out, because even Master Sy, surely, must want to see… But when Berren scampered over to wake him, the thief- taker screamed and stared at Berren wide-eyed, and Berren recoiled as though he’d been stung. The thief-taker stared at him, glassy-eyed and far away. ‘You haven’t the tools,’ he said. Then he blinked and came back from wherever he was and swore and cursed and swatted Berren away, and by then the messenger was gone. The lightermen had laughed and shaken their heads, as though this was something they saw every day.
‘Sorry, lad,’ said the thief-taker a minute or so later. ‘Dreams.’ He was looking at Berren hard, though, wearing his sad face, as though he’d dreamed of something bad that had yet to come.
Berren scowled. An Imperial Messenger was what every city boy wanted to be and he’d missed some of seeing one because of Master Sy. Racing with the wind from one side of the world to another, always moving, stopping for nothing except the next change of horse. Some people said they had secret powers, granted to them by the emperor’s new sorcerers. That they could freeze a man to the spot simply by looking at him, that they moved so fast that they could vanish in a blink. Berren wasn’t sure about that, but they certainly got to learn swords and he was willing to bet they didn’t have to learn their letters first. Or have stupid dreams. Bad dreams were for children. Babies. Not for men who carried swords.
Way stations, farms, hamlets and villages dotted the road, all with their own small jetties out into the water. On the other side of the barge, more little boats pottered up and down the river. Tiny rafts, dozens and hundreds of them, not much more than a few poles lashed together, bobbing about and covered with squawking black fishing birds. Sailing boats, not much bigger than the rafts, wove between them, deft and agile. And then there were the barges like the one where Berren dozed. Big and clumsy, lumbering against the current with a sail barely big enough to keep them moving.
Beyond all those, the far side of the river stretched out towards the horizon. It faded into a maze of mud- islands and channels and creeks and swamps that went on for days. Or so Master Sy had said. The only people who went in there, he said, were the most desperately wanted men with nowhere else to hide, and the thief-takers sent to catch them.
They stopped towards the end of the day at one of the riverside way stations. Master Sy waited while the lightermen made their boat secure. He bought them a flagon of ale each and then a gammon pie which he cut in half and split with Berren.
‘Ever been out of the city before, lad?’
Berren shook his head. The pie was a good one, with thick crusty pastry and big juicy chunks of ham. The sort of thing Master Hatchet would have bought his boys as a treat, except done properly, with soft meat instead of gristly bits and proper thick gravy instead of brown water.
‘I don’t come out here often,’ said the thief-taker. He was picking at his pie as though he didn’t really want it. And he was drinking. He finished one flagon and waved for another. ‘I’d like to go to Varr one day. Just to see the palace and the Kaveneth and the bridge they built over the river there. Or the City of Spires.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, his mind clearly somewhere else. ‘Never even got as far as Tarantor.’
‘Where we going tomorrow?’ asked Berren from behind a faceful of pie.
‘Bedlam’s Crossing. Kasmin bought his bottle of Malmsey from a trader in Bedlam’s Crossing. I know him.’
‘Bought his what?’
The start of a smile played around the corner of Master Sy’s mouth, but it didn’t get very far. ‘Wine, lad. The bottle of wine he had. I’ll teach you about wine one day. I’m afraid that’s something I know rather more about than is useful. ’ He sighed, picked up his beer and took another deep draft before staring at what was left. ‘Malmsey is a strong sweet wine, usually from the vineyards around Helhex. They don’t make very much so it’s quite rare. One of the first ships to be attacked in the harbour had ten thousand bottles in its hold and they all vanished. I knew they’d start to show up again one day.’ He shook his head. He’d still hardly touched his pie. Berren eyed it hungrily while the thief-taker drained his second flagon and waved over a third. Berren had never seen him drunk and had no idea what it would look like. Master Hatchet mostly liked to hit people. The thief-taker, Berren thought, would be one of those morose and moody drunks who got miserable and talked too much about stuff no one else cared about.
‘Was that man a friend of yours?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Which man, lad?’
