The Thief-Taker's Apprentice (33 page)

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Authors: Stephen Deas

BOOK: The Thief-Taker's Apprentice
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Yeh, except he’d be hurting on the inside too and itching for some revenge. And he was big. Berren had forgotten, somehow, how big Jerrin was. He probably stood taller even than Master Sy.
‘Too scared to say anything, Mouse? Too terrified to move? It’s too late to run away now, isn’t it? Here, look, you were one of us not all that long ago. You could have been a Harbour Man. You still can. Jack it in with that master of yours and pitch in with us. I’ll let you live. All you have to do is grovel in the mud on your belly, like the crappy little worm that you are. That’s all. Five minutes of shit, Mouse, and then you’re one of us.’ He sniffed and touched the back of his head again. ‘After that you can watch while I help myself to this ground-floor girl of yours. But no need to get all jealous on me, Mouse. We’re a gang. Everyone gets their share of the spoils. You can have her too. You’d have to go last, but you can have her. I think I’d have to insist, in fact. And let’s face it, Mouse, she’s a ripe piece and far too pretty for you to ever get her any other way.’
Goading. That’s all it was, but still, if Berren bit his tongue any harder, he wouldn’t have one any more. He could already taste blood. His silence was working, though. He could see that. Jerrin’s foot started to tap. Behind him, some of the other boys were getting restless. They weren’t liking the way this was going and their unease was infectious. Jerrin ran his hand through his hair and started to pace again.
‘You know what? Maybe I think you’re an ungrateful little turd. Maybe I’ll just cut open your belly and she can watch you dying in a corner. Yeh, you know what? I think that sounds a lot better. So yeh. That’s what’s going to happen. Last chance to run, Mouse.’ He stopped pacing and came a couple of steps closer, still keeping a dozen yards between them. He pulled his own knife out of his belt. It wasn’t much more than a long finger of steel, and Jerrin’s size made it seem smaller still. Berren smirked.
‘She’s a ground-floor girl, Mouse. You didn’t know that? Truth is, we started without you.’
Berren didn’t flinch. Inside he wanted to scream, but on the outside, he was as steady as a rock. Lies. They had to be. He had to believe that.
‘Oh what?’ Jerrin shouted, his voice breaking slightly. ‘Teeth! What’s wrong with you, Mouse? You have an accident in bed and piss your wits out?
Say
something!’
That was it. Jerrin had run himself into a corner. He didn’t have any more choices to make. There was nothing left for him now except to come running, screaming, waving his arms and his knife, and one of them would die. And Berren had a strange warm certainly that it wouldn’t be him.
They didn’t find out, though, because that was exactly when Kasmin and three other men came bursting out of the doors behind the Harbour Men, shouting their heads off and waving sticks around their heads, and everything fell into chaos.
41
THE THIEF-TAKER’S APPRENTICE
S
ticks went down first, thumped around the back of the head before he could even turn round. The rest of Jerrin’s Harbour Men wilted and ran. Kasmin pelted after the mudlark boy and dragged him down, then punched and kicked him until he stopped trying to get up again. The others swung their sticks and looked at Jerrin and then at Berren and then back at One-Thumb again. They grinned and licked their lips. Jerrin’s eyes darted between them, looking for a place to run, but they kept back, content to wait. Berren watched as Kasmin got up from the mudlark boy and walked back to where Lilissa stood, her mouth still open in surprise. Kasmin whispered something in her ear and then turned her face so she was looking at him. Berren couldn’t hear what either of them said; after a moment, Kasmin left her. He walked back to the mudlark boy, lifted his stick up high and brought it down on the boy’s legs with all his strength. Bones cracked; the boy screamed and Lilissa sank to the ground, burying her face in her hands. Berren’s skin went cold and numb. Could easily have been the boy’s head.
He looked at One-Thumb again, this time with a coldness in his heart. He hissed softly and started to walk, very slowly, towards where One-Thumb was still standing.
‘Tell me again, Jerrin,’ he whispered. ‘Tell me again what you just said about her. Started
what
without me?’
One-Thumb turned to look at him. He was shaking. Kasmin and the other men stood still and watched. Lilissa still had her face in her hands.
