Berren galloped through the kingdom of Tethis. He stopped at a farm, helped himself to a barn for the night and was gone with the dawn. He rode through the countryside, skirted Galsmouth with its garrison of fifty king’s guard, crossed the river and entered Gorandale. For a few days he passed through rolling hills dotted with the occasional flock of sheep. He saw shepherds and a few quiet villages nestled in among the valleys, but little else. Syannis had left food with the horses. Hard bread, biscuits, dried meat and cheese. Enough to keep four men for two or three days; more than enough for Berren.
His head fluttered like a moth around Syannis’s flame. They’d walked straight into a trap. Syannis could have dived into the sump and saved himself, but he’d hadn’t and now he was probably dead. Berren had thoughts about selling the horses, about taking the money and finding a ship and never coming back. But for most of the time he thought about all the things that had happened since the day in Deephaven when they’d first met in a dingy alley that smelled of blood and piss, when Syannis had been nothing more than a thief-taker with three dead men scattered at his feet. He remembered how he’d wanted to be like that, to fight like that. He’d wanted it more than anything. He’d have given his soul.
Maybe he already had. The woman he’d murdered after the battle on the beach still haunted his dreams.
Would Tarn have come back for him? Or Talon? Yes. But he’d never have thought Syannis would, because the thief-taker saw the world in a different way, where men and friends were sacrificed for some greater end. With regret, yes, but without remorse. The thief-taker had taught him that too. He’d taught Berren everything; now, too late, Berren found that that wasn’t who he wanted to be.
All the things the thief-taker had done for him and all the things he’d taken away. Yet this time Syannis had come back.
He forded a river in the middle of nowhere. The road — not much more than a muddy line through the hills — wound back to the coast. He stayed for a night in a tiny town that smelled of fish and filled his belly with something that wasn’t dry bread. Three days later he was outside Forgenver. Talon had always been decent to him. Talon deserved to know about Syannis. Then maybe he’d look for that ship.
‘Hey! Berren!’ he hadn’t even reached the tents before Tarn was waving at him. The two of them embraced. ‘Glad to be back?’
‘Hard to answer, that.’
‘Talon said you were in Tethis. He looked none too happy. So how’s the enemy’s strength?’ He frowned. ‘You know we’re at war with Meridian now, right?’
‘Yeh, I worked that one out.’
‘I’ve heard he has the Mountain Panther and the Black Swords hired to his cause.’ Tarn laughed. ‘Throw in the king’s guard, that’s sixteen hundred men. So is it true? Is that what he’s got?’
‘Yeh. The Mountain Panther was in Tethis. The Black Swords shipped in the day we left.’
Tarn grinned and clapped Berren on the shoulder. ‘Talon says they spent a week up the coast near Taycelmouth hunting for us until they realised we’d slipped away and taken their lancers too. Path of the Sun! That’s too many to face in the field! And they have archers and heavy armour. I reckon Talon has to sit tight for the rest of the season then. Meridian will have to let at least one of them go, and by next year we could have a company of five hundred. That’s what I’d do. At least the walls around Tethis aren’t up to much.’
Berren snorted, thinking again of the vast half-hidden city walls of Deephaven. ‘That’s true enough.’ Then he looked out of the camp, over to the town of Forgenver which had no walls at all. ‘Better than here, though. An army coming at Tethis from the north by land would have to cross the gorge and the river. If you came by sea, you’d have to fight through the town.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘There are some big ships in Tethis harbour. I’d be more worried about them coming here.’
‘Don’t you worry, soldier.’ Tarn caught his eyes. ‘They come here, we’ll have a palisade wall up in no time and we’ll shred them. Talon’s promised us a hundred brand new crossbows.’ He led Berren towards a large hut in the centre of the camp, half made of wood, half pieces of scavenged canvas.
‘As long as they don’t come from the armoury in Tethis.’ Berren smirked. At least they’d done something useful.
‘What we need is a hostage. But if it comes to fighting, we’ll just have to rely on our swords as always. Talon’s in the. .’ He waved at the wood-and-canvas thing. ‘That.’
