Raivi paused and snuck a glance at Ava who had her patient eyes on him the entire time. He straightened and cleared his throat. Vynder audibly snickered beside him.
"Anything funny Vynder?"
Came Ava's voice like cold wind in a winter morning and Raivi shivered despite not being the one to be addressed.
"No ma'am." Vynder replied immediately and Raivi pushed down an intense urge to smack his partner.
"Raivi?" She said his name as command and he looked at her almost completely in reaction to start again. "Go on."
***
"What was that?"
Raivi hissed at Cinsa as soon as the trio was alone again. Cinsa, dressed in that rich velvet garb innocently raised her dark eyebrows at the fragile looking boy in question. Like she didn't know what he meant. Raivi turned sharply to his side to catch a glimpse of what Vynder might be thinking but he was gone. Of course.
"Why did you provoke that …" Raivi asked again bitterly and then whispered after checking if anyone was nearby, "…Dog?"
Cinsa stared at him, eyes wide like she had seen something purely comical. Then she burst out in an uncontrollable fit of laughter, doubling over and leaning on Raivi's shoulder with her body's force, so unlike her, he thought uneasily. Cinsa only did that when she had something she had been trying to avoid. When in her head she was busy handling her thoughts, her lighter side surfaced, which to his knowledge wasn't a good thing.
"Sorry, sorry" she huffed, "It's just seeing you so scared…"
"They are THE DOGS!." Raivi intoned as if to clarify his obvious point to a dimwit.
"They don't CARE for a drunk." She said flippantly as they slunk in a dark and narrow alleyway.
"One of these days…" Raivi muttered but didn't extend. Instead he watched her silently as she remove her fancy wig and pads under her blouse in embarrassment but didn't let his frown drop. The refuse went back to her prized bag and out came a long, dark colored jacket that she wore over her now loose blouse. Then she bent over slightly to pull down her dress from her waist, and she was in her usual get up, almost. She was missing her scarf and instead her neck was covered by a wide and opaque velvet choker that looked like it was part of her yellow blouse. The scarf followed soon enough along with some other big piles of rough looking clothes that couldn't have fit in her small bag. Raivi would ask about the bag, like how something so small could fit so much, but she always would harshly change the topic whenever her bag was mentioned. So he surrendered, though still curious.
"Change. That servant look is not doing you good," She said, then turned and tossed a bungle of clothes at him and slowly stressed, "Milord!"
Raivi froze as the bundle caught his face, his deep frown hidden behind it. He had told them of his family in confidence, because they were his friends and they knew how much he hated it. Yet she used it - the title that reminded him of what he was – a scion of the Volenoij's, one of the most feared families of warlocks of the North-East of Faraq Mae.
There was malice in the way she called him that, dark and bubbling and Raivi didn't understand it at all because it felt artificial, forced, and it hurt her almost as much it did him, if not more. Cinsa's unpredictable behavior was suddenly puzzling him.
He wore his dark robe over his thin servant's one, not very willing to undress even in the dark and in front of the only spectator – Cinsa's back. He pushed back his unruly spikes of hair under his hood and finally looked at the girl in front of him – tensed, and if he watched hard he could even feel her tremble.
"Cinsa I-" he started looking at her back but a soft footstep at the mouth of the alley had them both snap and turn.
There was no one in sight, but the two still waited for someone to appear any moment …no one did and they both finally relaxed.
"They didn't even TALK about you, can you BELIEVE that?" Vynder whined standing tall and happy in between the two out of the blue, though his face was morphed into scorned annoyance.
"Were you spying on them?" Raivi asked slowly, his eye twitching in vexation.
"From… far." Vynder mouthed each word, moving his face to the extreme while keeping his eyes on Raivi and then turned to Cinsa. "They went back and stood in their position like a same damn statue again, NO damn reaction. Next time let's do it naked, both of us together." he wriggled his eye brows at her and grinned wide in invitation.
Cinsa stared, face calm eyes serene and then shifted her eyes at Raivi and swiftly turned and started walking out the alley from the other side.
"Eh, eh …eh?" Vynder uttered confused but Raivi was already rushing after Cinsa, worried. He heard Vynder's heavy steps follow them soon after.
***
The harbor was loud enough to give Raivi a headache and with rivers of people flowing around it with no one seeming to even care about the fact that it was past midnight. He had known it would be bad, but not this bad. So many of them, how were they going to get past, and how were they to even know where to go? Thinking of himself in the middle of those… untamed streams of humans, Raivi swallowed and relaxed to let the warmth creeping up his neck settle.
"Bring down your ballocks!" Vynder whispered with a slight shiver of fear in his voice that he wasn't quite able to hide. 'Burn some other time, when I'm not standing so close to you.'
