Monster and Apprentice

Chapter 1 Vengeance and Vandalism

Nobody hit Rolan Strider over the head with a baguette and got away with it. Nobody. Especially when it was a baguette he had been planning to eat.

Rolan’s stomach growled as he climbed the lamppost, as if to goad him on. The knife clenched between his teeth slipped, and he paused for a moment to readjust the blade and scope the street below.

Still quiet. Still bright, despite the late hour and the moon glowing faintly above.

The streets of Crisanth were always bright, the lamps burning steadily from dusk to dawn, tended by an army of lamplighters.

This night was no different, though if Rolan succeeded in his mission, this particular corner was about to become a little darker.

Shimmying higher, Rolan pulled himself up and over the lamp’s iron frame, securing himself with the rope he’d carried over his shoulder.

Then he went to work, sliding the knife under the lamp’s lid until it popped open.

The flame burning inside, in its little pot of oil, flickered back like a scared mouse.

Rolan grinned. “Hello, you. Don’t worry, it’ll be over quick.”

Licking his fingers, he reached down for the wick and—

“Rolan Strider!”

Yelping, Rolan lost his grip on the lamp and nearly plummeted to the ground. At the last second, he wrapped his arms around the post, hugging it for dear life, but sacrificing his grip on the knife. It fell to the cobblestone street with a clatter.

“Anaya.” He glared at the girl below. “You ain’t supposed to sneak up on people when they’re hanging on to lampposts fifty feet in the air!”

Standing with her hands on her hips, her freckled brown face tilted upward at him, Anaya looked like a tiny, fluffy-haired, furious doll.

She wore a green dress and a cream apron tied with a little bow at the small of her narrow back.

A daisy winked in her hair. Rolan thought that anyone who didn’t know her would say she looked sweet.

But Rolan did know her, and he recognized the dangerous glint in her eyes that told him he was in for a first-rate scolding.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Rolan,” she retorted. “That’s barely ten feet.”

“Let’s go halves and call it thirty. My point stands.”

“Half of fifty is twenty-five, which you’d know if you ever bothered setting foot in school! And you know what won’t stand? Whatever flimsy lie you’re going to tell the guards when they catch you up there, vandalizing. Again.”

Rolan scoffed, which nearly cost him his precious grip on the lamppost. He hugged it tighter, the cold iron pressing against his cheek and distorting his voice. “I ain’t vandalizing.”

“You were about to extinguish that lamp!”

“Only temporarily! I’m gonna steal it and teach Old Finkface a lesson.”

That wasn’t the only reason, of course. Sure, he couldn’t let the baker get away with clobbering him, but there was more to it. Not that he could tell Anaya what he was really up to… or whose attention he was really trying to get.

Anaya glanced at the bakery shop window which was understandably dark, given the late hour. Finkfloss’s Fine Breads, read the wooden sign over the door. “You were going through his waste bin again?”

“I was hungry. It weren’t stealing. He’d thrown it away.”

“You know he doesn’t like that.”

“I do, but just in case I forgot, he reminded me again. Very violently, with a baguette that was more brick than bread.”

Anaya looked up at him, her expression softening. “You know you can always come over to Evaine’s and—”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Right,” she sighed.

They’d been over this argument a thousand times before, and he was tired of it.

Yes, he could visit the apothecary’s shop and beg for a place at Evaine’s table, and yes, she would pack him a bundle of leftovers if he first endured one of her scathing lectures about all the ways he should get his life straight. But the last time he’d done that…

Well, Anaya didn’t need to know about last time, or the time before.

Striders don’t take charity, especially from nosy, upstart women who can’t mind their own business. Those had been Pa’s exact words. And Pa’s walking stick had hurt a lot worse than a stale baguette.

“What are you doing out here so late?” Rolan asked hastily, eager to change the subject.

Anaya held up a small package wrapped in brown oilcloth and tied with a string. Tucked into the knot was the usual sprig of rosemary, Evaine’s trademark. “I’m delivering medicine to a patient, like the good and upstanding apprentice I am now.”

“How very responsible of you.”

“Yes, it’s disgusting, I know.”

“You wanna climb up here and help me steal Finkface’s lamp?”

“I do not.”

“Fine, then you wanna throw my knife up here, since you made me drop it?”

“No, I’m not throwing a knife at you. That is a fantastically stupid idea, even for you.”

Rolan pouted. “You used to be fun.”

“I used to be an idiot.” She sniffed, her cloud of soft brown curls swaying behind her as she shook her head at him. “One of us had to grow up.”

