Chapter 34 Kidnapped
Rolan sat dejectedly on the curb outside the lamplighters’ guild, sullenly watching its members set off into the evening. They carried flagons of oil on their backs and long poles with wicks at the end, looking like odd fisherman.
This was the third time he’d applied for work as a lamplighter, and this was the third time he’d been thrown out on his bottom. Tegan, the man who commanded the lamplighters like a general directing his troops, knew who Rolan’s father was and wanted no part of him or his trouble. Or so he said.
Rolan’s stomach gurgled reproachfully. He patted it with a sad sigh. “I am trying, you know.”
Glancing down the street, he thought of his old ways of getting money.
Raiding a garbage barrel, digging around the latrines for dropped coins, running messages between criminals for a penny.
It all felt so small and pathetic to him now, and he wondered how he’d gotten by for so long, scraping a life out of the gutters and mud.
He’d tried to go back to his old ways, in the days after he’d left Luc, but it was like going back to crawling after he’d learned how to run.
It was humiliating, and besides, most of his old scrounging spots had been taken over by other grubby kids.
He didn’t much feel like starting a turf war over the reeking latrines behind the Duke’s Honor.
But his attempts at getting honest work hadn’t gone any better.
One thing he’d absolutely not done was go back to Evaine’s. Even if she did let him in, he’d only have to explain everything to her and Anaya. That sounded about as pleasant as pulling off his toenails one by one.
He spent most of his time slinking around the city’s west district, far from the apothecary, focusing hard on not thinking about the truth-blasted Arcanist. He did feel a twinge of regret now and again about throwing away his knives, which he could have sold, and his boots.
The raggedy rope-and-wood sandals he’d found abandoned by the river were already falling apart.
He could see why their previous owner hadn’t bothered to come back for them.
Plus they gave his feet nasty splinters.
Overlooked. Unknown. Rolan felt like a slip of nothing. Like if he only sat in a shadow for a time, he’d sprout claws and a tail and skitter off into the dark. A Cryptic boy.
He was still sitting outside the lamplighters’ guild, feeling terrifically sorry for himself, when he got kidnapped.
It happened very quickly. And very stupidly.
Someone tried to slap a burlap sack over Rolan’s head, but missed and ended up toppling over Rolan instead.
He went sprawling onto the street, crushed beneath his attacker.
Trying to wriggle free, he got his hair yanked back and he yelped.
With little else to try, he finally bit down on the ankle of the man atop him, and felt the hand on his hair release.
He scrambled up and took two steps before another man grabbed him by the waist, and that was the end of it. The sack went over his head and he was caught.
They hauled him down several streets, probably doubling back to confuse his sense of direction.
He struggled the whole way to no avail. They were bigger, tougher, and irritated.
One of them kept cuffing him on the back of the head any time they changed directions, and he guessed that was the one whose ankle he’d bitten.
Finally they shuffled him into a building, shoved him into a chair, and yanked off the sack.
He blinked hard in the dim light of an oil lamp, trying to grasp his bearings. There was a plain wooden table in front of him, and all the windows were covered with black cloth. It was about as boring as a room could get.
“Ugh!” He gagged. “It stinks in here. What is this, some kind of latrine?”
“Shut up, you little termite,” growled one of his kidnappers.
Rolan squinted at the man, not recognizing his wide, runny nose or the glass, heart-shaped earring dangling from his ear. If he had ever seen him before, he’d remember. That earring was just begging to be insulted.
The other kidnapper, however, he did know.
“Cabbot!” Rolan grinned. “How’s the ankle?”
Cabbot scowled, taking a seat on the other side of the table and knitting his fingers together. “You keep smirking at me, boy, and I’ll chop off your ankle.”
“Well, that would be stupid. You know who my pa is, right? He doesn’t much like folks going around chopping off his kid’s ankles, especially his only kid. His only beloved son.”
“The boy makes a good point,” said a gravelly voice behind Rolan, and Rolan went stiff at the sound of it. “I don’t much like folks who take what’s mine without permission.”
Rolan swallowed as the speaker walked around and stood next to Cabbot. Now Cabbot was the one smirking, and Rolan looked up miserably to meet his father’s eyes.
“Hey, Pa.”
His father was here, with Cabbot. In league with Cabbot, the man who was conspiring to destroy the Arcanist. His father, who had killed the Arcanist’s family.
He wished he felt more confused, but no.
It all made terrible sense, the pieces slotting together precisely.
He didn’t know why his father was still after Luc, or why he’d attacked him all those years ago, but he didn’t want to wonder about it.
Wondering about it meant thinking about Luc, and that still hurt. A lot.
“So you’ve returned,” his pa grunted. “I heard you came back to the city.”
“Nice of you to invite me round for supper,” Rolan grumbled. He glanced about, marking the door to his left. But he sensed there were a few more people lurking behind him and doubted his chances of making it out of the room.
“Thought I’d give you a few days to put some hunger in your belly,” Rabb Strider said, stamping his cane. “Teach you not to scorn the hand that feeds you.”
“When have you ever fed me?” Rolan scoffed.
He thought of all the shopkeepers and stable masters and lamplighters who’d turned him down when he’d begged for work, and he wondered if their scorn had been bigger than just knowing who his pa was.
Had his pa gone around town, threatening anyone who might help Rolan?
“I told you I’d take back what’s mine, boy. It’s a credit to you, though, that you finally wised up to the Arcanist. Figured out you were better off back home, did you?”
