Chapter 24 Bad Feelings
The next morning, they came across a trail of devastation.
His mouth set in a grim line, Luc told Rolan to hang back while he investigated.
Rolan did, for a few minutes, then he followed after the Arcanist, picking his way over the fallen trees and split boulders.
It was like a storm had blown through this section of forest, flattening and shredding everything in its path.
“I told you to stay in the trees,” Luc said. “Have you always been such a terrible listener?”
“Always,” Rolan confirmed proudly.
Luc was crouched over a large impression in the earth. It was shaped like a claw, with deep holes where talons might have pierced the ground. The size of it made Rolan’s heart falter.
He had a bad feeling in his stomach, like he’d eaten a whole salad of poisonous mushrooms.
“What if that thing is still lurking around?” he asked. “I mean, I’m obviously fantastic with a pair of knives, but if you mean to fight it—”
“If this thing were still close,” said Luc, “we’d already be fighting it. The only advantage we have is that when it does come, we’ll hear it before it can pounce.”
“When?” echoed Rolan. “Don’t you mean if?”
Luc just gave him a grim look before moving on to inspect some gouges in a nearby trunk. The claws that had torn the tree open were as long as the broadsword Luc sometimes carried when he was hunting.
This trail must have been made by the giant Cryptic, the one Rolan had seen from the barn weeks ago. The one Luc had been so worried about, he’d told the duke of it. Maybe Luc should have accepted the duke’s offer to call for more Arcanists. Looking around, Rolan felt ill with dread.
“Do all Cryptics get this big?” he asked.
Luc shook his head. “Only the darkest secrets grow this powerful. Most never surpass Rank Three. This one will have wandered off to the wilds of the western mountains, to mature in their eternal shadows, and now it’s returned home.”
“Returned?” Rolan echoed. “Why?”
Luc’s fingers rubbed the pommel of his sword hilt. “When they get big enough, secrets find their way home.”
“What’s that mean? They… hunt down the person who created them?”
“Not if we stop them first,” Luc replied, with what he perhaps meant to be a reassuring smile. It looked more like a grimace.
Queasily, Rolan gazed back over the trail the Cryptic had left through the forest.
“What rank do you reckon it is? Four? Five?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Luc. “We’ve been in the forest long enough. Lead us home, boy.”
Rolan fetched a stick and two stones, found north, and they struck off into the woods.
After ten hours and several wrong turns, they finally heard the sound of Supper bleating in the distance. Rolan broke into a run, breaking free of the forest with a shout of triumph. He drank in the open air and rolling green hills, the city a distant monument to all things good and civilized.
“I did it!” he declared to the sky.
“Someone’s here,” Luc said.
Rolan’s moment of victory was cut short as he realized Luc was right. There was someone sitting on a bale of straw near the house, her cinnamon skirts fluttering in the breeze. And near the barn, another figure was feeding the horse—
“NO!” Rolan yelled, breaking into a run. “Not apples!”
By the time he reached her, it was too late.
Anaya stumbled backward out of the barn, her face green as she gagged.
A stench rolled out behind her like a tide of death and swamp and rotting vegetation, so foul that the very grass seemed to wilt under its passing.
Through the doors, Apple stamped his hoof, releasing another noxious gust from beneath his tail.
“What,” she gasped, “is wrong… with… your horse?”
Rolan grinned, bending to pluck a handful of mint leaves from Luc’s herb garden. “Here. Stuff these up your nose. It’s the only thing that helps. Why are you here?”
“Evaine wanted to check on you,” she said, her voice muffled by the leaves in her nose.
Their nostrils bristling with crushed mint, the pair went to the front of the house where Evaine was still sitting on the straw bale, her expression as cool as winter as she looked up at Luc.
“We were about to head back to Crisanth,” she said. “You’re both filthy.”
“Were you waiting long?” Luc asked.
Evaine snorted. “Hardly. We’ve only been here for—”
“Seven hours!” Anaya cut in. “We’ve been waiting all day!”
The apothecary shot her apprentice a sharp look. “Yes. Well. I didn’t want to leave the pies unattended. Your goat there already tried to snatch them right out of my hands.”
“Pies?” Rolan gasped.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Luc said to Evaine.
“But Luc, pies!” Rolan spotted the hamper by Evaine’s feet and dove for it. “Leek and potato! Pork and apple!” Looking up at the apothecary, he said, “Give me ten years to grow up, Evaine, and I will marry you.”
Evaine laughed and stood, gesturing to Anaya. “We should get back. It’s late.”
