Chapter 30 Shady Business
Ordinarily, Rolan would have taken to the rooftops for a mission like this, clearing the streets in daring, dramatic leaps.
In his condition, climbing to the rooftops was out of the question, much less jumping across them. So he had to settle for sneaking through the streets, no easy feat given they were always brightly lit. Any shadow big enough to hide a boy could also hide a Cryptic. He ached for his knives.
“Where are you going, Cabbot?” he muttered.
The man he was following was two blocks ahead, ambling easily, hands in his pockets and shoulders slouched. As if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Rolan would bet that those pockets were also full of papers, each one with some incriminating secret written on it.
Cabbot was a fence, a guy you could sell stolen stuff to.
Then he’d turn around and resell it, clean, to some unsuspecting, honest shopkeeper.
Or maybe to a suspecting, slightly less-than-honest shopkeeper who’d decided the risk of jail was worth the guarantee of profit.
Rolan had sold a few things to Cabbot himself, though nothing of much value.
The man had a face scarred by pox and a personality scarred by drink, and Rolan preferred to avoid him most of the time.
But tonight Rolan was hunting, and Cabbot was his prey.
He ducked behind a corner as Cabbot suddenly turned, peering carefully to be sure he hadn’t been spotted.
Cabbot was clearly suspicious of being followed, which was a pretty sure way to get yourself followed at this time of night.
Nothing got you robbed quicker than acting like you had something worth robbing, and Cabbot was very much acting like a man with secrets.
Having already come eye to eye—or all six eyes—with one of Cabbot’s secrets, Rolan wasn’t eager to meet another, but he pressed on anyway once Cabbot turned back around.
The man eventually sauntered south, toward the river. Rolan shivered, following the same path he’d taken three nights ago. A path that had nearly gotten him killed. But if he was right about Cabbot, the man was going to the river for the exact same reason Rolan had: to hunt Cryptics.
Or… to meet someone else who’d been hunting Cryptics.
Cabbot didn’t go to the river. Instead he turned left and stopped in front of a ramshackle inn, its slatted board walls slimy with mold and its sign hanging by a single chain.
The Duke’s Honor. There wasn’t anything remotely honorable about the place, except perhaps for that single chain, which was really doing its level best to keep the sign from dropping on some poor patron’s head.
Rolan slinked along, giving the place a wide berth.
There was a balcony clinging questionably to the upper story, a perfect vantage point.
Normally he could scurry up one of the supports and over the railing in a blink.
Well, in three blinks at the very most. But he was already exhausted from shadowing Cabbot through the shadowless city, and he was pretty sure the stitches on his hip had opened.
Something warm and wet was oozing down his leg.
He hoped it was blood, anyway. Any other explanation would be painfully embarrassing.
Guiltily, Rolan’s eyes slid to the pouch on his belt where he’d put the relics…
“No,” he whispered to himself. “I can’t.”
In the end he ground his teeth together and made the climb, though the pain it brought him made tears squeeze from his eyes. When he finally hauled himself over the top, feeling like he weighed as much as a horse, he lay on his back, gasping in agony.
Only through sheer stubbornness—truly one of his underrated qualities—did he manage to crawl across the rickety boards. The one advantage of his frustratingly slow pace was that he didn’t make the old wood creak, at least not too much.
By the time he shimmied himself into a position where he could see Cabbot again, the scab had already met up with his… partner in crime? Client? Just who was he meeting, anyway?
Rolan slid forward another inch, taking a splinter in his ankle for it, but also getting a look at the new player in this wretched little performance.
Hoff!
Rolan couldn’t believe his eyes. What was going on here? The captain—former captain of the guard, meeting with one of the underworld’s most notorious fences?
Hoff really had fallen far.
“… got for me?” Cabbot was saying.
“Two,” Hoff replied, handing Cabbot a folded paper.
“It’s getting harder to steal away from the palace without notice.
And it’s blasted hard, by the way, doing the dirty work, risking my neck while you sleep soundly.
Have you ever killed a Cryptic, Cabbot? I’ve got wounds that would fell a lesser man such as you! ”
Cabbot pocketed the papers, grimacing. “Stop whining. We need things to excavate, not get quieter. Two secrets a week is not enough.”
“The word’s escalate, you imbecile.”
“Don’t turn your nose up at me, Hoffy. Not anymore. I heard the duke’s got you scrubbing chamber pots now!” Cabbot laughed, his voice cracking, and honestly Rolan couldn’t blame him.
Hoff turned purple, his hands clenching like he wished he could clobber Cabbot with one of those shiny, clean chamber pots. “You shut up! I still know enough guards in the force I could send after you!”
“And risk spilling our little secret? I don’t think so, Hoffy. I need more secrets. More fuel for the fire. The job’s not done until the Arcanist is dead or fled, that’s the orders.”
A cold pit formed in Rolan’s gut. He’d guessed this was about Luc, but hearing it confirmed made him feel sick. Was it Hoff who’d shot the flaming arrows at the house? Or Cabbot?
And who was giving the orders?
“I want the Arcanist gone more than anyone,” Hoff growled. “That monster cost me my job, my life’s work! I’ll bring you more secrets, you scum, as many as it takes to wash the Arcanist’s stink from our city. Him and his rabid little apprentice too.”
Just try it, Rolan thought. He’d love to see Luc put Hoff in his place, and reckoned it would take him less effort than shooing Supper out of the house.
He still needed to know who was behind all this, though. Someone was giving Cabbot and Hoff orders.
He leaned forward another inch, then felt a stab of pain as another row of stitches broke.
Blood dripped from his side, through a crack in the uneven boards… and dropped right onto Hoff’s shoulder.
The man startled, his lip curling in a snarl as he glanced at the blood, then up at the balcony.
“Someone’s spying on us!” he growled.
Swallowing his guilt, Rolan reached into his bag of relics and yanked out the first one he could find—a shimmering scale.
He used the paring knife he’d stolen from Evaine’s kitchen to smash it.
To his relief, the aleth he’d scratched into the blade worked, sucking Arcana from the scale, and he reached inward to open the Hollow Path.
His weary, wounded body sucked in the blue light like a drowning person gasping in sweet air.
By the time Hoff climbed the stairs to the balcony, Rolan was long gone.