Berren watched Tarn turn and walk away. The priests in Deephaven had tried to teach him things about warfare. Strategies and numbers of soldiers and how so-and-so had held such-and-such a place against an army of ten thousand for weeks or days or however long it was. Probably with six blind swordsmen and a one-armed archer who fired arrows with his teeth. Berren didn’t remember too much of any of it, only that the heroically outnumbered defenders generally came to a bad end. But still. . They’d taught him about the civil war. How Khrozus Falandawn, with half Emperor Talsin’s strength, had seized Deephaven despite its walls and Varr despite its armies. He’d wrestled the empire away from Talsin, and how had he done it? He was good with cavalry, he was brutal and ruthless, but mostly what Berren remembered was that Khrozus had had sorcerers, that he’d used magic. He smiled. He could still see the other novices shrinking and shrivelling into their stools, almost not wanting to hear what was to come. The priest banging on about the dangers of sorcery, how it was the path to wickedness, while Berren had sat wide-eyed, listening with rapt attention. Khrozus had won his battles with sorcery. He’d cheated. ‘Hey, Tarn!’ he shouted with a laugh. ‘We need a wizard! Get us a wizard!’
Tarn turned back to Berren and made a sign to ward off evil. ‘I’ll trust my sword, thanks.’
Sterm. That was the priest’s name. Sterm the Worm. Remembering made Berren smile for a while, and then the smile faded as he remembered how things gone for him when it came to wizards and their ilk, and the whiff of rotten fish he’d smelled as he’d plunged into the sump; and then other memories came too: the woman he’d killed, as always, and standing in the yard of Tethis castle with a whip in his hand and tears on his cheeks. Deephaven seemed so long ago. He’d been such a fool. So naive.
With a heavy sigh, he went and did what he’d come to do. Found Talon and told the Prince of War that his brother was gone. When he was done, Talon shook his head and sent him away without a word, though his face was pale and stony and his eyes were cold and hard. No blame, no pointed finger demanding to know how it was that Berren and Berren alone had returned. Almost as though Talon had expected it.
‘Meridian won’t kill him. Not while Talon’s here,’ said Tarn when the news finally spread around the camp. ‘But he’ll be happy enough to hold a hostage.’
The weeks passed and dragged into months. Berren stared out at the sea, watching ships come and go from Forgenver, telling himself that the next one, always the next one, would take him away. Talon recruited every man he could get. Each day wagons went back and forth, full of supplies. Most of it was food, but sometimes there were arrows or spearheads or boots, and when a hundred brand new crossbows arrived just as Talon had promised, the camp buzzed with the news for days and even Berren slunk across the camp to look at them. Every morning, as he woke up, he wondered if that would be the day he’d finally vanish back to Aria; and every night as he fell asleep in the same place once more, he realised that he had nowhere else to go; until, as the weeks rolled by, the thoughts began to fade and he knew, for better or for worse, that this was his home now, and the men around him were his family.
News came from Tethis now and then. Talon spoke of it with glee. Meridian had prepared an attack. He’d sailed two fat-bellied ships into Tethis harbour and filled them up with soldiers. They’d been ready to sail when the skies had darkened and the worst storm for twenty years had struck. One ship had broken apart and sunk right where it was, and the other needed months of repair. Dozens of soldiers, perhaps a hundred, had drowned. They heard too that Syannis wasn’t dead and was Meridian’s hostage, just as Tarn had said. Rumours shot through the camp like wildfire after this: every week there was a new story about how Syannis had escaped, or which bit of him had been cut off and sent to Talon as a warning this time.
Meridian tried again late in the summer, sending his soldiers northwards on foot. His army marched a day past Galsmouth and then found their food infested with rats, rot and blight. They had no choice but to turn back. From the accounts that reached Forgenver, Meridian had been so furious that he’d had the quartermasters from each company hanged.
The seasons turned and the weather began to change. The days grew cold and wet, the nights dark and long. In Tethis the Black Swords were rumoured to have sailed south for the winter, leaving only two cohorts of archers. Outside Forgenver the Hawks had swelled their numbers close to the five hundred that Tarn had predicted. The autumn rains set in, driven by a biting wind while Talon drilled them ever harder; unrest spread among the older soldiers, used to spending their winters in milder climes. Day after day of rain turned their camp into a sea of mud, and still Talon ordered his grumbling companies out of their tents to march back and forth until they were soaked, to practise their formations until mud covered everything and no one knew who was who any more. Berren began to think there might be a mutiny, but just when he thought that even he might revolt and run away, Tarn barged into their tent, shook the rain off his coat and beamed with glee. He threw a coin at Berren.
‘Two rest days and five silver crowns for each man.’ He hauled Berren up off his pile of blankets, where he’d been savouring the ever-present smell of sodden earth and listening to the thrum of rain on canvas, the pitter-patter of drips where it found its way inside their tent. Tarn was still grinning. ‘And then we march!’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Forgenver’s not going to know what hit it. We’ll drink the whole town dry!’
