Chapter 3 A Skitter in the Dark
Two nights later, Rolan was still staring at the same stupid wooden ceiling when the station’s lamp went out.
He bolted upright, blinking into the sudden darkness. Excitement tingled on his skin. He raised a hand but couldn’t see it in the gloom.
Had his father finally come for him? Was he breaking him out?
Rolan’s heart ached with hope. This was it. Pa would free him, compliment him on his cleverness, and finally, finally he would let Rolan be a part of his world. He’d look at him with pride. Rolan would prove where he belonged.
“Pa?” he whispered. But only silence answered back.
The younger guard was on duty tonight. Rolan had learned his name was Newt, which was apt because he was as nervous as one, and his nose always seemed to run. Even his snores sounded wet. He’d pose no threat to the great Rabb Strider, criminal mastermind, that was sure.
“Pa,” Rolan repeated, more loudly. “Is that you?”
He peered into the dark, trying to make out his pa’s square build in the shadows. His father had busted accomplices out of cells before, some of them much more secure than Rolan’s. This place should be a piece of pie.
Straining his ears, Rolan listened for his father’s voice, his breathing, anything to indicate his presence.
Instead, he heard a skitter.
Rolan’s body went cold. He sat as still as a stone, listening, watching, his muscles tensed. It was only him and Newt in the station. And while Newt was an awful snorer, Rolan had never heard him or Pa make a sound like that—like ten thousand tiny, hard legs scrabbling over rock.
He heard it again, closer this time, from somewhere above.
Rolan’s eyes stretched wide, straining for any glimmer of light that might reveal the whatever-it-was crawling across the ceiling, over his head. Maybe it was a spider. Maybe it was a rat. He could deal with spiders and rats. Not happily, but he could deal with them.
But if it was the other thing…
A thread of moonlight stretched through the narrow window behind Rolan, but it wasn’t nearly enough to illuminate the cell.
If he shouted for Newt, would the thing attack?
Rolan had no choice but to remain frozen as he watched the darkness, waiting for the sound.
It came again, on the other side of the cell this time.
Rolan’s eyes moved while the rest of him stayed still, and a bead of cold sweat dribbled down the nape of his neck and under his collar.
“Newt,” he whispered. “The light.”
Newt answered with a particularly robust snore, and the thing skittered again.
This time it moved across the window, and Rolan finally got a look at it in the silver moonlight.
His heart stopped beating.
The creature was as long as his arm, its sinuous body lined with legs, its head a spiked bulb on a stalk of a neck. It twisted, staring back at Rolan through three rows of pale, glowing eyes. When it opened its mouth, revealing teeth as sharp as arrowheads, wisps of blue mist oozed from its throat.
Cryptic.
Staring at the thing, Rolan realized this was as close as he’d ever been to one of the monsters. He’d glimpsed them before, in patches of shadow, vanishing into the night, and it had always been enough to fill his dreams with nightmares for days after.
What he saw now would keep him up for a solid year.
If he survived this night.
For a moment time seemed to stop as Rolan and the Cryptic studied each other.
It was hard to believe that this many-legged little monster had once been nothing more than a secret in someone’s head, a deed untold, a word unspoken.
And over time that secret had grown restless, as all secrets do, until at last it pried itself free of whatever fool had been keeping it and scurried into the dark.
And in the dark, secrets changed. They grew. They took on monstrous forms, sprouting legs and eyes and scales and claws. In the shadows of Crisanth, secrets came to life.
And then they attacked.
Rolan moved, but the Cryptic moved faster, sprinting off the wall with a raspy shriek. It struck the bench where Rolan had been lying, biting and clawing, scoring deep marks into the wood. Rolan flung himself at the bars, screaming for Newt.
The guard jerked up with a snort, making disoriented sounds as he fumbled with the lamp.
Rolan whirled, ducking just in time as the monster came flying toward him.
The Cryptic collided with the bars, snarling and furious, then dropped onto Rolan’s head.
He yelled and shook it off, but not before the thing opened a cut above his eye.
Scrambling across the cell, wiping blood from his vision, Rolan knew it was hopeless.
There was nothing in here to defend himself with.
The Cryptic was driven by manic rage, the need to bite, claw, kill.
Rolan had heard stories all his life, but nothing could have prepared him for the raw violence of the monster.
The Cryptic scrabbled about on the floor, gathering itself for another leap, when suddenly the door of the guard station burst open.
“Pa!” Rolan yelled.
Light—glorious, blessed light—flooded in from the streetlamps outside. Rolan vowed in that moment to never, ever again snuff out one of those magnificent lamps.
The light washed over the cell, and in response, the Cryptic shrieked with fury. It writhed, its rows of eyes flashing spitefully at Rolan one last time before it twisted through the cell bars and scuttled toward the open door.
