The King's assassin

The summer days were long and hot, the evenings and the nights pleasantly warm and the days started early. They rode their mules back to the roadside as the sun rose and then watched and waited until the first carts appeared on their way to the Tethis markets. Berren and Hain and Syannis sidled in among the traffic and settled alongside a couple of old farmhands driving a wagon full of hay. The men were surly, but they soon found their tongues when Hain offered to share his breakfast with them, and quickly got to chatting about the weather and their crops. Syannis let Hain do the talking. Berren’s mind wandered. Coming here had seemed like a fine enough idea when he hadn’t actually given it much thought, but now it was making him nervous. People in the castle would remember his face — the bondswoman, the two soldiers who’d barred his way, Princess Gelisya — and besides, Tethis was home to the soap-maker, Vallas, Saffran’s brother.

As they came close to the town, two soldiers on horseback blocked the road ahead of them, stopping each cart in turn. When the wagon reached them, they poked their swords into the hay and took a good long look at Syannis and Berren.

‘Business in Tethis?’

‘Hay for them horses of yours,’ grumbled one of the men on the wagon.

Hain smiled and patted the axe on his belt. ‘New edges for me and my brothers,’ he said. The soldiers muttered to each other, shook their heads and waved them on.

‘Look at their colours,’ murmured Syannis. ‘The Mountain Panther. That tells you something in itself.’

‘It does?’ Berren shrugged.

‘That Meridian has money,’ said Hain.

They rode on until they reached the side of the Tethis valley opposite the castle. For a few minutes they stopped, but from there the castle was difficult to see.

‘Can’t stay here staring,’ muttered Syannis. ‘People will notice.’

‘Another reason to come at the place through the hills,’ said Berren.

‘Or from the south instead of the north. Come on.’

The thief-taker led the way now. They reached the market where Berren had searched for what he’d needed to save Tarn. Instead of crossing the river bridge to the castle road, the thief-taker paused by the street down to the sea, towards the ships and the docks and the fishermen.

‘A moment, Berren, if you please.’

Syannis and Hain left him there, holding the mules. Berren followed the progress of the street with his eyes. He’d walked it that day, all of it. It ran all the way down to the sea, past the Mermaid, around the bulk of the harbour to a shingle beach covered with nets hung up in ranks to dry. Somewhere down there was the soap-maker, Vallas Kuy. Berren’s skin prickled. The stink of fish wafted up on the sea breeze. Gulls squawked and circled overhead. As soon as he looked for them, Berren started to see cats, here and there, hiding in shadows and nooks and crannies. He felt them watching him. His sword hand itched, but today he was a farmer and so he had nothing to grasp. He could almost feel the presence of the warlock.

It started to rain, a light warm summer rain that reminded him of Deephaven. Dark clouds flitted back and forth across the sun. Berren looked out at the sea and the waves. I can work on a ship, he thought. I could go anywhere. I could go home. What’s to stop me? He’d miss Tarn maybe. He wouldn’t miss him much, though. Not enough to stay.

But go? Go where?

Syannis came back and he was on his own. ‘Change of plan,’ he said. ‘Hain can go back and get our stuff. I’m coming with you.’

Berren blinked. What? ‘But won’t they recognise you?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. It’s been a very long time.’ He bared his teeth. ‘And you know what? I can’t resist it. The temptation is too much.’ He met Berren eye to eye for a moment, and there once more was the old thief-taker. ‘Like walking the edge of a sword blade, eh? And what better place to say whatever needs to be said about Radek and your dead sword-monk than in the midst of our enemies, digging their privies?’

Syannis was mad. Utterly mad. Berren couldn’t help himself — he started to laugh. ‘You know I might just push you into one and bury you,’ he said, and he meant it too.

‘Yes,’ the thief-taker’s face gleamed, ‘I know you might try.’

