was no other way for things to be.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do in Deephaven,’ said Berren quickly. ‘I did a favour for a royal prince once. I doubt he’ll remember and I lost the token he gave me when they took me onto the ship, but I reckon I’m not much use for anything except fighting now. Last I heard the empire was heading for another war. They’ll be wanting soldiers if they haven’t gone and had it without me.’ He wiped the rain away from his eyes. The water here was cold, not like Deephaven rain which mostly came as a blessed relief from the baking summer sun. He shivered. All he was wearing was a wool shirt. Tarn and Talon had thick leather coats.
‘I’d give that a lot of thinking,’ said Talon softly. ‘A soldier’s life can eat you from the inside. You’ve seen Syannis. I’d find something else if I were you. Something
Yeh, but what? What else could he do? He could read and write but not very well. He was still a dab hand at cutting a purse or picking a pocket, but that was a sure way to the mines in the end. He’d never learned a trade and who would take him now? And to do what? Bake bread? Make clothes? Till fields? He couldn’t, not after all he’d seen, not after all he’d done.
Master Sy, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to Deephaven anyway.
The air quietly changed. Talon and Tarn and the others were suddenly on edge. Berren looked up and saw the street was empty. And then, ahead, a gang of armed men emerged to block their path. When Berren looked over his shoulder there was another gang behind. He counted the numbers. Fourteen against six. Poor odds, and one of the men ahead was holding what looked like a ball of bright fire, a glass globe the size of a fist filled with brilliant swirling oranges and yellows. Berren had heard stories of such things, told through the nights at sea, of globes of glass made with exquisite care by the craftsmen of the far south, filled with fire by the High Mages of Brons and sold to the Taiytakei for the rockets that their ships carried to war. They were a myth, or so the sailors had said.
Slowly Tarn drew his sword. Talon put a calming hand on his shoulder.
‘Gentlemen!’ he called. ‘Can we in any way assist you?’
The man holding the ball of fire shook his head. ‘You can die,’ he said, and he tossed the globe. Time seemed to slow. Berren watched it arc towards them. His feet wouldn’t move; then someone shoved him in the back and he staggered forward and started to run. His hand reached for his sword only to remember that he didn’t have one. The ball of trapped fire flew past him, coming down towards the stones where he’d been standing, and then the world shook and roared. A shock of wind took him from behind and threw him onward, burning hot and blinding bright. Flames seared his back. He stumbled, almost fell, barely stayed on his feet while their attackers cringed and reeled and tried to shield their eyes. For a moment all he could hear was a rushing in his ears. He saw Tarn stagger and Talon stumble beside him, both with swords drawn, and then they tumbled into the waiting men, themselves half-blinded. Berren bounced into and back out of a doorway, still hardly able to stay on his feet. He screamed. Dodged around a flailing sword, passed the first soldier and then tripped on a loose stone and fell, rolling across the cobbles. The air smelled of burning, of burned skin and scorched hair. His back and legs felt as though they were on fire and maybe they were. He screamed again as he landed and then slid into a puddle. Cold water soaked him, a momentary relief. When he looked up, the street was filled with a haze of fog or smoke or steam. Talon and Tarn and two others ran past him. The other men gave chase, all of them running past Berren without giving him a second glance. They left two bodies groaning on the ground.
A moment later, more men with swords in their hands raced out of the steam, blinking and rubbing their eyes. Berren lay still and these ones ran straight past too. Warm air wafted over him, filled with the stink of burning. As the last one came by, Berren jumped at him and wrapped his arms around the man’s legs. The man went down like he’d been shot, flinging his arms out to catch himself but still cracking his face on the stones; he cried out and rolled onto his back, clutching his face, blood pouring from his nose. Berren sprang onto him, snarling, and bashed his head into the ground one more time. Then he grabbed the man’s sword, one of the long curved weapons he was so used to seeing on Deephaven’s snuffers. He stood for a moment, ready to use it, but stopped. The man was helpless now, unarmed. He was as tanned as Berren, not pale-skinned like most of the people who lived in Kalda.
