The King's assassin

you? Our father and most of our family were killed by Radek and his men. We lost our friends. Everything. I wonder sometimes which one of them has my old room. Does Meridian sleep in my father’s bed? I imagine that he does, and then I wonder who has mine. Princess Gelisya? Or perhaps Radek slept there when he came by to rest from his hunting of us.’ His grin grew wider, baring his teeth to show off a vicious glee. ‘You put paid to that, though.’ Then he shook his head as if throwing something off. ‘No, I didn’t say forget, but you can learn to put it to one side, Berren, and you better had because if you don’t then it eats you. Syannis, he never threw it off. You’ve seen what it does. Find a new life and make that be the one that matters. You still remember the old one. You just learn to put it in its place.’ Talon looked distant for a moment as though he was staring straight through Berren and the wall behind him, and through the cliffs too and far, far away out to sea. Then his eyes came crashing back. ‘Eat up! We have clothes to buy!’

The days passed. Talon laughed and joked as though he and Berren had known each other for half their lives. He showed Berren around Kalda and taught him the ways of this part of the world. Somewhere very far away there was an emperor like the emperor in Aria, only this one was called the sun-king and he’d lived for ever and could never die. He was powerful beyond imagining and he ruled over half the world. Kalda belonged to him, and the city’s king wasn’t really a king at all, and changed depending on the whims of that faraway court. Talon waved a hand over all that — too boring to talk about; instead, he whispered gleefully about the scandals that surrounded the high priests of the temples and the secret vices of the merchant princes. In the evenings they went drinking, and wherever they went, people knew him: the Prince of Swords. Men clapped him on the shoulder and bought him drinks or else glared at him from a distance. Women draped themselves over him. A handful of snuffers always came too, with Tarn never far from Talon’s side. When Talon talked about soldiering, his eyes almost glowed. He might even have become a friend if Berren had been able to see Talon without seeing Syannis and, with the thief- taker, always Tasahre. That was the last gift that both Syannis and Deephaven had given him, and why he could never go back.

‘Did Syannis bring Saffran Kuy back with him?’ he asked one day. ‘Was he here too?’

For a moment Talon looked as if Berren had pulled a knife and stabbed him. ‘Syannis and I don’t agree on much,’ he said at last. ‘We argue and bicker all the time. Sometimes we can’t stand each other for weeks. But that’s what brothers do, stand each other, and Syannis kept us alive. I was ten, you see. Syannis was fifteen. For three years we ran from city to city, country to country, looking for somewhere that would have us. Somewhere we could be safe when all we had were our names and what little we’d been able to carry. He kept me alive. I owe him a lot. And we would both like our kingdom back, even if it was only a little one. But Saffran Kuy. .’ He shook his head. ‘No, as far as I know Syannis did not bring any warlocks back with him from Deephaven. I pray to the gods that it stays that way but I fear it probably won’t. Something runs between those two. Some unpleasant cord that binds them.’ He smiled and then laughed again. ‘It’s actually nice to have someone who doesn’t think the sun shines out of his arse. You know we’ve got another brother? Or half-brother anyway.’

Berren nodded. ‘The one who looks like me.’

‘Aimes the idiot, yes. Looks a lot like you indeed. When he was little he got kicked in the head by a horse. Syannis acts like he was to blame. He has a mad idea that Saffran Kuy can find a way to make our little brother whole again.’ He stopped and turned to look Berren up and down. ‘In the end I think that’s how you got to him. When he saw you, he saw Aimes. It’s hard to imagine him wanting an apprentice. I can’t see him being a very good master.’

‘He was. .’ Berren didn’t know what to say to that. ‘He tried to be.’ That was fair. Master Sy had always tried. Hadn’t always managed it, but most of the time he hadn’t been too bad at all. ‘He taught me a lot.’ And that was fair too, and yet all Berren could think of was Tasahre, of holding her hand. Of feeling her heartbeat stop.

