room and a pie, just as he had at the river way station. Berren waited, fidgeting impatiently, slowly getting more and more wound up as the thief-taker chatted to the barkeep about this and that and nothing much. By the time their pie came out with a pair of plates, he was almost hopping from one foot to the other to contain himself.
‘Well?’ asked Master Sy as he sat down and cut himself a slice. ‘What is it?’ The smell was delicious. For a moment, Berren hesitated, torn between his desire for food and his curiosity. Too many years of being hungry meant that the pie won, but as soon as he’d shovelled a few mouthfuls down his throat, he gave the thief-taker an accusing look.
‘We haven’t done anything!’ He said angrily. ‘How can we have finished? We haven’t taken any thieves! We came all the way down the river and for what? For a quick chat with a bloke who sells wine? And that’s it?’ He shook his head. ‘We haven’t done anything!’ he said again.
Master Sy shrugged. ‘We got a name. That’s all we need.’
‘But what if the fat wine-man was lying?’
‘He wasn’t.’
Berren banged his knife on the table in frustration. ‘But how do you know? People lie all the time, and that’s just ordinary people. When it comes to thieves, well…’
For a moment, the thief-taker paused in his eating and glared. ‘Manners, boy,’ he hissed. Berren bowed his head.
‘Sorry, master.’
‘Better.’
‘But I don’t understand. All we did was wander around the city and talk to a few people and now suddenly we’re done. Done with what? I don’t even know!’
‘We’ve found the thieves we were looking for, that’s what we’ve done.’ Then Master Sy made a face. ‘No, we’ve found the thieves that Justicar Kol will pay us for. That’s more the truth of it. Do you understand the difference?’
Berren grunted, not understanding the difference at all. ‘So we’re looking for someone else?’
Master Sy grinned. The sort of toothy devouring grin that he’d given the wine-seller. ‘Yes, we most certainly are. Our friend the Justicar is looking for pirates. He wants them to stop, but what he wants even more is to have a gang of men he can put in chains and show off to his lords and masters before he bundles them into a barge and ships them away to the mines. Kol pays in gold, so our first job is to give him what he wants. Now the Bloody Dag is exactly the right sort to put a gang of thugs together and have a go at a bit of piracy, and I don’t doubt he’s our man. But someone’s telling him what ships to raid and we still don’t know how he’s moving his gang across the city. Justicar Kol doesn’t care about those things and he won’t pay us to find them out, but a good thief-taker needs to know.’ Master Sy smiled. ‘It’s a long road, lad, and you’re right at the start of it. But yes, wandering around the city and talking to people is largely what we do. We ask questions. The skill is asking the right questions in the right places. Every time a ship was attacked, I took a list of what had been taken from one of the harbour-masters. I went through that list and found a few things that would be easy to find if they started showing up in the city markets. Then I looked for them. It’s taken the best part of three months, but one of them was bound to show up sooner or later. You might think the city’s so large, how could you ever look for anything? Well, the trick there, lad, is that you don’t. You tell a few people you know who move wines through the city that you’re interested in a certain vintage of Malmsey and you’ll pay in silver to know who’s got some, and they do the looking for you. Then you wait. You wait and you wait and to pass the time, maybe you take on an apprentice, and then finally one of them comes back to you and says yes, they’ve found what you’re looking for, and your old friend Kasmin has it, of all people. So you give them a shiny silver crown, or maybe a gold emperor, and after that it’s easy. You’ve seen it for yourself.’ He shrugged again. ‘It’s not so hard. You just have to know people. After we’ve given Justicar Kol what he wants, we’ll find out all the other people who’ve had a part in this. We don’t take them though, not when there’s no coin in it. We just find out who they are for next time, and make our work just a little bit easier when that next time comes around.’ He followed Berren’s gaze. ‘And no,’ he said, ‘this time you can’t have my pie.’ Then he grinned and passed Berren a few coins. ‘Go on. Get us another one. We’re celebrating, after all.’
