in the trees he was sure he could escape. It would be like the old times, racing through the alleys of Deephaven’s Maze with a posse of militia at his back!

A stray thought came to him: if the warlock could brew a potion to see the future, as he’d claimed, how had Berren managed to shoot him? He didn’t have an answer to that.

He rounded a turn in the path, ready to dive among the trees, but now Kuy’s two startled apprentices were right in front of him. The boy was hurrying the girl towards the ship. She was crying. Unable to stop, Berren ploughed into the back of them, knocking them apart. His weight went into the boy, sending him sprawling. The girl staggered. She looked at him with big eyes. She was so young – eleven, twelve years old – and Berren could only wonder why she was here at all, what Kuy was doing to her. But other thoughts pressed him. He could see the beach now. There was a boat drawn up on the sand and the two men beside it were getting to their feet, roused by the hue and cry.

He seized the girl. ‘Do you want to live?’ She looked blankly back at him, then heaved a sob and stared with huge pleading eyes, and he knew straight away that it was the warlock she was afraid of, not him; but before she could say anything, the boy was up again.

‘I’ll kill you,’ he spat. ‘Master Kuy will rip your soul out. We’ll feast on it, just like we did—’ His hands were turning black, the nails into claws. Fear stabbed at Berren – he’d seen this before – but this time he brushed it aside. Before the boy could finish, Berren punched him on the nose. He felt the bone crack beneath his knuckles, and suddenly the boy was just a boy again, fourteen years old maybe, sobbing and shaking. ‘Please don’t hurt me!’

Is this what I looked like to Master Sy when he found me in that alley?
No time for that though: the soldiers would be on him in any moment – he could hear them – and the boy would tell them which way he’d gone. His hand went to his knife, but in the end the boy was just a boy, miserable and defenceless. Berren let the knife go, kicked him down instead and took the girl by the hand. ‘Come with me.’ He gave the boy one last look. ‘You’ll come to no good end following the likes of him. I should know.’

More shouts came from the camp, screams and battle sounds. Berren ran into the trees, half dragging, half carrying the girl. They hid, crouching deep under the cover of the ferns, still and silent, and yet even after the slavers didn’t come, Berren couldn’t shake a feeling of disquiet. However much he told himself otherwise, the warlock had done things to change him. The terrors. Neither the soldiers nor the slavers could see them. Only him.

‘I see them too,’ whispered the girl when they realised the slavers must have turned back to the fight in the camp. She squeezed his hand. ‘I always did.’

Had he been thinking out loud? He must have been.

‘He said it was a present but I don’t like it. I like making potions though. I’m glad you came.’

Berren shivered uneasily. ‘My friends are coming,’ he said. ‘They’ll take you home.’

‘I know.’ Her eyes were wide and earnest. ‘He told me. He said Prince Syannis would come. My shining prince.’ She stared at him. ‘But he’s not here, is he? Not yet. It’s all right, though.’ She laid a hand on his cheek. ‘I know who you are. You look like my cousin. You’re Berren. We’ve done lots together. Lots and lots. It’s nice to see you at last.’

Berren stared at her. He’d never met her before, not once in his life.

11

A MISSING PIECE RETURNED

O
n the ship Talon prowled his cabin and Berren had never seen a brow furrowed so deep. After he’d shot the warlock, whatever spell held the Hawks had been broken. They’d fought their way out, but now half the cohort were dead or badly hurt, and Tarn was in some sort of coma and no one could wake him. No one else had seen any sign of Saffran Kuy and his apprentice, and by the time Talon and the rest of his men had reached the beach, the little sloop had raised its anchor and was on its way back out to sea, taking with it the warlock and the slavers that survived.

Talon stopped for a moment to glare out of a porthole. They were back at sea themselves now, nosing their way out of the inlet towards the open ocean as fast as they could, but the sloop was smaller, lighter, faster and hours ahead of them. Short of a miracle, there was no chance they’d catch it. A little growl escaped his lips. ‘Are you sure it was him?’

Berren nodded. Talon had asked the same thing three times now.

Tarn lay prostrate on the bed. Talon’s other sergeants crowded into the corners of the room. The girl was there too, and she sat on the edge of the bed, watching everything with an air of distant contemplation. Berren found her calm unnerving, had done so ever since they’d left the camp. She had a name now: Gelisya. He tried to remember whether he’d ever heard of her in Deephaven. He thought not, but Talon knew her at once.
Princess
Gelisya, daughter to King Meridian of Tethis, and that troubled him every bit as much as discovering that the warlock was back. His thoughts were so loud that Berren could almost hear them.
What were you doing there? Why were you with Kuy? What do I do with you now? Do I take you home as I should or do I . . . do something else? Where is the trap in this? For surely it is there
. . .

The prince clenched his fists. ‘We are hired this season to deal with slavers in the Duchy of Forgenver. There have always been pirates plaguing the duke’s coast, but of late they have grown worse. The duke pays us to put an end to it.’ He sighed. ‘There are three ships involved and that sloop was one of them. I spent all bloody winter hunting them down. Bribes, threats, everything to find out where they were going to be. This is what I got and now we’ve lost her. We could have trapped their other ships in that channel, one after the other. Now we do it the hard way.’ He stared at Gelisya. ‘I have no idea what the duke’s going to think if he hears there is a warlock at work and the royal house of Tethis is entwined with them as well, so perhaps we just won’t tell him. But you,’ he pointed at Gelisya, ‘had better explain to me what you were doing there.’

Gelisya shook her head violently. She’d been largely silent since Berren had rescued her, and he was starting to wonder how much of a rescue it had been.
I know who you are
. She’d said it as though she’d been waiting for him. What if the warlock had lured them there? Was that possible? But if he had, what did he gain by it? It made no sense. Let himself be overrun and chased away? That wasn’t the Saffran Kuy that Berren remembered.

‘He took me,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

Talon turned to Berren. ‘What about you? You saw him. Thoughts?’

Berren shrugged. He looked at Gelisya. ‘She knows a lot more than she’s saying. She said Kuy told her Syannis was coming for her.’

Gelisya nodded. ‘He said you were coming as well. Both of you.’

‘So you knew we were coming, and so did he! He knew and yet . . .’ Berren curled his toes.
And yet Kuy let all this happen! Why?

‘Enough!’ Talon shook his head. ‘I’ve seen how the minds of warlocks work. I’ve no love for the new kings of Tethis; indeed I would happily see them burn and, given the torch, I would merrily light the fire. But I will say one thing for them, and that is that they would have no dealings with one such as Saffran Kuy. He knew we would come here?’ He nodded to Gelisya. ‘Then he has placed himself in our path to give us this gift, and I will not be used in such a way. The intent is obvious – he wishes to restart the old war. I will not allow it.’