Warlock's shadow

‘Oi!’ Berren rounded on him. The boy must have been almost twice his size. He picked up Berren’s bowl off the table and tipped it over Berren’s head.

‘Oops,’ he said again. Then he looked at Berren. And? Berren knew that look. The What are you going to do about it, runt? look. None of the priests had seen it happen. The other novices were all staring, eyes a-glitter. They hated him, they always had.

‘Stupid!’ they sniggered. ‘Can’t even drink from a bowl.’

Berren’s face burned. This was what used to happen with Master Hatchet whenever a new boy was taken. He could see exactly where this was going. It was a challenge and it couldn’t go unanswered; the years with Hatchet had taught him that.

As they filed out of the eating hall, he held back. Sure enough, when he went out, as soon as they were out of sight of any priests, there was the boy who’d emptied his gruel over him. Oops, or whatever his name was. He had a couple of friends with him too, just in case, but Berren didn’t bother worrying about them. He threw himself straight at the big one, fists and feet flying. In the first second, he’d kicked the boy’s legs out from under him and stamped on his knee to keep him down. Then he was on the ground too, all over the other novice, punching and kicking him while his friends were suddenly nowhere to be seen. ‘Oops,’ he said.

When the priests arrived with Tasahre to pull him off, everyone assumed it was all his fault. He was the one still standing, after all. Tasahre made his apologies to the priests, promised she would punish him harshly, and then she took him back out into the practice yard in the dark.

‘Foolishness.’ She shook her head. ‘Words, not fists, Berren. That is the correct way.’

‘Then why do you exist?’ he asked.

‘The threat of a sword so deadly means there is no need for it to be drawn.’

‘Then that’s what I was doing,’ said Berren flatly. ‘Showing off my sword. And now I won’t ever have to do that again.’

She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes bored into him, searching for something, but her face gave him no clue as to what it was or whether she found it. ‘I’m not finished with you,’ she said in the end. ‘Show me again how you threw me.’

So he did, and they wrestled and threw each other in the dark until she understood exactly how he’d beaten her and could do what he’d done with an ease and grace and speed that he’d never have. By the time they finished, he was battered and bruised and full to the brim with the touch of her, the smell of her. Afterwards he lay awake at night in the dormitory he shared with the other boys, listening to their snores, thinking of her and thinking of other things too. He’d been in a place like this before and the memories were of horrors and hurt and fear. What if Master Sy was wrong? What if he was killed? What then? Stay and fight his corner and spend half his days learning stuff he didn’t care about, letters and gods? Or did he run?

The token around his neck felt cool against his skin. Run away from the sword-monks? From Tasahre?

As soon as he was sure everyone was asleep, he slipped out of the dormitory. Getting out of the temple was easy. Getting into Master Sy’s house was easy too, but the thief-taker wasn’t there. It was tempting to climb into his old bedding, with its familiar feel and its familiar smell and fall asleep, safe and away from the snores and the taunts, but that’s what a boy would do, not a man, and so he crept back out the way he’d come, all the way back to his temple bed. He’d try again tomorrow, and again the day after that, and again and again until he found Master Sy once more, over and over until the thief-taker gave in and understood he wasn’t a boy any more, that he was a thief-taker too and that whatever Master Sy was trying to do, he could help.

Tasahre was waiting for him in the morning. Oops, whoever he was, wasn’t forgotten. There was a long lecture from the priest in charge of discipline in the dormitory. Berren got a whipping in front of all the other novices while another priest delivered a short sermon on obedience and humility. The whipping wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared, a ritual humiliation more than anything else, a bit of pain but no real injury — he’d had worse beatings from Master Hatchet every week back before the thief-taker. After that, instead of lessons with Sterm and practice with the sword-monks, he spent the rest of the day with a grumpy old priest who growled at him and showed him around the parts of the temple where the other novices lived, fed him a dry crust and then gave him chores until his knees were raw from scrubbing floors. The old man hardly said a word. When Berren asked how long he would be punished, all he got was a clip round the ear.

‘Stupid boy,’ said the priest, and that was that. No one said anything more, but the meaning was clear. Train with sword-monks or scrub floors. Your choice.

That evening the other novices kept away. He saw them watching him. They eyed him up with fear and, here and there, a flicker of nervous interest. No one tipped food over him. When he finished eating, Tasahre was waiting for him again.

‘You missed training,’ she said.

He shrugged. She knew why.

‘The presence of the sword is enough now, is it?’

This time he bowed. Not that he had a sword, but if Master Sy had taught him anything at all, it was when to keep his mouth shut. For that night and the two nights that followed she took him to the practice yard after dark, after supper and prayers. Away from the other monks, she battered him, taking what Master Sy had taught him and making it even better. Something had changed between them. He was catching her, slowly, and now when she spoke to him, he heard a quiet respect that hadn’t been there before.

After four nights practising in the yard, Tasahre used what Berren had shown her to win two of her fights with the other monks. They looked bemused, uncertain of how they’d been beaten, while the elder dragon wore a frown deep enough to sink a ship.

‘The teacher can learn from the pupil,’ Tasahre said as she bowed, and Berren didn’t know which pupil she meant — him or her.

He slipped away again that night, back to Master Sy’s house. There was a lock on the thief-taker’s door this time, shiny and new, which made him pause. Master Sy had never bothered much with locks before. Locks mean keys and keys are always stolen and Master Sy had shown that he knew all about stealing keys. Better to keep with you everything you value. That was another of the thief-taker’s mantras, always trotted out with a twinge of bitterness; but here it was — a lock. Berren stood and stared at it. Then he climbed onto the handcart they’d taken to Wrecking Point, still resting against the kitchen wall, and pulled himself onto its low roof. From there it took all of a few seconds to wriggle open the catch on the shutters to his old room. He crawled inside and stood and listened. The house was silent, which meant the thief- taker wasn’t asleep in his bed. Master Sy snored like a wounded donkey.

He crept down the stairs. The thief-taker’s table was still covered in papers, dozens and dozens of them, spilling onto the floor, the papers they’d stolen from the Headsman’s strongbox in the House of Records. Berren picked them up and leafed through them again, holding them up to the little windows at the front of the thief-taker’s parlour, and to the moonlit sky beyond, peering at them. They were full of numbers and names and places, the same as before.

He frowned. They were inventories, he saw that now. The numbers talked about swords and arrows and spears. They weren’t about ships, either, they were talking about places. He knew some of the names, parts of Deephaven where the Emperor’s soldiers were barracked: The Old Fort, the Emperor’s Docks and places along the coast, Mirrormere and Bedlam’s Crossing. Torpreah. The City of Spires. There were other places whose names were dimly familiar and others he didn’t know at all.

The more he looked, the more they started to make sense. The lists made a map, a map of the imperial armies.

He sniffed the air and smelled a slight whiff of tallow. Someone had burned a candle here not long ago. Then he checked the kitchen, looking for the crumbs and the fruit peelings and stones and where Master Sy would spit them. They were there and they were fresh. The thief-taker had been here, and not long ago.

He put the papers back and returned to the window, peering outside and wondering what to do. The yard was empty. This time, he decided, he was going to wait. He’d stay here until Master Sy came home again. He made his way back up the stairs, slow and careful so as not to creak the steps. Maybe he’d doze the night away in his old room, waiting for his master.

The door to the thief-taker’s room was open. Berren stopped. It had been closed when he’d come down, he was sure of it. He couldn’t bring himself to go in, but couldn’t help but look either. Everything was there. The table,