13
SWORDS, STEEL AND A PRESS OF SKIN

The afternoon sun shone on the temple yard, hot and hard like the earth under Berren’s feet. Sweat dripped off his face and spattered around his feet. The other monks hardly seemed troubled at all, either by the heat or by the effort of holding a sword straight out in front of them for hours on end. Their shoulders, Berren decided, must have been made of iron; or else they had some sort of magic that made their swords lighter. They’d been doing this to him for days.

First thing in the morning they went for a simple run, down to the sea-docks and back. The monks took it easy enough down the hill and then sprinted for the entire mile back up again, leaving Berren wheezing and gasping in their wake. As soon as they got back they started jumping. Jumping on the spot, long jumps, high jumps, hurdles and things that Berren couldn’t even begin to work out how to do – backflips, handsprings, things that would have made an acrobat gasp – the monks almost seemed to bounce for fun. Eventually, when his legs had given up, they made him lie down and lift weights instead. The monks lifted each other. The worst of it wasn’t that they were all so much better than he was, it was that none of them said anything. They never spoke a word of praise or disdain, only the bare basic instructions.

A couple of hours of lessons with Sterm the Worm and his cane were almost a relief after that. Then he was back out into the practice field, this time for stretching, bending himself into shapes that a normal person simply wasn’t supposed to make. Every time he thought he’d contorted himself into as position that couldn’t possibly get more painful, Tasahre would come over and kick his feet further apart, or sit on some part of him or rearrange him into some other shape that hurt ten times more. She rarely said anything either and her face was always a mask, but he could feel the malice in the sharpness of her movements. The monks, Berren was sure, hated him.

On Sun-Days and Moon-Days, that was all they did before their midday prayers, an hour of standing, sitting or lying in positions that made them look as though they’d had to break several bones to get there, then half an hour to either run and eat some food or else lie in a heap waiting for the pain to go away, your choice. After prayers, Berren had Sterm again and the relief of sitting in the shade of a cool cell with nothing being stretched, torn, ripped or otherwise abused. On Tower-Days and Mage-Days, the monks cut their stretching short and went running again instead, only this time they didn’t run in the streets but along the rooftops down among the warehouses by the docks. They climbed walls, leaped alleys and danced from roof to roof. At least when they did this Berren could keep up. He knew the city better than the monks and he’d been up to these places before with Master Sy. Between hard high alley walls, whispers had nowhere to escape save for eager ears listening from above, and no one thought to look up at night. He came to like Tower-Days and Mage-Days. Council-Days were the worst, when the monks all vanished and he was left with Sterm right through the middle of the day.

And then, on every day except Abyss-Day, in the heat of the late afternoon, he did this: standing stock still, holding a waster straight out in front of him with Tasahre standing across the small fighting circle she’d drawn in the dirt, staring right back at him. Today she was balancing an hourglass on the end of her sword to make the exercise a little harder for herself – and to remind Berren that, although it might feel like he’d stood there for hours, although it might feel like his shoulder was slowly turning to molten lead, they had in fact been doing this for five minutes and he had another five to go.

She had the hourglass balanced on the flat of her blade and she wasn’t shaking at all. He hated her.

On the first day, he’d lasted four minutes before his arm had simply given up. On the second day it had been five. Today it was seven. He’d hated it at first, the realisation of how useless he was. But now he counted the seconds, and if he counted one more than the day before, that seemed like a victory.

Tasahre stayed completely still for the last three minutes then smoothly let the hourglass go. ‘Guard,’ she said, and nothing else. She spent a minute or two fiddling with Berren’s stance, twisting his arm and and wrist, kicking his feet until he was standing in guard the way she wanted. They went through the same thing every day, practising simple blows, a cut or thrust, a parry and a riposte, the sort of thing he’d been doing with Master Sy for the last year. It was humiliating. Tasahre could have done it blindfold. Now and then she stopped and told Berren all the things he was doing wrong. Sometimes she’d stand right behind him, her legs pressed against his, chest against his back, hands on his wrists, pushing and moulding him into the stance she wanted. The sensation was odd and strangely intimate.