“Why did you come?” Luc demanded, his brow still low. “We have plenty of truth salve and other medicines.”
“But not nearly enough pies,” Evaine returned, “if poor Rolan’s appetite a few days back was any measure.”
“She does make an excellent point,” Rolan said, taking out the pork and apple pie and giving it a good, deep sniff. He’d forgotten his nose was still stuffed with mint leaves and only succeeded in sucking one so far up his nostril he began choking. He stumbled about, gagging for air.
“We don’t need feeding,” Luc said gruffly, ignoring his dying apprentice. “It was foolish to venture so far from the city, and to linger so close to night.”
“So I’m a fool, am I?” asked Evaine, her eyes narrowing to green slits.
Luc went pale. “N-no, that’s not what I—of course you’re not—”
Rolan stopped dying and gaped at the sight of the mighty, taciturn Arcanist stammering like a pickpocket caught with his hand in a purse.
“Well, since you’re so eager for us to be gone,” said Evaine, “we’ll be going.”
“It’s too late in the day,” Luc said. “You’re an hour’s walk from the city, and the sun will set in half that.”
Evaine looked up at the sky, surprise flitting across her bronze face, as if she hadn’t noticed the lateness of the hour. “We’ll be fine,” she said, but the doubt in her voice was clear even to Supper, who gave a concerned bleat.
“You’ll stay,” Luc said. “Go back in the morning. Rolan, fix up the beds with fresh linens for the apothecary and her apprentice. You and I’ll sleep in the barn.”
“I really don’t think—” Evaine began. Now she was the one looking flustered.
“Please,” said Luc, softly.
The apothecary looked at the sky again, then back at Luc, her brow creasing. “It’s just as well. There was something we should discuss.”
Luc nodded then snapped his fingers at Rolan. With a crisp salute, Rolan ran to do as bidden, Anaya trailing after.
A short time later, they sat around the table in Luc’s house, the remains of the two pies down to mere crumbs.
Rolan picked these up with a happy sigh and licked them off his fingertip while Luc poured mint tea for everyone.
Anaya, huddled under one of Luc’s thick sheepskins, drew her cup close and wrapped her fingers around it, her eyes darting to the windows every few heartbeats.
“First time spending the night outside the city walls?” Rolan asked her.
She scowled. “I’m not scared.”
“I was, the first night,” Rolan said. “Of course, it was storming like a sky full of angry bears that night. And I passed out before we got here so I had no idea where I was. And also Supper was trying to eat my nose.”
In his corner of the house, Supper blinked owlishly and chewed a curtain.
“Rolan Strider,” Anaya said, a smile playing on her lips, “scared?”
“Positively petrified.”
“Ohhh. Big fancy words for a street whelp.” Rolan grinned at her invocation of one of Hoff’s favorite insults.
Dropping his voice to a whisper, he told her about Hoff’s new position as a scullery servant in the duke’s house. Her laughter illuminated the cabin and drew a sharp shush from Evaine.
“You two go feed the horse,” Luc grunted. “Leave the adults to talk.”
“Sure,” said Rolan. “Wanna go feed the horse, Anaya?”
“As long as it isn’t apples.”
Like the two perfectly obedient apprentices they certainly were not, they glided from the house, only to instantly circle back and eavesdrop at the window.
They didn’t even need to speak a word to know what the other was thinking: When adults told you to clear out, it meant the conversation was about to get good.
Night had fallen, but Luc had lit the lamps around the house for once, ringing it and the barn in a pool of warm light.
“Do you think they’re going to kiss?” Anaya asked Rolan.
He made a face of disgust. “Why?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you don’t see it.”
“See what?”
Anaya rolled her eyes. “Why do you think Evaine came all the way out here?”
“To bring me pies.”
She thumped his arm. “To see Luc, idiot.”
“What!?” Rolan pushed upward to peer through the window, but Anaya yanked him down again. All he managed to glimpse was Luc pouring more tea for the apothecary.
Anaya giggled. “I think she was impressed by how Luc managed to cram actual letters and numbers into your stubborn brain.”
“She’s in love with him because he can read?”
“Not because he can—ugh! Forget it. And she’s not in love, I think, just maybe… I dunno. Intrigued.”
Rolan blew out a breath, bored of the topic already. “Whatever. So long as she doesn’t interfere with what we’ve got going out here.”
“And what is that, exactly? Blustering around the forest, bashing Cryptics into pulp?”
Rolan grinned. “Exactly.”
Anaya put a finger to her lips. “What are they saying?”
