Warlock's Shadow (4 page)

‘Look familiar?’

Berren blinked. ‘Yes!’ Yes, suddenly it did. ‘It’s like the Captain’s Rest.’

Master Sy half-smiled and nodded. ‘Yes. Built and owned by the same guild-master.’ He started to wander the paths. ‘I’ve heard there are gardens like this in Varr too but much bigger. Scent gardens, they call them. Use your nose. I imagine they’ll be at their best about a month from now.’ Berren looked around. Scented and flowering bushes and even two small trees grew up from the ground, masking the usual city-smell of bad fish. Variegated ivies competed for domination of the walls. There were no birds here, though. The Captain’s Rest, he remembered, had had birds.

‘You have to be a sea captain or one of their ilk to make your business in the Captain’s Rest. Everyone else comes here. Or they did, until His Highness took over the place.’ He pointed back the way they’d come, through the archway to the yard and on through to the other side. ‘Those are the rooms and lodgings for the Imperial Guard. We don’t go there.’ He gestured up at the windows overlooking the scent gardens. ‘Up there is where the prince sleeps. We don’t go
there
either.’ He walked closer until they were on a path right underneath the windows, one so crowded by greenery that it brushed Berren’s legs as he walked. Berren stopped. One of the windows was open. He could hear a gentle moaning and soft throaty laughter wafting out of it. Master Sy pursed his lips. ‘That’s where he has his rooms. There are baths in there and, well, the usual other diversions.’

By which Master Sy meant women. Berren grinned to himself. Master Sy was deadly deft and agile about everything else, but when it came to women he was as clumsy as a coconut. Berren, on the other hand, had grown up two doors away from a cheap whorehouse. He’d already seen about as much as there was to be seen before he even knew what it was all for; and while he was waiting for Dorrm the Dumb to trip over and impale himself on a swordfish, he was quietly working his way through the various houses on Reeper Hill whenever he could slip away for an evening and had enough crowns in his purse to pay for it.

Yes. Another thing Master Sy wasn’t supposed to know.

The thief-taker held up his hand. ‘Stop for a moment.’ They were right under the prince’s window, about ten feet above them. The noises coming down from there didn’t leave much to the imagination. Berren puffed his cheeks, trying to ignore them.

‘Look around you.’

Plants and paths and walls covered in ivy. If he peered a bit, he could see the archway and the moonpool yard and the soldiers standing there.

‘Do you think anyone can see us?’

Berren shrugged. ‘I suppose. If they look hard enough.’

‘Go over to the archway. Tell me if you can see me.’

Berren trotted off as he was told. When he looked back, he was surprised to see that Master Sy was almost invisible between the leaves of the bushes and the trees. Easy enough to see him if you knew he was there to be seen in the first place, but even then he had to peer a bit to be sure. He trotted back. Master Sy glanced up at the window and the ivy-covered wall below it.

‘How long would it take you to climb up there?’

‘There?’ Berren laughed. ‘Easy! I’d be up in a flash.’

‘Yes. That’s what I thought.’ Master Sy nodded. ‘Right. Well. Off to bed with you then.’

‘What?!’ Berren looked up at the sky. The sun might have set but the sky was still light and they hadn’t even reached the spring festival. ‘There’s half the day left!’

The thief-taker gave him his best baleful look. It was the look he put on every time Berren forgot that he was a worthless apprentice who should be grateful to even exist. ‘We are here to perform a duty, boy. I will take my turn on watch here until the small hours. Then
you
will take
your
watch. At dawn, you will leave here and go to the temple for your daily lessons. Master Mardan or Master Fennis will relieve you.’

‘But …!’

‘Boy, you will do as you’re told. We are taking the justicar’s gold to protect the life of His Highness. Whatever you may think of him.’

Berren closed his eyes. He could see the future, clear as the sun.
This
was how it would be.
Forever
, probably. After all, if you were the prince, with women like that to take to your bed and soldiers and thief-takers to fawn at your feet, why would you ever leave? ‘You were going to show me how to fight with short steel. Before spring! You promised!’

The thief-taker growled. ‘In good time, boy. The festival of the equinox is weeks away. Now do as you’re told!’