For those hours in the late afternoon they worked alone, Berren and Tasahre. The other monks paired up around them and simply pretended he didn’t exist. The elder dragon sometimes stopped to watch, but he was watching Tasahre, not Berren. He was watching how well she adjusted to the unwanted burden she’d been given. In the odd moment when he wasn’t busy resenting being taught by a girl his own age, he almost felt sorry for her, although he’d have felt a lot more sorry for her if she didn’t crack his ribs with her waster whenever his attention wandered.

For the last hour of the evening the monks all sat in a circle, taking it in turns to fight one another. Everyone fought everyone else, one bout only, and Berren was no exception. While the others fought with light padding and steel swords, Berren fought with his waster. Most of them simply batted him aside, clocked him on the head and withdrew before he even knew what was happening. One or two made a point of hitting him in a particularly exotic way, but after the first few days they grew tired of showing off and dispatched him with the same disdain as the others. Tasahre let him come to her and simply battered his attacks away without moving from where she stood until they both agreed he’d had enough. Still, he enjoyed watching the monks fight each other. He began to see who favoured what approach, which combinations, who was a sliver quicker and who was a fraction stronger. Tasahre, he saw, was usually beaten by most of the monks. Usually but not always.

At the end of each day he staggered back to the thief-taker’s house as the sun set. He chewed through whatever crusts of bread were left and drained the bowl of lukewarm gruel that the thief-taker had left for him, barely noticing what was in it, and then went to bed. Usually the thief-taker wasn’t there; even when he was, Berren was asleep before he could ask what Master Sy had been up to. He was exhausted, every single day. As he fell asleep, though, he found himself thinking of the scent garden over and over again, of the silhouette he’d seen clambering over the wall and of the strange black-powder smell the assassin had carried with him.

On Abyss-Day, the temple classes were closed, the monks spent their time at prayer and in meditation, and Berren finally got some rest. Abyss-Day was the day that thieves and snuffers claimed as their own. It was the day of delving into the deep, the day of blindness and ruin. No one did business on Abyss-Day; even most of the market and harbour traders stayed at home. It was the day of mischief and mayhem, before the light and truth that Sun-Day would bring; for Berren, though, Abyss-Day was the blessed relief of a lie-in in the morning, a few hours of dozing and stretching and moaning about how much all his muscles hurt, and then, when his stomach finally took charge, of eating. He eased himself down the rickety stairs and into the kitchen, lured by the smell of bread that wafted through the thief-taker’s house. There was fruit, too – Master Sy always liked his fruit if he could get anything fresh.

‘Morning, Berren.’ The thief-taker was sitting in a chair in his parlour, feet up on the table, massaging his knee.

‘Master.’ Berren helped himself to an entire loaf of bread. He sat down on the floor across the parlour and tore into it until his stomach stopped growling. Then he looked up and smiled brightly. ‘So?’

‘So?’ Master Sy smiled and shook his head. ‘So I’m fast losing my appetite for long stairways.’

‘I was thinking of that fellow on the roof with the bow. So is it right then? The man we’re looking for is in the Two Cranes?’

‘The man I’m looking for, lad. And yes, he is.’

‘And?’

‘Watching and waiting, lad.’ The thief-taker shook his head. ‘Watching and waiting.’ Which was the thief-taker’s way of saying he was up to something, but Berren knew better than to press his luck with questions.

‘Was me that caught him,’ he muttered. ‘You remember that, master. When there’s more than watching and waiting to be done, I want to help.’

Master Sy smiled. ‘I’ll do that. For now you can help by keeping well out of the way. Not something to mess with, this one.’

‘I’m not a boy any more, master.’

‘Maybe not, Berren. When there’s more than watching and waiting to be done, you can be a part of it. But for now there isn’t, so you stick with your sword-monks. Was you that tipped him over the edge so we couldn’t ask him any questions, you just remember that too.’

Berren finished his loaf of bread and wandered back to the kitchen looking for more. He came back with a couple of apples. They were soft and mushy and not crunchy at all. He made a face.

‘Late harvest from up north.’ The thief-taker shrugged. ‘They’ve been kept half-frozen in an outhouse for the winter and then sat on a wagon for a week and a ship for another. They’re not exactly fresh, but then what do you expect for apples in spring? Was thinking of boiling them up and making a paste but I suppose I’ll not bother now.’ He watched as Berren devoured the apples, core and all, and then sat, looking around the room as if searching for more. ‘You’re not still hungry are you?’ He shook his head. ‘They not feed you at the temple?’