Craning his ear, Rolan picked up enough bits and pieces of the adults’ voices to puzzle out their conversation.
“… all over the city?” Luc asked.
“At least a dozen that I know of.”
“And you’re sure they’re secrets?” Luc’s voice was harsh.
“Written as plain as you like,” came Evaine’s reply. “Salacious ones, too. The baker’s wife is stepping out on him. The silversmith on the east side is weighting his pieces with tin. The sort of secrets that start trouble and spark fights.”
“And how do we know these secrets are true?”
“All it took was one or two confessing to their alleged crimes, and everyone else figured it must all be true.”
Luc sounded as grim as he had when they’d found the giant Cryptic’s trail. “It could be the work of the Listeners.”
“It could be.” Evaine was quiet a moment, and then she added in a tight, concerned voice, “But they’re whispering about you, Arcanist.”
“That’s why you came out here? To warn me that the people are whispering about me?” Luc scoffed. “They’ve always done that. It’s part of my job, being whispered about.”
“Not like this. They’re blaming you. Saying you’re posting their secrets around the city because you’re… well…”
“A monster?”
“I’m only telling you what I hear.”
“Trouble inside the walls,” Luc muttered, so low Rolan could barely make it out. “Trouble outside them.”
“What do you mean?” Evaine asked sharply.
“Nothing for you to worry over. Arcanist business.”
“Tell me.”
“As the man tasked with hunting down Cryptics, I can tell you it’s not your concern, apothecary.”
“As the woman tasked with patching up the citizens harmed by Crytics you fail to stop, I can tell you I need to know!”
Anaya gestured at Rolan, and they crept away toward the barn.
“What’s wrong?” Rolan asked.
“What’s he talking about? What’s going on out here?”
Rolan glanced toward the house.
Drawing his gaze back with a touch, Anaya pulled the dirtiest of tricks. She made her eyes go round and wide like a kitten’s, and he knew she knew he couldn’t ever say no to that face.
“It’s a giant Cryptic,” he confessed. “Bigger than a house. Bigger than the city walls, maybe. We found its tracks in the forest. It knocked over entire trees.”
Anaya went gray. “Luc can stop it, right?”
Rolan gave a weak smile. “I mean, with my help, sure. What about your news? What’s this about more secrets being posted in the city? We saw one when we were there, you know. Something about a Listener stealing donation money. Luc was worried about it.”
“There have been more every day, posted to walls around Crisanth.” She chewed her lip. “It’s getting ugly, Rolan. Families are turning on one another. Shops are being ransacked because the owner was accused of cheating his customers. Nobody trusts anybody.”
The bad feeling was back in his belly, making him sick.
“And they’re blaming Luc?” he asked.
She shrugged one slender shoulder. “He’s the obvious choice. Not that I think it’s true, of course! But they already hate him, because they’re afraid of him.”
“Luc would never tell the secrets he knows!” Rolan exclaimed. “He can’t! It’s part of his oaths!”
“So he does know people’s secrets!” Her eyebrows rose, and Rolan cursed himself for the slip.
“Yes, but it’s not like you think. He’s not some monster who reads minds. And he doesn’t tell them to anyone, not even me.”
“I guess not everyone’s as convinced as you. I mean… let’s face it, Rolan. A few months ago you and I would have believed he was guilty along with everyone else.”
Rolan scowled, even though she was right. He’d always imagined the Arcanist to be half man, half Cryptic, looming in the dark and stealing secrets out of sleeping children’s ears.
“It’s so stupid,” he snarled. “He risks his life every day keeping them safe, but all they do is treat him like—like a monster! If it weren’t for Luc, the city would be overrun with Cryptics!”
Anaya laid a hand on his arm. “I know.”
Somewhere in the woods a wolf howled, causing Anaya to jump. Rolan was used to the wolves by now—they were an awful lot better than Cryptics in his mind—but he knew she wasn’t accustomed to the way the night sounded outside the city.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you back inside.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, well, aren’t you Mr. Gentleman now.”
“I just—”
“Never mind.” She smiled. “You know, I kind of like Rolan the Apprentice.”
“I’m not any different than I was before,” he muttered.
“Yes, you are. Just like I was different before Evaine took me in.” She grabbed his hand, and her touch sent a spark of lightning shooting up his arm to explode in his chest, making him sizzle to the ends of his hair.
It was like absorbing Arcana, without the burden of a terrible secret to follow it.
“Just don’t forget where you came from, Rolan Strider, and neither will I. ”
Swallowing fire, Rolan choked out the promise.