‘Tell me, Jerrin!’ said Berren, louder this time. ‘I want to know.’ He started to walk faster. One-Thumb stared back at him in disbelief. He was afraid. It was written all over him. He was scared and he didn’t know what to do, while Berren felt himself getting stronger with every step.
‘Come on, Jerrin,’ he said for the third time, almost shouting. ‘Let’s hear it! Started
what
, exactly? Come on! Tell me!’
Jerrin stared right back at him, too petrified to move. He started to shake his head. ‘I . . .’ And that was as far as he got before Berren was standing right in front of him. Without any hesitation at all, almost with a will of its own, Jerrin’s hand snapped back and then thrust forwards again, stabbing his knife into Berren’s midriff. He didn’t even look to see what he was doing, just kept staring right back up into Berren’s face, a look of utter disbelief on his face. Berren didn’t move, didn’t even think to defend himself, only grunted and staggered back a step. He hadn’t expected than. Hurt a lot less than he’d thought. He put a hand to his belly, but when he looked, there was no blood. Under his shirt, he was wearing Master Sy’s ringmail. For a moment, he’d forgotten.
Berren raised his knife and pointed it at Jerrin’s face. ‘You cowardly little shit.’ He took a step forward. Jerrin had tried to kill him. No question this time. Now there would be blood.
‘I didn’t touch her!’ Jerrin gasped and took a step back. ‘Never did. I swear.’ As Berren advanced, Jerrin backed away. ‘Please! Please, Mouse . . .’ Blood dribbled out from the corner of his mouth where he’d bitten his own lip. He dropped his little knife. ‘Mouse . . .’ Any moment. Any moment now, Berren knew, he would strike.
Abruptly Jerrin’s legs gave way and he fell over. He managed to get onto his knees, then fell over a second time as Berren loomed over him and raised Kasmin’s knife.
‘Please! Mouse! Please!’
For a second, Berren clenched the knife. For a second he did nothing. He saw Master Sy and the mudlarks from Talsin’s Forest and he knew what he had to do, but his hand wouldn’t move.
‘You going to do it or not?’ growled a deep voice behind him. Kasmin.
For another second he stayed stock still. Then slowly he stepped away and lowered the knife. No. Not to a man grovelling on the ground. Couldn’t do it. Not even to One-Thumb.
Kasmin pushed past and brought his stick down on One-Thumb’s head as hard as he could. Quick and sharp and no messing about. Jerrin’s startled look stayed on his face for a moment, and then blood ran down over his face and he toppled backwards. Kasmin looked Berren up and down.
‘Boys from Shipwrights should stay in Shipwrights,’ he growled. The men behind him murmured agreement and nodded. ‘Harbour Men?’ He spat on One-Thumb’s corpse. ‘Not any more.’ He wandered back to Sticks, who was on his hands and knees, throwing up and moaning on the floor. Berren almost couldn’t bear to watch, but Kasmin’s cudgel didn’t come down a third time. Instead, Sticks merely got another kicking. ‘Boys from Shipwrights should stay in Shipwrights,’ roared Kasmin. ‘Do you hear me?’ He swung back to where One-Thumb lay, glared as though he’d never seen Berren before. ‘What about you, boy? You call yourself a Harbour Man?’
Berren took a step back. He shook his head, not quite sure what to say.
‘Your girl?’
This time Berren nodded.
‘I like the look of your knife, boy. You leave that here and I’ll let you go. Both of you. You hear?’
Berren nodded again, more quickly this time. He dropped Kasmin’s knife on the ground and then the sheath as well. Glad to be rid of it.
‘You’ll not be telling no thief-takers about us, now will you, boy? If I were you I’d keep my mouth tight shut. You got that?’
Berren nodded again.
‘Go on then. Piss off. Both of you.’
There was blood on his hand. Someone’s. Not his. Jerrin’s, maybe, from when Kasmin had cracked his skull. He wiped it on the leg of his trousers then ran to Lilissa, still squatting on the ground and sobbing into her hands. He tugged her to her feet and looked at her. One eye was red with tears, the other purple from a huge bruise on one side of her face. Her hair was a tangled mess. She was still wearing the dress that had made her look like a princess, the one she’d worn to the Captain’s Rest, except now it was ripped and ruined.