‘Not much, no.’

The thief-taker got up. He winced as he put weight on his knee. ‘Here, then.’ He threw his purse to Berren. ‘Go feed yourself. There’s not much in it. I’m off to bed. Up all night watching the Two Cranes. Don’t forget to go and get water.’

A squeak of protest got as far as Berren’s mouth. He swallowed it back down and looked into the purse instead. A handful of pennies and that was all, not even a single crown. And he’d been looking forward to spending the day with his master, wandering the city, telling him all about the monks in the temple and asking questions, lots and lots of questions.

‘Said there wasn’t much.’

‘Master?’

‘Lad?’

‘I was thinking …’ How to ask without sounding like an idiot?

‘Usually a good way to start that, yes.’

‘Well, as well as the man with the bow, I was thinking about the assassin who wanted to kill Prince Sharda.’

The thief-taker shook his head. ‘Drop it, lad. It’s not a place you want to go.’

‘But–!’

‘No, no.’ Master Sy waved his hands dismissively. ‘I know that look on your face. That’s the hunter’s eye, that is. You’ve got scent of something and now you want to track it down. You’re thinking we should go after whoever it was, right?’

‘Well …’

‘Thought so. The answer’s no, it’s a bad idea and we’re not going anywhere near it. Another time I might humour you for something to do, but I’ve got my business to attend to and you’re not to go near that one on your own.’

‘But–!’

Master Sy sat down again. ‘Think, lad! First thing, there’s no money in it. If you found out who it was, then what? Who’s going to pay you for that?’

‘The Justicar?’

The thief-taker roared with laughter. ‘Kol? Why? It’s thieves he’s after, anyone who pricks the skin of the merchant guilds enough for them to notice, that’s all. He’s theirs. The only time he’ll care about a murder is when it’s one of those fat pigs we saw in the Golden Cup.’ The thief-taker leaned towards Berren. ‘I’ll tell you who’d pay you for that: whoever did it. They’d pay you handsomely to keep you quiet and then they’d have you killed. What sort of person, do you think, tries to have an imperial prince murdered?’

Berren’s eyes lit up. ‘Someone in the temple! Everyone knows the priests there don’t like the Emperor and his house one little bit. And it was the night the sword-monks came. What if it was one of them?’

‘No! Think, boy! If there’s one thing I’ve tried to teach you, it’s that you look for the money. Never mind who it was you whacked on the nose – although whether you think you’d ever manage to do that to a sword-monk is maybe something you should ponder while you’re training with them – whose purse were they taking, that’s the question! Some priest?’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘There’s Talsin’s heirs, they’re none too pleased with who’s on the throne. Maybe the Overlord himself. You think the sort of man who pays a snuffer to murder a prince is going to let an urchin from Shipwrights’ bring him down? And then yes, there’s the assassin himself. He killed two men. Slit their throats. He’s a cold snuffer, that one. Did you know … no, how would you? The soldiers at the Watchman’s Arms were poisoned, quite a few of them. Not a killing poison, but a sleeping draught to make them dopey, and that means that whoever he was, he was in the Arms earlier that night. Chances are it was one of the prince’s own men who did it. You going to go to Varr to look for him? Drop it, Berren. You stopped a murder, you got your reward. Leave it at that.’

Berren was shaking his head. ‘The soldiers he had were all big. The man I saw was our sort of size.’

Master Sy groaned. ‘Leave it, Berren. You chase after that snuffer, he’ll kill you the moment he gets a sniff of you. Stick to your lessons and keep your head down.’ Master Sy stood up once more. ‘Live to fight another day, eh? Just this once.’ He creaked his way up the stairs and went to his room and closed the door. Before long, the house shook softly with his snoring.

Live to fight another day? For what? Berren mulled that one over. Like Master Sy always said: I’m not a thief-taker for Kol’s silver, I’m a thief-taker because I don’t like thieves.

He got up and headed off for The Eight. On his way out, he thumbed his nose at the thief-taker’s snores.