They led their mules from the market square, over the bridge and up the other side of the river valley and then back along the top of the cliffs. The open ground within the castle walls and palisades was filled with tents and makeshift huts and soldiers now. Even the castle itself had changed since Berren and Talon had come by some two months before. The buildings had been made gaudy with a riot of coloured paint and were festooned with flags and banners, as though some fading rainbow had fallen out of the sky and spilled its guts everywhere. As their mules picked a path between the tents, Berren spotted three different uniforms among the soldiers. He’d seen the castle soldiers before, the king’s guard, but now there were also soldiers who looked like the two horsemen they’d met on the road, and then there were soldiers in polished silver and bright green with the strange double-headed pikes he remembered from Deephaven and Radek’s ship.

They found a sergeant from one of the mercenary companies and Syannis begged for work. The castle was full. Berren could feel the tension in the air, too many men with too many swords, all pressed together with nothing much to do. The sergeant promised them a penny and a supper and set them to work. They filled old privies and dug new ones, cleaned boots, polished armour and stayed as far from the castle as it was possible to be. Berren looked up from time to time, but he never saw any sign of Gelisya or her bonds-maid, nor even Meridian or Prince Aimes or any of the rest of the court. The work was dull and dirty, but after years of being a ship’s skag, he bore it easily enough. Simple hard work suited him. It let him empty his head, or it would have if Syannis hadn’t been right there beside him. But Syannis was there, and Berren didn’t know where to start.

‘Stealing your half-brother sounds like a stupid idea,’ he said at last, when he couldn’t think of anything else. ‘If you can get that close to him, you should just kill Meridian.’ Come the evening, he thought he might just walk away and head back down to the docks and take up being a seaman again. Sail somewhere far away. Anywhere, really.

‘And how is that any better?’ whispered Syannis.

‘You kill a man, he doesn’t shout out, call for guards, raise the alarm, kick and struggle and scream. That’s how.’

Syannis snorted. ‘You sound like me. Well then maybe we will, but we can’t kill Aimes. You know the only reason I took you was because you looked like him. Nothing else. I didn’t want an apprentice. But there you were, my little brother, standing right in front of me, and this time I could actually do something. Later. . well, later there were other reasons. You weren’t such a bad apprentice. Mostly.’

He is Aimes. Berren remembered that from the woods by the beach, the night after the battle against the slavers. Master Sy had meant something more than skin-deep. Berren couldn’t imagine what, but the thought made the hairs on his arms prickle. ‘This brother of yours, he’s some sort of idiot, right?’ He watched carefully as a cloud crossed the thief-taker’s face.

‘He was after he got kicked in the head by a horse.’ Syannis sat down and wiped the sweat off his brow and took a sip of water, fresh from the river outside. In Deephaven the river stank. Master Sy had sent Berren two miles every day, along the riverside to Sweetwater where the river was clean, but most people drank beer or weak wine. Here, though, they kept their rivers so you could drink from them.

Syannis passed the water skin to Berren. ‘Talon and I are both bastards. Aimes was the true heir to Tethis. When Radek and Meridian came and our father was killed, Talon and I fled but I left Aimes behind. I just couldn’t get to him. Everyone knew there was something wrong with him and maybe that’s what saved him. Anyway, they didn’t kill Aimes, even though they tried hard enough to get rid of me and Talon.’ He leaned closer. ‘Meridian declared Aimes king and then promptly sat on the throne and called himself regent. I suppose it gives him more of an air of authority in the kingdom. Meridian rules but strictly it’s Aimes who wears the crown.’ The thief-taker pursed his lips. ‘He’d be a few years older than you. To look at him, he’s in perfect health. They say he’s a good rider and would probably be handy with a sword if he had the first idea what it was for. It’s like something inside him is missing.’

‘Something missing?’ Berren almost choked. ‘Like someone cut out a piece of his soul, maybe?’

Syannis looked at him long and hard. ‘He was kicked in the head by a horse. It happens. He shouldn’t have been playing in the stables.’

Berren took a long swig of water and burped loudly. That was one of those thief-taker answers he’d grown