20
BEDLAM’S CROSSING
Berren yawned and rubbed his eyes. The lightermen
worked around him, oblivious. Now and then they threw him a sly
glance. He’d spent half the night with them. They hadn’t known
anything much about Master Sy or thief-taking, but they’d known a
lot about Bedlam’s Crossing, and about the river, too. And they’d
known a lot about how to prize pennies out of Berren’s purse. He’d
listened to their stories with eager ears and marvelled, paying for
each of them with more flagons of pale ale. Stories of the City of
Spires with its five curving towers of gleaming white stone, so
tall that they scratched the sky. Of Varr and its palaces and
temples, all carved from lumps of solid gold as big as a ship. Of
swamp-hags who swam across the river from the other side at night
and lured men away to a watery grave. Of the river mermaids who
sometimes saved them and who were more beautiful even than the
emperor’s new queen. Of the strange lands further up the river, of
three-headed lions and giant snakes with the faces of men and
witches who turned sailors to stone. Of sea-monsters that swallowed
entire ships.
They were laughing at
him now but he didn’t mind. After he’d left them, he’d crept back
through the way station and found the last few drunks, hopelessly
in their cups. He’d quietly cut their purses. Master Sy would
probably throw him in the river if he ever found out, but he
wouldn’t and old habits died hard. No, on the whole the night had
gone well.
‘There’s a thing I’ve
learned,’ whispered a voice at his shoulder. Berren jumped a full
foot into the air, spun around, lost his balance and almost fell
over the side of the barge. When he finally gathered himself
together, the thief-taker stood over him. His face looked bleak.
Berren’s heart raced. The lightermen had left at the crack of dawn,
when the way station drunks were still snoring at their tables. He
couldn’t know what Berren had done. Can’t
possibly know.
Didn’t matter what he
told himself, though. Believing it was something else.
But the thief-taker’s
thoughts were somewhere else. He sat down beside Berren and stared
at the water, at the rippling waves rolling steadily
by.
‘Do you know what
wisdom is, lad? They say that wisdom is something you get as you
age. Improved by the years like a fine wine. Wisdom is spending
your effort on the battles that matter and having the grace to
smile at defeat in the ones that don’t. Trouble is, lad, wisdom
comes too late for some. Look at Kasmin. He was a fine swordsman in
his time. He was a soldier, a captain in the King’s Guard. He had a
fine life, filled with everything a young man wants. Wine, women,
song, swords.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure you can imagine. Everyone loved
him. And then he lost it all, and in the end, instead of fighting
for what mattered, he gave up. Now look at him. A drunk old man,
slipping slowly towards oblivion without even knowing it. Give it
another few years and you’ll find Kasmin crawling in the gutter,
begging from scraps, with everything he ever had, even his dignity,
stripped away. Or you’ll find him in that same gutter with a knife
between his ribs.’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘If there’s one
thing I’ve learned, lad, one thing that matters more than anything
else, one thing I’d like to teach you more than letters or manners
or swords, it’s not to regret what you can’t undo. I’m afraid,
though, that that’s something you’ll have to learn from someone
else.’
‘Wisdom is knowing
what is beyond your power to change,’ said Berren, parroting
Teacher Garrent. The thief-taker smiled and nodded.
‘So you do listen. No, there’s no shame in making a mistake
as long as you can put it right. For the ones you can’t, learn what
you can learn and then let them go. Go to a priest and find a
penance if you have to and then leave it be.’
Berren nodded. ‘But
master, how will you know that you truly can’t change something if
you give up trying?’
‘You can’t bring back
the dead, lad.’
‘But what if it’s
something about the living?’
‘Then you listen to
your heart, lad. Your heart will tell you when it’s time to
stop.’
‘But what if it never
does?’
The thief-taker stood
up. ‘Kasmin’s heart told him to give up a long time ago,
lad.’
‘But what if it
didn’t?’
The thief-taker
shrugged. ‘Then don’t.’ He shuffled away down the deck, back to his
stool in the prow. Berren watched him sitting there, staring out
across the water, lost in memories. It was only then that he
realised the thief-taker hadn’t been talking about Kasmin at all.
He’d been talking about himself.
He frowned. Did he
have any regrets? Did he regret leaving Master Hatchet? Not really.
Was he sorry for all the purses he’d cut? He had a good long think
about that one. The beatings had hurt, when he’d been caught, but
when it came to remorse . . . No. Not a trace. Did he wish he’d
been born to a rich merchant prince with ships full of gold? Yes,
he did, but it was hard to feel particularly resentful that he
hadn’t. Did he wish that the whore in Club-Headed Jin’s brothel had
let him touch her? Well yes, he did. A part of him did still smart
from that. But he hardly thought about her any more, so maybe that
was the sort of thing that Master Sy had been talking about. Maybe
that was wisdom, letting that go.
