The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) (7 page)

Trying him out
. Berren wondered if anyone had told Lucama that. He was driving Talon steadily into a corner with sheer violence and twice Berren thought he saw Lucama’s blade cut Talon; but since the prince never seemed to notice and since there wasn’t any blood, he supposed he must have been wrong.

Tarn’s fists were clenched, Berren saw. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t—’

‘No,’ Tarn snapped. Then he spoke more quietly. ‘He does this every year, picks on someone from another company and tests him. I wish he wouldn’t. Don’t worry – he’s got metal under that shirt.’

The fight stopped as abruptly as it had started. Silvestre was standing at the edge of the practice yard. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t need to – his presence alone was enough. Talon saluted, first Lucama and then Silvestre, and walked away. Lucama glowered after him. For the rest of that day he was sullen and bad-tempered.

The next morning was Berren’s last with the sword-master. It rained solidly and by the end he and Tarn were soaked to the skin. Talon came to meet them when they were done, promising a night to remember before they all sailed their separate ways. The sword-master gave them a lecture on the virtues of running away as soon as a fight started to go bad and then shooed them out of his house as if he was glad to be rid of them.

‘Silvestre doesn’t like farewells to linger,’ Talon said as they walked through the drizzle down towards the docks. Berren turned and looked back at the city around him for what might be the last time. ‘He likes you. He likes Tarn as well. Actually, Silvestre is one of those people who likes almost everybody, which I suppose is both his blessing and his curse. Every winter he teaches men and women to fight. Soldiers like us. By the end of the season half of them are dead. He told me it was always half, for some reason. If you last through the first year then there’s some hope you’ll survive to grow old. Chances are that you won’t, though.’

‘I will,’ said Berren, with a force that surprised him. Talon gave him a puzzled look and then laughed.

‘They all say that. But
you’re
going to Deephaven. It’s me and Tarn who should worry.’

‘I don’t . . .’ Now was the time to speak, now or never, before Talon drank himself stupid and they were both too muddled to think and he was suddenly on the run again, on his own, heading off to find Master Sy – wherever he was. It would be
easier
, wheedled a voice inside him, to find the thief-taker if he stayed with Talon. Then it would only be a matter of time, surely? But then maybe the right time to say something
was
when Talon was deep into his cups, when maybe he wouldn’t be thinking things through and they were all friends together in the way that only too much wine could forge.

‘You don’t what?’ Talon was smiling but there was a hardness and a sadness there, as though he knew what Berren had been about to say and was ready to tell him no, that they would part tomorrow with the dawn and there was no other way for things to be.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do in Deephaven,’ said Berren quickly. ‘I did a favour for a royal prince once. I doubt he’ll remember and I lost the token he gave me when they took me onto the ship, but I reckon I’m not much use for anything except fighting now. Last I heard the empire was heading for another war. They’ll be wanting soldiers if they haven’t gone and had it without me.’ He wiped the rain away from his eyes. The water here was cold, not like Deephaven rain which mostly came as a blessed relief from the baking summer sun. He shivered. All he was wearing was a wool shirt. Tarn and Talon had thick leather coats.

‘I’d give that a lot of thinking,’ said Talon softly. ‘A soldier’s life can eat you from the inside. You’ve seen Syannis. I’d find something else if I were you. Something
good
. A reason, a cause, an aspiration.
Build
something, Berren. Something for others to admire. Something that will make you proud.’

Yeh, but what? What else could he do? He could read and write but not very well. He was still a dab hand at cutting a purse or picking a pocket, but that was a sure way to the mines in the end. He’d never learned a trade and who would take him now? And to do what? Bake bread? Make clothes? Till fields? He couldn’t, not after all he’d seen, not after all he’d done.

Master Sy, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to Deephaven anyway.

The air quietly changed. Talon and Tarn and the others were suddenly on edge. Berren looked up and saw the street was empty. And then, ahead, a gang of armed men emerged to block their path. When Berren looked over his shoulder there was another gang behind. He counted the numbers. Fourteen against six. Poor odds, and one of the men ahead was holding what looked like a ball of bright fire, a glass globe the size of a fist filled with brilliant swirling oranges and yellows. Berren had heard stories of such things, told through the nights at sea, of globes of glass made with exquisite care by the craftsmen of the far south, filled with fire by the High Mages of Brons and sold to the Taiytakei for the rockets that their ships carried to war. They were a myth, or so the sailors had said.