‘What do you mean we march?’
‘Get your coat on! We’ve got a shipment of blankets and boots and other things to get from the docks to the camp without there being any pilfering, and then. .’ Berren threw on his long leather coat, the coat Master Sy had once worn in Deephaven. Outside they trudged, heads down through the mud. ‘Tethis, Berren.’ Tarn slapped him on the back but his tone was serious. ‘We’re going to Tethis! We’re going to war! Whatever words have never been spoken, speak them soon. A winter war takes far more lives than a summer one.’
The road into Forgenver was churned to a thick gooey mud that sucked at Berren’s boots. The rain was relentless. Even under his cloak and his coat, he was soaked to the skin when they reached the docks. Crates lay piled up by the waterfront; men were swearing and shouting at each other over the hiss of water falling on stone. Puddles lay ankle deep. Everything was sodden and faded to a haze of grey, and in the midst of it all, barking orders and cursing, stood Talon, waving his arm over some crates stacked beside him.
‘Tarn! These! Get these to the camp. I don’t care how, but get them there. Don’t drop them.’
‘What are they?’
Talon glanced at Berren. He shook his head. ‘Fragile, that’s what.’ Berren saw firelight flickering through the cracks in the wooden crate. Were they. .? He bent down to peer closer and then stopped. Talon had drawn his sword, fast as a snake, and the tip of it was hovering in front of Berren’s face. ‘Fragile. Like glass. That’s all you need to know,’ he said to Tarn, then turned his eye on Berren. ‘You I brought here for a different reason.’ His voice softened a notch. ‘You’ll know what they are when you see them.’
Berren stepped back. He knew already. He’d seen that flickering light before. In Kalda, a bright ball of flame in the hands of a Deephaven lancer.
Talon’s stare was strong enough to flay skin. ‘Sergeant Tarn, I suggest you put a covering over those crates when you get them to the armoury. You will take them yourself and you will let no one else come near them. Do you understand? What they hold will change the course of a battle, if used well.’
Tarn nodded.
‘There’s a handcart here for you. Let no one else see them.’ Talon turned back to Berren. ‘Well, you might as well help him now.’
The two of them gingerly loaded the crates. Berren tried to guess how many fire-globes Talon had. A dozen crates and a handful in each one, so perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred? Enough to change a battle, yes, unless the enemy had them too. They set the crates down on a bed of straw, carefully apart from one another. When they were done, Tarn helped himself to a piece of sailcloth and wedged it down on top. Further along the waterfront, a heavily loaded wagon was being forced through the mud by a team of beasts pulling from the front and a cohort of sodden swearing soldiers pushing behind.
‘We’ll follow them,’ said Tarn. ‘They’ll go nice and slow and find all the bumps for us,’ but Talon was shaking his head and looking at Berren.
‘Take them back on your own, Sergeant Tarn. Berren stays here.’ When Tarn cocked his head as if to ask why, Talon laughed. ‘Because I’m going to ask him to help me kill a warlock, that’s why.’ He turned to Berren. Half a smile played around the corners of his mouth. ‘I know what Syannis offered you in Tethis. She’s here. She wants to talk to you. She wants you to kill Saffran Kuy. Can’t say as I’d object.’ He turned back to Tarn. ‘Does that satisfy you, Sergeant?’
Tarn wrinkled his nose. He nodded. Then, when Berren didn’t say anything, he shrugged and pulled his cart slowly away into the rain. Talon watched him go.
‘We both have a lot to be sorry for,’ he said without looking at Berren. ‘Syannis couldn’t bring back your sword-monk and you can’t bring back Syannis. You said Saffran Kuy made you kill Radek?’
‘Yeh.’ Berren spoke softly, words almost lost in the rain. He remembered perfectly how the warlock had come, a thing made of shadows, how he’d wrapped a part of himself around Radek’s neck, and the voice inside Berren’s head: Kill! Kill him now! A voice he’d had no choice but to obey.
‘Princess Gelisya’s bondswoman is here of her own accord. She ran away. If we lose, she’ll be hanged. She ran away because, she says, Saffran Kuy is turning her mistress into something terrible.’ He wrenched his eyes away from wherever they were and looked at Berren instead. ‘I’ve not forgotten that you once said the same. If it were down to me, I’d make peace with Meridian long enough to have Kuy and his like hunted down and strung up. Too late for that now, but Kuy still has to be stopped.’
‘Tell me how!’ said Berren. ‘I’ll hunt him down and I’ll kill him.’
