The damp wood scraped against my incisors. A faint hint of fish and oil tickled my palate, but there was absolutely nothing to chew.
A quick flash of white and red passed right over the tip of my nose, almost making me sneeze. It smelled of musk and fried fish.
"Magnificent... I've seen it in the library books, but never in person. So the Count really bought it, eh?" Sipar said, his eyes wide toward the horizon.
"So, is it that famous?" The ship appeared to be burning, given the enormous amount of white smoke it was vomiting upward. It was pulling away from the port at an impressive speed, leaving behind a trail of thick white smoke.
The wooden skewer dipped into the paper cone and speared another calamari ring.
"Are you kidding me? It's one of the new great steamships around. They're the pinnacle of modern technology from Lumia." Sipar shook his head. "I can't believe it, how can you not…" He stopped, hands open in surrender.
The skewer returned to my mouth. Damp, tasted like fish, but it was empty again.
Another tickle on my nose.
Emma pointed at the large warships moored right in front of where we were sitting, making a gesture with her fingers as if to push them away with contempt.
"I agree with Emma, Sipar. These traditional sailing ships are much more beautiful. And they don't look like they're burning while they move, by the way."
The stick plunged back down, spearing a prawn this time. I kept my eye on it as it ascended this time.
"Ah, poor ignorant fools! The Spuma of Astermond can travel at least three times faster than these, and can carry at least twice the cargo."
The stick returned empty to my mouth, scraping against my teeth. Again, that flash of red and white on the tip of my nose.
"Achoo!"
"Lirka! Are you done stealing my fish? You had yours and now you're stealing mine every time I bring it to my mouth, cheeky fox!"
Lirka froze on the spot, her red and white ear a whisker away from my nose. She turned her head slowly, continuing to chew with an infuriating calm; the prawn tail was still sticking out from her lips.
She slurped it in with a slimy sound and swallowed it without even chewing.
She sprang to her feet in front of me and stuck out her tongue and winked, like she always did.
I stabbed the skewer hard into the last prawn and brought it to my mouth, chewing violently and without savoring. I glared at her with an intensity that could almost move her hair with my gaze alone. I wanted to seem unmovable, a fortress of indignation.
Her mouth drooled.
She lowered her ears and tucked her tail between her legs, shrinking on the low wall.
"Sorry. I'm really hungry. Poor me." she whispered.
Don't give in. Don't give in, Arek.
Emma placed her hand on her thick mane, petting her like you do with a beaten puppy, shooting me a reproachful look.
Don't give in. They are taking advantage of you.
Lirka's pupils started to dilate, the whites of her eyes seemed to fade into the intense yellow of her irises and made me feel like a heartless monster.
Hold it. Don't… oh for the love of the Gods.
"Fine, have some more!" I burst out.
Damn it!
Lirka and Emma pounced on my paper cone of fish with the grace of two pirates boarding. At that moment I knew I wouldn't taste even the shadow of that fried food again.
"And that one back there is a High Elf Catamaran," Sipar continued, undaunted and totally unaware of my food drama. "I read that it can lower its mast in an instant to zip under bridges and even travels faster…"
"Alright, done." Sister Cora's voice saved me from another unrequested sailing lecture. She was carrying two huge, heavy shoulder bags, one for each shoulder, that seemed to be dragging her downward.
"Can we help you with the bags?" I asked, attempting to be a gentleman despite still having the bitter taste of the last stolen prawn.
"Yes, thanks darling."
She passed one to me, the one with the enormous scaly tail of a deep-sea fish sticking out. As soon as I took it, my knees made an ominous creak; it weighed like a boulder.
She passed the other to Sipar, who didn't even have time to grab it properly: he dropped to the ground with a strangled sound, arms stretched to the max struggling to lift it, but the bag didn't move an inch.
"Emma, Lirka, help the boys, would you?"
Emma glanced at the sky, a silent sigh that seemed to say: "Will I always have to do everything?", underlining how our physical strength was obviously lacking compared to theirs.
Lirka, on the other hand, bared her teeth in a feral grin; she knew perfectly well that lifting that weight would be child's play for her Bestial strength, and she couldn't wait to give us a lesson in humility.
The two lifted the bags with an almost embarrassing ease, bringing them to their backs without the slightest apparent effort, as if they were full of feathers instead of wet fish. Their eyes met for an instant, shining with silent complicity, and together they turned toward us, who were left with our mouths hanging open.
