19
DRIFTING ON THE RIVER AND EATING PIE
Berren lay sprawled out in the sun, eyes closed and
half asleep. A gentle wind blew across his arms and his face. The
midday heat was like a warm blanket wrapped over him. He dozed, on
and off, lulled by the sounds of lapping water and creaking wood.
Deephaven was an hour down the river behind them, and the quiet was
staggering. Sometimes one of the lightermen would call out; a sail
would flap, the barge would shift a little, and then it was back to
the rhythm of the water and the wood. The sounds were like someone
breathing in and out; slow, deep and restful.
And then there was
the smell. The sweet, fresh smell of the river. The way the air
smelled up past Sweetwater, except even sweeter still. Filled with
trees and grass and flowers from the farms and the woods on the
city side of the river. Berren had never ventured much further out
of the city than the edges of the River District, and even then
only the once and with Master Sy as his guide. They were well
beyond that now. He stared at the vast openness, at the swathes of
green, the huge trees and the forests they made up on the Haven
Hills that overlooked the city. Other smells came and went, too.
More familiar smells drifting in wisps off the road that ran beside
the river, the great wide River Road that ran out of the River
Gate, through Sweetwater and right on to the other end of the
world, as far as Berren knew. To the City of Spires and the
imperial capital of Varr and maybe even further than that.
Sometimes, when he wasn’t snoozing, Berren watched the road for a
bit just to see what he could see. He tried to count the wagons and
the carts but quickly lost track. Once he saw a black-clad
galloping horseman racing towards the city. An Imperial Messenger!
He stared, enraptured, then jumped up and pointed and shouted out,
because even Master Sy, surely, must want to see . . . But when
Berren scampered over to wake him, the thief-taker screamed and
stared at Berren wide-eyed, and Berren recoiled as though he’d been
stung. The thief-taker stared at him, glassy-eyed and far away.
‘You haven’t the tools,’ he said. Then he blinked and came back
from wherever he was and swore and cursed and swatted Berren away,
and by then the messenger was gone. The lightermen had laughed and
shaken their heads, as though this was something they saw every
day.
‘Sorry, lad,’ said
the thief-taker a minute or so later. ‘Dreams.’ He was looking at
Berren hard, though, wearing his sad face, as though he’d dreamed
of something bad that had yet to come.
Berren scowled. An
Imperial Messenger was what every city boy wanted to be and he’d
missed some of seeing one because of Master Sy. Racing with the
wind from one side of the world to another, always moving, stopping
for nothing except the next change of horse. Some people said they
had secret powers, granted to them by the emperor’s new sorcerers.
That they could freeze a man to the spot simply by looking at him,
that they moved so fast that they could vanish in a blink. Berren
wasn’t sure about that, but they certainly got to learn swords and
he was willing to bet they didn’t have to learn their letters
first. Or have stupid dreams. Bad dreams were for children. Babies.
Not for men who carried swords.
Way stations, farms,
hamlets and villages dotted the road, all with their own small
jetties out into the water. On the other side of the barge, more
little boats pottered up and down the river. Tiny rafts, dozens and
hundreds of them, not much more than a few poles lashed together,
bobbing about and covered with squawking black fishing birds.
Sailing boats, not much bigger than the rafts, wove between them,
deft and agile. And then there were the barges like the one where
Berren dozed. Big and clumsy, lumbering against the current with a
sail barely big enough to keep them moving.
Beyond all those, the
far side of the river stretched out towards the horizon. It faded
into a maze of mud-islands and channels and creeks and swamps that
went on for days. Or so Master Sy had said. The only people who
went in there, he said, were the most desperately wanted men with
nowhere else to hide, and the thief-takers sent to catch
them.
They stopped towards
the end of the day at one of the riverside way stations. Master Sy
waited while the lightermen made their boat secure. He bought them
a flagon of ale each and then a gammon pie which he cut in half and
split with Berren.
‘Ever been out of the
city before, lad?’
Berren shook his
head. The pie was a good one, with thick crusty pastry and big
juicy chunks of ham. The sort of thing Master Hatchet would have
bought his boys as a treat, except done properly, with soft meat
instead of gristly bits and proper thick gravy instead of brown
water.
‘I don’t come out
here often,’ said the thief-taker. He was picking at his pie as
though he didn’t really want it. And he was drinking. He finished
one flagon and waved for another. ‘I’d like to go to Varr one day.
Just to see the palace and the Kaveneth and the bridge they built
over the river there. Or the City of Spires.’ He drummed his
fingers on the table, his mind clearly somewhere else. ‘Never even
got as far as Tarantor.’
‘Where we going
tomorrow?’ asked Berren from behind a faceful of pie.
‘Bedlam’s Crossing.
Kasmin bought his bottle of Malmsey from a trader in Bedlam’s
Crossing. I know him.’
‘Bought his
what?’
The start of a smile
played around the corner of Master Sy’s mouth, but it didn’t get
very far. ‘Wine, lad. The bottle of wine he had. I’ll teach you
about wine one day. I’m afraid that’s something I know rather more
about than is useful. ’ He sighed, picked up his beer and took
another deep draft before staring at what was left. ‘Malmsey is a
strong sweet wine, usually from the vineyards around Helhex. They
don’t make very much so it’s quite rare. One of the first ships to
be attacked in the harbour had ten thousand bottles in its hold and
they all vanished. I knew they’d start to show up again one day.’
