Hang the witch.
They'd found a place to stay. He hadn't been paying much attention. Memories came at him from everywhere. He must have fallen asleep, and then the dreams, and now he sat beside Tuuran on a rooftop in the sun.
‘You never believe me when I tell you who I am.’ He said it without any bitterness but with a sadness that came of simply being here. From the rooftop they were looking over what had been the Maze, back when he'd been an orphan boy from Shipwrights’. He should have been able to see other places he'd known once: the Sheaf of Arrows where he'd hidden with Lilissa, the Barrow of Beer where old Kasmin had lived. He should have been able to point them out to Tuuran but he couldn't. The Maze he remembered was all gone and a new Maze had risen in its place. The House of Embalmers and Morticians stood on one corner, a place that hadn't existed in Berren's day because burying the dead had been a terrible sin and still was. The streets of the Maze were covered over now, everything was covered over, windows boarded and curtained or bricked up and it didn't take much to understand the why of it. The Maze had become the Necropolis, a city within the city, a city of the dead just as the oar-slaves in the galley had said. Every street he knew had been barricaded from within and then blocked by the living except for one — Taphouse Way once, but now they called it Dead Man's Walk.
‘I know you think I'm mad.’ He didn't look at Tuuran's face but pointed out over the city. ‘There. Those towers up there. The Peak. The tower capped in gold is the Temple of the Sun. The one that seems to have wings is the Overlord's tower. They're the same height so neither overlooks the other.’ He peered at them. They were still exactly as he remembered them. His arm moved round. ‘That tower poking up over the rooftops is the Temple of the Moon.’ Old Garrent who had always put a smile on his face. ‘Beyond lies the Godsway, which runs from Arr estuary and the River Gate to the Square of the Four Winds.’ Right past the House of Cats and Gulls where Saffran Kuy once lived. His arm moved again. ‘Down there runs the Avenue of Emperors. All the way to the sea. The one we walked up yesterday from the docks. Next road along is the Kingsway.’ His arm swept further round. ‘Pelean's Gate and the Sea Gate are over there. Then somewhere are the old city walls. On the other side there used to be a canal. It was supposed to go from the river to the sea and make Deephaven into an island but they never finished it. It's mostly covered over now, but the canal's still there underneath the slums. You go and see, Tuuran, and then come and tell me how I know all this.’
‘Never said you hadn't ever met someone who'd been here.’ Tuuran snorted. ‘Just said you were too young to be the Bloody Judge, that's all. Thought you were a bit pale to be from here too but I see they have all sorts.’
Berren rocked on his haunches. ‘Bit of everything in Deephaven. Anything you want, you can find it.’ Almost anything. The boat from Helhex had brought them round the mouth of the river. He'd seen the Emperor's Docks where his thief-taker master had killed his first love. The memory felt as fresh as dripping blood. He knew he'd never find someone like her again.
‘We could stay here. In Aria. In Deephaven,’ said Tuuran.
‘No.’
‘There's work for a good sword here.’
Snuffers. He meant they could be snuffers. He was right too. The snuffers the young Berren inside him remembered, the old soldiers from the civil war, they were all gone now, dead or hung up their swords. The city hungered for more.
‘There's a war coming.’ Tuuran said it almost like he was saying a prayer. A war, except there were no dragons here for him to slay.
On the rooftop, sitting in the sun, staring out over the Necropolis, Berren Crowntaker turned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We're not staying.’
Tuuran sniffed. ‘I've been listening out,’ he said. ‘Keeping my ears alive while you've been sleeping the day away. That Ice Witch rules here now, and these risen dead, their presence, the tolerance she gives them, the fact that she doesn't have them all burned, that's proof enough of what she is.’ Tuuran made a gesture of the sun, a warding away of evil. ‘You should look for your warlocks and your blood-mages here, not somewhere across the sea.’ He drew his knife and tested its edge with a finger. ‘They say she rules as regent for her younger brother but that when he comes of age he's going to move against her. There's going to be a war. They say she's built a vast fortress up the coast from here, a huge thing as big as the Palace of Paths. All black stone risen out of the earth and welded into shape by her magic.’ He shivered.
‘Stay if you want; I won't.’ Berren got up, leaving Tuuran out in the sun, and clambered across the rooftops looking for a way down. On the whole he'd seen enough of war, and now he'd seen enough of Deephaven too, but he had to have a look at what had once been the Maze, just the once before he left. Had to, because what was now the Necropolis had almost been his home.
‘They don't like the light.’
Berren was following a man and a woman down Dead Man's Walk, loitering behind them because the woman seemed to know what she was talking about. The man was obviously new to the city — it was all over him in the nervous way he walked and how his eyes darted from side to side, in the unease that clouded his face; and who could blame him, heading into the gloom to where dead men walked and spoke and haggled over pieces of bone. The windows overlooking Dead Man's Walk were boarded up, the side alleys and streets blocked with rubble or walled shut. A patchwork of boards and blankets and sails hung between the rooftops overhead. The street became a tunnel. In places the stone was blackened and charred. There had been fires here.
The man looked around him and gawped and Berren stared too. Fire destroys the walking dead. He wished he knew how he knew that.
As they walked deeper in, only a few dim rays of sunlight filtered down to the ground. His eyes began to adjust to the strange twilight. He could see where daylight burst in again at the far end of the street, where the Necropolis ended once more. Between there and where he stood lay a small square, the Speaking Square in his day although it doubtless had another name now. A dozen or so figures stood within it, clustered in twos and threes.
‘This is where they do their business with the outside world.’ The woman was talking again. Berren stopped close enough to listen. She pointed down another street, a black hole leading away from the square. ‘There lies the heart of the Necropolis.’
One of the figures in the square turned to look at him. It was the face of a doll, beautiful and perfect and cold and lifeless; and as Berren looked around he saw they were all like this, and they were all turning and looking at him. They started towards him, all of them at once. Though they moved as though they could see as well as anyone, each had their eyes sewn firmly shut. The woman fell silent. Sudden fire flickered from the tips of her fingers.
Berren turned and fled. Bolted like a frightened little boy until he was back in the summer sunlight once more, holding his side and gasping for breath. People passed him on the street with wry smiles. Someone running out of Dead Man's Walk like his arse was on fire? They probably saw the same thing every day. He waited until he caught his breath but no dead men came shambling after him. Out here the rest of Deephaven, the rest of the empire and beyond, everything was exactly as it was when he'd entered. Perhaps ten minutes had passed, and yet as he emerged into the light he came into a different world. Nothing would be quite the same. His home was gone for ever. He'd leave on the first ship he could find now and Tuuran could do whatever he liked. He didn't think he'd ever be back.