Raivi turned to Cinsa, brushing off Vynder's remark. But she wasn't looking at him, and instead her eyes were to her side, searching in the crowd. It was usually Cinsa and not Vynder who had his back, as despite their difference in size, Vynder often seemed somehow intimidated by Raivi. Whenever he was unable to control his emotions, which showed in his face, Cinsa would calm him down.
What had happened to her? He thought uneasily. No answer came.
Raivi's first few days in the academy were mostly spent in solitude. A fragile young boy of twelve, with skin like dark ash and hair of flame colored fuzz, pointed skyward, a freak that no one wanted as their friend. And on top of all that, his tendency to turn into a blazing inferno whenever he was under an emotional distress kept evens the few willing ones away. But Cinsa, that gloomy girl always siting in the shadows, was the only one to have tried again after her first experience with Raivi's flaming outburst.
They were on the first floor balcony of a plain eatery, which like the harbor, was packed even at this hour. Inside behind the big balcony door were patrons in their variations, and the waitresses, tired with their sullen faces and their aggressive conduct. Many of the patrons, mostly the rich and tired pointed at the balcony behind the fiber door, probably asking why despite there being empty seats in a big deck like the size of a room, no one but only three kids were allowed. They were stopped by the two guards waiting by the door, vast in glimmering heavy armors of red and silver. Private guards of someone very very …rich, Raivi mused.
~clank, clank~
A fork clanked on a ceramic plate as Vynder fought with his roughly cooked mutton. In their haste to feed the ever present customers it seemed that they neglected to properly finish cooking.
"Oh it moved, see?" ~clank~ "see, it moved again." Vynder said disinterested and sleepy but still not willing to be quiet, "I think it's… Alive." He mooted.
"So eat it and make it dead." Cinsa said without looking.
"What's crawled up on your rear end today?" Vynder, suddenly awake, narrowed his eyes at Cinsa.
"I am on my period."
"…you're not. It's like… one and half weeks left for that."
Vynder waited eyes wide gleaming with vengeance as he stared into Cinsa. But She didn't look back, and downcast, Vynder threw his piece of meat over the balcony railings.
The glass door rattled and a portly man in his forties walked in from behind. Rosy cheeks and pointy mustache that extended halfway to his shoulders. A gaudy fur coat of black and green cloud, a gold chain around his neck almost as thick as Raivi's wrist. Long and thick dark curly locks fell on his chest and over that a small animal sat. A small red Cetal fox, with dead onyx eyes and its twin tail of red wisp behind the man's head.
Not an animal, Raivi noticed, just an extremely fine fur cap.
"This is what I hired?" he asked, his heavy voice rumbling in anger. "Kids? Not even old enough to handle a proper drink!" His heavy hands with rings as big as his eyes slammed onto their table. The tankards flew spilling the contents all over the floor and table and some on Raivi. Vynder grinned, ear to ear fully awake and very amused. Cinsa turned her head slowly like just noticing the man's presence and Raivi simply stared with his ember eyes, dead into the man's grey without blinking.
The man flinched slightly but held himself from leaning back.
"If you want the best…" Cinsa spoke softly and then pointed her head behind the man to the faint blue tower against the sky. "…They are right there. I heard Pearl is not here but still… "
That seemed to have made the effects. The man finally straightened and pulled a chair and sat with them.
"I am paying one thousand for this, I need-"
"Twelve hundred." Cinsa interrupted.
The man stared at Cinsa like he wanted to murder her but quickly controlled his features and asked softly, "what?"
"Yes."
The man just stared at her, eyes numb and hard.
"Or no? We walk." Cinsa still impassively watching the tower. "You have options. Albeit, no better ones."
"I wil-"
"Mr. Erborn, let's not waste time here. Our ship will not wait for us for long… and it is a long trip down to Meridante."
And just as if to prove a point a horn was blown beyond the road from the harbor, signaling the next ship's departure. That seemed to shake Erborn off of his anger. He frowned and looked almost desperate. Whatever he wanted he wanted bad and knew only Cinsa could do it.
He signaled over his shoulder and another portly man that looked like a petite version of Erborn- shorter hair, smaller mustache and little less expensive clothes, a small black pouch in his hand which he threw on the wet wooden table. It jangled over to Cinsa and she ceased it with a snap and opened to check inside. She snatched a scroll from the shorter man's hand that he had pulled out of his pocket-the permit for their voyage.
Just as smoothly she got to her feet and without looking to her friends said, "We are leaving."
"Have a lot riding on this, girl! He doesn't return with you, Sharak or no Sharak, you will never see the Sun."
Cinsa paused for a moment to nod and headed out. Raivi and Vynder quietly trailed after her.