They glowered at each other but that was a fight that only one of them was ever going to win. Berren walked away, saving his storming and stomping until he was out of Master Sy’s sight. The thief-taker had promised to teach him to fight with steel more than a year ago and still all they ever did was fight with sticks. He’d promised again for midsummer, spent a week showing Berren how to hold a real sword properly and then promptly gone back to sticks again. Then he’d promised for midwinter and just forgotten all about it.

Berren reached the room where he and Mardan and Master Sy would all sleep together. Thank the sun, Master Mardan wasn’t there. Berren threw himself down on the mattress. He was
never
going to learn swords. Master Sy just didn’t want to teach him, that was it.

Trouble was, neither would anyone else. Not for the meagre purse that Berren could muster. Sword-masters were paid in gold.

M
ost evenings, before this drunkard prince had come to Deephaven, Berren came back from the temple and had his supper with Master Sy. Then they’d go off about their errands, the sort that were best run after dark. They’d wander down into the night market to make a nuisance of themselves among the wagoners, or else they’d amble down to the taverns near the docks and listen in on who was selling what and who wanted to buy it. Sometimes they went as far as Reeper Hill or wandered the streets around The Peak. The thief-taker would talk to the snuffers, the ones who still had a vestige of decency to them. Once or twice every month they’d dodge the press gangs and head into The Maze, to the Barrow of Beer and Master Sy’s friend Kasmin from the old days that he never liked to talk about. Sometimes they didn’t go any further than the yard outside Master Sy’s little house, the thief-taker clucking and shaking his head while Berren tried to cut and lunge with his waster until the light failed.

That was before.

It seemed he’d only just managed to fall asleep when Master Sy was shaking him awake again to sit for hours in the dark of the scent garden, bleary and cold, listening to people snore. And then, as everyone else was getting up and thinking about breakfast, there was Master Fennis, chasing him on his way with nothing but a crust of yesterday’s bread in his pocket, back up the hill to Deephaven Square and the temple in time to catch a lash of Teacher Sterm’s cane for being late. And
that
was when he realised that he hadn’t asked Master Sy about Kelm, whoever he was, and sure enough, Sterm had him straight up to the front first to share his ignorance.

That was the way his days became – woken up in the middle of the night, cold and thankless hours sitting in the dark of the garden, more cold and thankless hours of sitting in the gloom at the temple, snatching leftovers to eat whenever he had a spare moment, always rushing from one misery to the next. His head was full of things he wanted, of princes and their women, swordplay and blade-dancing, and he was getting none of it, no swords, no thief-taking, nothing. He barely even saw the prince he was supposed to be guarding. In the temple, the other novices only jeered at him when he tried to tell them how important he was. The solar priests, it turned out, didn’t much care for Prince Sharda of Varr. If they’d known half the truth, they’d probably have rolled on the floor and wept with laughter.

The novices to serve the monks from Torpreah were chosen – not Berren of course. They might have been the most gracious and the most penitent but that didn’t stop them strutting like peacocks when none of the priests were looking, and for once Berren envied them. Monks of the fire-dragon
were
the best fighters in the world, even Master Sy said so, and now he’d probably never even see them. His misery was complete.

‘Here.’ Master Velgian beckoned Berren over one evening when the Watchman’s Arms was busier than usual. Velgian had replaced Master Mardan, who had apparently said something he shouldn’t and been thrown out. Velgian fancied himself a poet and always carried the same battered old book of verses from Caladir and Brons with him wherever he went. On quiet evenings in The Eight, he sometimes read to the other thief-takers whether they wanted him to or not. There were more soldiers than Berren was used to tonight; there were other faces too, men and women he hadn’t seen before, wandering in and out through the yard around the moonpool. They were dressed in the silks and satins of rich city lords from The Peak, laced with gold and silver and decked with jewels. They looked agitated.

Berren shrugged. It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. As best he could tell, the prince was somewhere off and about, most likely up on Reeper Hill again. He’d taken Master Sy with him too.

‘Get a torch, lad.’

Velgian was sitting beside the archway to the scent garden with a square piece of metal on the ground in front of him. Berren got a torch and sat down beside him.

