wriggled back and forth so he could either see the top of Master Sy’s head again, or an occasional glimpse of the Headsman, sprawled against the wall. All he saw of the witch-doctor was a fleeting shadow.
The Headsman spat. ‘Get on with it, bastard. You won’t get out of here alive! Every snuffer here is mine. And even if you kill me, Radek is coming. When he does, it’ll be the end of you!’
The thief-taker spat right back at him. ‘Yes, I know Radek is coming. I delight in knowing that. In fact, the only reason I waited so long for this was to make sure, certain beyond any possible doubt, that Radek
A harsh laugh. ‘Kasmin was a thief and a liar.’
‘He was a fine man once.’ Master Sy’s voice was flat.
‘He was a killer and a drunkard. Putting him down was a mercy. Do you want to know how we found him?’
Everything went silent. Berren listened to his heart, pounding so hard it seemed that everyone must hear it. Then a crash shook the stables. The door flew open, kicked almost off its hinges by some heavy boot. Berren wriggled frantically, trying to see. Master Sy was moving. At least three more people had come in. More than that, Berren couldn’t tell.
‘The warlock!’ a new voice called. ‘Get the-’ There was a crash. The lamplight died. Steel rang on steel. Berren heard a gasp, a shout, abruptly cut short, and then a screaming that went on and on, a screaming the likes of which he’d never heard. It was a keening, wailing cry of anguish and terror and dread and it ran through Berren and pinned him to the floor. Other noises pierced it: a crash, another crash, a shout, the smash of something thrown against a wall. But over the top, the constant howl held Berren fast. It took him a moment to realise that the noise was even human. It was the scream of something worse than death. He clamped his hands over his ears but even that didn’t help.
He ought to run. He could slip back out to the roof and be away. No one would possibly hear him now. Yet he couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe.
As suddenly as it had started, the chaos from below came to an end. There was no more crashing, no more shouting. The flickering light of a candle appeared.
‘Men will come now,’ breathed the whispering voice. ‘Soon and fast.’
‘All right, Kuy,’ said Master Sy. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
Berren heard sobbing.
‘You see, in the end, you fat feeble prick, I don’t care why you were here. I don’t care why you came. I don’t care what you’ve got in your ship dressed up as crates of black tea. I don’t care who or what or why or what war you’re trying to start and I don’t care what you think you could offer me to leave you be. You took my life, you murdering shit.’
The Headsman’s voice, when he spoke, was tight with pain. ‘A pox on you, bastard! You say you’re a godly man and you serve a thing like
‘I serve my kingdom,’ answered the thief-taker evenly. He punched the Headsman in the face, knocking him out of Berren’s view. The Headsman lapsed into sobbing whines. Berren couldn’t see either of their faces.
‘I’ll give you anything I have.’
‘No, no. Gods! It’s too late for
‘Quickly, Syannis!’ hissed the witch-doctor from the House of Cats and Gulls.
‘I know about Radek! He’s coming! He’s …’
The Headsman said no more. His last sound was a punctured sigh. Then there came a heavy thud. Try as he might, Berren couldn’t find a crack in the floor wide enough to let him see what had happened.
‘I know, I know,’ said Master Sy softly. ‘He’s been looking for me for a long time, and now word is on its way to him that I’m here. We’ll hear all about it later, won’t we now.’ Wet fleshy sounds floated up through the floor, mixed with the sort of crunching Berren was used to hearing from dogs when they were chewing on a bone. Very slowly, he eased himself to where there was a slightly bigger crack in the floor.
Master Sy was hacking through the Headsman’s neck with his sword.
Berren’s heart nearly flew out of his chest. He rolled away and stared at the ceiling and clamped a hand over his mouth, partly to stop himself from gasping and partly to stop himself from being sick. He lay very still, wishing he was invisible. Kasmin had been decent, Master Sy was right enough about that. He’d saved Berren’s life once, back when Jerrin One-Thumb had been about. He’d become something of a gruff-but-kindly uncle and Berren wouldn’t shed a single tear for the man who’d killed him. But still, hacking a man’s head off? Why?
When it was done, Berren thought he heard the thief-taker and the witch-doctor, slipping away. He couldn’t be sure. His ears were still filled with the terrible sound of Master Sy’s sword slicing at the man’s flesh. For a long time he lay where he was, flat on his back, not daring to move. What if Master Sy hadn’t gone anywhere? What if he was simply lurking downstairs in the darkness? What if the witch-doctor was still there, waiting for him?
There were bodies in the room downstairs for sure. He didn’t know how many, but more than one.
No, he needed to move, to get away, and as if to prove it, a gang of snuffers from the Two Cranes burst in, six or seven of them with lanterns from the inn.
‘Holy Kelm!’
‘Khrozus’ Blood!’
He couldn’t know what they were seeing, but he could imagine it. Three dead men and a fourth with his head missing, blood everywhere.
‘Sun and Moon!’
‘Well don’t just stand there, you onion-eyed oaf! Go and get someone!’
‘Who?’
‘Gods! I don’t know! Everyone! Don’t touch anything!’
The snuffers moved back outside. As quietly as he could, Berren tip-toed back to the window. He slipped out and closed the shutters behind him and lay quiet and still on the stable roof. The little yard behind the inn had half a dozen snuffers in it now. He didn’t dare move.
A few seconds later, they found the bodies of the two men who’d been guarding the back gate, the ones Master Sy had paid off to let him in. That was enough. They ran back inside, filling the night with cries of murder and alarm. Berren waited until they were gone, then jumped down into the yard, bolted for the open gate, and fled into the night as fast as he could.
23
Berren slipped across the city, silent and unseen, back into the temple and crept to his bed. He lay there with his arms wrapped around his head, trying to cast out the sounds so that he could sleep; except, even when he did sleep, they came back in his dreams. That was worse. His imagination provided what his eyes couldn’t. He saw himself watching Master Sy split the Headsman’s head from his shoulders. In his dreams, the Headsman was never quite dead. His tongue lolled, his eyes rolled and strange noises escaped his lips. As his head fell from his neck, some last word guttered from his throat, so bent and broken that Berren couldn’t understand what it was, no matter how many times he heard it. He woke up, sweating, his rough woollen blanket twisted around him.
No, not always so calm. Underneath the surface was a rage like no other. Berren had seen it before. He’d seen more than a dozen men die on the end of his master’s blade, and the thief-taker wasn’t shy to use it once his ire was raised. But Master Sy had never chopped a man’s head off his shoulders before. It had been so … messy, that was the thing. Not a clean single stroke like an executioner, but hacking over and over, like a butcher with a