Rolan dropped his gaze. “What do you want, Pa? Why’d you have these idiots jump me like I was some lordling for ransom? You could’ve just asked to see me.”
“I tried that once already,” his father replied drily.
He looked down at his father’s hand, at the bone tattooed on his thumb, and shivered.
“I know what you really want, Rolan,” his pa said.
He waved Cabbot out of the chair and took it himself, leaning on his forearms over the table, as if they were equals.
As if this were a serious business conversation.
Rolan leaned away, his brow a hard, low line over his eyes.
Usually when he found himself at the center of his pa’s attention, he walked away with bruises or worse.
“If you’re thinking what I really want is a warm bath and some venison stew,” said Rolan, “you’re right on the money.”
“You want to be a part of my crew. You always have, since you was little.”
Of course, it was true. Or it had been true, for the Rolan he’d been a few months ago. But that Rolan was gone, reshaped and transformed under the hands of the Arcanist. He’d been made into someone new, and then that Rolan had also been lost.
Now he was a nothing boy—just an empty, admittedly filthy shirt and pair of trousers blowing around the city without purpose.
He had no idea what he wanted anymore. He wasn’t sure he should want anything at all, because wanting things seemed to only lead to trouble and disappointment.
A cell in the duke’s dungeon. Daggers thrown on the ground.
Apothecary’s apprentices leaving for the capital.
That was where wanting got him.
He watched his father and said nothing. Rabb, perhaps taking Rolan’s silence as a sign he was on the right track, continued.
“I’ve put you off for years,” he said. “Concerned for your well-being.”
Rolan scoffed.
“But,” his father went on with a stern look, “I believe you’re ready now. I believe I have the perfect job for you to prove, once and for all, where you belong.”
Despite himself, Rolan sat up straighter. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Rabb grinned. “So. You in or out?”
Rolan crossed his arms, mostly because he feared his father would see his heart jumping in his chest. “This is about Luc, isn’t it?”
“Ooowee,” crooned Cabbot. “On first-name terms with the Arcanist, are we?”
“Shut up, Cabbot,” Rabb said. “Yes, Rolan. This is about the Arcanist.”
“I know your plan. Yours and Cabbot’s and Hoff’s. How does Hoff like it, by the way? Taking orders from you?”
“Even a kicked dog needs to eat,” Rabb laughed. “I guess you found your spy, eh, Cabbot? Hoff tore apart half the city looking for my boy, but what can I say? He’s got his pa’s wiliness.”
There had been a time, not so long ago, when that comment would have made Rolan glow like a lamp. Now he just felt sick, like he’d drunk something oily and sour.
“Did you tell the Arcanist, you little rat?” Cabbot snarled. “What does he know?”
Rolan cut him a narrow look. “Why should I tell you anything? You put a sack over my head!”
“Enough,” Rabb said, rapping his knuckles on the table. “It doesn’t matter what the Arcanist knows. He thinks he’s safe, hidden away behind his traps and tricks and Cryptic pets. But you, Rolan. You can take us to him.”
“So that’s the job, is it?” Rolan scowled. “I help you reach Luc, and you… what?”
“Then we have a little chat with the fellow,” his pa replied.
“That’s all. We talk, he realizes it’s best for everyone if he just…
goes away. Takes his dark magic to some other part of the kingdom.
Not that that bit’s your concern. You get us to his house in one piece, and that’s it.
You’re in. I’ll make you a member of my crew.
You can even get one of these.” He waggled his thumb, making the bone tattoo dance.
“Eh? Not even the crew get these. It’ll be a sign to everyone that you belong to Rabb Strider, and Rabb Strider only. ”
Rolan shuddered.
He looked at his pa, this man who’d loomed over him his entire life, and wondered how he’d ever wanted to be like him.
Perhaps that was never what he’d really wanted at all.
Maybe he’d just seen joining Rabb’s crew as a way to escape the punishing end of his cane.
Maybe that had been the best life he could imagine—simply a life where he wasn’t hungry, wasn’t cold, wasn’t hurt.
Then blasted Luc had come along with his blasted books and daggers and pathfinding, and Rolan’s imagination had grown ten sizes.
Now he could see farther than he ever could before, when the walls of Crisanth had felt like the ends of the world.
He’d outgrown this place, and his father and his measly, murderous gang, but he had no idea how to shed them.
He’d tried, and they’d dragged him back in a sack.
“It’s agreed, then,” his pa said, as if the matter were settled and that was that. He began to rise from his chair.
But Rolan said, “I haven’t agreed to anything.”
Rabb froze, his expression darkening. Then he turned and spread his hand on the table, looming over Rolan once again. His other hand lifted, shaking the metal head of his cane at his son.
“Do not,” he said through his teeth, “play with me, boy.”
“I won’t help you,” Rolan declared. He stood too, planting his hands on the table and matching his father’s glare.
“You’d be an idiot to try it anyway. Luc would chop you up and feed you to the Cryptics!
He’s a proper warrior, with a proper sword and everything.
What are you going to do, bash him with that? ”
He tried to grab the cane, but his father snarled and yanked it back, then shoved Rolan hard in the chest. Rolan hit his chair with an “Oof!”
When he tried to jump up again, Cabbot’s hands closed on his shoulders, pinning him down.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” Rabb said. “But you can’t ever say I don’t properly prepare. Spin him around, Cabbot.”
Rolan gripped the sides of his chair as he was roughly turned to face the back wall. There was another door, and now the man with the heart earring opened it just a crack.
Just enough for Rolan to see Anaya on the other side, tied to a chair with a gag around her mouth.