34
THE GOLDEN KNIFE AND THE SECRETS OF THE
WATERFRONT
They walked back in silence, hand in hand, until they
reached the thief-taker’s yard. As soon as he opened the door to
the house, Berren could smell that someone else had been there. The
air carried the taint of rotting fish, much stronger than the yard
outside, and of something else. Something cold and dead. Upstairs,
a board creaked.
‘Master?’ Berren had
Stealer in his pocket and now he gripped it tight. Snuffers? Could
there be snuffers here, lurking in wait? Most likely it was Master
Sy, but better safe than sorry. He crept up the stairs, quiet as a
ghost, and pressed his ear to Master Sy’s door.
Lilissa watched him
from the open door to the yard. Berren pressed a finger to his
lips. ‘Master?’ he whispered again. From inside he heard the
knocking of a window shutter against the wall. Caught in a breath
of breeze perhaps.
‘Master?’ he said
again, louder this time. There was no answer. The shutter fell
silent. Berren’s fingers settled on the handle of the door and then
paused. He’d never been into the thief-taker’s room. The door had
no lock; sometimes it was even ajar, and he’d sneaked a peek. But
he’d never gone in. Never dared.
He took a deep
breath. Quiet as he could, he eased the door open.
The inside of the
thief-taker’s room was plain enough. An empty bed, a wooden rack
for hanging clothes, and beside them, a table. In another room the
table would have seemed perfectly ordinary. Here, though, it looked
almost like an altar. Short squat candles were arranged around
three sides in a semi-circle. There was a quill and a pile of
papers and a bundle of letters, tied in ribbon. And there was a
closed box. A plain wooden thing almost as long as his
arm.
That was all. No
chests, no closets, no space under the bed, nowhere for someone to
hide. There was no one here.
He stepped across the
threshold, still poised to run. A purse hung from one end of the
wooden clothes-rack – he couldn’t help but notice that. The
shutters of the window that looked out over the yard were open. A
faint wind drifted in through the room and down the stairs,
carrying the smell of the city. He went to the window and peered
outside into the yard, but it was empty.
‘Berren?’ Lilissa’s
voice came at him from the window and the door, both at once. ‘Are
you all right?’
He frowned and
scratched his head. He was sure he’d heard someone in the room when
he’d come in, but where were they now? He peered down out of the
window. It was a long drop. You couldn’t simply jump out and expect
to just run away. And Lilissa would surely have seen . .
.
‘Yeh,’ he called. His
eyes moved restlessly about. Maybe he was imagining things. Maybe
the creak of the floor had been nothing. Old houses did that
sometimes; yet he couldn’t shake the sensation that he wasn’t
alone, even now. He shivered.
He was about to leave
when his gaze stopped again on the table and its temptations. He
paused. The box was open. Berren stared. He was certain, as certain
as he could be, that the box had been shut when he’d come in. Yet
now it wasn’t. Inside it was a knife. A strange thing; the blade
was an unusual shape, more like a cleaver than a
knife.
For some reason he
couldn’t fathom, his hand reached out and he picked it up. When he
took the knife out of its sheath, the blade shone like polished
silver. Strange curling patterns marked it. Berren noticed all
these things, but most of all, he noticed that the hilt was made of
pure, carved gold. He weighed the knife in his hand. It was heavy,
much heavier than it looked.
It was
solid.
He tried to think
about how much it must be worth. Then he tried not to. Next to
this, ten emperors was nothing. And yet here it was, in Master Sy’s
room, next to his bed. Unguarded.
‘Berren!’ Lilissa
again. Her voice had an urgent ring to it.
He wanted to put the
knife back but his hands wouldn’t move.
‘Berren!’
Berren . . . whispered the air. He stared at the
blade, his eyes wide. It seemed that the patterns in the steel had
begun to shift and swirl . . .
‘Berren!
Please!’
With a shudder he
threw down the knife. It clattered on the floor, loud and accusing.
Biting his lip, half closing his eyes, he picked it up again and
quickly put it away. As an afterthought, he closed the box. Just in
case. Just in case of what, he wasn’t sure, but he did it anyway.
Then he snatched the thief-taker’s purse and ran down the
stairs.
Lilissa looked at
him, eyes wide. ‘What’s up? You look pale as a ghost!’
‘He’s not
here.’
She put a hand on his
shoulder. ‘Let’s just wait. I’m sure he’ll be back.’ She smiled,
but Berren barely noticed. He needed space, that’s what he needed.
Space and to be away from the thief-taker’s house for a
bit.
‘I’m going out,’ he
said. ‘Ought to get some bread. Need some clean water too. You want
to come? Or do you want to wait? In case he comes
back?’
‘One of us should
stay.’ Lilissa let out a deep sigh. ‘You come back quick, all
right? Please?’
Berren nodded
vigorously. ‘Yeh. Back as quick as I can.’ On impulse he stopped
and turned, pulled her to him with one hand and cupped her face
with the other. He kissed her, sharply aware of the warmth of her
against him from his chest down to his thighs. For a moment, all he
wanted was to pick her up and run, somewhere far far away. He
kissed her again, looking for a sign, the slightest sign that she
felt the same.
