Berren ran outside, past the fountain and up the street into Four Winds Square. He was already yawning. Good food and plenty of it, a day full of hard work and he was ready for bed and a good night’s sleep. There’d be a few sharp words from Master Sy on messing with matters that didn’t concern him when he got home, no doubt.
He was two streets away from the thief-taker’s house when a silhouette stepped out of an alley in front of him. Berren skittered to a stop on the wet stones of the street. He froze there for a second. The silhouette was of a shortish man with two swords over his back. The man who’d murdered two imperial guardsmen, who’d had the audacity to try and take the life of the imperial prince himself. Now he was standing in the street, only a dozen paces away.
The assassin slowly drew his swords, one in each hand. For that first moment, Berren was sure he was about to die.
‘I know who you are, Berren.’
The moment passed. Other thoughts followed: that it was dark but still long short of midnight and others might come this way at any moment; that he’d beaten this man once before, in the scent garden; that he wasn’t far from home and Master Sy; and then a last thought came along, slower than the others yet more pressing. Why step out in front of him? Why be seen at all? Why not a shadow in the dark with a short curved knife and a throat-slitting flick of the wrist and away into the night, unseen? So he held his ground.
The assassin growled. ‘There’s no purse to killing you, boy. Do you want to live?’ The man’s face was lost in the shadow of a deep hood. ‘If you do want to live, put your justicar off my scent. I’ll be watching both of you. If you don’t, the next time I see you, I’ll kill you. Do you understand? Now run!’ The assassin’s voice was thick and guttural, a bit like the archer from the warehouse roof. Berren took two steps backwards and then stopped.
‘No.’ He drew out his waster. This wasn’t right at all. ‘Who are you?’
‘Your death, curse you boy!’ The assassin hesitated an instant before he charged, both swords raised. Berren knew he ought to run, that Master Sy would tell him he was mad to stand fast; but he’d fought against sword-monks now; he’d beaten this man once before, and there was something … something wrong about the way this assassin held his swords, something about the way the assassin came at him that wasn’t right, as though it was all a bluff. The swords whirled at Berren’s face but with no real skill; Berren jumped sideways and poked his waster at the man’s head as he went past. He missed, but the wooden tip caught the cloth of the man’s cloak and pulled back his hood, and now Berren could see who it was.
‘Master Velgian?’ He stopped, stunned. It all made sense! Velgian being mugged and getting a bloody nose – that hadn’t ever happened, it had been Berren’s waster that marked him! And the smell, the black-powder smell in the scent garden and the look on Velgian’s face when Kol had said he meant to go after the assassin! But why? Velgian, of all of them, a killer?
The poet thief-taker turned and stopped and looked at Berren with sad eyes. ‘Why couldn’t you just run, lad? Why couldn’t you leave it be?’
Berren glanced up and down the street but there was no one else in sight.
‘Path of fire! You were supposed to be asleep! I didn’t want to hurt you. I liked you. Sun knows there was enough sleeping draft in your breakfast to fell a horse! I could have killed you like I killed the others, but I would have let you be. Why did you have to chose that one night not to be hungry, eh?’
Berren knew exactly. Too excited about seeing the sword-monks the next day, too full of left-overs from the feast of the night before. ‘Why did you do it, Master Velgian?’
‘Why do you think, boy? For the purse and the fistful of golden emperors inside it, that’s why. Damn your eyes! I didn’t want it to come to this, but now what choice have I got?’ He took a deep breath. The way he held himself changed. ‘I’m sorry, lad, but it’s you or me now.’ He came at Berren again and now all the bluff was gone and Berren knew for sure that if he tried to fight, this time he’d die. He turned and bolted and Velgian was right on his heels.
‘I promise not to tell!’ yelled Berren over his shoulder.
‘And I wish I could believe you!’
He sprinted into the little yard outside Master Sy’s door. ‘Master Sy! Master thief-taker! Help!’ He reached the door and kicked it as he passed but it stayed shut and then he had to keep running because Velgian was right there and he couldn’t even stop to open his own door. ‘Master! Velgian! It’s Velgian!’ He darted down a little alley instead, the one that went round to Master Sy’s back yard; he bounded up onto the back of an old empty chest the thief-taker kept by his back door and then up onto Master Sy’s kitchen and on to his roof. If that didn’t get Master Sy’s attention, nothing would.
‘A pox on you, boy!’ shrieked Velgian behind him.
From Master Sy’s roof there was only one way to go, but Berren knew the rooftops here as well as he knew the streets. They were his home as much as anywhere and even in the dark he knew exactly which way to go – straight over the top, double back across the alley, around the side of the yard …
‘Give it up, boy!’ Velgian wasn’t dropping back. He was a thief-taker too, after all.
Being up on the rooftops made him think of the archer who’d fallen off the warehouse. He changed direction sharply. One rooftop to the next and then the big leap, right across the street, the one place you could do it but you had to get the jump just right and land in exactly the right place. Berren flew across the gap, caught the edge of the roof on the far side with his toes, let his momentum carry him forward and then grabbed onto the roof with both hands, pulling himself up and scrabbling with his feet. It was a hard jump to make, even if you knew the trick to it. He scrambled up the roof and looked back. Velgian had skittered to a halt on the other side of the jump. He still had his swords drawn.