He smiled to himself
and stretched out across the top of the deck on his back, squinting
at the sky. No, he hardly thought about Jin’s women at all any
more. A cloud crossed the sun, stealing the heat off his face. What
he thought about was Lilissa. Lilissa, who never came around any
more. Lilissa who had a special friend who was a fishmonger’s son.
Lilissa, who lived alone with no one to watch over her and no one
to tell her what she couldn’t do. Now, could that be something he
could change . . . ?
Abruptly he jerked
awake. The sky was grey and filled with cloud. The wind was cool
and full of noise and smelled of fish again. The middle of the
morning had become the middle of the afternoon. The barge shifted
beneath him. He sat up, eyes wide, and looked around. The river had
changed; they were right up against the edge, bumping a little
wooden jetty. The bank here was covered with hastily made wooden
buildings, scrambling over each other to be close to the water. The
river itself was full of boats.
The thief-taker
jumped onto the roof beside him and slapped him on the back.
‘Bedlam’s Crossing, lad. Shake a leg. They won’t wait, you know.
Sleep any more and you’ll find yourself in the City of
Spires.’
After all the stories
he’d heard from the lightermen, Berren wasn’t sure that would have
been so bad. He rose unsteadily and stumbled along the side of the
barge, following in the thief-taker’s wake until he scrambled up
onto the wooden docks. Almost at once, the barge pulled away, back
into the channel of the river.
‘I will admit, lad,
that I don’t take too kindly to being on the water. It feels good
to be on dry land again.’
Berren shrugged. The
truth was that he’d rather liked the gentle movements of the barge.
They felt restful and sleepy and easy. Master Sy, though . . .
Well, you could see at a glance how glad he was to be ashore. The
darkness that had followed him since the Barrow of Beer had
vanished. He was the thief-taker again, the thief-taker who danced
through knives and laughed at swords and always knew the answer.
Berren definitely liked this
thief-taker better. If nothing else, you always knew where you
stood.
‘Bedlam’s Crossing,’
said the thief-taker again. ‘The last river crossing before
Deephaven and the sea. Take a boat over to the other side and you
can get a coach that will take you to Tarantor, Torpreah, wherever
you like. The north road will lead you up to Mirrormere. The river
reaches off to the City of Spires and beyond. No one stays in
Bedlam’s Crossing, but a lot of people come through.’ He bared his
teeth. ‘A lot of goods too. Come on, this way.’
Berren followed. In
Deephaven, the river docks were a maze of wooden bridges and
platforms. Some of them sat on piles sunk into the river bed, but a
lot of them simply bobbed up and down on the water on big wooden
floats, held in place by ancient ropes and sheer bloody-mindedness.
In a good strong storm, whole strips of the docks were sometimes
torn away and blown halfway up the river or else washed out to sea.
Both docks were little realms unto themselves, with their own rules
and order and Berren knew well enough to keep away. Hatchet always
told his boys that the docks had a magic of their own, powerful and
old and vindictive. You go out there, boys,
you be sure to make your sacrifices to the old gods of the sea and
the river spirits, otherwise that old wood will split apart and
close over your head again and they’ll take your soul to their inky
depths. The docks at Bedlam’s crossing might have been a lot
smaller, but they had the same simmering hostility to them. They
rocked and swayed under Berren’s feet as though trying to tip him
over, and he was glad to be off them. Master Sy might not have
liked his boat, but to Berren’s mind, ground that was supposed to
stay where it was but actually shifted under your feet was a
thousand times worse.
About a dozen yards
further along the cobbled waterfront, Master Sy stopped at a door.
‘Well, lad,’ he said, ‘are you ready to meet your first real
thieves?’
Berren steadied
himself, still on edge. He looked the shop-front up and down.
Barswans’ Winery, it said, on a fancy
sign that had clearly been paid for with gold rather than silver.
There were windows in the front with dark glass, expensive ones,
with good oak shutters reinforced with iron bands. It looked like
the sort of shop that belonged on the fringes of The Peak. The sort
of place where rich folk went to spend their money on wine shipped
in from Brons and Caladir instead of the local hills.
Not like a den of
thieves at all. He wrinkled up his nose and scowled.
‘Well?’
Berren took a deep
breath. Then he sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do I need to
have a sword or something?’
‘Little tip, lad. If
you ever go into a thieves’ den looking for a fight, do it with at
least a dozen city militiamen at your back. If it comes to fighting
in there, what you do is run. But it won’t come to
that.’
Berren scowled some
more. Thieves and watchmen mixed together only ever meant one
thing, and that was a fight. It was hard to see why thieves and
thief-takers should be any different. But he nodded anyway to show
he was ready. If there was one thing he was good at, it was
running.