No sign came. He let
go. He couldn’t read her expression at all. Amused, maybe. A little
surprised, perhaps? Definitely not overwhelmed with desire, that
much was for sure. He scowled and then nodded.
‘I’ll bring you back
a spice cake,’ he said, and hurried out the door before either of
them could say anything more. That was it. His head was full now.
Completely full. Between Master Sy and Lilissa and One-Thumb and
being chased by snuffers and now some weird knife, there was a good
chance it was going to burst, or at least that was how it seemed.
He got as far as the Godsway before he even noticed where he was.
He paused there and bought spice cakes like he’d promised. He
treated himself to one there and then. After the night they’d had,
they deserved it, he thought. Both of them. Then he tried to think,
tried to work out what he should do, but it was all too difficult,
all too complicated. Wait, that’s what he ought to do. Probably go
to teacher Garrent and stay there until Master Sy came back, which
he surely would. And if he didn’t . . .
For some reason he
couldn’t make himself think about that.
He sighed. Water,
then. Whatever happened to the thief-taker, he was going to need
fresh clean water when he came back. And that, at least, was
something Berren could get. As soon as he’d finished gobbling down
his spice cake, he ran on down to the river docks, to the Rich
Docks, to the sprawl of wooden jetties that reached out into the
water like the remains of some nest of monsters. The usual
Tower-Day market was set out on the cobbles along the riverside.
The combination of the market and the frantic loading and unloading
of boats gave a crushing weight of people, all trying to move in
different directions. When he’d been living with Master Hatchet,
the Rich Docks had been one of his favourite haunts. Even when
someone caught him picking their pocket or snatching their purse,
they could never catch him. He’d simply slip away. It was a
comfortable place. Felt like home.
For all the same
reasons, it was a terrible place to try and carry something like,
say, four large buckets full of water. On the way back he’d have to
leave the dockside by the House of Gulls and go straight up the
Godsway.
Yeh. The House of
Gulls, the one Teacher Garrent had shown him from the top of the
moon temple. He knew more now than he had then. A witch-doctor
lived there, or at least that’s what the lightermen had said. A
potion-maker and a healer who dealt in curses and wishes and could
speak with the dead if you brought him some token. Berren wasn’t
sure how much of that was true and how much was the usual tales you
got from lightermen.
The crowds thinned.
The smell he was used to from Shipwrights, the stink of fish,
filled the air again. All there was at the end of the Rich Docks
were large wooden warehouses. Lots of them and all the same. Past
the pillared arch into Godsway, before the River Gate itself, there
were a few more. These ones were old and empty.
Almost empty. As he got closer to the River Gate,
the smell got worse and worse. At the gate itself it was almost
overpowering. He looked up. Gulls circled overhead. He had no idea
which house belonged to the witch-doctor, only that it was
somewhere here. The ground was slippery between the cobbles, coated
in a filthy slime. Something cold in the air made his skin prickle.
The smell, the horrible smell . . . It made him gag. It reminded
him of Master Sy’s room, of the stink he’d sniffed when he’d first
opened the door to the thief-taker’s house. The soldiers at the
gate wore scarves over their faces, covering their mouth and nose.
As he passed them, Berren smelled perfume. He hurried on, glad to
be away.
Past the River Gate
and the Grand Canal bridge then, because only an idiot drew their
water from the docks. He quickly skirted around the back of the
Poor Docks and reached the edge of the city. Here, past the last of
the boats, the river water was clear and didn’t smell overly bad.
Further on into Sweetwater, a cluster of little jetties had been
built so that the city-folk could take their water without getting
covered in mud. Anyone with any sense, or at least any sense of
taste or smell, came at least as far as here to take water from the
river. Master Hatchet had once told him that the villages in the
River District further upstream were forbidden, by order of the
Overlord, from throwing their waste into the water, just so that it
stayed clean for the rich city-folk. Berren waited patiently,
queuing to get onto one of the jetties. There didn’t seem to be
many rich city-folk dipping their buckets in the river today. Never
were. Rich folk had servants to do that for them.
Or apprentices, he thought, as he filled up his
own. It was almost a ritual now, coming out here with Master Sy’s
buckets, filling them up and reminding himself that he was the
thief-taker’s servant. He’d come to take pride in it.
When he was done, he
paused for a while by the river bank. Took a drink, washed his
face, tipped a little over the lump on his head to soothe its
throbbing. Then he set off back the way he’d come. Usually he went
the long way home, working his way through the slums of Talsin’s
Forest by the walls until he reached Pelean’s Gate. Then across
Market Square and back down Weaver’s Row. It was half as long again
as following the river from the docks and there was always a chance
of being set upon by one of the gangs that roamed the slums, but it
was cheap. The quick way cost money, a penny to go back into the
city through the River Gate. On most days, that was a penny saved.
But not today. Today he just wanted to get back.
And then what? What
if Master Sy was dead? He couldn’t go back to Master Hatchet, that
was clear enough. Couldn’t even imagine ever wanting to, either.
Cleaning dung off the city streets? Cutting purses, begging,
stealing, never knowing whether today was the day they caught you
and cut off a finger or maybe worse? No. Not any more.