To Rolan’s dismay, it wasn’t his father standing there.
It was Hoff.
The guard captain let out a yell and kicked at the thing racing toward him.
The Cryptic lashed out, rushing up the guard’s leg and hissing.
Hoff grabbed it in a gloved hand and smashed it against the doorframe, but the creature seemed unharmed.
It darted around the corner and into the street, then out of sight.
A long silence followed, filled with heavy breathing and the clatter of rattling armor. Newt was trembling head to toe.
Then Hoff lunged for the table and relit the lamp, his face red.
“Never,” he roared at the young guard, “never let the lamp go out!”
“S-s-sorry,” Newt stammered.
“Leave!” Hoff ordered. “You’re on two weeks’ suspension. No pay!”
Newt didn’t wait to be told twice. He scrambled up, clanking and rattling, and rushed from the station.
Hoff walked to the chair and sat with a groan. He pulled off his gloves, revealing the deep scratches the Cryptic had left on his hands, even through the thick leather. With a snarl, Hoff looked at Rolan.
Rolan shrank back, hugging himself. “It weren’t my fault.”
With a snort, Hoff tipped his water flask, washing the blood from his hands.
Then he took a jar from his pocket and popped off the lid.
Rolan studied the jar, noting the sprig of dried rosemary tied around its neck.
The salve inside, which Hoff was now applying to the lacerations on his hands, was one of Evaine’s.
He wondered if Anaya had delivered it to him.
The guard captain glanced at him, sneering. “You’re shaking like a leaf, boy. Don’t tell me that was your first Cryptic?”
When Rolan didn’t reply, Hoff roared with laughter.
“Oh, it was, was it? That measly little pest?” He hooted.
“I’ve seen cats with more bite to ’em! You should see the monsters out in the woods.
Bigger than this building, teeth like swords.
Aw, what am I saying? You’ll never see one of them.
You’ll be locked in the cells beneath Crisanth.
You won’t see the sun for a decade, much less a proper Cryptic.
I suppose that’s one thing in your favor, at least.”
Rolan jerked to his feet, still shaking. “I have one more day! My pa—”
“Your pa ain’t coming for you, boy,” Hoff laughed, but for a moment his expression faltered, as if somewhere deep in his cold, empty kettle of a heart, a flicker of pity had ignited.
He quickly snuffed it out with a cough. “You’ll get a formal trial sometime, maybe in a month.
But we both know how it’ll end, with all the trouble you’ve gotten into in your short, miserable life.
You’re looking at ten years in a box. Twelve if you give us grief on the way down. ”
Rolan’s scalp prickled. This wasn’t really happening, was it? He’d been as free as a bird two days ago, carrying on as always, minding his own business. Then that stupid baker with his stupid baguette…
But no.
This wasn’t Finkfloss’s doing, really. This was Rolan’s destiny.
He’d heard it all his life, from Evaine, from the guards, from those adults with whom he’d collided and rebounded like a Cryptic from the light.
You’ll end up no good, just like your old man.
There’s a cell in the duke’s prison with your name already on it.
Nothing but trouble. What a waste. What a shame.
If only your poor mother were still alive…
Hoff opened the cell door. Rolan was too shaken to even run. First the Cryptic, now this. His world was shattering too quickly for him to comprehend the pieces, much less catch them and try to patch them back together.
“Come on, whelp. Your time’s up. They’ve got a real cozy cell prepared for you underground.”
Hoff moved him along with more gentleness than he usually did, but there was still no give in the man’s grip. He held Rolan by his upper arm and led him into the street.
The sun was rising. Blinking up at the pale-gray sky, Rolan wondered where the Cryptic had gone.
He supposed that eventually it would go where they all went when they got big enough—the forest outside the walls, where it was always shadowed, and a little Cryptic could grow into a much bigger Cryptic.
Then it would lie in wait for the unlucky, like little apothecary’s apprentices on their way to Sylvet.
“Your pa’s a worthless scab,” Hoff said. “You coulda just turned him in and avoided all this trouble. Still, be grateful an upstanding man like myself is stepping in to straighten you out. In ten years you’ll walk out of the duke’s prison a new boy, reformed and righteous at last.”
Rolan squeezed his eyes shut. He could barely hear the captain’s words for the pounding in his ears.
Hoff chuckled. “Don’t look so glum, boy. You want your pa so bad? Tell you what. I’ll catch him and throw him down there with you. How considerate of me, don’t you think? Going around, reuniting families, even ones full of cheap crooks like yours.”
Finally, defeated, Rolan slumped, letting Hoff tow him up the road.
He had never felt so utterly alone.