Chapter 29 Bandages
Rolan woke with a start, a spasm of panic splintering through him. It was soon followed by a screaming chorus of pain. Wounds burned on every corner of his body.
“Where is it?” he cried, reaching for his knives, but they weren’t there. All he got was two fistfuls of coarse wool blanket.
“Stop thrashing!” Evaine ordered, putting a firm hand on his chest to keep him still. “You’ll tear your stitches.”
Blinking, Rolan felt the dark, chaotic blur of battle fade from his mind. He wasn’t on the riverbank, there was no storm, and there was no Cryptic.
He was in the apothecary’s kitchen, on his pallet by the stove, and Evaine was sitting beside him. Her face was lined with weariness and worry, and in a flash he understood what must have happened.
“You found me,” he croaked, his voice a dry rasp.
“Anaya found you,” she said. “When she went to gather brightleaf by the river, three days ago.”
Three days? He’d been unconscious that long?
Rolan felt a tremor go through him. Anaya had been to the riverbank. Where the Cryptic would have found her, if he hadn’t found it first.
“We thought you’d run away in the night,” Evaine went on. “We never guessed you’d run away to do the stupidest thing imaginable.”
“What do you mean?” he murmured, lying back on his pillow. “I tripped and fell.”
“Into a box of knives?” She twisted her lips. “Rolan, you broke about ten different laws, and my trust as well as Luc’s, when he finds out. And he will find out.”
“I killed a Cryptic!” Rolan protested. “Actually, if you must know, I’ve killed eight Cryptics over the past week. You’re probably just mad because you’ll have fewer victims to patch up now. I’m bad for business.”
Evaine pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezing shut.
“You know,” Rolan added, “it used to be that Arcanists’ apprentices would take the oaths the minute they started training—not at the end. It says so in the Arcane Histories.”
“The Histories?”
“Yeah. They’re these massive books that could flatten a chicken if you dropped one. And I read them. And they say that apprentices used to be tasked with hunting down low-level Cryptics, and that—”
“Used to? What changed?”
Rolan waved a hand dismissively. “A bunch of them died, maybe, but I know what I’m doing.”
“Is that why we had to drag you home while you bled out within an inch of your life?”
“I’m fine. In the books it said Cryptic wounds sometimes look worse than they are, because of—”
“Rolan, don’t make me regret the fact you learned to read.” She studied him with bloodshot eyes. “You’re going to get yourself killed. At least tell me you haven’t used any Arcana?”
Rolan opened his mouth, fully prepared to lie—and also ask how in the goddess’s name Evaine knew about Arcana—but at that moment the door opened and Anaya walked in, her face grim.
“You’re awake,” she said flatly, but he saw the relief in her brown eyes. “Good. Now I can properly kill you!”
“You shouldn’t go down to the river,” Rolan rasped. “It gets too dark, and there are Cryptics—”
“You are the last person who can tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, Rolan Strider!” Anaya shouted. “Do you have any idea what it felt like, to find you lying in the mud, covered in blood and wounds? I thought you were dead!”
“Sorry to disappoint?” he offered with a weak smile.
“This is not the time for smart comments,” Evaine said. “We thought you’d changed, Rolan. That your reckless days were behind you.”
“I was trying to help! I did help!” His temper prickled now. He’d done something good. Why were they acting like he’d set a house on fire? “This is what Arcanists do!”
“You’re not an Arcanist yet,” Anaya pointed out.
“I don’t see why you care,” he muttered. “You’re leaving forever anyway.”
Her mouth fell open, and her skin darkened with anger from her neck to the tips of her ears.
Then she turned on her heel and stormed upstairs.
“Of course,” Rolan laughed bitterly. “There she goes! Leaving again, like she always—yowch!”
He looked down at his arm where Evaine had pinched him.
“Enough,” the apothecary said. “That girl’s heart is torn in two, don’t you see it? She has a life ahead of her, Rolan. A bright future. And she’s on the verge of throwing it all away because of you.”
Something wounded and savage squirmed in Rolan’s gut. “Oh, I’ll only drag her down, is that it? I’m the no-good trash who’ll ruin your plans to send her to Sylvet and beyond?”
“That’s not what I said.” Evaine drew a breath through her nose, a line drawn between her brows. She was looking at Rolan too closely. Seeing too much of him. “It’s not a bad thing to love someone, Rolan—”
“I do not love her. She’s my best friend!”
Evaine’s eyebrow quirked. “Uh-huh. Very well, it’s all right to need someone. To rely on them, and have them rely on you in turn. But love doesn’t just protect. It also lets go, when it is time to let go.”
“Oh, is that why Luc threw me out?” he retorted. “Where are my knives?”
She barked a laugh as she rose to her feet. “Not happening.”
He sighed and flopped down again. The fight went out of him as pain and exhaustion overwhelmed his mind and body.
“Get some rest, child. Your wounds weren’t deep, but they were many, and you lost a lot of blood.” Evaine rose and moved toward the shop doorway.