‘Berren!’
‘Don’t! You’ll fall, Master Velgian. You will.’ Now that he’d led the poet thief-taker here to his little trap, escape was enough. Then home, Master Sy, the justicar, he could tell them all he was right …
Velgian started to run, still with his swords out, straight at the gap. It was a good jump and he almost made it. His foot caught the roof and he pitched forward just as Berren had done, only Velgian wasn’t ready for it. His hands were full. It was all over in an instant. His foot slipped off, he dropped both his swords, clawed at the roof and then he was gone, over the edge.
No, not quite. When Berren inched closer, he saw Velgian still hanging by his fingertips.
‘Master Velgian!’ The roof was steep, like all the roofs in this part of the city. ‘Whose purse, Master Velgian?’
‘You going to help me up, boy?’ Velgian’s fingers were slowly slipping. Berren offered him his hand and then withdrew it. The roof was too steep, his own footing too precarious. If Velgian wanted to be helped, Berren could help him, but what Velgian really wanted was to take Berren over the edge with him – he could see it in the thief-taker’s eyes. Nothing to lose any more.
‘Thought not. Got some sense there.’
‘Whose purse, Master Velgian? Whose gold bought you?’
Velgian’s arms were shaking. ‘Are you listening, boy? You tell Syannis one thing for me. You tell him that Saffran Kuy is not the friend he thinks. You tell him that, Berren. Do that for me. Tell him …’
The edge of the roof snapped under his fingers. It was only twenty feet down to the ground, but Velgian landed flat on his back. He bounced and lay still. By the time Berren got down, Velgian was dead. His neck was broken.
They were in sight of the thief-taker’s house. Berren dragged Velgian to the door and pulled him inside. Master Sy wasn’t there, presumably off watching the Two Cranes again or whatever it was he did, but Berren could hardly go to bed and leave a body in his parlour for the thief-taker to find when he came back. In the end he curled up in the thief-taker’s chair and fell asleep there, waiting for his master to come home.
It wasn’t Master Sy who nudged him awake barely moments after his eyes had closed, though, but the Justicar.
‘Wake up, boy.’ He was poking Berren with a finger. ‘Wake up. And then tell me, right now, what the bloody Khrozus Master Velgian is doing dead on the floor.’
For a moment Berren wondered if he should run, but he was too tired and what was the point? He didn’t understand why Velgian, of all of them, would have done something like this.
‘He fell,’ he said, and then slowly and carefully went through everything that had happened, trying to put it all together in his head as he did, as if that might bring some sense to it. When he was done, he was no better off than when he started.
‘Velgian?’ Kol rubbed his face, struggling with disbelief. Berren nodded. He could see quite clearly now how the poet thief-taker must have been the man in the scent garden. Everything about him was right, right size, not the best swordsman, moved the right way, everything. But why? Why would he do it? Even Kol seemed bemused.
‘For a purse filled with the Emperor’s head like he said, I suppose.’ Kol took a deep breath and frowned as though he still didn’t really believe it. He gave Berren a strange look. ‘There are ways to get to the truth, even now,’ he said. ‘Does he have any family to claim the body?’
They looked at each other. As far as Berren knew, Velgian had come to Deephaven from somewhere far to the east. He’d come alone, and if you believed his boasts in The Eight, he’d had a string of lovers as long as your arm. But in the end he always struck Berren as a lonely man. ‘I don’t think so. Don’t you know?’
Kol shrugged. ‘You thief-takers keep yourselves to yourselves. If he had anyone, he never spoke of them to me. Right then. You’re not going anywhere for the next few weeks are you, Berren? No, let me say it another way – you stay where I can see you. You and Syannis both. Now I’m going to have to go and haul some of my men out of their cups, which isn’t going to please any of us. So he’d better still be here when I come back.’
‘He was trying to say something when he fell. Something about the witch-doctor.’
A dark look crossed Kol’s face. ‘Was he now? Well like I said, there’s people in this city who can do something about that. If they can be persuaded.’
He went away and came back half an hour later with a pair of militia-men and a handcart. They lifted Velgian into it and wheeled him away. Kol watched them go.
‘Something I need to talk about with your master. Got some news for him about what’s keeping him at the Two Cranes. So I’ll be staying around for a bit.’ He gave Berren another odd look, sort of angry and sad at the same time. ‘None of your business what it is unless he says otherwise though. If I were you, I’d piss off to bed and get some sleep.’ He settled into Master Sy’s chair. ‘Yeh, that’s what I’d do if I were you, and I’d quietly forget that any of this ever happened. Velgian, eh? Poor bastard. Your master’s right. Meddle with the affairs of kings, look what happens.’
It was only as Berren huddled under his blanket on his mattress of straw that he realised Kol hadn’t been talking about Master Velgian at the end.