He shook his head. He’d still hardly touched his pie. Berren eyed
it hungrily while the thief-taker drained his second flagon and
waved over a third. Berren had never seen him drunk and had no idea
what it would look like. Master Hatchet mostly liked to hit people.
The thief-taker, Berren thought, would be one of those morose and
moody drunks who got miserable and talked too much about stuff no
one else cared about.
‘Was that man a
friend of yours?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Which man,
lad?’
‘The old bloke in the
Barrow of Beer. I thought you’d kill him, what with him being a
thief.’ Belatedly he remembered the look on Master Sy’s face as
they’d come away from Kasmin’s tavern. Too much pie was making him
bold. He tried to look shamefaced, ready for the rebuke, but it
didn’t come. Master Sy simply looked sad again.
‘I didn’t kill you,
did I?’ he asked, gently.
Berren bowed his
head. ‘Sorry, master.’
‘Lad, what you saw
when we met wasn’t something that happens every day. A thief-taker
doesn’t fight. Not unless he has to, and even then, you don’t kill
a man without a very good reason.’ The thief-taker took a long
swallow from beer number three and smacked his lips. His face was
starting to glisten. Berren didn’t know much about getting drunk
himself, except for his one disaster in the Eight, but he’d learned
how to spot it in other people. Drunks had always been his first
bet for lifting a few pennies. The only trouble being that they
often didn’t have any.
‘When you first met
me in that alley, what you saw then is not a thief-taker’s life.’
Master Sy was starting to slur his words. Only very slightly, but
enough to notice. ‘You can’t win every fight, lad, and you only
have to lose one to be dead. No, you don’t fight unless you have no
choice.’ He patted his chest, rattling the ringmail under his
shirt. ‘Of course, I do try to make sure that any fight I’m in I’m
going to win.’ He tried grinning again, but it didn’t really
work.
‘I seen people go
funny like that,’ Berren said. He was treading on dangerous ground
and chose his words carefully. ‘Like he knew he was in big trouble
the moment you came in. Seemed like you knew him pretty well,
though. Like you were friends for a real long time.’
Master Sy took a deep
breath and sighed. ‘Kasmin? Yes. I’ve known Kasmin since I was a
boy, maybe since I was half your age. He was a soldier. He worked .
. .’ The thief-taker frowned. ‘He helped my father from time to
time. He was a brave man once. A strong one, too, and a leader.
When the . . . When I was forced to leave my home, Kasmin came with
me. I’d lost most of my family. I was a bit older than you, but not
much. I had a younger brother to look after. And another . . .’ He
stared at Berren long and hard. Stared right through him, off into
some other place and time. ‘Yes, another brother, who looked a bit
like you do now. We had lots of friends. Or people who said they
were our friends. People who should have been. Kasmin came with us.
He helped me for a while. When things were at their worst, he was
always there.’ Master Sy smiled. ‘Truth is, he probably saved my
life more than once and I never even knew anything about it. He was
a good man, but the wandering broke him. He so wanted to go back
home, and he could have, too. He had family, but that would have
meant leaving us and abandoning his duty. Eventually we heard that
they’d been killed, months later. Robbers. He always drank too
much, Kasmin. One day he just vanished. Had enough. Walked out into
the night and didn’t come back. Years later I washed up in
Deephaven. I started thief-taking, and then one day there he was,
on the wrong end of my sword. I was afraid for a moment, because I
knew he knew how to fight. But he didn’t. He gave himself up to me;
and for all the things he’d done for me and mine before he left us,
I let him go. I even helped him a bit to buy the Barrow. It’s not
the first time he’s fallen in with the wrong sort and I don’t
suppose it’s going to be the last.’
Berren decided to try
and push his luck one more time. ‘He called you a prince,’ he said,
which wasn’t quite true, but close enough.
‘No he
didn’t.’
‘Well he called you
something like that.’ Yes, and it wasn’t the first time
either.
Behind Master Sy’s
eyes, the shutters had come down. Berren had gone too far; or else
the thief-taker had realised that he’d said too much. Master Sy
shook his head and took another swig of beer. ‘We’ve known each
other for a long time, lad. We used to call each other all sorts of
things.’
Which might have been
true, but certainly wasn’t the truth he’d been looking for.
Something to remember for the next time he ever saw his master
drunk, perhaps. But enough for now. Instead, Berren waved his fork
at Master Sy’s plate.
‘Can I have your pie
then?’ He put on his best grin, showing off his teeth. Master Sy
didn’t smile though. He merely pushed the plate across the
table.
‘Go ahead, lad. I
think I should go to sleep. You’re in the stables, in the
hayloft.’
‘Master? When I woke
you up on the boat, you said something. I didn’t understand. What
did you mean?’
‘Said something?’
Master Sy shook his head, and there came that forced half-smile
again. ‘No, lad. I didn’t say anything. If you really want to know,
I was dreaming I was back home again. Some time years from now. And
nothing had changed for the good.’ He grunted and shrugged. ‘Seeing
Kasmin, you see. Brings it all back.’
Berren watched him
go. The thief-taker walked steadily, no sign that he was half in
his cups. For a few seconds, Berren even wondered if it had all
been an act, whether Master Sy hadn’t been drunk at all. But that
was foolish and didn’t really make much sense when you came to look
at it.
With a happy sigh, he
turned back to the remains of the thief-taker’s pie. His master
might have gone to sleep, but the night was yet young and he had
every intention of making the best of it.