‘Get in!’
There was a crash, the sound of someone being hurled across the room and then of wood splintering and Master Sy swearing. Then footfalls. A horse snorted. Berren heard a quiet splash of water, more quiet footsteps, then a loud one. There was some spluttering. He couldn’t see anything. There were no lights inside the stables. He wrinkled his nose – even though there was almost no wind, the city stink of rotting fish was uncommonly bad all of a sudden.
‘Kelm’s Teeth! Who’d have thought that a life of rape and murder could leave a man so fat?’
That was Master Sy’s voice. There was another, one he didn’t know, the whispering voice from before, but then there was a coughing and a third, gulping, gasping for air.
‘You!’ The Headsman.
The realisation broke whatever spell was freezing Berren still. He needed to be closer. Gently, he slipped across the roof to a little shuttered window that opened into the stable attic. The shutters were loose. He pried them slowly apart, and then whipped one open and dropped inside, into the hayloft.
‘What was that?’ The voices down below fell quiet. All that separated Berren from the men below was a thin layer of creaky wooden boards and he had no idea which ones might squeak and which ones wouldn’t. He lowered himself down, lay flat and pressed his ear to the floor, sweating and shaking. One whisper of noise and the thief-taker would know he was there, and then … Whatever the and then was, he didn’t want to know.
‘Noises in the wind, Syannis. Ghosts and night-creepers, nothing more,’ said the whispery voice.
More footsteps. ‘You have a choice,’ said Master Sy, as amiably as if he was commenting on the weather. ‘Your life ends tonight, either way. I can do it quickly or I can linger. I’d like to linger. I’ve a decade of lingering to catch up on. So please, don’t tell me who in Deephaven is a part of this. Let me take my time over you.’
‘Time is dripping by, Syannis,’ said the other voice. ‘Wasting.’ It was brittle, like old dry paper rustling in a breeze. ‘Take his head and be done with it.’
‘Treacherous necromancer!’ The Headsman again. ‘Cut me loose, bastard. We’ll settle this the old way.’
‘See?’ Master Sy snorted. ‘Saffran wants to do it his way. That would be quickest and we’d know the answer, but I want to see your face. I want to see your pain. I want to see it wrenched out of you as though I was tearing out your heart. So why are you here? Weren’t Tethis and Kalda enough?’
Saffran? Saffran Kuy? The witch-doctor?
‘Deephaven is not Tethis, Syannis.’ The whispery voice sounded bored. Perhaps a touch impatient, but only insofar as it had better things it could be doing.
‘Yes! So they would have accomplices within the city!’
‘Armies would march from the fortresses around Varr, vast and fast, and how would we stop them, eh? The Emperor would smash us flat rather than lose us. Crush and rend us to ash and sand. How would you stop such a fate?’
Someone lit a lamp. Pale orange light flickered. Berren moved his head and put an eye to a crack in the floor. He could see the top of Master Sy’s head, slowly shaking, but he couldn’t see anyone else. He could smell something, though. The smell of dead fish, even worse than it had been outside; stronger and richer, almost deep enough to make him retch.
‘I want to hear it from him while he lives!’ Master Sy moved out of sight, and then the familiar sound of fists pounding flesh began. Berren winced. He’d heard that too many times before, back when he’d been with Master Hatchet. ‘This bloated turd has no more power than the Overlord here holds in his little finger! He’s a foot soldier. Foot soldiers advance and die, sacrificed to save more potent pieces. I want to know who the Dragon is.’ The edge to Master Sy’s voice set flies fluttering in Berren’s stomach – it was like steel being sharpened on a whetstone. He wriggled back and forth so he could either see the top of Master Sy’s head again, or an occasional glimpse of the Headsman, sprawled against the wall. All he saw of the witch-doctor was a fleeting shadow.
The Headsman spat. ‘Get on with it, bastard. You won’t get out of here alive! Every snuffer here is mine. And even if you kill me, Radek is coming. When he does, it’ll be the end of you!’
The thief-taker spat right back at him. ‘Yes, I know Radek is coming. I delight in knowing that. In fact, the only reason I waited so long for this was to make sure, certain beyond any possible doubt, that Radek will be coming. Believe me, I’ll be sharpening my sword every day in anticipation. All I need to know is when.’ There was a pause, but whatever happened, Berren couldn’t see. ‘Yes, you overfed leech, I’ve been watching you for weeks. You have no idea how hard it was to wait. I know you murdered Kasmin.’
A harsh laugh. ‘Kasmin was a thief and a liar.’
‘He was a fine man once.’ Master Sy’s voice was flat.
‘He was a killer and a drunkard. Putting him down was a mercy. Do you want to know how we found him?’