He
‘Slug-leavings! Sheet-stain!’ Berren screamed at him. ‘What was that for? Why?’ Screaming took the edge off the pain.
The snuffer groaned and feebly rolled away. Berren left him to it and ran on down the street, but after a few dozen steps he staggered to a halt, gasping for breath. Gods, but his back hurt! And his shoulders too and the backs of his legs, a burning pain from the flames, soothed only a little by the rain. He looked up and down the street but Talon and the others were out of sight now. All he could see were the two bodies on the ground and the man whose sword he’d taken, slowly crawling away. Where would Talon go? The Bitch Queen, perhaps, although Berren wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go back in there, not on his own.
His breathing was all wrong, too quick and too shallow. Everything still moved so nothing was broken, but the pain was excruciating. He could feel his strength ebbing away. He staggered back up the hill to Talon’s house, the only place he could think to go, but when he got near he saw yet more armed men. They wore no colours to say who they were but their arms and armour were the same as the ones who’d attacked him in the street, and so was the colour of their skin. Deephaven snuffers. This time he was sure, although what a company from Aria was doing here across the ocean was anyone’s guess. He watched for a while in case the snuffers left and then slunk away. The docks then. That was the place to look. The pain was all over him now, weighing him down. He needed to get off his feet. To rest. Sleep.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back into the shadows of an alley. He yelped, and then another hand clamped across his mouth and Tarn’s voice was whispering in his ear: ‘Quiet!’
Tarn let go. Berren stood very still, panting and gasping at what felt like a hundred knives all flaying the skin off his shoulder where Tarn had held him.
‘Path of the Sun, look at you!’
Berren closed his eyes. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t hurt, that was too much to ask, but he was damned if he was going to let Tarn see how bad it was. He took a few deep breaths until he could trust himself to speak without whimpering. ‘What’s going on?’
Tarn shrugged. ‘You’ve seen as much as I have. As to who or why, we’re not short on choice. Campaign season’s about to start. Could be another company trying to cripple us. Could be anyone. And Talon’s got enemies all of his own; you know that. Turn round.’ Gently, Tarn twisted Berren around and looked him up and down. ‘That must hurt. You’ve been burned from top to toe.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what that soldier threw at us.’
‘Talon?’
‘He’s fine. We only lost one man. That fire didn’t do them any favours. Flash blinded them and we just cut through them and ran. They didn’t chase after us for long. Rain and a good thick coat and most of us got away lightly.’ Tarn glanced down. The back of his sword hand was bright red. ‘Going to hurt in the morning, that, but it’ll heal quick enough. You, though, you look bad.’ He smirked. ‘That’ll teach you go around wearing nothing but a shirt. Armour, boy, that’s what you need. Never be without it. Come on, I’ll take you down to the ship. Gods! I thought we’d lost you, but when there was no body I reckoned you’d come back here if you could still walk.’
Berren followed Tarn down the slope of the city once more, breathing hard. By the time they reached the docks and the waterfront, it was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There was a longboat waiting, filled with soldiers Berren didn’t recognise but whom Tarn seemed to know. Berren sat with his head in his hands while they rowed out into the river. The back of his head hurt too. Most of his hair was gone.
‘You’re lucky it was raining.’ As they turned towards one of the ships anchored in the Triere, Tarn pointed up to the flag fluttering atop the foremast, a diving silver hawk on a black field. ‘That’s us.’
‘You’ve got your own ship?’
Tarn chuckled. ‘You ask me, I’d have preferred one of those sleek Taki ones for crossing the ocean. They’re twice as fast but it turns out you can fit three times as much cargo into this flat-bellied monster and we’ve got a whole company to move.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘You have no idea how much work goes into just getting from one place to another. It’s all food and shelter and how good are the roads, and where will be able to get water and then more food again. Ugh! Talon’s not going to thank me for bringing you aboard but I can’t leave you running around