‘The old bloke in the Barrow of Beer. I thought you’d kill him, what with him being a thief.’ Belatedly he remembered the look on Master Sy’s face as they’d come away from Kasmin’s tavern. Too much pie was making him bold. He tried to look shamefaced, ready for the rebuke, but it didn’t come. Master Sy simply looked sad again.
‘I didn’t kill you, did I?’ he asked, gently.
Berren bowed his head. ‘Sorry, master.’
‘Lad, what you saw when we met wasn’t something that happens every day. A thief-taker doesn’t fight. Not unless he has to, and even then, you don’t kill a man without a very good reason.’ The thief-taker took a long swallow from beer number three and smacked his lips. His face was starting to glisten. Berren didn’t know much about getting drunk himself, except for his one disaster in the Eight, but he’d learned how to spot it in other people. Drunks had always been his first bet for lifting a few pennies. The only trouble being that they often didn’t have any.
‘When you first met me in that alley, what you saw then is not a thief-taker’s life.’ Master Sy was starting to slur his words. Only very slightly, but enough to notice. ‘You can’t win every fight, lad, and you only have to lose one to be dead. No, you don’t fight unless you have no choice.’ He patted his chest, rattling the ringmail under his shirt. ‘Of course, I do try to make sure that any fight I’m in I’m going to win.’ He tried grinning again, but it didn’t really work.
‘I seen people go funny like that,’ Berren said. He was treading on dangerous ground and chose his words carefully. ‘Like he knew he was in big trouble the moment you came in. Seemed like you knew him pretty well, though. Like you were friends for a real long time.’
Master Sy took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Kasmin? Yes. I’ve known Kasmin since I was a boy, maybe since I was half your age. He was a soldier. He worked…’ The thief-taker frowned. ‘He helped my father from time to time. He was a brave man once. A strong one, too, and a leader. When the… When I was forced to leave my home, Kasmin came with me. I’d lost most of my family. I was a bit older than you, but not much. I had a younger brother to look after. And another…’ He stared at Berren long and hard. Stared right through him, off into some other place and time. ‘Yes, another brother, who looked a bit like you do now. We had lots of friends. Or people who said they were our friends. People who should have been. Kasmin came with us. He helped me for a while. When things were at their worst, he was always there.’ Master Sy smiled. ‘Truth is, he probably saved my life more than once and I never even knew anything about it. He was a good man, but the wandering broke him. He so wanted to go back home, and he could have, too. He had family, but that would have meant leaving us and abandoning his duty. Eventually we heard that they’d been killed, months later. Robbers. He always drank too much, Kasmin. One day he just vanished. Had enough. Walked out into the night and didn’t come back. Years later I washed up in Deephaven. I started thief-taking, and then one day there he was, on the wrong end of my sword. I was afraid for a moment, because I knew he knew how to fight. But he didn’t. He gave himself up to me; and for all the things he’d done for me and mine before he left us, I let him go. I even helped him a bit to buy the Barrow. It’s not the first time he’s fallen in with the wrong sort and I don’t suppose it’s going to be the last.’
Berren decided to try and push his luck one more time. ‘He called you a prince,’ he said, which wasn’t quite true, but close enough.
‘No he didn’t.’
‘Well he called you something like that.’ Yes, and it wasn’t the first time either.
Behind Master Sy’s eyes, the shutters had come down. Berren had gone too far; or else the thief-taker had realised that he’d said too much. Master Sy shook his head and took another swig of beer. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, lad. We used to call each other all sorts of things.’
Which might have been true, but certainly wasn’t the truth he’d been looking for. Something to remember for the next time he ever saw his master drunk, perhaps. But enough for now. Instead, Berren waved his fork at Master Sy’s plate.
‘Can I have your pie then?’ He put on his best grin, showing off his teeth. Master Sy didn’t smile though. He merely pushed the plate across the table.
‘Go ahead, lad. I think I should go to sleep. You’re in the stables, in the hayloft.’
‘Master? When I woke you up on the boat, you said something. I didn’t understand. What did you mean?’