But just as her hand parted the beads, Rolan said quietly, “Can I ask you something?”
She looked back at him, raising one eyebrow.
“Why did you choose Anaya?”
Evaine lowered her hand, turning around to face him. “What do you mean?”
Rolan stared up at the ceiling. The wooden beams holding it up shone with polish. Everything in Evaine’s house was always so clean. “Was it because of how fast she can run? How smart she is?”
Evaine leaned in the doorframe, folding her arms as she pondered. “Well, Anaya is fast and smart. But those aren’t the reasons I chose her.”
“Then why?” Why Anaya, and not him? It felt like a stupid question—of course anyone with a brain would see how much better Anaya was than him at nearly everything.
And he felt a stab of guilt for even wishing it had been him Evaine had chosen.
He didn’t really want to be an apothecary, anyway.
But still, it ate at him. What did Anaya have that he didn’t?
What was he missing, what shortcoming did he have that he could fix?
What was it about him that made him so easy to throw away?
“I chose her,” Evaine said slowly, “because she deserved better than what the world gave her.”
He sighed. Anaya was smart and beautiful and kind, and of course she deserved better. He’d always known that. It was why he knew she’d leave him one day. For something better.
But what did Rolan Strider deserve? A cell in the duke’s prison, if you asked Hoff. A knock in the teeth, if you asked his pa.
And what if you asked Luc?
“He’s not coming back for me, is he?” he asked, still staring at the ceiling.
“Rolan…”
“It’s because I couldn’t learn math fast enough, isn’t it? Or because I didn’t listen well enough. I tried, I did. I just… get distracted.”
Evaine exhaled between pursed lips, looking weary. “It’s nothing you did, child. It’s nothing you could have changed. He wants you to be safe.”
Rolan pressed his eyelids shut, saying nothing. He thought of the duke’s words to Luc, when they’d thought he was asleep. He’s trouble. There are better boys from better homes.
What if that’s what this was? What if Luc had already chosen another apprentice, one who listened better, learned faster, and didn’t pick locks he was told not to pick? Someone more like the son he’d lost?
Evaine shook her head, sliding her hand into the bead curtain again. “Try to sleep. Your body needs it.”
She went into the shop, leaving him to collapse onto his pillow with a frustrated groan. It had all gone so wrong.
They should be hailing him as a hero. Luc should be riding back with Rolan’s praises on his chapped, surly lips. Truth, he’d done a good thing! Why could no one see it?
He thought of the Cryptic he’d killed, and of the secret its relic had revealed to him.
His work was not done yet.
After waiting a few more minutes, to be sure Evaine was settled into her shop and Anaya wasn’t going to come back downstairs, Rolan peeled himself off his pallet.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he was so wrapped in bandages that he almost didn’t need one.
Everywhere he’d been cut, Evaine had smeared truth salve.
At least, he hoped it had been Evaine, and not Anaya.
Cheeks hot, he opened his small sack of belongings, all things Luc had given him.
He was down to only one last shirt, and he pulled it on slowly, grimacing as the movements sent spiky jabs of pain through his body.
When he was dressed, he had to sit for a few minutes just to blink away the stars in his vision. Nothing would banish the pain.
Rolan hunted all through the kitchen as quietly and quickly as he could, but his knives were nowhere to be found. They were probably upstairs, in Evaine’s room, and he couldn’t risk sneaking past Anaya.
Cursing the loss of them as he pocketed a dull paring knife, he then stole out the back door and into the alley, pausing only to collect his small stash of relics from their hiding place in the bricks.
From a scrap pile around the corner he pulled an old rusty nail.
He used it to quickly scratch an aleth in the paring knife’s blade.
The double spiral was lopsided and uneven, but he hoped it would be enough to transform the knife from an ordinary kitchen peeler to an Arcane blade capable of storing magic, if it came to that.
He did not plan to return to the apothecary. He suspected that even if he did, he’d find the doors locked to him. Evaine wouldn’t forgive him a second running away.
He hesitated at the alley’s mouth, knowing this was his last chance to turn around. To be sensible. To prove Evaine wrong—that he wasn’t reckless and stupid.
But then he looked down at his boots. Rather, the boots that had belonged to Mylas, Luc’s dead son. The son who’d died in a fire, just like the fire that Rolan had plunged into to save Anaya.
He couldn’t go back. Maybe he was reckless and stupid, but he wouldn’t leave Luc to fight this thing on his own. Not when Rolan was sure he could help. Not when he could prove to Luc that he’d made a mistake in sending Rolan away.
All he had to do was show Luc he had something to offer, that he was worth keeping.
That he had learned everything the man had tried to teach him.
He could be quick and clever and helpful, just like Anaya.
He could be a perfect apprentice. And he would start by finding the man posting the secrets around the city, stirring the people against the Arcanist.
He would prove himself, and Luc would never throw him away again.