Anaya held up a small package wrapped in brown oilcloth and tied with a string. Tucked into the knot was the usual sprig of rosemary, Evaine’s trademark. “I’m delivering medicine to a patient, like the good and upstanding apprentice I am now.”
“How veryresponsibleof you.”
“Yes, it’s disgusting, I know.”
“You wanna climb up here and help me steal Finkface’s lamp?”
“I do not.”
“Fine, then you wanna throw my knife up here, sinceyoumade me drop it?”
“No, I’m not throwing a knife at you. That is a fantastically stupid idea, even for you.”
Rolan pouted. “You used to be fun.”
“I used to be an idiot.” She sniffed, her cloud of soft brown curls swaying behind her as she shook her head at him. “One of us had to grow up.”
Rolan shut his eyes, letting himself briefly recall the good old days when Anaya had been the quickest pair of feet on the streets of Crisanth. She’d taught him which guards always napped on their shifts, which windows you could shimmy open with a knife, andhow to quiet a watchdog with a bit of dried venison. She’d been the one to show him Finkfloss’s bakery-scraps bin, but she’d never been fool enough to get herself caught while raiding it.
They’d been a pair of wild ghosts haunting the city, doing as they liked, going where they liked.
Then she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and grown up.
“C’mon,” he said. “For old time’s sake?”
Anaya stiffened, her head cocking to the side. “Guards are coming.”
Rolan peeled his cheek from the lamppost. “Where?”
She nodded up the road behind him, and he listened until he heard it—the clank-clank-rasp of steel boots and capes. The night watch. Of all his rotten luck.
“Right,” he sighed to the lamp. “Finkface gets one more night with you, and then you’remine.”
He started to slide down the lamppost only to realize, with a sinking of his stomach, that his leg was caught in the rope. With a yelp, he flipped upside down and dangled by his ensnared ankle.
“Rolan!” Anaya looked wildly from him to the street corner where the guards would appear at any moment. “Wait there!”
“Oh, sure, because I was about torun off! Anaya, go.Now.”
“I can’t leave you there!”
“Yes, you can!” Hanging upside down, he had to tilt his head all the way back to meet her gaze. Her wide, dark eyes looked like drops of honey, the lamplight reflecting in her irises. “It’s like you said. You ain’t an idiot anymore. You got a good thing going with this apprenticeship. If Hoff finds out you’re hanging around with the likes of me again…” He snorted. “Get it?Hanging around?”
She rolled her eyes, but the implication was clear between them.
The guard captain would make no end of trouble for Anaya if he thought her Rolan’s accomplice. He might even hold Evaine responsible, as the law often held masters accountable for their apprentice’s actions.
For a moment Anaya seemed to waver. Rolan thought of all the tight spots they’d gotten each other out of in the past, before Evaine had found them and offered Anaya an apprenticeship in her apothecary. He thought of how he’d begged Anaya to turn it down, because jobs wereboring, and who needed one when you had the run of the entire city?
“Anaya…”
He almost said it. He almost asked her to stay and help him, even if it got her caught, because he was selfish and he missed the way things had been. Maybe hewoulddrag her down with him, if it meant he could keep her a little longer.
But then he took in her clean new dress, the way it actually fit her, and he noticed the spot on her apron where she’d spilled ink and tried desperately, if ineffectively, to scrub it out.
The truth was, she’dglowedthe day Evaine had taken her in. Rolan would snuff out every lamp in the city before he dared snuff out that light in Anaya’s eyes.
“I been caught a hundred times,” Rolan reminded her. The sound of the clanking boots was louder now. The guards had to be steps away. “They’ll put me in a cell for a few days, I’ll get some free food, and that’ll be that. I’ll be fine.”
