12
PEOPLE COME TO SANDOR TO FORGET

It took a while to get back down to the alley. A gang of boys scattered as Berren and the thief-taker approached. Berren started to give chase but quickly stopped. Even if he caught one of them, so what? The body was still there, half stripped. The bow was gone, boots, belt, purse, everything short of his shirt and breeches, and Berren didn’t doubt that they’d have gone too if he and the thief-taker had taken another minute to climb down from the warehouse roof. Master Sy crouched down beside the body and turned him over. The bowman had landed badly. One leg was snapped, the bone sticking out through his shin. His head had hit the stones hard. There wasn’t all that much blood but the man was quite dead.

‘Do you know him?’ asked Berren. Master Sy shook his head. ‘He was shouting. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.’

The thief-taker nodded. ‘I heard. He’s from the Free Cities.’ He shook his head then tore open the man’s shirt. At the far end of the alley, Berren caught sight of eyes, watching them. Dock boys, waiting greedily for whatever they could steal.

Master Sy ripped one arm off the shirt. On the dead man’s skin up near his shoulder was a tattoo of an axe, the same as the one on the flag Berren had seen from the watchtower.

‘One of the Headsman’s.’ The thief-taker sounded grim. He straightened then took a penny out of his purse and threw it down to the end of the alley. A boy scurried from behind the corner, snatched the coin almost as it landed, and dived back for cover. ‘So he really is here in Deephaven. There will be others, I don’t doubt. This the fellow who eyed you back on Kingsway?’

‘No.’ The man who’d stared at him across the street as they came out of the old watchtower had had different clothes. ‘That one had a beard.’ Had a heavier build too.

Master Sy shook his head. His words were bitter. ‘He was waiting for us. So either the fellow you saw got word up to him mighty quick or else he knew we were coming. He knew who we were, too.’ He growled. ‘Kol needs to know about this.’

He threw another penny down the alley. ‘Hey lads, I know you’re there. This fellow’s dead and whatever he had, he’s not needing any more. What I want is to know where he was staying. Might be that one of you with your sharp eyes has seen him before, coming and going from a tavern or an inn or a flophouse. Got a silver crown for anyone who can take me to where he slept.’

A young boy stepped out from the far end of the alley. He kept his distance. Another boy, a little older, stepped out and pushed the first one aside. The older came up to the thief-taker.

‘Please sir, I can show you, sir.’

‘You know who I am?’

The boy shook his head. ‘It’s no bother to me, sir.’

‘I’m a thief-taker, boy. You know what that means?’

This time when the boy shook his head, he was wide-eyed. Berren thought he might run.

‘Means I keep my promises and I eat thieves for breakfast. You really know where this man used to rest his head?’

The boy gulped. He glanced back into the shadows. The younger boy nodded.

‘Right then. You show me. You and your little friend.’

Out in the docks, the boy led them towards the Avenue of Emperors. The imperial soldiers were still there, slouched beside their covered wagon. One corner had lifted up. Underneath, Berren could see kegs, all packed together. As he passed the wagon, he was sure he caught a whiff of Master Velgian’s black powder, sharp and acrid and strangely familiar.

Master Sy’s limp was getting worse; he was wincing with almost every step now. The boys led them up the Avenue of Emperors and in among the fancy lodgings for ship’s captains and the merchants and traders who owned them, places like the Captain’s Rest. Berren had been there once, back when the thief-taker had been hunting pirates and their elusive master. It was like a palace; but the boy didn’t take them there. Instead he went the other way off the Avenue, into the fringes of The Maze, the alleys where the press gangs worked and no militia dared enter. The boy went on in, weaving deeper among the narrow streets until they stopped at a place that was part flophouse, part Moongrass den.

‘Are you sure this is the place you want to be taking me, boy?’ asked Master Sy mildly. Berren knew exactly what he was thinking. There were plenty of places in the Maze where all that waited inside was a good mugging or else a sap round the back of the head and waking up five miles out to sea. Both the gangs and the muggers often sent boys out into the docks to try and lure people in.

The younger boy nodded. ‘Seen him come here, mister.’

The older one held out his hand. ‘Give us a crown then.’

Master Sy smiled at them both. ‘You come inside with us. If it turns out you were telling the truth, you’ll get your crown. If not, well, there might be a crown for me instead when I take you to a sweathouse.’

The older boy paled. The younger one didn’t seem concerned. He shrugged. ‘I seen him come here,’ he said again.