Slowly Tarn drew his sword. Talon put a calming hand on his shoulder.

‘Gentlemen!’ he called. ‘Can we in any way assist you?’

The man holding the ball of fire shook his head. ‘You can die,’ he said, and he tossed the globe. Time seemed to slow. Berren watched it arc towards them. His feet wouldn’t move; then someone shoved him in the back and he staggered forward and started to run. His hand reached for his sword only to remember that he didn’t have one. The ball of trapped fire flew past him, coming down towards the stones where he’d been standing, and then the world shook and roared. A shock of wind took him from behind and threw him onward, burning hot and blinding bright. Flames seared his back. He stumbled, almost fell, barely stayed on his feet while their attackers cringed and reeled and tried to shield their eyes. For a moment all he could hear was a rushing in his ears. He saw Tarn stagger and Talon stumble beside him, both with swords drawn, and then they tumbled into the waiting men, themselves half-blinded. Berren bounced into and back out of a doorway, still hardly able to stay on his feet. He screamed. Dodged around a flailing sword, passed the first soldier and then tripped on a loose stone and fell, rolling across the cobbles. The air smelled of burning, of burned skin and scorched hair. His back and legs felt as though they were on fire and maybe they were. He screamed again as he landed and then slid into a puddle. Cold water soaked him, a momentary relief. When he looked up, the street was filled with a haze of fog or smoke or steam. Talon and Tarn and two others ran past him. The other men gave chase, all of them running past Berren without giving him a second glance. They left two bodies groaning on the ground.

A moment later, more men with swords in their hands raced out of the steam, blinking and rubbing their eyes. Berren lay still and these ones ran straight past too. Warm air wafted over him, filled with the stink of burning. As the last one came by, Berren jumped at him and wrapped his arms around the man’s legs. The man went down like he’d been shot, flinging his arms out to catch himself but still cracking his face on the stones; he cried out and rolled onto his back, clutching his face, blood pouring from his nose. Berren sprang onto him, snarling, and bashed his head into the ground one more time. Then he grabbed the man’s sword, one of the long curved weapons he was so used to seeing on Deephaven’s snuffers. He stood for a moment, ready to use it, but stopped. The man was helpless now, unarmed. He was as tanned as Berren, not pale-skinned like most of the people who lived in Kalda.

He
was
a Deephaven snuffer.

‘Slug-leavings! Sheet-stain!’ Berren screamed at him. ‘What was that for? Why?’ Screaming took the edge off the pain.

The snuffer groaned and feebly rolled away. Berren left him to it and ran on down the street, but after a few dozen steps he staggered to a halt, gasping for breath. Gods, but his back hurt! And his shoulders too and the backs of his legs, a burning pain from the flames, soothed only a little by the rain. He looked up and down the street but Talon and the others were out of sight now. All he could see were the two bodies on the ground and the man whose sword he’d taken, slowly crawling away. Where would Talon go? The Bitch Queen, perhaps, although Berren wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go back in there, not on his own.

His breathing was all wrong, too quick and too shallow. Everything still moved so nothing was broken, but the pain was excruciating. He could feel his strength ebbing away. He staggered back up the hill to Talon’s house, the only place he could think to go, but when he got near he saw yet more armed men. They wore no colours to say who they were but their arms and armour were the same as the ones who’d attacked him in the street, and so was the colour of their skin. Deephaven snuffers. This time he was sure, although what a company from Aria was doing here across the ocean was anyone’s guess. He watched for a while in case the snuffers left and then slunk away. The docks then. That was the place to look. The pain was all over him now, weighing him down. He needed to get off his feet. To rest. Sleep.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back into the shadows of an alley. He yelped, and then another hand clamped across his mouth and Tarn’s voice was whispering in his ear: ‘Quiet!’

Tarn let go. Berren stood very still, panting and gasping at what felt like a hundred knives all flaying the skin off his shoulder where Tarn had held him.

‘Path of the Sun, look at you!’

Berren closed his eyes. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t hurt, that was too much to ask, but he was damned if he was going to let Tarn see how bad it was. He took a few deep breaths until he could trust himself to speak without whimpering. ‘What’s going on?’

