Chapter 10 Visitors
Rolan didn’t run away the next morning.
It was raining, and he didn’t like getting wet.
He didn’t run away the day after that, either, but only because the rain had left the path all muddy.
And the day after that, his ankle was sore from when he jumped off the loft and landed on it funny.
The ankle healed in a few days, but then he got a weird rash on his arm from a plant he’d picked in the field behind Luc’s house.
He decided to stick around a few more days, just in case it turned serious.
Rolan woke one morning to realize that he’d been in the Arcanist’s house for two weeks.
He really did need to make some progress on his running-away plan, but maybe…
maybe he would wait until the melons in Luc’s garden had ripened.
They were nearly ready, and he did love a freshly cut melon.
They were so expensive in the city. He’d wait, and bring some back for his pa.
The waiting would be easier if Rolan weren’t so bored.
During the day, Luc slept late, made breakfast, then went outside.
There, rain or shine, he did a thing Rolan found utterly perplexing.
A narrow pole, no thicker than Rolan’s wrist, was driven into the dirt behind the carrot patch.
While a baffled Rolan looked on, the Arcanist would balance atop the pole, standing on just one foot, the other leg bent at the knee, with his hands held slightly away from his body.
He would stand there like that with his eyes shut, silent and motionless, pretending to be a scarecrow for all Rolan could make out.
After ten or twenty minutes of this lunacy, the Arcanist would calmly open his eyes, jump down, and go about his day.
As if standing utterly still atop poles was a normal thing normal people did every morning.
When Rolan asked him what in the name of truth he was doing up there, Luc only grunted in reply.
Whatever. Rolan didn’t really care, anyway.
He did try to stand on the pole a few times, when the Arcanist wasn’t looking.
It had to be easy, if an old man could do it.
And Rolan had always been light on his feet, able to balance on the gutters and lampposts of Crisanth as he scurried about the rooftops to escape the guards.
But every time he managed to leap up onto the pole, it would wobble, sending him tumbling to the mud. Whatever the trick to it was, Rolan couldn’t figure it out. The blasted thing was set up to make him fail.
Once, he spotted Luc watching him from across the vegetable patch, the man’s stoic face as expressionless as always. Rolan toppled off the pole, cursing, and did not try to balance on it again.
Besides the pole thing, Luc mostly just did farm chores.
He hoed vegetables and fed livestock and mended fences.
He hauled hay and curried his horse. And Rolan shadowed him everywhere, waiting for Luc to give him something to do.
But Luc never did. Rolan might as well have been a ghost flitting about, invisible.
Luc put food on his plate and made him bathe every other day, but beyond that, he ignored Rolan entirely.
Each night, Luc departed with all his weapons and his cloak and his silence, and Rolan amused himself around the house until he finally fell asleep, angry and restless.
When would the apprentice stuff begin? When would he get a sword?
When would Luc speak to him other than the occasional grunt or reminder to wash between his toes?
It was stupid, is what it was.
He was pretty sure Anaya’s apprenticeship hadn’t gone like this.
He remembered her first weeks with Evaine, and how the apothecary had her running ragged all over the city, fetching and carrying and delivering, and sometimes, he was sure, just running for the sake of wearing Anaya out.
It had been horrible. He’d barely seen Anaya at all during those days.
His apprenticeship, however, was turning into a complete bore.
Oh, he loved the free food and the warm bed and the fact that no one was jumping him in an alley and forcing him to turn out his pockets or eat a mouse they’d caught or any of the other awful things the older boys in Crisanth called fun.
He didn’t miss hunting through dark alleys and creepy sewers in search of his pa, or flinching when he had found him, but he was in one of his moods, the moods that usually meant it was best for Rolan to sleep behind the blacksmith’s shop for a few nights. No. He didn’t miss that at all.
But he felt he should be doing something. In all that open grass and under that great blue sky, he felt trapped.
Finally, he confronted Luc.
He waited until the man was in the tub one afternoon and thus unable to vanish into the barn or the woods or any of his other usual escapes. He had a tendency to disappear when Rolan wanted to speak with him.
Despite the water being murky with dirt and suds, obscuring everything beneath the surface, Rolan kept his eyes firmly on the sky as he approached the Arcanist.
“I’m bored,” he declared, which wasn’t at all the elegant and persuasive speech he’d planned out. But with the Arcanist in the tub, glaring daggers at him, he got flustered.
Luc said nothing.
Rolan waited, having figured out Luc’s trick of ignoring him until he got even more bored and wandered off. Not this time. He was staying put until he got what he wanted. He could be patient and surly too.
They went into a deadlock, each trying to outwait and outsilence the other.
Finally, Luc spoke, his tone dangerously calm. “Do you want to fight Cryptics?”
Rolan let out a breath. “No.”
“Do you want to muck out the horse’s stall?”