Tailoring? Weaving?
Cloth-making? Leather-working? All good solid trades. Not something
to ever make a man rich, but certainly good enough that a man could
be sure of having food on the table each night. Not the sort of
trades where a man had to worry about snuffers and mudlarks and
thieves and pirates and being cursed or poisoned.
Fishmongering?
No, not that either.
The thief-taker had opened his eyes. He was Berren, and one day he
was going to be great. One day people were going to know his name
and they’d shift on their feet and make the sign of the sun and the
moon and hope he never came their way. He was going to learn
swords, be the greatest swordsman ever. And the best thief-taker
too, but that would just be the start. He’d sail away with a band
of men and they’d conquer some place somewhere and he’d come back a
king. Those were the dreams the
thief-taker had given him.
The thoughts made him
laugh at himself. Fool’s talk. Anyway, Master Sy wasn’t going to be
dead. Most likely he’d be waiting long before Berren got back,
angry and impatient as ever.
At the Grand Canal
Bridge, he put down the pails of water for a quick rest. As he did,
the first drops of rain started spattering around him. He snarled
and raised his fist at the sky. That was the city mocking him, that
was. Waiting for him to walk all that way and then starting to
rain, far earlier than usual. Mocking him for his daft thoughts of
sailing away from it.
Around him, people
slowed and smiled at the sky. Summer rain that came this early in
the afternoon was a treasure, an hour or two of unexpected relief
from the heat. And then the rain would go and the clouds would part
and the sun would shine and the streets would sweat and swelter
like everyone else, right into the evening; and then at night every
wall in the city would drip with damp and it would probably rain
again.
A waft of stinking
air rose up from the waters of the canal. A reeking smell of sewage
that made him screw up his face in disgust. Like the mudlarks from
The Maze the night before, only a lot worse. He left his buckets
where they were and pushed his way to the other side of the bridge,
over to where the stagnant canal waters festered their way into the
outskirts of Talsin’s Forest and vanished under a web of bridges.
Some were stone, some were wooden, most of them were just massive
tree-trunks levered across the waters during Talsin’s siege of the
city and left there ever since. According to Master Hatchet, every
now and then one of them rotted and collapsed, taking half a row of
slums with it. The people who lived in Talsin’s Forest just went on
and filled in the hole and built on top of it again. Probably the
only bits of the old canal that weren’t completely filled in with
rubble by now were the bits out in the open; the bit that ran under
Berren’s feet to the river, and the bit out by Pelean’s Gate. He
shuddered and went back to his buckets. Some of the men who went to
Club-Headed Jin’s brothel reckoned there were tunnels or caves that
went all the way from Pelean’s Gate to the sea; old tunnels that
supposedly got dug under Reeper Hill during the war or even before.
No one went down there. Filled with monsters, that’s what they
said. Evil flesh-eating man-fish things. That was what made the
place stink so. Fish-men who crawled out at night and took people
back down to the tunnels and ate them. That’s why people vanished
sometimes. Fish-men kept the canal clear too, so they could roam
right across Talsin’s Forest and across to the docks if they
wanted. Berren wasn’t so sure about any of that, and he was pretty
certain the thief-taker would just laugh. No one he knew had ever
actually seen a fish-man, after all. But then again, people
did disappear, and the canal
did stink something rotten, and the
bits you could actually see never did seem to dry up.
He picked up his
pails, crossed over the bridge to the River Gate again and handed
over his penny to the soldiers who took the toll there. Time for a
different bad smell. If there was one thing Deephaven had in
abundance, it was bad smells.
‘Which one’s the
witch-doctor then?’ he asked nervously, sheltering for a moment
from the rain. Talking to city guards was something he’d spent
years learning not to do. In the world he was used to they meant
nothing but trouble.
The soldiers looked
at him. One of them wrinkled his nose and pointed, straight at a
narrow alley between two of the warehouses. Berren thanked him and
hurried on. Fish-men. That was just silly stories told by men too
far in their cups to know what they were saying. Probably the
witch-doctor was the same. Being scared was silly. So he stood,
just inside the gate, and stared at the alley where the guardsman
had pointed. He could see a doorway right enough. In the doorway,
little things were squirming in the shadows. Cats. Lots of cats,
hiding from the downpour. At least the rain washed away some of the
smell.
The door opened and
the cats vanished inside. Berren quickly looked away. A few seconds
later, a figure appeared. For a moment it paused, shrouded in the
shadows of the house. The witch-doctor. Berren was certain of it.
His heart jumped. The witch-doctor, come to take him for his
insolence!
No, that was stupid.
Hundreds and hundreds of people walked in and out of the River Gate
every day. It was hard to imagine that even a very busy
witch-doctor could curse more than a handful of them. Even so, with
every step towards the Godsway arch, he half-expected to feel a
heavy hand on his shoulder.
No hand came. As he
reached the arch, he risked another glance back towards the door.
What he saw was a man, hurrying quickly away, heading towards him,
face bowed against the rain. The man ran right past him, without
seeing him, without even noticing that he was there. Berren stood
absolutely still, and watched him go.
It was Master
Sy.