- CHAPTER 1 -VENGEANCE AND VANDALISM
Nobody hit Rolan Strider over the head with a baguette and got away with it.Nobody.Especially when it was a baguette he had been planning to eat.
Rolan’s stomach growled as he climbed the lamppost, as if to goad him on. The knife clenched between his teeth slipped, and he paused for a moment to readjust the blade and scope the street below.
Still quiet. Still bright, despite the late hour and the moon glowing faintly above. The streets of Crisanth were always bright, the lamps burning steadily from dusk to dawn, tended by an army of lamplighters. This night was no different, though if Rolan succeeded in his mission, this particular corner was about to become a little darker.
Shimmying higher, Rolan pulled himself up and over the lamp’s iron frame, securing himself with the rope he’d carried over his shoulder. Then he went to work, sliding the knife under the lamp’s lid until it popped open. The flame burning inside, in its little pot of oil, flickered back like a scared mouse.
Rolan grinned. “Hello, you. Don’t worry, it’ll be over quick.”
Licking his fingers, he reached down for the wick and—
“Rolan Strider!”
Yelping, Rolan lost his grip on the lamp and nearly plummeted to the ground. At the last second, he wrapped his arms around the post, hugging it for dear life, but sacrificing his grip on the knife. It fell to the cobblestone street with a clatter.
“Anaya.”He glared at the girl below. “You ain’t supposed to sneak up on people when they’re hanging on to lampposts fifty feet in the air!”
Standing with her hands on her hips, her freckled brown face tilted upward at him, Anaya looked like a tiny, fluffy-haired, furious doll. She wore a green dress and a cream apron tied with a little bow at the small of her narrow back. A daisy winked in her hair. Rolan thought that anyone who didn’t know her would say she looked sweet.
But Rolan did know her, and he recognized the dangerous glint in her eyes that told him he was in for a first-rate scolding.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Rolan,” she retorted. “That’s barely ten feet.”
“Let’s go halves and call it thirty. My point stands.”
“Half of fifty istwenty-five, which you’d know if you ever bothered setting foot in school! And you know whatwon’tstand?Whatever flimsy lie you’re going to tell the guards when they catch you up there, vandalizing. Again.”
Rolan scoffed, which nearly cost him his precious grip on the lamppost. He hugged it tighter, the cold iron pressing against his cheek and distorting his voice. “I ain’tvandalizing.”
“You were about to extinguish that lamp!”
“Only temporarily! I’m gonna steal it and teach Old Finkface a lesson.”
That wasn’t the only reason, of course. Sure, he couldn’t let the baker get away with clobbering him, but there was more to it. Not that he could tell Anaya what he was really up to… or whose attention he was really trying to get.
Anaya glanced at the bakery shop window which was understandably dark, given the late hour. Finkfloss’s Fine Breads, read the wooden sign over the door. “You were going through his waste bin again?”
“I was hungry. It weren’t stealing. He’d thrown it away.”
“You know he doesn’t like that.”
“I do, but just in case I forgot, he reminded me again. Very violently, with a baguette that was more brick than bread.”
Anaya looked up at him, her expression softening. “You know you can always come over to Evaine’s and—”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Right,” she sighed.
They’d been over this argument a thousand times before, and he was tired of it. Yes, hecouldvisit the apothecary’s shop and beg for a place at Evaine’s table, and yes, she would pack him a bundle of leftovers if he first endured one of her scathing lectures about allthe ways he should get his life straight. But the last time he’d done that…
Well, Anaya didn’t need to know about last time, or the time before.
Striders don’t take charity, especially from nosy, upstart women who can’t mind their own business.Those had been Pa’s exact words. And Pa’s walking stick had hurt a lot worse than a stale baguette.
“What areyoudoing out here so late?” Rolan asked hastily, eager to change the subject.