22
COURTING DANGER
‘No.’ The justicar shook his head. ‘My authority stops at the water’s edge. I can’t do anything with this. You’re the thief-taker. You want your money, you go and get him.’ They’d been in the Eight Pillars of Smoke for half an hour. The Justicar had listened politely enough to the thief-taker and then for twenty minutes he’d talked about other things, mostly about the penny increase in grain tax recently announced by the Overlord and the likely trouble that would bring. For all that time, he’d pointedly ignored Berren’s presence. Now, though, now that he’d finally returned to the subject that had brought them together, his eyes settled on Berren for the first time. ‘And I believe I instructed you not to bring your boy into my presence again.’
Master Sy’s face didn’t change, but Berren heard a rumble of distant angry thunder in his master’s voice. ‘The boy needs to learn. Where I go, he goes.’
‘Well then he must be going to Siltside.’ The Justicar smiled and then yawned. ‘I’m sure that will be an enlightening experience for him.’
‘I don’t do my work across the river,’ said Master Sy. He still sounded amiable enough, but Berren knew him better. Inside he cringed. Most likely, he was the one who was going to feel the worst of Master Sy’s wrath, simply because he was there.
‘Well neither do I. The difference is that you make a choice, while I am bound by imperial law. I’ll have boats and a few dozen good men at the ready first thing in the morning. At dawn, if you like.’
‘And who’s going to lead your men, Justicar? It had better be someone I know.’
‘Oh well, that it most certainly is. You, Syannis. You’re going to lead them.’
‘I’m a thief-taker, not a soldier.’
The Justicar snorted like a pig. ‘And I am simply a trivial functionary voicing the emperor’s will, communicated directly into my thoughts by a gang of eunuch mages in Varr who have nothing better to do with their time.’ He spat. ‘Pull the other one, Syannis. What are you after? More gold?’ He reached into his robes and fiddled there for a few seconds. When his hand emerged again, it was holding a small purse. He opened it up and counted out five golden emperors. ‘There. In addition to our agreed price. Which you only get if you bring me back this Bloody Dag fellow alive. The guild would like to torture him and then parade him in public up on The Peak. It would help a lot if you could bring back some of their missing merchandise too.’ He showed his teeth. ‘You know. So that they can be sure you aren’t just leading them in circles.’
The thief-taker ran his fingers over the coins. He picked them up and moved them around the palm of his hand. ‘Five emperors for a day’s work? I suppose that’s a reasonable offer.’ Then he glanced at Berren. ‘Then there’s the boy, too.’
The Justicar blinked. For a few seconds, he only stared at Master Sy. Then his jaw dropped. He started to stutter. ‘You… You… You must be out of your mind! For…’ He glared at Berren. ‘You want me to pay for him?’
‘I believe the entitlement for an apprentice is two coins for every ten to his master. That’s the guild’s valuation, Kol, not mine. Imperial law, just like you said, and I wouldn’t want to cross the guild. Would you?’
By now the top of the Justicar’s head was bright red. Shaking, his fingers dipped into his purse and drew out another golden emperor. ‘I’ll not forget this,’ he hissed.
‘Oh tosh.’ Master Sy snatched up the last coin. ‘I could have held out for ten emperors and you’d have paid me. You got a bargain today, Kol, and you know it.’ He rose. ‘Good day, Justicar.’
Outside, the thief-taker flipped one of the gold coins at Berren. ‘There. You earned your first emperor. Go and enjoy yourself, lad. I’ll not need you tomorrow.’
‘But…’
Master Sy wagged a finger at Berren. ‘No, lad. This is dangerous work now. Siltside isn’t Bedlam’s Crossing, and I’ll wager you your one emperor against all five of mine that Kol will pick the most brutal men he’s got for this. Most likely they’ll run riot. There’s going to be knives and clubs and swords and you don’t know the first thing about fighting. Not for real.’