He touched her swollen cheek. She was beautiful. Then he looked around him. Kasmin had his knife back now; he and whoever the men were he had with him were already turning to go. Sticks was staggering off as fast his legs would carry him; Hair and Waddler and the rest of Jerrin’s boys were long gone. There was the mudlark boy, pulling himself on his arms to get away, wailing and moaning. And then there was One-Thumb, flat on his back and dead as a rat. Berren felt sick.
This
was thief-taking?
He turned away. His head was spinning, his throat was as dry as parchment. His skin tingled, his arms and legs felt as though they didn’t really belong to him any more; the rest of him seemed so light that he might lift right off the ground and fly in the first gust of wind. Nothing seemed quite real any more.
Except Lilissa.
He took her hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’
42
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
T
hey sat at a table together in the Golden Hart, the closest tavern to The Peak that Master Sy was prepared to afford. It was a place where rich people went, not thief-takers, and certainly not a dung-boy cut-purse from Shipwrights. It was the middle of the day, the sort of time when a place like this was quiet and empty, but the few people there still stared at them both, muttering under their breath as Berren and Master Sy passed their tables. The tavern-keeper, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered in the least. He gave the thief-taker a nod as if they were old friends. Almost before Master Sy was in his seat, a whole roasted duck was set down on the table in front of them. Then bread, still warm from the oven, two glasses, and a bottle of something dark and red. Master Sy picked up the bottle and turned it over in his hand. He was smiling.
‘Now that’s something you don’t get to see every day.’ He sighed a happy sigh. He was limping, Berren had noticed. Not badly, but enough that Berren could see. ‘You drink much wine in Shipwrights, lad?’
Berren nodded vigorously. Watery stuff that Hatchet’s boys stole from Club-Headed Jin when they got the chance, which wasn’t very often. And then they’d wait for Hatchet to be asleep or drunk, and they’d get it out and pass it from one to another in the dark. Times like that they’d all been a gang together.
Times like that. Yeh. He’d spent most of the night lying awake, thinking of One-Thumb lying dead in the dirt. Thinking of the horror on Lilissa’s face when she’d seen the blood on his hands. He’d gone to Trickle Street to save her, to win her, and somehow, in the saving, he’d lost her. He’d seen it in her eyes even as they were leaving. It left a bitter taste, one that jarred with the thief-taker’s good humour.
Times like that. Yeh. Times like that hadn’t come around too often. Mostly they’d been at each others’ throats, like cats in a cage.
‘Well not like this you haven’t.’ Master Sy broke the wax seal around the bottle’s neck and levered the cork out with a knife. ‘This is from my home, lad. It’s come halfway around the world to be here. Just like me.’ He poured one for himself and then tipped a thimbleful into Berren’s glass. ‘Mind, though. Remember the beer in the Eight Pillars of Smoke. This is stronger stuff. Try not to make an idiot of yourself. Sip it. If you gulp it, it’ll knock you flat. Like all the best things in life.’
Berren took a sip. Even as the wine touched his lips, it seemed to steal into his mouth, setting his tongue on fire. He recoiled and coughed and the thief-taker laughed. Then Master Sy tore a wing off the duck and waved at Berren to eat.
‘What happened to your leg, master?’
‘Oh, I landed badly chasing one of the Dag’s pirates in the tunnels under Reeper Hill.’ He shrugged.
‘Did you get them?’
‘They were there right enough. Hiding away with their loot. Caught them red-handed. Unfortunately Justicar Kol and his soldiers got there first. Kol himself.’ He shook his head. ‘I forget, sometimes, that our Justicar used to swing a sword with the best of them. No.’ He sighed. ‘Our pirates are all done now. We did what Kol wanted us to do. We got the Bloody Dag out of Siltside and then we rounded up his men and now they’re all dead or on their way to the mines and that’s the end of it.’ Master Sy’s lips twitched, as though he’d tasted something sour. Berren paused between stuffing strips of juicy meat into his mouth.
‘What about . . . ?’
‘And where were you last night?’ This time the thief-taker raised a knowing eyebrow. Berren flushed and looked away.
‘I went to Mistress Lilissa, like you said. Just in case.’

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