Tarn shrugged. ‘You’ve seen as much as I have. As to who or why, we’re not short on choice. Campaign season’s about to start. Could be another company trying to cripple us. Could be anyone. And Talon’s got enemies all of his own; you know that. Turn round.’ Gently, Tarn twisted Berren around and looked him up and down. ‘That must hurt. You’ve been burned from top to toe.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what that soldier threw at us.’

‘Talon?’

‘He’s fine. We only lost one man. That fire didn’t do them any favours. Flash blinded them and we just cut through them and ran. They didn’t chase after us for long. Rain and a good thick coat and most of us got away lightly.’ Tarn glanced down. The back of his sword hand was bright red. ‘Going to hurt in the morning, that, but it’ll heal quick enough. You, though, you look bad.’ He smirked. ‘That’ll teach you go around wearing nothing but a shirt. Armour, boy, that’s what you need. Never be without it. Come on, I’ll take you down to the ship. Gods! I thought we’d lost you, but when there was no body I reckoned you’d come back here if you could still walk.’

Berren followed Tarn down the slope of the city once more, breathing hard. By the time they reached the docks and the waterfront, it was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There was a longboat waiting, filled with soldiers Berren didn’t recognise but whom Tarn seemed to know. Berren sat with his head in his hands while they rowed out into the river. The back of his head hurt too. Most of his hair was gone.

‘You’re lucky it was raining.’ As they turned towards one of the ships anchored in the Triere, Tarn pointed up to the flag fluttering atop the foremast, a diving silver hawk on a black field. ‘That’s us.’

‘You’ve got your own ship?’

Tarn chuckled. ‘You ask me, I’d have preferred one of those sleek Taki ones for crossing the ocean. They’re twice as fast but it turns out you can fit three times as much cargo into this flat-bellied monster and we’ve got a whole company to move.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘You have no idea how much work goes into just getting from one place to another. It’s all food and shelter and how good are the roads, and where will be able to get water and then more food again. Ugh! Talon’s not going to thank me for bringing you aboard but I can’t leave you running around like that.’

Berren stared at the ship as they drew closer. From a distance it didn’t seem much different from the one that had brought him here, but as they came alongside he could see it was bigger, taller and fatter. A ladder made of short planks of wood and two long knotted ropes dropped down. Talon let the other soldiers in the boat climb up first, then gestured to Berren.

‘You up to climbing that?’

‘I spent two years on the sea as a skag. I’ve climbed worse than this half-dead before, when it was keep working or be thrown into the sea.’ Weary, he hauled himself up.

As he reached the top of the ladder and almost fell over the rail, the ship rocked with such a noise that Berren stopped for a moment, trying to work out what it was. Not the usual shouting and swearing of surly sailors with empty pockets and sore heads. Cheering, that’s what it was. Soldiers and sailors alike were cheering, while Talon held his hands aloft with the setting sun behind him. The deck was packed. There were soldiers everywhere, nearly all in black shirts with the emblem of a diving silver hawk on the front. Some were crude, painted on by an unskilled hand. Others were exquisite, embroidered with silver thread.

‘The Hawks have new blood!’ Talon shouted over the din. You wouldn’t have known from looking at him that someone had tried to kill him only an hour ago. ‘You’ll see them among you, in your cohorts, in your tents. Treat them the way you were treated when you first joined us. Let them know what’s what and what it means to be a Fighting Hawk. Take them with you to the best taverns wherever we go! See they have their fair shares of all that matters. Of food and water. Of boots and swords and arrows. Of the fighting and of the plunder!’ Talon drew his sword and thrust it into the air. ‘The Fighting Hawks!’ he cried to another thunderous cheer.

‘When the season’s over and we go back to our homes, we’re all different people,’ Tarn said, standing at Berren’s shoulder. ‘But together we become something else. All here are equal, be they a prince or a peasant. That’s the secret of the Prince of War.’ He stopped and turned to face Berren. ‘I’ll take you to that ship he found for you if you ask me to, but I know this is what you wanted. While you’re with us, you’re no better and no worse than any other soldier here. You’ll fight beside them. If it comes to it, you’ll die beside them, so best you get to know them.’