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grinned. ‘Which reminds me: Kol owes me an emperor.’ The grin vanished. ‘There are those who don’t like the idea that he’s founding a dynasty but that has nothing to do with us. We’re little people, Berren. In the affairs of princes and kings, little people end up getting squashed.’ He sounded bitter.
    ‘Right.’ Berren nodded. ‘I didn’t hear anything then, right?’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Right.’ He’d been looking forward to telling Master Sy about what he’d heard for the whole day. He sighed. Master Sy, though, was looking pleased with himself.
    ‘His Highness will be leaving in a few days, back to Varr for the spring festival. We’ll have the Emperor’s head in our purses again. I think we might take a day or two of leisure before we go and see what work Justicar Kol has to offer a pair of thief-takers. We’ll go down to the old lookout tower on Wrecking Point. You can tell me about everything you didn’t hear there.’ They sat together in silence for a while longer and then the thief-taker nudged Berren. ‘Get some rest, lad. You want to be fresh when your dragon-monks arrive don’t you? I’ll get Fennis to take over down here a bit earlier tomorrow.’
    Fresh? Not much chance of that, not unless he dozed in a corner of the scent garden though his watch, although he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t do just that. He’d been doing this stupid job for days and nothing had happened at all. No one had even come in to his little garden, not once, not if you didn’t count Master Sy and the other thief-takers. Kelm’s Bones! If they really thought someone was going to try and climb in through the prince’s window, they’d never had put him there in the first place! For all Master Sy’s fine words sometimes, he was still an apprentice and they all still treated him like a child.
    And he was still thinking that when Master Sy shook him awake in the middle of the night. He grumped and grumbled and got up, shaking off stupid dreams full of dragon-monks, and shuffled off down the stairs into the back of the Watchman’s Arms. A bowl of cold porridge was waiting for him, his breakfast. He sat down and tried to settle somewhere comfortable to doze, but he couldn’t stop his mind from wandering. Every now and then he looked up, sure he’d heard something. After a bit he shuffled over to a far corner, hidden behind some stupid bush that was supposed to smell of something nice but smelled to Berren of fish – everything smelled of fish tonight, the city finally overwhelming the scents of the garden. It was a good place to hide though. He couldn’t see the yard but he could see the prince’s window and in the night shadows, he was invisible. Grumbling to himself, he poked his breakfast with his spoon. It was cold and congealed and his belly still hadn’t forgiven him for the night before. He wrinkled his nose and pushed it away.
    When he looked up again, there was a face at the arch. He blinked and the face became a whole person, slipping into the shadows around the edge of the scent garden. Someone small, his sort of size. It was too dark to make out anything more.
    He stayed very still, holding his breath, straining his ears, wondering for a moment if he was imagining things. The night was silent. He couldn’t hear the usual mumble of conversation from the guards in the yard. A chill ran through him. The soldiers would never have let someone come into the garden, not at this time of night. He couldn’t hear them because they weren’t there any more. Or because they were dead! Khrozus! No had ever told him what he was supposed to do if someone really did slip into the garden. He didn’t even have a weapon! Only his old purse-cutting knife Stealer and his practice sword, his waster. A glorified stick. Now what?
    He could run, he supposed. Run out into the yard shouting his head off, but what good would that be if there weren’t any soldiers out there? Then again, he couldn’t see