29
ALONE IN THE DARK
Berren ran. Up the Avenue of Emperors towards the
square, but that was no good. He grabbed Lilissa’s arm and pulled
her off towards one side. ‘This way!’
‘What?’
‘This way!’ He pulled harder and dragged her off the
Avenue and down into a pitch black alley that wove its way into The
Maze.
‘I can’t
see!’
‘Then hold my hand.’
Lilissa’s fingers slipped into his own without protest or question.
He was running for his life, and yet her touch made him feel like
the strongest man in the world.
‘He gave me a knife!
Master Syannis gave me a knife!’
‘He gave me one too.
Come on!’ Berren led her deeper. These streets were his home. Even
in the dark, he knew exactly where he was. He knew their twists and
turns, he knew their dead ends, he knew which parts were safe and
which parts to avoid – although dressed up as they were in their
rich clothes, which parts to avoid extended to almost
everywhere.
Most of all, though,
he knew where the empty houses were. The places they could
hide.
Voices. Footsteps. He
dived into a doorway and pulled Lilissa close to him.
‘Hey!’
He squeezed her hand.
‘Shhh!’ Even though the moon was up, down here in The Maze he could
barely see her. He could feel her, though. Feel the warmth of her
right beside him, almost but not quite touching. He could smell her
breath, the lingering taste of the glass of wine she’d had while
he’d dozed.
The voices came
closer. They were round a corner but still coming
closer.
‘Why are we . . .
?’
This time he pressed
his free hand over her mouth. She was pressed against him now. She
grabbed his hand and then froze.
‘Shh,’ he whispered,
quiet as the breeze, straight into her ear.
‘I’m going to burn
his pig and goat if he don’t pay up.’ The voices were in the same
alley now. Berren counted footfalls. Sticks had taught him to do
that, years back. Men. Big men. Three or four of them. Accents,
too. Not quite right. Not quite local. Mudlarks, from their
rhyming. Not that that meant much. Mudlarks got everywhere. These
ones stank, too. A real bad smell of city sewage.
‘Yeh? And then what?
How’s he going get us our three ladies if he can’t sail. A good
kick in the loaf ought to be enough.’ The footsteps stopped. One of
them sniffed the air.
‘You smell
something?’
Laughter. ‘I smell
you, you rancid oaf.’
‘Perfume. Yeh.
Khrozus!’ Berren tensed. They could always run. No, he could run. He’d have to drag Lilissa behind
him.
‘You’re right. Some
ground-floor girl been working here I reckon.’
Someone hawked up
some phlegm, spat, and then let out a loud belch. Another voice
joined in.
‘Now everything
smells of rotting fish. Thanks, Dree.’
‘You’re welcome.’ The
footsteps started again. They walked straight by where Berren and
Lilissa were hiding. Close enough that if Berren had reached out an
arm, he could have tugged on their coats as they passed. He waited
a long time, until he was sure they were gone, before he let
himself breathe again.
Lilissa pulled his
hand away, gently this time. ‘Who were they?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t
know. Doesn’t matter. No one comes in here at night unless they’re
up to stuff they don’t want others to see.’ He took a tentative
step back out into the alley, then strained his ears and peered up
and down. Mostly pointless in the dark, but his instinct was
driving him. ‘All right. Let’s go!’ He pulled on Lilissa’s hand but
she didn’t move.
‘Berren! What are we
doing here?’
He stopped. He hadn’t
thought too much about what he was doing. Only that The Maze was
where he ran whenever he got into trouble.
‘We can’t go back to
Master Sy’s house,’ he said slowly. ‘Not in the dark.’
‘Why
not?’
‘What if they got
there first? What if they’re waiting for us? What if we got back
and then they came?’ He didn’t even know who they were. No, they
were the harbour-master’s men. What he didn’t know was what Master
Sy had said to make the harbour-master suddenly want to kill them.
Not beat them and warn them off, but kill them. Straight out and just like
that.
Or was it even worse?
Had he been planning this even before they’d sat down and broken
bread together. He must have, mustn’t he?
‘I want to go home,
Berren.’
‘How come those
snuffers were so right and ready? They were going to kill us.’ He had to keep saying it to believe it.
You just didn’t do that. Even One-Thumb with his knife probably
wouldn’t have gone through with it. Would have scared him too much
to live with what came with being a killer. But the men who’d come
out of the Captain’s Rest . . . He’d seen the way they moved.
