he pulled them out and peered at the tiny words, carefully etched into the glass.
Berren almost dropped it.
A love potion? He almost burst out laughing. He looked at the last one.
A potion to cheat love. A potion to cheat death. And poison, a potion to cheat life. Underneath the potions were more notes, scrags of vellum, some rolled up, some crumpled into balls, all covered in the warlock’s spidery hand.
‘Berren! Stop!’ Tasahre was next to him. She laid a hand on his, gentle but firm. ‘Stop,’ she said again. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’
Carefully, Berren put the warlock’s potions back as he’d found them. He put the purse back too.
She had her hand on his, pulling him, still gentle. ‘Come away.’
‘I wanted to show you something,’ he said again.
‘Then please do so and let us be gone.’
‘As you wish.’ He reached out his other hand and cupped her face. ‘I know our paths were never meant to join, and it makes me want to raise my fists against the gods, but I won’t do that, because I know it would make you sad.’ They weren’t even his words. Just something Velgian had recited one evening while Master Sy and Kol and the other thief-takers had jeered at him. ‘You are the best thing in my life. I wish …’ The lump in his throat wouldn’t let him say any more.
Tasahre didn’t move. Her hand stayed on his. She didn’t push him away. He leaned forward and kissed her, softly on the lips, as the ladies from Reeper Hill would do. He kissed her lips and he kissed the corners of her mouth. His hand on her cheek slipped slowly to her neck.
‘Stop!’ She pushed him away, took a step back and shivered. The expression on her face was a strange one, full of confusion. He’d never seen her anything but certain. Angry, before she’d confronted the Sunbright, and sad afterwards. Scared as they’d fled from the warlock. But unsure? Never.
She sniffed hard and half-smiled. ‘Is that what you wanted to show me?’ There were tears in her eyes.
‘I wanted you to know,’ he said, with a quiver in his voice. ‘Just in case …’
There. He couldn’t finish that sentence or he’d be crying like a little boy.
‘In case …?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have.’
‘No.’ Now there was a tear on her cheek. ‘No, you shouldn’t.’
He’d ruined everything. He turned away.
‘Berren?’
‘Tasahre?’
She was standing there, arms limp at her sides, eyes glistening, half smiling, half full of sorrow.
‘I …’ She shook her head. ‘You are so …’ She looked down at her feet, then looked up again. ‘It is Abyss-Day, is it not?’
‘Yes.’
‘And tomorrow begins the Festival of Flames.’
‘Yes.’
‘And so tonight you will go to the Emperor’s Docks to look for your master, because you know that he knows that his enemy will be there, and you hope to find him. If you do, will you stop him?’
She knew? But of course, because he’d told her everything the Headsman had said after they’d fled from Kuy. She hadn’t forgotten, then. He swallowed hard. ‘I will try.’ So she knew he wasn’t coming back then. She’d see that, surely.
‘Then I hope I will not see you again.’ She took a deep breath.
‘What?’
‘Give me your hand.’
He held out his hand and she took it and pressed it against her cheek, just as he had done, and sighed and closed her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It means I hope you will succeed. I hope you will sway him and be away, both of you. It means I hope you will be safe. You know this cannot be.’
He nodded.
She lifted his hand gently away and kissed it. ‘But thank you for giving me this moment. Thank you for showing me that there is more to this monk than what you saw of me yesterday, that I am more than a sword of the sun.’ She laughed, shaking her head, and there were tears running down her face. ‘And now I will go, before one of us does something even more foolish. And you should go too. I would ask you to stay in the temple tonight, of all nights, but I know you won’t unless I tie you down, and I will not do that. Please, be safe Berren.’
With that, she turned and almost ran out of the door.
32
He stood, frozen to the spot for a time with a head so full that he couldn’t think. Outside, as he walked across the empty practice yard, he felt a lightness on his shoulders and a spring in his step. He’d go to Justicar Kol, that’s what he’d do. They’d go to the Emperor’s Docks while it was still light with a company of the Emperor’s men. Kol could take Radek away and Berren could sit there and wait for dark. That’s when Master Sy would come, and then he’d tell the thief-taker everything and no one would get murdered and just maybe they wouldn’t have flee the city and he’d get to come back to the temple for the last week before the Festival of Flames ended and Tasahre sailed away, and that was enough time that anything could happen, right?
The thought of his hand on Tasahre’s cheek made him shiver as he walked past the temple guard, out through the gates. Even so early in the morning, the city was getting ready for the summer festival. The days were at their longest, the nights hot and humid and short. He crossed Deephaven Square, still quiet at this hour, and went down the Avenue of the Sun to Four Winds Square which was anything but. He smiled to himself. It seemed like almost forever since he’d been out in the city crowds. They felt like an old and loved shirt, easily slipped on and immediately comfortable. For no better reason than he could, he made a game of it, pretending there was a whole militia gang after him. He zigged and zagged his way around the square. Everything felt so
He crossed in front of the courthouse and turned down the street that ran beside it, past the fountain and into The Eight. He stood on the threshold and savoured the familiar smells — good strong beer, pipeweed, damp wood, earth and the ivy. For a moment he felt a pang of sadness. The Eight was a familiar place. Now he was here, he missed it. It had always felt safe.
It was also empty. Thief-takers, he reminded himself, were night people and it wasn’t even mid-morning. Although it
He breathed a sigh of exasperation. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. If Kol was looking for the thief-taker then there’d be gold on his head by now and there might be a crown on Berren’s as well. Finding the justicar was one thing, but running into one of the thief-takers he barely knew, maybe that was another. He tried to think. He had no idea at all where Justicar Kol lived and the courts, where he might have asked, were closed on Abyss-Day. He wandered aimlessly down through the backside of the Courts District, skirting the edge of the Maze until he reached the sea-docks, right down the end by the Reeper Gate where the harbour-masters lived beside their House