It was weird, the way Luc had so many animals around but refused to name any of them. It was just “the horse” or “that sheep” or, when he was in an eloquent mood, “this thrice-blasted idiot of a brainless goat!”
“No, I don’t want to muck anyone’s stall,” said Rolan.
Luc continued in that horribly gentle voice. “Do you want to fix the leaky roof tile?”
Rolan looked up, up to the highest point of the house’s roof, where a loose tile had let in rain the night before. It was very high up, in the place where the roof was almost vertical. He blanched. “Not really.”
“Then what do you want to do, boy?” Luc growled, his voice dropping about a hundred octaves, as deep as the core of the earth.
Rolan gulped. “I don’t know. Not any of those things, but something.”
“Something.”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to—to—” Well, Rolan wasn’t sure what Luc’s game was, but he knew there was a game, and that he didn’t like it. He jerked his chin up, finally meeting the Arcanist’s eyes. “Why did you bring me out here if you’re just going to ignore me?”
To his surprise, Luc’s gaze slipped away, almost as if the man were ashamed. It was such a startling moment that when Rolan heard his name being called, he dismissed it, instead studying the Arcanist to try to figure out what it was the big man could be ashamed of.
But the Arcanist sat up, the water in the tub sloshing around him, his brow lowering like a thundercloud.
And Rolan’s name was called again. He gasped in recognition of the faint voice.
At that moment it was like a storm had cleared and the sun shone down on the world for the very first time. Daisies lifted their petals. A lamb leaped into the air, kicking its heels in a moment of pristine, incandescent joy.
“Anaya!” Rolan cried.
“Who?” said the Arcanist, fumbling for his clothes.
Ignoring him, Rolan turned and ran. He raced over the green hill and around the house and down the path until he saw her, trudging along in her green dress and her apron, with her hair coiling around her shoulders.
When she saw him, she scowled. “There you are, you absolute brick!”
Rolan rushed to her and grabbed her up in a hug, lifting her right off the ground. “You’re alive!”
“Of course I’m alive!” she wheezed. “But I won’t be for long if you don’t let me breathe! What happened to your hair?”
He set her down gently, grinning from ear to ear. “Last I saw you, you said you were going to Sylvet and then you were just gone! I had no idea if you’d been eaten by Cryptics or fell down a hole or—”
“You’re one to talk!” Anaya retorted. “I get back from our trip and what do I find? Rolan Strider has vanished from the face of the earth! People said you’d gone to prison, or been executed by the duke, or fed to Cryptics by the Arcanist!”
“How many times do I have to tell you kids,” sighed a weary, lilting voice. “Cryptics don’t eat people. They maul them to death, but they don’t eat them. They don’t eat anything. They’re not animals.”
Rolan realized then that Anaya wasn’t alone. Evaine stood on the path behind her, with her bulky apothecary’s satchel on her shoulder.
“Evaine!” He glared at the woman. “Why did you go to Sylvet? Are you moving there? You can’t move. You’re the best apothecary in Crisanth. We’ll all drop dead without you.”
“It’s nice to know my work is appreciated,” Evaine said drily.
She was a tall woman with olive skin and a hooked nose and a great mass of dark, wavy hair.
Her eyes were the bright, uncanny green of spring grass.
Rolan had always thought her face belonged on the back of a coin or on a statue, carved out of some fancy stone.
She wore a loose yellow scarf over her head and a long gown of deep blue with an apron that matched Anaya’s, only hers had flowers embroidered up the edges.
“I got an apprenticeship,” said Rolan. “Like you said, Anaya, it’s time one of us grew up.”
“But with the Arcanist?” Anaya whispered. “Rolan, he’s a monster. You’ve heard the stories.”
“I had to interrogate Hoff before he’d confess what had happened,” Evaine said softly. “Rolan, if I had been here, I’d never have let—”
“It’s all right,” Rolan said quickly, because her words stung him more than he thought they could. If Evaine had been here, of course she wouldn’t have let Hoff drag him to prison or the Arcanist ride off with him. But she hadn’t been here. He’d been alone.
“Luc ain’t so bad,” he added. “He’s grumpier than a caged badger, but I pretty much get to do whatever I want.”
“Is that right?” Evaine said through her teeth, her eyes lifting to focus on something behind Rolan.
He turned to see Luc walking their way, still buttoning up his pants.
“Who are you?” the Arcanist called out gruffly. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Rolan saw Anaya’s eyes widen as she beheld the figure of myth and legend, the monstrous man they’d whispered stories about all their lives. For his part, Luc did look pretty fearsome, scowling at them as he was, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the bathwater dripping from his beard.
“Anaya. Rolan.” Evaine’s voice was deceptively even, her eyes locked on the Arcanist. “Why don’t you run along and catch up while I speak with this… gentleman?”