‘Good.’ Master Sy didn’t wait for any more. He pushed open the door and they all reeled as the reek of Moongrass poured out like warm treacle. Fingers of it wrapped themselves around Berren’s head, worming their way inside his skull. He coughed and staggered. Past the door, a dingy hall was filled with tables. The windows were shuttered. Half a dozen scrawny men dressed in little more than rags looked up and stared, all gaunt faces and hollow eyes in the gloomy light of a few cheap candles. None of them moved. Berren wasn’t sure how much they even noticed. They looked, but what did they see? Already he was starting to feel light-headed.

Another man emerged from the gloom as Master Sy stepped inside. This one looked like the others, but he wore a scarf over his face and his eyes had a purpose to them. He looked the thief-taker up and down and then silently held out a hand.

Master Sy shook his head. ‘I’m not here for your smoke.’

The man nodded. The scarf covered his nose and mouth and made his expression hard to decipher. He mumbled something that Berren couldn’t understand. For some reason, the scarf had caught Berren’s eye. There was something about its torn and fraying edges that was immensely fascinating. He wondered what it had been before it was a scarf. A shirt, maybe?

‘No. I’m looking for someone,’ said Master Sy.

The man frowned. He started trying to push them out of the door. Berren put his hand on his waster; to his surprise though, Master Sy let the man lead them back out onto the street. The cool crisp spring air made his skin tingle all over, like a hug of fresh water. He shivered. The city smells had never seemed so rich. Fish. Always fish.

The man carefully closed the door and pulled down his scarf. Berren gasped. The man’s chin and mouth were a mass of scars.

‘People come to Sandor to forget.’ His speech was as broken as his face. ‘Not to look.’

‘Man with an axe tattooed on the top of his arm. Scar on his neck, two on his face. Short black hair. Foreigner. Spee lah thees eh.’ The thief-taker’s accent was so perfect that it startled Berren out of his reverie of smells. Master Sy opened a hand to show a silver crown. The scarred man nodded.

‘More than one like that,’ he mumbled.

‘Doesn’t matter to me. They all came from the same place. Where are they staying? Any of them.’

The scarred man looked hungrily at the silver in the thief-taker’s palm. He hesitated and then his shoulders slumped. He snatched for the coin but Master Sy’s fingers closed before he could take it. The scarred man shrugged. ‘Little Caladir. The Two Cranes.’

Master Sy cocked his head. ‘That’s a way away. Like their Moongrass did they?’

‘They came to sell, not to smoke.’

The thief-taker opened his hand. The coin vanished. The man pulled his scarf back over his face and a cloud of smoke billowed into the street as he opened his door and closed it again. Master Sy tossed another crown to the younger of the two boys. The boy yelped for joy and ran; the older one dithered for a moment, looked at Master Sy, saw he wasn’t going to get anything and gave chase.

‘Should have split it between them,’ muttered Master Sy.

Berren didn’t say anything. He’d been both of those boys. Splitting it wouldn’t make any difference. Sooner or later the older one would catch the younger one and then the crown would be his, and that was simply the way of things. ‘What’s the Two Cranes?’ he asked instead. His head was clearing now, the fuzziness slowly fading. Which was sad, in a way, because the fuzziness had felt nice. That’s what everyone said about a touch of Moongrass. Nice. The trouble started when a touch became a headful and you completely forgot who you were.

‘A place where the sun-king’s sailors stay, the ones who can afford it. The sort of place we might find the Headsman.’

‘So are we going there now?’

The thief-taker glanced up at the sky. Then he shook his head. ‘No. We’re going home and getting you ready for your sword-monk lessons tomorrow.’

Berren stared pointedly at the thief-taker’s leg. ‘All the way back up the Avenue?’

Master Sy winced. ‘All the way, lad. No hurry now. We know where he is and we know he knows we’re here. This needs some thinking.’

Berren gave his master a steady look. Thinking. He was coming to learn what that meant. It meant pacing up and down all day – or rocking back and forth in his chair. It meant shouting at Berren about little things that didn’t really matter. And in the end … in the end …

Master Sy nodded. He smiled and patted his sword-hilt, almost as though he was reading Berren’s mind. ‘Getting dark soon. Press gangs will be about. Don’t want to wake up and find myself a skag on some ship.’

However true that was on the surface, they both knew that in the two years Berren had been Master Sy’s apprentice, the thief-taker hadn’t once shown himself in the least bit bothered by such things. What he meant was that this was his business, and his alone.

And that was all right, because standing out here in the afterglow of a touch of Moongrass, Berren realised he had some business of his own now. That black powder smell he’d picked up from the wagon beside the imperial soldiers in the docks – mix that with a bad dose of rotting fish, and that was the whiff of something sharp he’d sniffed off the assassin in the Watchman’s Rest!

He was going to find out who it was.