Warlock's shadow

but for as long as you’re not telling me what it is that you know, it’s not mine. And that’s a bad place to be.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Tides ebb and tides flow. The Autarch rests in Torpreah, the Emperor still has an heir, armies have stayed in their castles and it seems there is to be no war after all, not this year; so our Overlord finally grows a spine and climbs off his fence. And so now I’m here, with the one and only man in this city who can command the priests of the sun, and at last we get to the truth.’

‘I told you everything I know, Master Kol. All of it.’

Kol snorted. He pulled back the shroud on the cart. Underneath was a body, someone who’d been dead and drying out for months.

‘I haven’t forgotten you and your master, Berren, but today I have my eyes on a different prize.’

It took Berren a moment to recognise to corpse, and even then, it was the clothes he recognised more than the dried peeling leathery face.

Master Velgian.

29

CURIOSITY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

He ran straight back to Tasahre, who was sitting at the edge of their fighting circle, legs crossed, eyes closed, with a smile on her face.

‘They’ve got Master Velgian’s body! They’re going to call his spirit and make him talk! Or something like that.’

‘Good.’ She unfolded her legs, stood up and tossed a waster at Berren. He caught it without thinking. ‘Now can we resume our practice?’

‘It’s Master Velgian! They’re going to bring him back from the dead!’ Practice? This was no time for practice! Berren hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Don’t you want to be there? Don’t you want to hear what he says?’

‘No.’ She came to him and lifted his arm so he was holding his waster out straight. Then she balanced her hourglass on the end of his blade and took her own position across the circle. She stared at him down the length of her sword. ‘Calling back the dead is … it is an unclean thing to do. A necessary evil perhaps, and it will be kind when this is done to give the assassin’s body to the sun at last. But no, I do not wish to witness such a deed.’

‘I do! I want to know who made him do it!’ Berren grinned. He couldn’t ask the priests of course — they wouldn’t tell him anything and he’d just get a telling-off for being nosey. Even following a few around trying to eavesdrop on his way back to Tasahre hadn’t helped.

‘To what end? What difference will it make?’ She was trying to sound severe but there was a twinkle in her eye that Berren had come to recognise. One that said we are more than just a teacher and her student. One that said they were friends.

‘You want to know too!’

For a moment, Tasahre’s sword wobbled, actually wobbled, and Tasahre’s sword never wobbled. It took Berren a moment to realise why. She was trying very hard not to laugh.

‘What?’

She shook her head and then she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. ‘Of course I do. But it is forbidden.’

‘Forbidden? Why?’

‘A sword-monk does not dabble in such things.’

They stared at one another. Berren glanced at the glass on his sword: five minutes left.

‘But shouldn’t you be there? I mean one of you? Sword-monks can smell a lie — that’s what they say!’

‘Yes, Berren, we can, as you very well know, but from the living, not from the dead.’ For a moment he thought he caught a slight stiffening in Tasahre’s face. She was always hard to read, but there was an air of unease to the way she stood.

Two minutes on the hourglass. Berren watched the sands trickle down. ‘I’m going to go and listen,’ he said.

‘They will not let you in.’

Which made him laugh. ‘I know more ways to get about this temple than the rest of you lot put together. I was raised a thief, Tasahre. There’s nowhere I can’t go.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘And here we are, teaching you swords too? I shall begin to wonder if that is wise if you continue to say such things.’

He shrugged and beamed. ‘I could say nothing. Wouldn’t make it any less true.’ One minute. ‘Tasahre?’

‘Berren?’

‘Come with me.’ Thirty seconds. His shoulder was starting to go, the tip of his waster just beginning to wobble. Behind Tasahre, the great gates to the temple dome were opening and there was Justicar Kol and his cart. Berren watched it roll slowly inside and the doors close again. The last grain of sand trickled through the hourglass. Berren didn’t move. After another minute, Tasahre gently lowered her own sword.

‘I cannot.’ She stepped smartly away. ‘Now! Guard!’

Berren lowered his waster. ‘You’ll have to catch me first!’ He dropped it and bolted across the yard, dodging around Tasahre and heading for the dome.

‘Berren!’ It took her a moment before she was after him, swift as the wind. He ignored her, pelting past the closing doors of the dome and round to the back where the bulk of the temple joined it, the dormitories and the teaching cloisters and the kitchens and the priests’ tower. He sprinted for the kitchen, up onto the roof of a low drying shed and then shimmied to the top of the teaching cloister. He smiled. Tasahre was right behind him. Somewhere under his racing feet, Sterm was teaching a class full of novices. Telling them all about some saint who simply didn’t matter any more, most likely.

‘Berren!’ Tasahre called him again. ‘Stop! You cannot!’

Oh yes I can! His smile spread through him, making him run even faster. He vaulted a chimney block and then hurled himself at the high roof of the dormitory, gripping the edge with his hands and swinging his legs up onto the tiles a whisker of a second before Tasahre could reach him. He paused for a moment and looked down at her. ‘Admit it — you can’t catch me!’

She jumped, a standing jump, high enough to reach the edge of the roof with her hands while the rest of her followed in one fluid movement. Berren dashed across the top of the sloping roof towards the dome. There was a walkway that ran around it, an easy climb from the dormitory. He vaulted up and ran to the little door that led into the inside, to a catwalk that ran high around the dome above the altar. No one ever guarded the temple rooftop.

At the door he skidded to a stop.

‘Berren! Don’t!’ But she wasn’t close enough to stop him. He opened the door and slipped inside, creeping now. Below him, the centre of the temple dome was filled with people, forty or fifty of them. The cart was empty now. There were soldiers, the Emperor’s men in their pale silver, carrying Velgian to the altar of the sun. Berren moved quickly and silently away from the door and then crouched to watch. There were shadows up here. If he was still, no one would see him, even if they thought to look up. He just had to be quiet, that was all.

‘Berren!’ Tasahre came through the door. She hissed at him but she didn’t shout; instead, she came quietly to crouch beside him and grabbed his arm, tugging him. ‘Come! You cannot be here! It is forbidden!’

‘Why?’

‘They will expel you! I cannot be here!’

‘Then go away!’ Berren jerked his arm away from her.

‘Berren!’ She was getting angry. He’d never seen that, not once in all the time he’d been with her. She grabbed his arm again.

‘Get off!’ Below, the soldiers had Velgian on the altar now. They stepped back, leaving space around the dead thief-taker. The Overlord in his golden robe was standing beside an old man in sunshine yellow, the Sunherald of Deephaven himself. The Emperor’s soldiers and the temple guardsmen eyed each other with twitching suspicion. But it wasn’t the Sunherald who stepped towards the body, it was a woman, dressed in the same brilliant yellow