The King's assassin

‘What do you mean we march?’

‘Get your coat on! We’ve got a shipment of blankets and boots and other things to get from the docks to the camp without there being any pilfering, and then. .’ Berren threw on his long leather coat, the coat Master Sy had once worn in Deephaven. Outside they trudged, heads down through the mud. ‘Tethis, Berren.’ Tarn slapped him on the back but his tone was serious. ‘We’re going to Tethis! We’re going to war! Whatever words have never been spoken, speak them soon. A winter war takes far more lives than a summer one.’

The road into Forgenver was churned to a thick gooey mud that sucked at Berren’s boots. The rain was relentless. Even under his cloak and his coat, he was soaked to the skin when they reached the docks. Crates lay piled up by the waterfront; men were swearing and shouting at each other over the hiss of water falling on stone. Puddles lay ankle deep. Everything was sodden and faded to a haze of grey, and in the midst of it all, barking orders and cursing, stood Talon, waving his arm over some crates stacked beside him.

‘Tarn! These! Get these to the camp. I don’t care how, but get them there. Don’t drop them.’

‘What are they?’

Talon glanced at Berren. He shook his head. ‘Fragile, that’s what.’ Berren saw firelight flickering through the cracks in the wooden crate. Were they. .? He bent down to peer closer and then stopped. Talon had drawn his sword, fast as a snake, and the tip of it was hovering in front of Berren’s face. ‘Fragile. Like glass. That’s all you need to know,’ he said to Tarn, then turned his eye on Berren. ‘You I brought here for a different reason.’ His voice softened a notch. ‘You’ll know what they are when you see them.’

Berren stepped back. He knew already. He’d seen that flickering light before. In Kalda, a bright ball of flame in the hands of a Deephaven lancer.

Talon’s stare was strong enough to flay skin. ‘Sergeant Tarn, I suggest you put a covering over those crates when you get them to the armoury. You will take them yourself and you will let no one else come near them. Do you understand? What they hold will change the course of a battle, if used well.’

Tarn nodded.

‘There’s a handcart here for you. Let no one else see them.’ Talon turned back to Berren. ‘Well, you might as well help him now.’

The two of them gingerly loaded the crates. Berren tried to guess how many fire-globes Talon had. A dozen crates and a handful in each one, so perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred? Enough to change a battle, yes, unless the enemy had them too. They set the crates down on a bed of straw, carefully apart from one another. When they were done, Tarn helped himself to a piece of sailcloth and wedged it down on top. Further along the waterfront, a heavily loaded wagon was being forced through the mud by a team of beasts pulling from the front and a cohort of sodden swearing soldiers pushing behind.

‘We’ll follow them,’ said Tarn. ‘They’ll go nice and slow and find all the bumps for us,’ but Talon was shaking his head and looking at Berren.

‘Take them back on your own, Sergeant Tarn. Berren stays here.’ When Tarn cocked his head as if to ask why, Talon laughed. ‘Because I’m going to ask him to help me kill a warlock, that’s why.’ He turned to Berren. Half a smile played around the corners of his mouth. ‘I know what Syannis offered you in Tethis. She’s here. She wants to talk to you. She wants you to kill Saffran Kuy. Can’t say as I’d object.’ He turned back to Tarn. ‘Does that satisfy you, Sergeant?’

Tarn wrinkled his nose. He nodded. Then, when Berren didn’t say anything, he shrugged and pulled his cart slowly away into the rain. Talon watched him go.

‘We both have a lot to be sorry for,’ he said without looking at Berren. ‘Syannis couldn’t bring back your sword-monk and you can’t bring back Syannis. You said Saffran Kuy made you kill Radek?’

‘Yeh.’ Berren spoke softly, words almost lost in the rain. He remembered perfectly how the warlock had come, a thing made of shadows, how he’d wrapped a part of himself around Radek’s neck, and the voice inside Berren’s head: Kill! Kill him now! A voice he’d had no choice but to obey.