Talon’s eyes strayed back to the horizon. ‘It won’t be easy. I know he’s touched you. He’ll feel you coming.’
‘So be it.’
The Prince of Swords nodded and sniffed. ‘Meridian is no fool. Beating him will be difficult. But it’s my homeland. I will know the battlefield. But I do not know which side Saffran Kuy will be on. I do not want him on mine. But I do not want him on Meridian’s either. If he’s near when we come to battle, I want him gone. Forever.’
‘I’m a thief,’ whispered Berren. ‘I’ll slip in like a shadow, put a knife through his eye and slip away again.’
Talon half-smiled. He slipped his sword out of its scabbard and stared at the blade. ‘Killing a warlock isn’t such an easy thing. I thought you knew that already. And I have little advice to offer. Come with me!’
He jerked his head towards the town and strode away from the cursing men on the waterfront, through the Forgenver streets.
‘The bondswoman is in here. Make whatever deal you like with her. Maybe she can help you. When Meridian is dead you can have her if you want her. Do with her what you will. Release her if you wish. I will see to it she doesn’t hang for abandoning her mistress.’ His restless eyes settled on Berren again as he stopped at a travellers’ tavern and pushed open the door. ‘When this war is over, Aimes will still be king of Tethis. She will belong to him. He’s simple and will be easily swayed.’
He led Berren inside, through the commons and up some stairs. There were soldiers here, lots of them, not all in their armour or carrying their spears, but he saw them nonetheless. Lancers from Aria. Talon stopped at an arched door.
‘Here. I don’t know what she wants, save that Saffran Kuy’s head on a pike is a part of it. Freedom, I suppose. Her life. Don’t we all?’ His eyes glittered. ‘Although it’s possible she wants to murder you for that flogging you gave her, so keep your on guard and keep your wits with you in there, Berren of Deephaven.’
With that he left. Berren watched him go, and when Talon was out of sight, he pushed on the door. He knew this place. The rooms were comfortable, the sort used by traders come to Forgenver for a few days to buy and sell before moving on to the next port up the coast. A hovel beside the Captains’ Rest and the Watchman’s Arms of Deephaven, but immeasurably better than a soldier’s tent. It even had a bathtub.
Gelisya’s bonds-maid was sitting on the bed. Clad in white with a veil over her face, she could have been anyone. Berren took off his cloak and his coat, shaking rain onto the floor; as he did, she turned to look at him. Between the dark of the room and her veil, all Berren could see of her was a sinuous shape that once again made him think of Tasahre. This was a woman he’d whipped. His jaw locked. He struggled for words. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. I had no choice. But they all died in his throat. Sorry wouldn’t take away the scars. Didn’t want to? But he’d done it anyway. Had no choice? None at all? They both knew that wasn’t true, not really.
She lifted her veil and her eyes were wide and sad. She stared at Berren and Berren stared back. He tried to remember Tasahre, to put the two of them side by side, and found he couldn’t. The sword-monk’s face kept slipping between the fingers of his memory; and sometimes he thought it was a wilful thing, that her memories had slowly chosen to leave him because of the awful things he’d done: for the old woman after the battle of the beach, for the bloody whipping in the castle yard of Tethis and for the guard under the castle whose throat he hadn’t slit.
‘My mistress says your name is Berren,’ she said.
Berren nodded.
‘Bondsmen don’t have names.’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘But when I did have one, it was Fasha. Master Berren, I have not been truthful. I have not run away. I have come to humbly petition you on behalf of my mistress, Princess Gelisya of Tethis, daughter of the regent Meridian, for your aid.’
‘My aid? In what?’ He was staring at her. He couldn’t help it.
Fasha’s voice grew urgent. ‘The warlock. He has touched my mistress. I fear for her. He will ruin her. He’s touched you too.’ She sank carefully to her knees and bowed her head. ‘Master Berren, my mistress pleads with you: she begs you to help her. Will you do this?’
‘Why ask me?’
When she looked up, her face was torn with grief. ‘My mistress says you are the only one who can stop him. She says she has seen it, that it must be you. I will give you gold.’
‘I don’t want gold. Not for this. I’ll kill Saffran Kuy out of spite.’
‘You will help us?’ Berren nodded. A moment later she was on her feet. She stood right in front of him, so close that they were almost touching and he could smell her skin, a slight tang of rain and sweat. She looked up at him, face brimming with hope. ‘Truly? You will help us?’
‘If the help you seek is the murder of Saffran Kuy, then yes.’ When did it become so easy to be a killer?
