2
TEN EMPERORS IN AN ALLEY
Patience didn’t come easily to Berren. He shifted
back and forth on his lintel until the crowds had dispersed and the
square was almost empty. Then he dropped to the ground and crept
from shadow to shadow, eyeing the building where the man with the
small fortune had gone. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing.
He was already late. Even if he ran all the way back to
Shipwrights, he’d still get a cuffing from Master Hatchet. Didn’t
like his boys out too late, did the master. At least not unless it
was his errands they were on. Berren had a decent enough take, too.
Enough that he could give it over and keep a few pennies to himself
without Hatchet getting too suspicious. That was the unspoken deal.
The more you handed over, the less likely you were to get searched.
Gods help you if you got searched and Hatchet found something. Boys
who did that once learned not to do it again. Boys who made a habit
of it wound up face-down in the bay.
Ten gold emperors,
though. That was something else. Hatchet’s eyes would likely pop
right out of his head. Or he could keep it. Keep it and run away so
far that even Hatchet couldn’t reach him. Then live like a king.
That’s how much ten emperors was, wasn’t it?
So he didn’t go home
and he paid no mind to the restless worries that told him to leave
a man such as this thief-taker well alone. He’d been cutting purses
and picking pockets for more than half his years and that was
enough to be considered an expert in any other trade. No, he didn’t
go home; instead he watched and he waited, slinking from one corner
of the square to another, trying not to arouse the suspicions of
the soldiers who stood on watch there. They weren’t the sorts of
soldiers he was used to either. In the rest of the city, the
various district militias wore whatever they could get their hands
on, and carried clubs and sticks, or maybe knives if they were
lucky or happened to spend their days as a butcher. The soldiers
here were different. They wore uniforms and carried swords. They
had mail shirts and shiny steel helmets and on the arms of their
surcoats were flaming birds, bright red on a black field. They were
the emperor’s soldiers, and no one Berren knew had a nice word to
say for those who wore the colours of the emperor.
Maybe they thought he
was too far beneath them; although they watched him, they left him
alone, and eventually Berren saw what he was waiting for. The man
from the platform, the thief-taker with ten gold emperors in his
pocket. He came out of the front door of the courthouse and walked
straight across the square, in plain view, bold as brass. He still
didn’t look like much. If anything he was a bit short, a bit
skinny. His boots were battered and worn and most of him was
wrapped up in a stained leather overcoat that had clearly seen
better days. The coat hid most of the rest of him. It was much too
hot for the thick humid air of a Deephaven spring and made him
almost impossible to miss.
He was also on his
own. Berren felt a new anxiety surge inside him. The man was a
thief-taker, and good enough at it to bring in men worth hanging.
Surely he wasn’t so daft as to walk through the streets of the city
with all that money and no bodyguard. But as Berren was wondering
about that, his legs were already moving. As far as the rest of him
was concerned, he had to get in quick. He’d seen three or four
others while he’d been waiting. Men lurking around the fringes of
the square. Big men with sticks. Probably there were more, and they
looked like the sort who’d take a runt like Berren and break him
over their knee just because they could. One way or another the man
with the fortune was in for a mugging. Best, then, if Berren got to
the gold first. He jammed his hand into his pocket and fingered the
tiny knife he kept there, the blade only as long as his finger but
sharp as a razor. His purse-cutting knife. Secretly, because he’d
heard that all good swords got given names, he called it Stealer.
Not that he’d ever dare admit something like that in front of
Master Hatchet or the other boys.
He followed the
thief-taker out of the square. To his horror, almost the first
thing the man did was to turn off the main road and walk into a
narrow alley. Berren could only stand and watch as two other men
followed suit. A third suddenly sprinted away, probably dashing for
the far end. For a second, Berren hesitated. The man with the
fortune was about to get his throat cut. The men who’d be doing
that for him were the sort that even Berren went out of his way to
avoid. Almost every instinct told him to turn and go, cut and run,
take his beating for being late and be glad to still be alive. You
didn’t mess with cut-throats. About the only instinct that
disagreed was a new one that had started to rear its head in the
last few months. One that said that he didn’t have to listen to
anyone any more, not even himself.
Ten emperors, it kept saying to him.
The emperor’s face, stamped on gold. Ten of
them!
The air had grown
still and heavy, like a warm, damp blanket. Berren took a deep
breath and dived in.
The sun was sinking
low by now and the buildings on either side of the alley were tall
in this part of the city. The air was gloomy and dank and smelled
stale, of sweat and piss as well as the ever-present stink of
rotting fish. Berren found the deepest shadows and darted from one
to the next, hiding in doorways. He could see the two men in front
of him and he could see the knives cupped in their hands. The man
with the small fortune was a little way ahead. He seemed unaware
that he was being followed. Berren crept closer.
The first fat splats
of the evening rains began to hit the cobbles. A moment later,
sheets of it were hissing down, soaking everything. The thief-taker
had almost reached the end of the alley. As he drew close, the
third man, flushed and out of breath, entered in front of him.
