The King's assassin

‘Same ones, but Prince Syannis has turned them to our cause. Or bought them. Same difference, really.’ He shook his head. ‘Meridian must be desperate. Never mind the gold this must have cost him; if word ever reaches the courts of Brons and Caladir that someone is bringing in soldiers from Aria, there’s bound to be trouble. After all, if an upstart like Meridian can hire a few dozen, what’s to stop someone else hiring a few thousand. Or a few tens of thousands. The gods know there’s certainly enough of you over there.’ He chuckled. ‘So you and Talon’s brother — are you going to have a fight or how’s this going to end? You can’t keep looking at him like that and then not do anything about it, that’s for sure.’

‘I told you — he killed someone.’

‘Yes, you did. Your sword-monk. You loved her. He didn’t know. Harsh. Stop staring at him and do something about it. Say whatever needs to be said.’

‘He let me down.’ Berren stood up. Then he stopped. He still wasn’t sure whether he wanted to murder his old master or cry at his feet. Gods be damned, and he still kept seeing Tasahre, only now she was all muddled with the slave he’d whipped in Tethis and the old woman he’d killed, and he couldn’t see one without the others all piling into his thoughts. He pressed his fists to his head and screwed up his eyes. ‘I was a rubbish apprentice,’ he said. ‘All I wanted to do was learn how to fight. I couldn’t leave things be. Didn’t listen. Didn’t see how good I had it.’

He downed another cup of beer in one long gulp. ‘I’ve spent the best part of two years thinking about what Syannis did back in Deephaven. I wanted to kill him, slow and painful. Now? I don’t know. Some of the things I blamed him for were more my fault than they were his. Even. .’ He still couldn’t say Tasahre’s name without a pause to force it out. ‘Even what he did at the end, that was Syannis being what he was and fate placing her in his path. All she was to him was another enemy, another thing in his way. I can’t hate him for being evil or malicious because he wasn’t, but that doesn’t make everything right. Gods! Took me long enough to realise that, but when you’re a skag, you have a lot of time on your own to think about how you got there. I still hate him for throwing me aside, but maybe even that’s not fair.’

He refilled his cup again, thinking of the last time he’d seen Master Sy, standing on the edge of Radek’s ship, one foot over the rail, hand out, calling to him to run. ‘Thing is, the other thing you get to do as a skag is stare at death. I wanted to kill him and I wanted to loathe him, but in the end I couldn’t. I hate him for letting Radek matter more than I did. I despise him for killing Tasahre. I’m afraid of him for the madness that drives him. I never knew, until now, that I wouldn’t fly into a rage if I ever saw him. But we’re not done, him and me. He was the closest thing I ever had to a father, and I need him to hear it, and I need to hear it back.’ He raised his cup to the bemused-looking Tarn.

‘Well,’ said Tarn after a moment of silence. ‘I don’t think I really followed any of that. Just go. Say what needs to be said and get it done.’

Berren shrugged. ‘Have another beer with me, Tarn.’ Getting drunk seemed the best thing. He’d never told anyone except Talon what had happened in Deephaven, and Talon had listened politely but he hadn’t wanted to know, not most of it, not how it felt. When he’d been a skag, the sailors would only have laughed and jeered at him. But Tarn. . for some reason, Tarn needed to know. He filled both cups.

‘It’s all changed,’ grumbled Tarn. ‘This whole business with these slavers, that’s not what’s really happening at all. I don’t understand any of this any more. I thought Prince Syannis and Prince Talon had made their peace with Meridian.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I didn’t even know Radek was dead until you showed up. Or rather, I did, but I didn’t know how and I certainly didn’t think Talon or Syannis had had anything to do with it. Now Meridian’s hired two companies to hunt us, we’ve been suckered out here and they’re probably only a day away. The lancers were supposed to take us by surprise and cut us off from the sea and then the others would finish the job. For all I know there never were any slavers and the Duke of Forgenver’s in on it too.’ Tarn scratched his chin. ‘Hain said something else, something about Syannis seeing his future in the blade of a knife. Don’t think that made any more sense to Hain than it does to me. Sounds like more death-magery.’