‘Princess Gelisya’s bondswoman is here of her own accord. She ran away. If we lose, she’ll be hanged. She ran away because, she says, Saffran Kuy is turning her mistress into something terrible.’ He wrenched his eyes away from wherever they were and looked at Berren instead. ‘I’ve not forgotten that you once said the same. If it were down to me, I’d make peace with Meridian long enough to have Kuy and his like hunted down and strung up. Too late for that now, but Kuy still has to be stopped.’

‘Tell me how!’ said Berren. ‘I’ll hunt him down and I’ll kill him.’

Talon’s eyes strayed back to the horizon. ‘It won’t be easy. I know he’s touched you. He’ll feel you coming.’

‘So be it.’

The Prince of Swords nodded and sniffed. ‘Meridian is no fool. Beating him will be difficult. But it’s my homeland. I will know the battlefield. But I do not know which side Saffran Kuy will be on. I do not want him on mine. But I do not want him on Meridian’s either. If he’s near when we come to battle, I want him gone. Forever.’

‘I’m a thief,’ whispered Berren. ‘I’ll slip in like a shadow, put a knife through his eye and slip away again.’

Talon half-smiled. He slipped his sword out of its scabbard and stared at the blade. ‘Killing a warlock isn’t such an easy thing. I thought you knew that already. And I have little advice to offer. Come with me!’

He jerked his head towards the town and strode away from the cursing men on the waterfront, through the Forgenver streets.

‘The bondswoman is in here. Make whatever deal you like with her. Maybe she can help you. When Meridian is dead you can have her if you want her. Do with her what you will. Release her if you wish. I will see to it she doesn’t hang for abandoning her mistress.’ His restless eyes settled on Berren again as he stopped at a travellers’ tavern and pushed open the door. ‘When this war is over, Aimes will still be king of Tethis. She will belong to him. He’s simple and will be easily swayed.’

He led Berren inside, through the commons and up some stairs. There were soldiers here, lots of them, not all in their armour or carrying their spears, but he saw them nonetheless. Lancers from Aria. Talon stopped at an arched door.

‘Here. I don’t know what she wants, save that Saffran Kuy’s head on a pike is a part of it. Freedom, I suppose. Her life. Don’t we all?’ His eyes glittered. ‘Although it’s possible she wants to murder you for that flogging you gave her, so keep your on guard and keep your wits with you in there, Berren of Deephaven.’

With that he left. Berren watched him go, and when Talon was out of sight, he pushed on the door. He knew this place. The rooms were comfortable, the sort used by traders come to Forgenver for a few days to buy and sell before moving on to the next port up the coast. A hovel beside the Captains’ Rest and the Watchman’s Arms of Deephaven, but immeasurably better than a soldier’s tent. It even had a bathtub.

Gelisya’s bonds-maid was sitting on the bed. Clad in white with a veil over her face, she could have been anyone. Berren took off his cloak and his coat, shaking rain onto the floor; as he did, she turned to look at him. Between the dark of the room and her veil, all Berren could see of her was a sinuous shape that once again made him think of Tasahre. This was a woman he’d whipped. His jaw locked. He struggled for words. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. I had no choice. But they all died in his throat. Sorry wouldn’t take away the scars. Didn’t want to? But he’d done it anyway. Had no choice? None at all? They both knew that wasn’t true, not really.

She lifted her veil and her eyes were wide and sad. She stared at Berren and Berren stared back. He tried to remember Tasahre, to put the two of them side by side, and found he couldn’t. The sword-monk’s face kept slipping between the fingers of his memory; and sometimes he thought it was a wilful thing, that her memories had slowly chosen to leave him because of the awful things he’d done: for the old woman after the battle of the beach, for the bloody whipping in the castle yard of Tethis and for the guard under the castle whose throat he hadn’t slit.

‘My mistress says your name is Berren,’ she said.

Berren nodded.

‘Bondsmen don’t have names.’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘But when I did have one, it was Fasha. Master Berren, I have not been truthful. I have not run away. I have come to humbly petition you on behalf of my mistress, Princess Gelisya of Tethis, daughter of the regent Meridian, for your aid.’

‘My aid? In what?’ He was staring at her. He couldn’t help it.