Through the blurring roar of the rain, he held one hand cupped
loosely at his side. Like the others. Berren pressed himself into a
doorway and froze. He knew how this played out. The first man would
stick his knife into his victim’s guts as they passed and walk on
as if nothing had happened. The other two would jump in from behind
and force him to the ground. When they’d got what they wanted,
they’d either slit his throat or simply leave him to bleed to
death. And then they’d run. All Berren had to do was watch through
the rain as carefully as he could. He had to make sure he knew
exactly which one of them made off with the purse. That was all.
Didn’t have to do anything else. Just had to use his eyes and not
be fooled.
And then what? He didn’t know. Follow the fortune
in gold, probably. He didn’t have time to think about that. It was
happening. He held his breath, as the man with the money and the
man with the knife came together . . .
. . . And then
something happened that Berren couldn’t quite explain. The rains
cascaded down. Rivulets of water were already running through the
crevices of the alley. Fat drops ran into Berren’s eyes. He
blinked, and the man with the knife doubled up and crumpled to the
ground. Berren hadn’t even seen the thief-taker move, yet now he
was suddenly facing back the way he’d come. He held a short and
stubby sword that glittered wetly all the way to its hilt, bloody
rainwater dripping off it. The two men who’d followed him faltered.
They seemed paralysed as the thief-taker leapt between them. The
sword blurred in several arcs. Blood and rain sprayed all across
the alley. The men fell over. It was done in a blink, so quick that
the two throat-cutters had barely even moved. Berren stared, frozen
in awe . . .
The thief-taker
walked straight at him, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out
of his shelter and into the twilight and the rain. Close up, there
was something odd-looking about the man. Something exotic. Not
someone who’d been born to this city, that was for sure. Didn’t
look right. Didn’t smell right either.
‘Are you with them,
boy?’ Through the hammering of the rain, the voice sounded refined
and educated. There was another hint of something foreign there,
too.
Berren shook his
head. The man with the sword let him go.
‘I’m not going to
kill you, boy. So if you weren’t with them, what is it? Keeping an
eye on me for someone else? Or were you thinking of having a go at
my gold yourself?’
Berren said nothing.
His mouth wouldn’t move. The man crouched down in front of
him.
‘You’re not old
enough to be working someone like me on your own. Who sent you,
boy? Who looks after you? You tell me who he is and where I can
find him, and there’s a crown in it for you.’ The man put his sword
away somewhere under his coat and pulled out a silver coin. Berren
stared hungrily at it.
‘Master Hatchet, sir
. . .’ His voice sounded feeble.
‘Speak up,
boy!’
‘Master Hatchet, sir.
That’s who gives me shelter.’ He had to shout to make himself heard
over the roar of the rain. Master Hatchet would never send one of
his boys to do something like this. Safe and soft, that was
Hatchet’s motto.
‘And where might I
find your Master Hatchet?’
‘Please, sir, he’ll
kill me if I tell.’
‘Maybe I’ll kill you
if you won’t.’ The man moved closer. His coat opened. Berren caught
a glimpse of the sword again. And something else. He lifted his
face and looked the man in the eye.
‘Please, sir. Please
don’t hurt me. He lives in the Fishing Quarter.’
The man sneered. ‘I
can tell that from the smell of you.’ He gave an exaggerated sniff.
‘That’s not the only thing I smell on you. Where in the Fishing Quarter?’
Berren backed away.
The man followed, until Berren was pressed against a
wall.
‘Where?’
‘Shipwrights. Behind
the toolmaker on Loom Street. There’s an alley there. That’s where.
Near to where all the . . .’ He hated himself for hesitating. The
younger boys laughed and giggled about the brothel next door. They
made up all sorts of names for the women who worked there. The
older ones, they just called it what it was and got on with things.
‘Near to the brothel,’ he said firmly, jutting out his
chin.
‘Ah. I know it.’ The
man smiled nastily. ‘Hatchet, is it? Yes, the dung collector. In
the one alley in this rotten city that stinks of something more
than fish. I went into that brothel once to take a man. It had been
raining. The cobbles were slick with shit.’ He frowned. ‘You look a
bit like someone. Anyone ever tell you that?’ He straightened
himself and stared at Berren. He stared hard, and behind his eyes
his mind seemed to wander. For a moment he seemed to relax. Berren
lashed out with both arms at once. One to punch the man between the
legs. The other to take what he’d seen beneath the coat. And then
he ran, skittering on the wet stones. He didn’t stop or look back
until he was out of the alley and half a dozen streets away. When
he did, and when he was sure that the man with the sword was
nowhere in sight, he found a place to shelter from the rain and
opened his hand. In it he held a purse. He let himself feel the
weight of it, listen to the coins jingling. He didn’t dare stop for
long enough to look inside. He didn’t need to. He knew what was there.
Much later, when his
curiosity finally got the better of him, he opened it.
All that was in the
purse were a few coppers and some rusty iron.