Rolan shut his eyes, letting himself briefly recall the good old days when Anaya had been the quickest pair of feet on the streets of Crisanth.

She’d taught him which guards always napped on their shifts, which windows you could shimmy open with a knife, and how to quiet a watchdog with a bit of dried venison.

She’d been the one to show him Finkfloss’s bakery-scraps bin, but she’d never been fool enough to get herself caught while raiding it.

They’d been a pair of wild ghosts haunting the city, doing as they liked, going where they liked.

Then she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and grown up.

“C’mon,” he said. “For old time’s sake?”

Anaya stiffened, her head cocking to the side. “Guards are coming.”

Rolan peeled his cheek from the lamppost. “Where?”

She nodded up the road behind him, and he listened until he heard it—the clank-clank-rasp of steel boots and capes. The night watch. Of all his rotten luck.

“Right,” he sighed to the lamp. “Finkface gets one more night with you, and then you’re mine.”

He started to slide down the lamppost only to realize, with a sinking of his stomach, that his leg was caught in the rope. With a yelp, he flipped upside down and dangled by his ensnared ankle.

“Rolan!” Anaya looked wildly from him to the street corner where the guards would appear at any moment. “Wait there!”

“Oh, sure, because I was about to run off! Anaya, go. Now.”

“I can’t leave you there!”

“Yes, you can!” Hanging upside down, he had to tilt his head all the way back to meet her gaze.

Her wide, dark eyes looked like drops of honey, the lamplight reflecting in her irises.

“It’s like you said. You ain’t an idiot anymore.

You got a good thing going with this apprenticeship.

If Hoff finds out you’re hanging around with the likes of me again… ” He snorted. “Get it? Hanging around?”

She rolled her eyes, but the implication was clear between them.

The guard captain would make no end of trouble for Anaya if he thought her Rolan’s accomplice. He might even hold Evaine responsible, as the law often held masters accountable for their apprentice’s actions.

For a moment Anaya seemed to waver. Rolan thought of all the tight spots they’d gotten each other out of in the past, before Evaine had found them and offered Anaya an apprenticeship in her apothecary.

He thought of how he’d begged Anaya to turn it down, because jobs were boring, and who needed one when you had the run of the entire city?

“Anaya…”

He almost said it. He almost asked her to stay and help him, even if it got her caught, because he was selfish and he missed the way things had been. Maybe he would drag her down with him, if it meant he could keep her a little longer.

But then he took in her clean new dress, the way it actually fit her, and he noticed the spot on her apron where she’d spilled ink and tried desperately, if ineffectively, to scrub it out.

The truth was, she’d glowed the day Evaine had taken her in. Rolan would snuff out every lamp in the city before he dared snuff out that light in Anaya’s eyes.

“I been caught a hundred times,” Rolan reminded her. The sound of the clanking boots was louder now. The guards had to be steps away. “They’ll put me in a cell for a few days, I’ll get some free food, and that’ll be that. I’ll be fine.”

Anaya bit her lip, but nodded. Then she spoke in a rush. “I actually came this way to tell you that Evaine is taking me to Sylvet tomorrow. We’ll be gone for a week.”

He blinked. Anaya was leaving Crisanth? Venturing through the woods—through the Cryptic-infested, deadly woods?

He had a hundred questions. Were they taking guards?

Were they leaving early enough to reach Sylvet by dark?

Would they pack enough torches, in case they got caught outside at night?

Cryptics hated light, but they would still attack if they were big and nasty enough. What if one attacked?

“Evaine’s going to leave a basket of food inside her window for you,” Anaya continued. “You know the one. Please promise you’ll—”

Clank, clank, rasp.

“Anaya, go!”

She bolted, rewarding him with one last glimpse of the fastest pair of feet in Crisanth. She still had it, all right. Anaya sprinted away and around the corner just as the guards came into view.

“HEY!” Rolan shouted, ensuring their eyes went directly to him and not to the flash of linen skirts and apron strings vanishing around the corner.

Rolan swung in his humiliating position and put on the widest grin he could muster, given most of his blood had drained into his head. He watched the three guards approach slowly, clanking and rattling like a barrel of kettles rolling downhill.

“Evening, gentlemen,” he said brightly.

But in his chest, his heart was pounding. His palms had begun to sweat. These weren’t just any guards. The one in front, with a face like an old hound’s, was Hoff. The guard captain.

Rolan’s mortal nemesis.