‘No!’ Berren was holding the ink pot to throw it, but then a mad impulse seized him. Very deliberately he emptied it over the papers littered across the floor. The thief-taker’s eyes bulged. His knuckles clenched white. For a moment he stood rigidly still and then he lunged. Berren dodged him, round the other side of the table. He dropped the ink pot and ran out the door into the rain. ‘I don’t want to learn letters!’ he shouted. ‘Letters are stupid! I want to learn swords and you never show me anything that I want!’
The thief-taker picked up the ink pot and threw it at Berren as hard as he could. It missed his head by inches and smashed on the wall behind him. ‘Get back here, boy!’ He strode to the door. As he did, he picked up a belt. ‘Get back here now!’
Berren backed away, trembling. He’d felt the rush of air past his head when the ink pot had missed. Now the look on the thief-taker’s face was murderous and terrible. Master Sy strode out into the yard and kept on coming, belt in hand. Berren ran. He shot out of the yard, slipping on the wet stone. Through the alley and out into Weaver’s Row, quiet in the afternoon rain. A sharp turn into Button Lane got him into a part of the city he knew well. He glanced over his shoulder. Master Sy wasn’t chasing him. He slowed down to a trot through Craftsmen’s and then zigged and zagged through The Maze, the warren of narrow streets and alleys that separated the Market District from the sea-docks. The rain meant there weren’t many people about. The city was quiet at this time of day. Most folks were in their homes, done with their work for the day, pulling off their boots if they had any and getting ready to take their supper. Then there were the ones who came out after the rains, the ones whose trade were more suited to the evening. They’d be watching the skies, waiting by their doors to rush out as soon as the cloud began to break. As for the ones who came out after dark – well, it wasn’t dark yet.
The Maze slowly merged into the back of the sea-docks. Berren stopped. He stood, bent almost double, hands on his knees to hold the rest of him up, gasping for breath. Once he was quite sure the thief-taker hadn’t followed him, he sat down heavily in a doorway and held his head in his hands.
Master Sy could have killed him with that ink pot. He told himself that again, partly in disbelief, partly to make himself believe. And now he’d run away. Whatever else, that meant he couldn’t go back. Not to someone like that.
So he was never going to see Lilissa again. And he was never going to learn swords after all, or be rich and important and powerful and tell people what to do. It was all a big lie. He bit his lip. Crying never got you anything but jeering and a beating from the older boys, but his eyes burned all the same. Right there and then, he hated the thief-taker more than anyone in the world for showing him so much and then taking it all away again.
The rains slowly relented. The evening sun broke through the cloud and glittered across the bay, already fiery red. It would be dark soon. Reluctantly Berren got up. Wandering the back alleys of the sea-docks at night was no place to be if you were small and on your own, even if you didn’t really have anything worth stealing. There were gangs about who were interested in things other than money. Berren had never run into them, but that was because he was careful. He’d certainly heard the stories. Gangs of men who took boys and dragged them off to sea. Gangs of men who took boys for other reasons. Right now, going out to sea on a ship and never coming back didn’t seem like such a bad thing, but Berren wasn’t sure how you could tell those gangs apart from the other ones.
And anyway, there was always Master Hatchet. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a place to go. He took a deep breath. Shipwrights was a part of the fishing quarter and the fishing quarter was a huge place, but Loom Street was close enough to the docks. With a bit of luck he could get there before the streets got really dark. He set off again at a run. That was the thing. Never stop anywhere that wasn’t out in the open. Never stop in the shadows. Never stop if someone shouted at you or if a hand grabbed at you. Never stop at all if you could help it. Not here in the back alleys of the sea-docks. He didn’t stop when he reached the harbour and the waterfront either. There was less to fear among the crowds of sailors and the teamsters. Some of them were drunk, but most were still hard at work. The work on the docks never stopped. There were always people there at all hours of the night, hauling bales and crates to and from the boats at the edge of the sea.