Talon smiled, pushing the tension away. ‘Oh, Syannis was always good at trying. The thing he never learned was how to stop, and the gods know how much of a pain in the arse it can be to live with someone who’s constantly trying to be perfect.’ He shook his head. ‘Tethis isn’t much more than a castle with a few fields around it. It’s not worth much, but now that Syannis is back in the game, some tiny little thing will happen and the dam will break. Blood will flood our little kingdom once more. You’ll see murder.’ He sighed. Then he looked at Berren and pursed his lips. ‘Well, you won’t, if you’ve got any sense, because you’ll be on a ship back to where you came from. You wouldn’t like to take him with you, would you?’ Talon’s lips laughed as he spoke, but his eyes were still and dark and spoke of storms.

A week passed and then another and Berren found himself sitting on a jetty in the small hours one morning, looking across the water at the ships in the dark, his head full of beer-fog and a silly smile on his face. When he looked up into the horseshoe of the city rising around him, he could see the whole of it all at once, smudged among the cliffs, a stain floating where smoke from the night fires still hung in the air waiting for a morning breeze to pick it up and carry it away. Talon sat beside him.

‘Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?’ murmured the prince. ‘The only city in the world with no gates and no roads in and out, and look at the size of it. Oh, there are paths up the cliffs and paths along the coast, but the only way in or out for anything bigger than a mule is by sea. Kalda, the city with no doors. How she’s grown.’ He stretched and pointed across the docks to the forts by the river mouth. ‘They have black-powder cannons there now — gifts from the Taiytakei. But who is it, do you think, that the merchant princes fear? It’s people like us, and yet here we are, right in the middle of them.’ He stood up and grinned and stared at the slope of the city. ‘Do you think you could run all the way up there without stopping?’

Berren shook his head. ‘Nah.’ That sounded like a thing the sword-monks would have done.

‘Spring Festival isn’t far away. Another month and you get your ship home. There are things I need to do before then. The sort of things that would leave you so bored you’d probably drown yourself in the river to get away. There’s a sword-master up near the cliffs who makes a happy living teaching the rich young men of Kalda how to kill each other. Tarn will be spending his days there now. I thought you might join him. Scrape some of the barnacles off your own edges before you leave. Seems more to your temperament than sitting around the house watching me bite my own arm off trying to get everything ready for us to move.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘Or does reading great lists of goods and numbers strike more of a chord? What do you say?’

‘That I’m grateful for everything,’ said Berren carefully. Talon could say what he liked about a ship back to Deephaven. He’d already made his own decision about that.

‘Really?’ Talon arched an eyebrow. ‘Thing is, Berren, I said you’d start first thing this morning, and then I forgot, and now we’re down here and we’re drunk and we’ve had no sleep.’ He pointed up the slope of the city. ‘And we need to be up there. For sunrise. And that’s not far off now.’

He set off jogging down the jetty and across the open space of the docks out in front of the Bitch Queen. When he was halfway, he turned and waved at Berren.

‘Well, are you coming?’

6

MEMORY AND A FLASH OF UNDERSTANDING

Berren slowly caught up with Talon as they ran through the city, laughing. Talon led him up to a fine house, high on one of the steeper side slopes with a crossed-swords sign drawn by the doors. When they reached it, the Prince staggered to a stop and leaned against a wall, bent over, hands holding his knees and gasping for breath. Berren stood beside him, breathing heavily.

‘You’re not. . as out of breath. . as I am,’ panted Talon. ‘Not fair!’

Beside the house was a narrow alley, wide enough for one person but not for two. When Talon had his breath back, that’s where he went. It led around the back and up some steps to a low building with no walls and a roof held up by two rows of ornate wooden pillars. Inside, men with swords were sparring — one of them was Tarn — but when Berren stopped to stare, Talon pulled him onwards. They walked past the edge of the fighting square towards the back of the house, and a man with silvery hair came out the other way clutching a handful of wasters. Wooden practice swords. Despite everything else, Berren felt a tiny surge of anticipation at the sight of them.

As soon as the silver-haired man saw Talon, he dropped the wasters and embraced him. ‘The Prince of War!’