“I’m not dancing!” Rolan shouts. “I’m being attacked by bees!”
“What?”
“BEES!”
“I heard what you said, what I meant was why—oh, goddess. Get down from there!”
“But—”
“NOW!”
With a groan I remember pointing out the bees’ nest in the rafters yesterday and offhandedly commenting that it must be ripe with honey by now. I never expected the daft child to go climb up there and stick his hand in. Then again, having gotten to know Rolan over the past few weeks, perhaps that is the first thing I should have expected.
He clambers down with catlike alacrity—really, his agility is impressive, not that I could ever tell him so. It would inflate his ego to even more dangerous heights.
“The pond!” I shout. “You must get in the pond!”
“What pond? I’ve been here weeks and you never showed me any blasted—yowch! They’re stinging me!”
“This way!”
I take off at a sprint over the grass, the boy screaming behind me, the goat screaming behind him. We must look like a procession of mad idiots, charging over the fields: screaming boy, screaming goat, and me in my underwear.
On the goddess, if the apothecary shows up now I’ll have to go into the woods and never come out again.
“There!” I roar, pointing. “The pond is there! But wait, don’t come close—”
Too late.
He runs right past me, slapping me on the arm with his honey-drenched hand. “Thanks!”
With a whoop he leaps off the short dock and drops like a stone into the water.
The cloud of bees that had been chasing him swirls in confusion, then catch a whiff of honey.
As in, the honey now smeared on my arm.
Next thing I know, I’m the one screaming and running to the dock and hurling myself into the water.
The goat, it seems, is immune to bee stings.
I surface near the boy, grimacing from the burn of stings down my back and… other places.
“What’s the matter?” the boy asks, spouting water from his mouth. “Is the big, scary Arcanist afraid of a few little bees? You can battle ferocious monsters, but not little insects?”
“Cryptics don’t tend to scurry into your drawers and sting you in places the sun never shines,” I mutter.
“Fair point.”
“The next time I tell you not to climb the house, Mylas—” I bite my tongue, my heart skipping a beat.
Time itself skipping a beat.
“Mylas?” Rolan scoffs. “Who’s Mylas? Your last apprentice? The one you chopped up and fed to the Cryptics?”
“Yes,” I growl. “And unless you want to go the same way, stay off the roof.”
“I might,” he replies airily. “But how else are we going to get that honey? I don’t suppose you have any better ideas?”