Berren sat very still. I’ve seen that knife, he thought. He smiled wanly. ‘There are storms out in the deep ocean,’ he said, ‘terrible storms. They don’t move — they’re always in the same place — and to get from here to Aria, you have to pass through them. We did it three times. Always with other ships. Taiytakei ones, because they were the only ones who knew the way through, and we could only follow. They’re not like other storms. Waves and winds, yes, and they got worse and worse, but in the middle the sky went black. Real black. Night-black with no stars or moon or any light at all, even when it should have been the middle of the day. And the worst? There was a calm in there, once you reached the dark, a dead calm as though the sea was flat as a mirror and there was no wind at all, although with it being dark you couldn’t tell if the sea was still even there. Some of the sailors used to see things then, in the middle of that calm. Flashes of things. Flashes of the future they reckoned. But not me, I never saw anything.’

Tarn poured them both another cup. ‘Can we talk about something else? Women, maybe. Or. . I don’t know. I know some nice women. Big. .’ he held out his hands as if testing the weight of something.

Berren shook his head. That meant talking about Tasahre. ‘And then the dark would break and you’d be right back in the heart of the storm with its waves and the lashing wind again, and you’d think that you’d only been inside that calm for a heartbeat or two, but the sun had always moved hours.’ He shrugged. ‘I spent the last two years a skag. Not much else to talk about, not that you’d want to hear. Certainly not any women. Before that?’ He shrugged. ‘Not a good idea. Oh, and the lightning in the storms, just before the calm. It was purple. Unnatural.’ His head was buzzing from the beer now.

Tarn stretched his arms over his head. ‘Prince Syannis ever tell you about his sword-mistress? Shalari? They shared a bed more than once before Radek and Meridian and their mercenaries came to Tethis, or so I hear. She died in the fighting. Whispers say that Prince Syannis never forgave Radek for that.’

‘He was always a bit funny about women,’ muttered Berren. He laughed, the drink in his head making his thoughts fuzzy. ‘I thought this was all about losing his family and his kingdom and his birthright. On the whole that did seem enough.’ He laughed again. ‘Gods!’ Maybe Syannis would understand then. Maybe, if he’d lost someone of his own, he’d understand why Berren could never forgive him for killing Tasahre. ‘There’s one lady I can tell you about.’ He drained his cup again and grinned. ‘I can tell you about the lady that gave birth to me. The lady of Deephaven.’

The evening wore on. Boats scurried back and forth from ship to shore and men ran about their business around them. Berren talked about Deephaven and everything that had happened there, of the older, happier times before Tasahre and the warlock. By the time he was done, the sun had set and it was dark and Berren’s head was spinning and stuffed full of wool. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d told Tarn and what he hadn’t, but they were laughing and leaning against one another like two drunk old men.

‘I need a piss,’ slurred Tarn. He stumbled up the beach, ignoring the grumbles from the men around them already trying to sleep in their tents.

‘Me too.’ Berren followed. ‘Then I think I want to punch something.’

‘Find yourself a new woman.’ Tarn nodded sagely. ‘Clear all that old rubbish out.’ He lurched into a tree, staggered sideways and dropped his breeches. ‘Ahhh. Better! Sunfire! I think I need to go to sleep now. Did I have a tent somewhere? I don’t think I did. Bugger. And don’t punch Hain again. It’s not his fault he’s a prick.’

‘No, brother, no!’ A raised voice cut through the quiet of the woods. Tarn wobbled. He put his fingers to his lips and made an exaggerated gesture to Berren. ‘Shhh! What was that?’ The two of them stood still, swaying gently from side to side. Then, with the clumsy stealth of the drunk, they tiptoed between the trees towards the voices. As Berren drew closer, he recognised them. One was Talon. The other, the quiet one, was Master Sy.

Tarn leaned against a tree. He flashed Berren a huge grin and set about making a great show of listening. Berren simply stood where he was, swaying.

‘You know my opinion. Everything in our lives started to go wrong when father let that man into our kingdom.’ Talon.

‘He saved Aimes, remember.’

‘Did he really? And even if he did, so what? He saved the idiot! Do you ever stop to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t?’

There was a long pause. When Syannis spoke again, his voice was low and Berren only heard pieces of it. ‘I know. . hated. . but. . ever speak like that again.’

‘You can’t have an idiot for a king! It doesn’t work! But that aside, I’m talking about the here and now. I’m telling you that your warlock has been poking his nose around our homeland again. I thought he was gone, across