‘Keep that away for a moment.’ Velgian had a waxed paper pouch in his hand. He tipped it over the metal plate, shook out a little pile of black powder then shuffled back a little. ‘Go on. Touch the torch to that then.’

Berren poked the torch at the metal plate. There was a whoosh, a flash of orange light, a puff of smoke and a wave of heat. Berren reeled away. The smoke stung his eyes and the air stank of bad eggs.

‘What was
that
?’ He stared in awe at the black stain on the metal plate.

Master Velgian shrugged. ‘I don’t know what they call it. Comes from Caladir. Black powder but with something else as well.’

‘Does the witch-doctor make it?’ The witch-doctor, Master Sy’s old friend from across the sea who lived in an old warehouse by the river, was the only person Berren knew who dealt in potions and powders. Velgian, for some reason, looked petrified.

‘That devil?’ He shuddered. ‘I know Syannis speaks with him sometimes, but take it from me, Saffran Kuy is evil and nothing good comes from any who deal with him.’ He glanced up into the sky and leaned closer. ‘You know how everyone who goes to see him leaves a basket of fish outside when they leave? That’s because he has a pact with the cats and the gulls who live there. They’re his spies. He rides inside them, seeing the world through their eyes, listening to what people say with their ears!’ He shuddered again and then sat back. ‘No, this is what the Taiytakei use to make things that fly up into the air and make pretty lights. A ship came in with some kegs of it a few weeks back, a present ready for the Emperor’s spring festival in Varr. Turns out one or two fell off the back of a wagon on the way and ended up in the night market. Fancy, eh?’ He rolled his eyes and then shrugged again. ‘Bought a pouch of it. Too much money from standing watch over this prick of a prince. Bloody waste. Here, come look at this though.’ Master Velgian led Berren across the moonpool yard and back inside the Arms, into a wide hall that Berren hadn’t seen before. A delicious smell of food laced the air. Paintings and hangings lined the walls here, faces of men from Aria’s history that Berren had had beaten into him by Teacher Sterm, and other faces that he didn’t know. Uniformed servants hurried around them, speaking in whispers. Berren watched them.

‘What’s happening?’

‘The feast of the last moon before the spring, that’s what,’ whispered Master Velgian. ‘His Highness has guests too. They came into the Arms in the middle of the day. Apparently they’ve been looking for His Highness for a while.’ Velgian spat. ‘Can’t have been looking all that hard, that’s all I can say. They’re going to take him back with them though and they might take you and your master too if you’re lucky.’ Then he smirked. ‘If they can find him, of course. Sneaky bastard actually managed to slip out of here without anyone noticing, probably with a bit of help from Syannis. Glad it wasn’t on my watch. So now they’re going to have their big Feast of the Last Moon and some great announcement, and the person who should be the centre of it all isn’t even here.’ He snorted in disgust. ‘I was going to show off that black powder. Syannis said to bring some if I could. Meant for a prince it was, and instead I’m left with you.’

He nodded towards a large man with wild blond hair, leaning against the wall just inside the door. The man had an impatient look to him. His expression had something of resignation in it too, as though he was used to this sort of thing.

‘That’s Ser Elmarc Borolan. Story goes that he and the prince were up in the mountains a year back. Lost a lot of friends. No one says how or why. Be on your guard tonight. Right.’ He patted Berren on the back. ‘Go and get some rest.’

‘What?’ Berren gaped at the table and then looked at Master Velgian, imploring. Velgian shrugged.

‘This isn’t for the likes of us, young Berren. We get to stay outside with the dogs and the riff-raff.’

‘But!’

‘Would you
want
to stay? Forced to stand still as a statue and silent as a shadow for hours on end while the lords and ladies of the city stuff themselves with every conceivable delicacy and ignore you completely, all the while complaining bitterly about how the whole feast is a complete waste of time without His Highness? I’m sure Syannis is expecting you to sit your watch and continue with your instruction in the temple too. No, to bed, young man.’ Master Velgian frowned. ‘Isn’t it tomorrow that the monks of the fire-dragon arrive?’