sun, to know this, but to know is but a scratch. To understand, yes, to understand, now that is the heart beneath. What priests would exalt, I shall call the Useless Part, the one that departs for far-off ideals, for the Sun or the Moon or the Stars. Or Xibaiya or elsewhere. Delights to taste some other day. What remains we shall call the Useful Part. Mindless thoughtless fodder for the living, but useful, yes, for they are the energy we draw on to work the tiny miracles that fill our lives, consumed and eaten. But what if one were to hold its form and keep its empty aimless hunger? What shall we call such a creature? Dangerous, I name it, and most potent ally too. Ephemeral pet-things, but while they remain they hunger for a life they cannot have, and they will fight to own a new coat of flesh. Men, sometimes, lifeless although they still live. Walking the streets with empty faces as though their spirits have long departed but who have yet to understand that they are dead. Or who lie still and cannot be roused yet do not pass away. In the murky places of this wretched land you will find such as these. Or strong men filled with woes they cannot explain. The housewife sapped of energy by a mystery. Crippled souls who seem as though they must fight a constant battle merely to live, and so, indeed, they do. Now you will know the cure for both. Watch carefully, for I will show you a draught to cast aside these usurpers. They will be your friends, your allies, your servants and your soldiers. One day they will crush worlds for you, little girl.
Suddenly he turned and seemed to stare straight at Berren. Listening are you, little ungrateful Berren-piece? Watching us now? Because it is not done between us, yet here I sense your fate is close to mine once more. You will have a want for this one too, I feel it. I see pain in our futures. Savour it! Relish it! Let it soak you through your skin and run ebullient through your veins, for if you hear these words, you have regained that which I took and I have given you a gift by it.
He saw it all, with absolute clarity. Everything Kuy had done, every ingredient, every motion and every method. And he understood that these things Kuy described, they were the terrors he’d seen back among the slavers, the same nightmares that Kuy had called to him as he’d battled Tasahre. Most of all, he understood what lay inside Gelisya’s teaching stone. It was him. It was the piece of his soul that Kuy had taken in the House of Cats and Gulls. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’
Talon frowned. ‘You do what?’
‘I do want it back.’
Gelisya sniffed. ‘Well then you have to do it.’
‘Do what?’ Talon was close to breaking.
Berren looked him in the eye. ‘She’s right. I do know how to save Tarn.’
THE KINDNESSES OF WARLOCKS Three days later, the Fighting Hawks weighed anchor off the city of Tethis. Berren, Talon and half a dozen other mercenaries climbed down into a longboat. Tarn was lowered. Talon placed his little princess cousin carefully on his lap and the soldiers began to row. Before they were halfway to the shore, the ship was on its way back out to sea.
‘How long will this take?’ asked Talon.
In the days they’d been at sea, Tarn had wasted away. He was still alive, but for how much longer? Talon asked the same question at least once every day and Berren always gave the same answer, the only one he could: ‘I don’t know.’ He wished that he hadn’t said anything about it now; most of the time, he even wished that Gelisya had never given him the stone. He could feel how it changed him, how it made him whole and filled the tiny missing piece that had had been cut away in Deephaven. Yet at the same time what good ever came of a warlock’s gift? What would Kuy take from him now? And how had the warlock known he would be there, in that place at that particular time? Had he known it even back in Deephaven? The thought made him shiver. If Saffran Kuy could see so much of the future then what did that mean? How did you fight a man who knew how everything would end before it even started? Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress! Kuy even knew how he was going to die. I saw my apprentice kill me. That had been the golden- hafted knife, the one that cut souls. That was what showed him these things. The only thing a man could do, Berren thought, was to keep well away, and he’d have been more than happy with that. But he had to find Master Sy first. Had to, for Tasahre and her memory. And now he had to save Tarn.
‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘All I know is that Saffran Kuy is making all of this happen. We’re being moved about like pieces in a game of Hak-Kanad.’
Talon shook his head and frowned. He didn’t want to hear. And who would? What did you do with knowledge like that except weep?
Word had spread among the other mercenaries that Berren and the warlock at the camp had known each other once. The soldiers looked at him differently now, with suspicion and mistrust. More memories had begun to surface from the stone too. Memories of other potions, of Kuy brewing them, explaining carefully and clearly exactly what he was doing as if to a dullard apprentice. Sometimes the room around Kuy was empty, sometimes Gelisya was there, sometimes another boy — the boy from the slaver camp. Always Kuy spoke to his little Berren-piece. Mostly what he made were cures for this, that or the other; but there were other potions, and even knowing the ones that seemed harmless left Berren with a sense of dread. There would be a price for this, he was sure, a price heavier than he cared to imagine.
But he was going to save Tarn.
He shuddered. For that potion he didn’t even know what half the ingredients did; all he could remember were the names. In Deephaven he might have known how to find some of them, but here he had no idea where to even begin; then, if he did manage to lay his hands on everything, how would he know if he’d made the potion properly? He wouldn’t. For all he knew, he’d end up feeding Tarn poison. How long would it take to work? What else might it do? What other marks might it leave? He didn’t know anything except that it would cast the hungry spirit out, and that Saffran Kuy was leading him by the hand, step by cursed step. He was sinking inexorably into deep black water. Talon was right. He should have gone back home.
But still, he was going to save Tarn.
They reached the shore and men and women stopped to stare. The waterfront constables huddled together, wondering what to do. Talon tossed a purse full of money at Berren.
‘At least you can make yourself useful. When you’re done, I’ll see to it that you’re expected at the castle. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.’
Berren snatched the purse out of the air and darted away into the thick of the town. Out of sight of Talon, he slowed to a walk and soaked in the air of the place. For once he was glad to see the back of the others. Princess Gelisya haunted him. She made him think of Saffran Kuy and Tarn and potions; or else she made him think of Radek, and that made him think of Deephaven and Tasahre and the sun-temple and Master Sy. And then he’d be thinking of all these things and Gelisya would turn and look at him with her child’s face and her black hair and her wide unblinking eyes that seemed weary with knowledge. Talon took it for granted that Saffran Kuy had abducted her for his own ends, but Berren wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t shake the notion that Gelisya had been more a willing apprentice than a helpless hostage. A bit of both, perhaps?
He stopped in the street and looked around and, for a moment, forgot about everything else. He’d been here before! Not actually into the city, but as far as the harbour. When he’d been a skag, and there’d been some sort of drink that the sailors had found when they’d gone ashore. Califrax, or something like that. He’d heard it for weeks. It’s Califraxed. He was Califraxed. The word had stuck to the ship like a limpet.
He stopped sailors in the street and asked what it was and his questions led him to a sleazy sailors’ hole, the Mermaid, a bit like the Bitch Queen of Kalda except a tenth of its size. The inside was gloomy, but made up for it through a vicious assault on all his other senses. Berren pushed his way through the crowd around the door. Lanterns were burning and the windows, such as they were, had heavy curtains drawn across them and a layer of black grime on their sills. The sun outside was high in the sky but inside it might just as easily have been midnight. As he moved through the crowd, he was bumped and battered and shouted over and occasionally splashed by
