The King's assassin

‘Where’s Fasha?’

‘She told you her name? She shouldn’t have. I must have her punished. Would you whip her for me again?’

Berren snarled at her. ‘Where is she?’ I fed it to Syannis and whispered my name three times in his ear to see what would happen. ‘That potion you sent with her — you’re lying. You’d already fed it to Syannis before Talon ever marched south. While he was in the Pit.’

Gelisya smiled again. ‘Very good, murderer. Very astute.’

‘And that’s why he wouldn’t keep his promise. Because you wouldn’t let him. All these years I’ve hated him and it was you!’

‘But you still hate him. Don’t you? Vallas, please show the murderer his slave.’ The soap-maker bared his teeth. Gelisya held the knife up to the light. ‘After everything I’ve taken from him, there’s more of him in here than in his head now. I always know how he’s feeling, and so I know that you’re telling me the truth and that Aimes is dead, because Syannis has found out. I can feel his desolation. I wonder who told him.’ She pouted and gave a little shiver of exhilaration. ‘Pity. I wanted to be the one to tell him, but his despair is delicious. Come come, Vallas, show the murderer his prize.’

Berren thought of the guard he’d hacked down. Could that have been Syannis? The last man standing, the one who hadn’t fled. But if so then why hadn’t they found his body?

The soap-maker disappeared for a moment, vanishing behind a stack of crates. He emerged again dragging a body dressed in white. Fasha! For a moment Berren thought she was dead, and before he knew what he was doing, the blade of his sword was at the soap-maker’s throat. Vallas dropped her. He looked more annoyed than scared.

‘Don’t hurt my warlock!’ snapped Gelisya. ‘That would make me angry. I gave her Safansa water to make her sleep. You know what that is. It’s there if you look for it. In the stone. In that little piece of you. I never did want to give it back, you know, but Saffran said I had to. She’s not hurt, not yet. See for yourself.’

For a moment Berren still stared at her. ‘If you were always Saffran’s, why did you send her after me and ask me to have him killed?’

Gelisya pouted. ‘Can’t an apprentice have a little falling-out with her master now and then? When she doesn’t get what she wants? You know what that’s like.’ She giggled.

‘You’re mad.’ Berren knelt down. Fasha lay on her back, breathing peacefully, fast asleep. He put his sword away and lifted her gently in his arms. ‘And the boy? My son?’

The soap-maker went back behind the crates and returned holding a boy, a few years old, sleeping like his mother. Gelisya smiled. ‘They won’t wake for hours. We’ve been waiting for you. I knew you’d come, you see, but I didn’t know how long it would take you. The knife tells me things, but not everything. Saffran said you held it yourself, once. Did it talk to you?’

‘Yes, it did.’ Berren swung Fasha over his shoulder and picked up the boy with his other arm. ‘You don’t need me for Syannis. You can clearly deal with him yourself.’

‘You’re right.’ Now and then when she spoke, there were sing-song traces of the child he remembered. ‘It’s almost better this way. I might even thank you.’

‘Aimes was a mistake. An accident.’ He gave Gelisya a nod and made to leave. ‘But you got what you wanted. All debts are paid then.’ Warlocks. Tethis. This little girl-witch. Syannis. He despised them, loathed them, all of them, and the sooner he was away the better. Far, far away.

‘No.’

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. Gelisya was still sitting in her circle of candlelight. She was pointing the knife at him. Her eyes were large and black.

‘No, murderer,’ she said. ‘All debts are far from paid. And I still have a tiny little piece of you in here. Which makes me pleased because it means I can do whatever I like!’

Her fingers tightened around the knife and an unearthly pain split Berren’s head in two, white-hot and unbearable. He sank to his knees. Fasha slipped from his arms.

‘You killed my father,’ whispered Gelisya. ‘You murdered him. You shot him in the back of his head. So no, murderer, all debts are not paid. Vallas, Syannis is on his way here. Go up and guide him to us. And tell your brother he can stop skulking and hiding. This one’s all his whenever he wants him.’

Dimly, Berren saw the soap-maker bow. He’d got it all wrong. She wasn’t their puppet, she was their mistress! ‘Who are you?’ he croaked.

‘I am the Princess Gelisya.’ The pain grew stronger. She smiled. ‘Queen Gelisya now, thanks to you. You can call me Your Majesty if you like. For as long as you’re alive.’

Berren gritted his teeth. ‘You’re not a queen yet.’ Then every nerve inside his head shrieked at once and the world went mercifully black.

33

THE CUTTER

When Berren woke up, the pain was gone and so was his sword. His hands were bound together. He was still in the hold exactly where he’d fallen. Fasha lay on the floor beside him, murmuring softly in her sleep.

‘Look!’ said Gelisya.

Berren craned his head to see her. She was sitting as he remembered, but now there was someone else inside the circle of candles with her. Syannis. Lying curled up with his head on her lap while she stroked his hair. Berren stared, struggling to believe what he was seeing. ‘Sun and moon! What have you done to him?’ He looked terrible. Gaunt and ragged and utterly, utterly lost.

‘Look,’ said Gelisya again, ‘look, my little puppy. I woke the murderer up again. What a long sleep! We all went up on deck to see what was happening at the castle and we only just came back. Imagine, you might have woken all alone. Oh!’ She put on a mock frown. ‘Wait! But the knife wouldn’t let you. Not until I say so. Syannis, why don’t you help him to his knees?’

As though in great pain, Syannis rose. He stepped out of the circle and hauled Berren up. The candles, Berren realised, had nearly burned out.

‘You shouldn’t have hurt my beloved,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t have hurt her. Either of us.’

Berren stared at him, filled with fury and fear and bloody-minded disbelief. ‘I didn’t touch her!’ he spat. He didn’t recognise this man at all. The thief-taker he’d loved and hated and feared and admired and envied, that man was gone. What was left was a shell.

‘We took her father away.’ His face was a mask of anguish.

Berren tore his eyes away from the thief-taker’s empty face. ‘What have you done to him?’

Gelisya smiled and showed her teeth. She pointed the knife and Berren felt a slight tingle inside his skull, enough to make him flinch. ‘I told you. A little cut here, a little cut there. Poor Syannis, you so nearly understood, but all the time you thought that Saffran was going to make your little brother better for you, and it was always a lie. Wasn’t it, Saffran?’

An old familiar shape pushed out from the darkness behind her. Not the soap-maker this time, but Saffran Kuy. ‘You!’ Berren was shaking.

‘Hello, little Berren-piece. Do you still wear my crystal nice and tight and close?’

Berren pulled at the ties around his wrists. ‘I will kill you, warlock. I will.’

Kuy let out a little cackle. ‘I’ve already seen who will kill me, little Berren-piece. I told you, years ago. Not you.’

For a moment Gelisya glared. ‘Saffran knows how to make the knives work properly.’ She bared her teeth at Berren. ‘Stupid Aimes sent him away before he showed me, so I had to work it all out for myself.’ She shrugged. ‘It would have been the easiest thing in the world to get rid of you when you were in my Pit, but he just wouldn’t do it, even though he was so, so