The King's Assassin (Thief Takers Apprentice 3) Read Free Page B

running again. He pushed the silver token into his mouth and bolted for the roof. Kalda made no bones about selling its unwanted to Taiytakei slavers when they came. A cruel death at the oars, long and slow and hard; but he’d spent half his life running from men like these and he knew how to escape them. They’d come through the doors and he’d leave across the rooftops and it would be as easy as that because it always was. No one slept up in the old bakery attic because half the roof was missing. In the wind and rain of a Kalda winter you’d get better shelter sleeping in an alley. Half the roof missing had made for cold nights too, but it also made for an easy way out.
    The shouts from below were getting louder. He thought he heard his name but that couldn’t be right. They spoke with funny accents here; it must have been someone else. For a moment he stopped. If the thief-taker wasn’t here, if the thief-taker had never been here, then what was he doing? If he ran, where to? For what? Why not just turn round and let them take him?
    He reached the attic and entered. An arm wrapped around his face and then someone was on his back, bearing him to the ground. He struggled furiously but a second man quickly pinned his legs.
    ‘We’ve got him!’ shouted the man on his back. Berren struggled to turn and look but he was held fast. We’ve got him? These weren’t slavers simply clearing out the slums. They’d come for him , not for just anyone. Because of the sailor in the Bitch Queen?
    ‘And the rest?’
    ‘If they look like they can swing a sword then take them to the arms-master. Otherwise let them go.’ The voice came closer and hissed in Berren’s ear. ‘You! Keep still! I won’t hurt you if you keep still, but I won’t mind if it turns out that I have to. Got that?’
    Berren couldn’t even nod. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’ve done nothing!’
    ‘You were out the back of the Bitch yesterday. You had a knife in your hand with fresh blood on it and you’d just killed a man. You call that nothing, do you?’
    ‘I . . . No! Not me!’ No, he didn’t call that nothing. He might have called it a mistake. Might have.
    The man on his back pushed down harder, twisting Berren’s arm. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘So that was some other dark-skin boy with his first fluff on his face who happened to look exactly like you and talks the same funny way, was it? Pillock.’
    Sailors got stabbed in the Bitch Queen every week. Maybe their shipmates came looking for you but not a gang of snuffers. Sailors didn’t have the money to buy snuffers. ‘No! I don’t . . . I didn’t . . . I wasn’t . . .’
    The man squeezed and Berren whimpered. ‘You count your lucky stars that we’re not city men. The prince doesn’t get on with the people who rule here.’
    A fearful understanding gripped him. This wasn’t about Klaas – these were the snuffers he’d met outside with the man he’d mistaken for Master Sy!
    Another voice joined the first. The one he remembered. ‘Tarn! Let him up.’
    ‘You sure about that, Prince? He’ll run.’
    ‘No, he won’t. Get off him.’
    The weight came off Berren’s back and then his arms were free. He started to get up, already glancing left and right for the quickest way out. There were two men behind him and then the snuffer who looked like Master Sy in front. From this close, even in the dark, it clearly wasn’t his old master, but there was something familiar about him. Berren rose slowly to a crouch. He’d have to bolt past not-quite-Master-Sy. Then he could jump the alley between the bakery and the next row of run-down old houses. With a good lunge he’d get straight onto the roof. These snuffers with their armour and their swords, they wouldn’t make it. If they jumped, they’d fall. He’d lured men to their deaths that way before. That wasn’t killing though, not like in the Bitch Queen. No accounting for people being stupid.
    Not-quite-Master-Sy was giving him a