They’d have gone through with it and then some.
‘Berren, I want to go
home!’ Lilissa wasn’t whispering this
time. Berren huddled back into the doorway next to her, shushing
her.
‘So do I, but we
can’t. What if the whole thing was a trap? They could be waiting
for us.’
She pushed him away.
‘What if it wasn’t? Besides, it wasn’t about us, was it? It wasn’t
about me.’
‘I saw the way he was
looking at you. Looking right at your . . . Well, put it this way,
if I’d have looked at you like that even when you wouldn’t notice,
I’d have got a clip round the ear. And he was doing it right in
front of all of us.’ Somehow the thought of leaving the streets he
knew made him quake with fear.
Lilissa snorted.
‘Don’t be stupid. It’s not about me. It’s about whatever business
Master Syannis has. Something he’s found out about that horrible
man.’
‘Look, I know a place
we can hide for the night. Not far. No bother. We’ll be left alone.
In the morning, when it’s light, we’ll go up Weaver’s Row. It’s not
far. Then you can go home. We can take a look when the sun’s out.’
After they’d been to the moon temple and told Teacher Garrent all
about what happened. But no need to mention that. ‘Look, this
place, it’s only a few minutes away. Let’s get there and be safe.
Then we can talk about what we’re going to do.’ The ‘few’ was more
like ten and he didn’t know what he’d do if she still wanted to go
home once they got there, but it was all he could think of to
say.
Lilissa made a
sceptical sound, but she let him lead her out into the alley again.
‘I’m starting to wonder if I should believe any of this. Letting
you take me into some dark alley in the middle of the night. Ma
would kill all three of us if she could, paths bless her.’ There
was a tremor in her voice. Anxious, however much she tried to
pretend she wasn’t. Not as scared as she should have been,
though.
‘Yeh.’ Berren tried a
nervous laugh. It helped a bit. ‘Well. Like old Master Hatchet
said: Dead tomorrow is alive today.’
‘Don’t think I
haven’t seen where your eyes look
either. You’re every bit as bad as that horrible VenDerren or
whatever his name was.’
‘No I’m not. I’m not
as ugly for a start.’
‘Really? Are you
sure?’
‘I’m not as fat; I’m
sure about that.’
She giggled. ‘His
bows were better, though.’ They were moving. For the moment they
had this bit of The Maze to themselves. Berren started to walk more
quickly, until they were almost running. ‘Dragging me off to a
place like this. Bet you’ve been thinking about it all evening.
What would your master say?’
‘It was his idea.’
Sort of. His idea I should drag you
off.
‘Ah. Tonight was all
a big show, was it? All for me?’ She giggled again. ‘I suppose I’d
better go along with it, then, after all that effort. I imagine I
should feel flattered.’
You should feel scared and you should be quiet and so
should I. That was what Berren wanted to say. Instead he
stopped. Paused. Listened. There was still no one
about.
‘We’re here.’ He
crept into an opening he couldn’t even see and listened again. Then
he knelt down. Low down in the wall was an old wooden door about
three feet high and wider than it was long. His hands traced its
shape until he found an awkward hole in the bottom. He lay down and
reached through, undid the latch, and the door swung open. Inside
was an even deeper darkness than the alley. It was silent, too.
Silent as death. He sat on the ground by the doorway and dangled
his feet over the drop beyond. There was no way to see how far it
was down to the floor.
‘What is this?’
hissed Lilissa.
‘We’re round the back
of the Sheaf of Arrows.’ Berren turned around and carefully lowered
himself into the void. The floor was about four feet below him.
‘This is the cellar.’
Lilissa didn’t move.
From where he was now, he could just about see her, silhouetted
against the night sky. ‘Won’t we be caught?’
Berren shook his head
and beckoned her down, both gestures lost in the dark. ‘Nah. It
burned down three years ago. They built it up again, but this bit’s
full of rubble. No one ever comes down here. That door’s the only
way in and out.’ That’s what other boys had told him,
anyway.
Lilissa carefully
lowered herself to sit on the edge. Berren took her hands, warm and
soft in his, and eased her down; but it was only as he closed and
barred the door behind her that he realised he had Lilissa to
himself in the dark. And that despite everything she’d said, she’d
still come with him. The lump on his head thrummed with pain, but
with Lilissa beside him he didn’t care. What would a fishmonger’s
son say now, he wondered?