Everything went silent. Berren listened to his heart, pounding so hard it seemed that everyone must hear it. Then a crash shook the stables. The door flew open, kicked almost off its hinges by some heavy boot. Berren wriggled frantically, trying to see. Master Sy was moving. At least three more people had come in. More than that, Berren couldn’t tell.
‘The warlock!’ a new voice called. ‘Get the–’ There was a crash. The lamplight died. Steel rang on steel. Berren heard a gasp, a shout, abruptly cut short, and then a screaming that went on and on, a screaming the likes of which he’d never heard. It was a keening, wailing cry of anguish and terror and dread and it ran through Berren and pinned him to the floor. Other noises pierced it: a crash, another crash, a shout, the smash of something thrown against a wall. But over the top, the constant howl held Berren fast. It took him a moment to realise that the noise was even human. It was the scream of something worse than death. He clamped his hands over his ears but even that didn’t help.
He ought to run. He could slip back out to the roof and be away. No one would possibly hear him now. Yet he couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe.
As suddenly as it had started, the chaos from below came to an end. There was no more crashing, no more shouting. The flickering light of a candle appeared.
‘Men will come now,’ breathed the whispering voice. ‘Soon and fast.’
‘All right, Kuy,’ said Master Sy. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
Berren heard sobbing.
‘You see, in the end, you fat feeble prick, I don’t care why you were here. I don’t care why you came. I don’t care what you’ve got in your ship dressed up as crates of black tea. I don’t care who or what or why or what war you’re trying to start and I don’t care what you think you could offer me to leave you be. You took my life, you murdering shit.’
The Headsman’s voice, when he spoke, was tight with pain. ‘A pox on you, bastard! You say you’re a godly man and you serve a thing like that …’
‘I serve my kingdom,’ answered the thief-taker evenly. He punched the Headsman in the face, knocking him out of Berren’s view. The Headsman lapsed into sobbing whines. Berren couldn’t see either of their faces.
‘I’ll give you anything I have.’
‘No, no. Gods! It’s too late for that. All you have that I want is your silence. I want you to disappear. I want you to end.’
‘Quickly, Syannis!’ hissed the witch-doctor from the House of Cats and Gulls.
‘I know about Radek! He’s coming! He’s …’
The Headsman said no more. His last sound was a punctured sigh. Then there came a heavy thud. Try as he might, Berren couldn’t find a crack in the floor wide enough to let him see what had happened.
‘I know, I know,’ said Master Sy softly. ‘He’s been looking for me for a long time, and now word is on its way to him that I’m here. We’ll hear all about it later, won’t we now.’ Wet fleshy sounds floated up through the floor, mixed with the sort of crunching Berren was used to hearing from dogs when they were chewing on a bone. Very slowly, he eased himself to where there was a slightly bigger crack in the floor.
Master Sy was hacking through the Headsman’s neck with his sword.
Berren’s heart nearly flew out of his chest. He rolled away and stared at the ceiling and clamped a hand over his mouth, partly to stop himself from gasping and partly to stop himself from being sick. He lay very still, wishing he was invisible. Kasmin had been decent, Master Sy was right enough about that. He’d saved Berren’s life once, back when Jerrin One-Thumb had been about. He’d become something of a gruff-but-kindly uncle and Berren wouldn’t shed a single tear for the man who’d killed him. But still, hacking a man’s head off? Why?
When it was done, Berren thought he heard the thief-taker and the witch-doctor, slipping away. He couldn’t be sure. His ears were still filled with the terrible sound of Master Sy’s sword slicing at the man’s flesh. For a long time he lay where he was, flat on his back, not daring to move. What if Master Sy hadn’t gone anywhere? What if he was simply lurking downstairs in the darkness? What if the witch-doctor was still there, waiting for him?
There were bodies in the room downstairs for sure. He didn’t know how many, but more than one.
No, he needed to move, to get away, and as if to prove it, a gang of snuffers from the Two Cranes burst in, six or seven of them with lanterns from the inn.
‘Holy Kelm!’
‘Khrozus’ Blood!’
He couldn’t know what they were seeing, but he could imagine it. Three dead men and a fourth with his head missing, blood everywhere.
‘Sun and Moon!’
‘Well don’t just stand there, you onion-eyed oaf! Go and get someone!’
‘Who?’
‘Gods! I don’t know! Everyone! Don’t touch anything!’
The snuffers moved back outside. As quietly as he could, Berren tip-toed back to the window. He slipped out and closed the shutters behind him and lay quiet and still on the stable roof. The little yard behind the inn had half a dozen snuffers in it now. He didn’t dare move.
A few seconds later, they found the bodies of the two men who’d been guarding the back gate, the ones Master Sy had paid off to let him in. That was enough. They ran back inside, filling the night with cries of murder and alarm. Berren waited until they were gone, then jumped down into the yard, bolted for the open gate, and fled into the night as fast as he could.