He slowed down again once he passed through the Sea Gate and reached Reeper Hill. Every house on the street here was a brothel, from the crumbling ramshackle town-houses at the bottom by the docks to the almost- mansions at the top and back to the squalid shanty-town of huts down the other side on the edge of the fishing quarter. Everyone came to Reeper Hill. Sailors and dockers mostly but princes and priests too; you’d find them all if you knew where to look. No one wanted any trouble on Reeper Hill. Although he’d learned the hard way not to stop and stare for too long at any of the ladies out by their doors.
Near the top of the hill on the fishing quarter side there was a small road that led out around the north side of the sea-docks. Further on it petered out into a path that led eventually to nothing much except the jumble of rocks at the top of Wrecking Point. Berren followed it a little way and then turned down a muddy track, skittering down the steep slope of the ridge and into the stinking backside of Shipwrights. The smell reached out and grabbed him like a hand, shaking him to his senses. He’d forgotten how strong it was here, or perhaps he’d never noticed because he’d never really known anything else. He hopped and skipped down the path, dancing from one uneven step to the next without even looking. This was home, this was, and between that and the smell, he was almost smiling when he reached the bottom. He squeezed through the darkness between the twine-maker’s house and the gloomy but familiar half-collapsed bulk of an old compass-maker’s workshop. When he came out the other side, he stopped. Loom Street. He sniffed. Over in this part of the city, the air was rich. A heavy base scent of the sea and of rotting fish. A steady mid-tone of manure from the dung heaps. High notes of sweat, of soured milk, of vinegar, of cheap perfume, depending on the time of day. They don’t get air like this up on The Peak. Makes you strong, it does. When the smell from the fishing wharves got particularly bad, that’s what Master Hatchet always said, regular as the tides.
He walked carefully. The cobbles of Loom Street were either uneven and full of holes or worn smooth and slick with a fine slurry of rain and sea-water and dung. The locals here had a saying: You could always tell a Loom Street boy from how clean their hands were. On Loom Street you learned the hard way to wash your hands before you put them in your mouth.
The alley behind the tool-makers’ was as dark as it always was in the middle of the night. Berren was used to it. Used to not being able to see his feet or even his hand in front of his face. They used to run down here, even in the pitch black, but today he was more cautious. The alley had a few traps for the unwary. Buckets of slurry, brooms propped up against the wall. Things that would make a noise and give a warning if anyone came. Berren picked his way past them. He reached the little door that led up a tiny flight of steps into the brothel next to Master Hatchet’s. It was ajar. A breath of warm air brushed his face, moist and heavy with cheap perfume. A few steps on, the alley ended in one last entrance. Master Hatchet’s house. In daylight he could have gone the other way, around into the yard where they kept the dung-carts. The yard had a gate, though, and that was always bolted shut after sunset.
He knocked on the door. Quietly at first, then louder. Hatchet didn’t sleep much. Except sometimes when he went out drinking all night and the boys woke up the next morning to the sound of his snores shaking the house.
Berren banged on the door again. This time he heard footsteps, heavy and slow. A glimmer of candlelight seeped through the gaps around the door where it didn’t quite fit in its frame.
‘Who is it and what do you want?’ growled a voice from the other side. Berren’s heart jumped inside his chest. A little bit of fear, a little bit of hope, maybe a little bit of despair. Master Hatchet.
‘It’s me, sir.’ His voice had a tremor to it.
‘Who’s me? And what do you want?’
‘It’s Berren, sir.’
There was a long silence. ‘Berren. Had a boy work here once called Berren. Worthless little shit, he was. Can’t be that Berren though. Boy was stupid all right, but not even he was dim enough to come back to Loom Street after he’d taken up with a thief-taker. So you must be a different Berren.’
‘Set the dunghill wet so it may rot and be odourless; also set it out of sight; the seed of thorn will decay and die in it. Asses’ dung is best to make a garden with; sheep’s dung is next; and after that the goat’s and also horses’ and mares’. Swine’s dung is the worst and should be kept apart and thrown into the sea.’ All you needed to know to be a city dung-collector. Hatchet made them recite it every day when they went off with their carts. It was the closest thing they had to a password. There was another long silence. The door didn’t open.
‘Piss off, boy,’ he said, at last.
‘Master, please…’ No, that was a mistake. Begging and pleading with Hatchet never got anyone anywhere.