She took a step away from him. ‘Best not speak it aloud.’
‘This is a war.’ Berren tore his eyes off her. ‘Wars are filled with vicious deeds. When it’s done, I’ll free you. Both of you. And I’ll not take your gold, but I might take some from your mistress.’ Her closeness was making his heart beat fast. Two years at sea and then another as a soldier and he’d almost forgotten what it was like to be close to a woman. What it had been like with Tasahre, standing among the stolen relics of the House of Cats and Gulls; but now he felt it again, a hunger and a longing almost too great to hold back.
‘Thank you.’ Fasha reached a hand to touch his face and Berren took it in his own, pressing her fingers against his skin. His other hand touched her hip, drawing her gently closer. She put a hand over his heart. ‘If you will help us, I am to give you a gift.’
‘I don’t a need a gift.’ But he did. His hand went from her fingers to her face, cupping her cheek, tilting back her chin, running slowly down the pale naked skin of her neck; and if she’d pulled away now, he wasn’t sure he could have stopped himself from pulling her back, and what sort of monster was he for that? But she didn’t. She pressed herself closer and his hand on her neck slipped to her breast and felt the stiffness and the beating heart beneath as she drew his head to hers and closed her eyes.
‘Berren,’ she murmured. ‘Berren. Whisper your name to me.’ And he did, and she kissed him, slowly at first and then with a desperate passion, the both of them like starving men stumbling upon an unexpected feast. She moaned and cried out as Berren’s fingers found her, and Berren gasped as hers did the same, as they tore each other naked and devoured one another, clawing and urgent and oblivious to the world beyond the circles of their embrace. And when their first throes of passion were done, Fasha took his face in her hands and led him to the bed and they lay down together, one beside the other, and simply stared into one another and stroked and touched and explored with fingers and tongues, all through the night until the first cracks of morning eased their way through the shutters on the window and the dawn roosters crowed.
‘I must go.’ The words brushed Berren’s ear like perfumed silk. He let his eyes watch her as she dressed and then he called her to him and ran his hands over her skin once more. His fingers lingered over the scars on her back.
‘I should never have done that to you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I had no choice.’ And he felt Tasahre’s memory turn and walk away, sad and shaking her head. There is always a choice, Berren. Always a choice. And she was right. Don’t look to ease the harm, Berren. Look to do good. There is a difference.
‘You weren’t the one who made me a bonds-maid.’ Fasha closed her eyes. ‘And I thought you were a warlock’s boy. I knew what would come of what I did.’
He dressed. As he did, he caught a glimpse of something that lay under the bed, something that glittered in the candlelight. He reached for it and his fingers closed around something small and made of glass. He heard Fasha gasp and then he held what he’d found up in front of his face, a small vial. Another like the ones from Deephaven, with tiny words carefully etched into the glass, like the one he’d seen again in Tethis from the soap-maker’s house: The blood of the Funeral Tree, only this was one of the others. His heart beat faster.
Let them drink this and fall asleep. Whisper a name three times in their ear, so that name may become the object of their obsessions and desires.
Berren almost dropped it. ‘What? What is this?’ He stared at it and then at Fasha. She looked horrified.
‘I. . I. . I did not. .’
‘You tricked me! You ensorcelled me! And you call me the warlock’s boy!’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘No, I did not! Look!’ She lunged and grabbed Berren’s hand, forcing the vial up close to his face. ‘See! It’s full! My mistress. . she gave it to me, yes, and I could hardly refuse it to her face. But I didn’t use it! I would not. And you agreed to help, freely. Please!’ She clutched at him. ‘Please!’
Berren shook his head. ‘I would have hunted Kuy anyway.’
In a flash she grabbed the vial out of his hand and opened it and held it to her lips. She looked at him and then closed her eyes. ‘Berren, Berren,’ she breathed. ‘Say your name if you must. Say it for the third time.’
‘No!’ Berren grasped her hand and held it fast. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Keep your freedom! Go and tell your mistress that you’ve done what you came to do. And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll throw that potion into the sea.’
After she was gone, Berren lay still. He gazed at the ceiling, lost in a reverie of bliss and remembered sensation. He only had to close his eyes and she was with him once again, her face aglow with lust, her eyes wide with desire. He lay there and dozed and thanked all the gods he knew, and tried to forget their vicious little twist with Kuy’s potion vial. After all, like she said, she hadn’t used it. She hadn’t.
And then later he got up and walked away and joined the Hawks as they marched out of their camp, as they turned towards the south and towards the war that the thief-taker had made.