"Do you want a hand walking too, little brothers? I can carry you on my back if you want to." Lirka's smirk seemed to ask, as her tail swayed rhythmically, proud of the load.
"Well, we're done at the market. I have to go to the Big Cathedral to meet with Father Tyeron. We need to organize some new lessons. You take the fish home, please. Emma put it under ice."
"Okay," we answered in chorus, as Cora walked away toward the large main road.
The return was decidedly slower than the trip there. No longer having to race to save our pants, we had time to chat and stroll, getting lost among the sounds and noises of the city fully waking up.
The streets narrowed into a labyrinth of cobblestones and half-timbered houses with sloping roofs. Above us, the iron signs of the shops creaked in the wind, while the smell of freshly baked bread mixed with that of manure and tanned leather.
It was a world moved by muscle and magic, made of ox-drawn carts and artisans working on their doorsteps conjuring small fires or breeze to clean the streets, a stark contrast to the black smoke of the steamships we'd just left at the port.
Above the roofs, the ever-present tower served as a constant reference point.
The white pinnacle filled the sky.above the city roofs
A very short guy with a beard so long it almost brushed the ground nearly ran into me, while I had my nose up looking at that immense white thing. I moved aside just in time, avoiding him by a hair. His soft brown beard brushed my face. Soft as a cloud.
Sipar, without thinking at all, yelled, "I knew it! Dwarves are not extinct!" making all the passersby turn and making us sink with embarrassment.
The short legged gentleman, instead of taking offense, burst out laughing and kindly explained that he was a Gnome and not a Dwarf at all. He called Sipar 'boy' in the process, which made him furious.
Through all this, though, I couldn't stop thinking about the man in orange robes with the pointed goatee. That image had stuck under my eyelids like the afterglow of a too-bright sun. Would he still be there? Was he looking for Father Tyeron? And above all, what the hell were those floating spheres that seemed to have a life of their own?
Arriving at the church square, right across from our orphanage, I almost expected to see him still there, motionless under the bell tower like a harbinger of misfortune. But the square was deserted. Only the pentagonal fountain, with its placid rushing water, made it different from a desert. Surely the summer heat, which in the middle hours was starting to make itself felt, contributed to that unreal silence.
We entered the house quickly, grateful for the temperature shift that the thick stone walls offered compared to the suffocating heat outside.
The smell of incense drifting from the side door that led to the church was light, the familiar scent of home.
"I'll put away the fish," I said, as the girls set the heavy bags on the big wooden kitchen table.
Lirka, true to her style, shot upstairs before she could offer any kind of help, her tail disappearing beyond the staircase in the blink of an eye.
"Lazy fox, as usual."
I shook my head in unison with Emma.
She, as expected from a good Mother General, was already at work sorting the shopping and cleaning it with quick, precise gestures, while I opened the wooden and zinc icebox to organize the inside.
"There's not much ice here," I observed, feeling barely a breath of cold escaping the compartment. "We need to tell Cora to refill it, or by evening everything will stink like the port."
"Um... guys. Can you come here for a second?" Sipar's voice drifted from the back garden. It sounded fragile, almost hesitant, lacking that usual know-it-all quality that characterized him.
Emma and I exchanged a quick glance. A quick wipe of our hands on the hanging apron and we rushed out.
I squinted, passing from the dimness of the kitchen to the blinding light of the sun bouncing off the marble of the portico.
Sipar was standing in the middle of the garden, beside the unlit brazier we lit when we had to practice with fire magic. He was still as a pillar of salt, his short breaths barely lifting his shoulders.
Emma stiffened by my side.
"What?" The words died in my throat.
"Your name is Arek Grey, am I right?" A calm, controlled voice, but with a sharp tone, cut through the air. It wasn't cutting like the slash of a sword, but rather like the thin blade of a knife that grazes skin with surgical precision.
I turned in the direction my brother was looking and saw them.
In our garden, upright and almost at attention, stood three figures. They were so different from one another, in style and bearing and age, that the result was a grating contrast, an insult to the harmony of the place.
Among the three I immediately recognized the central silhouette, the one who had called my name: the man in orange robes.
His mocking smile seemed to taunt me, exactly as the three spheres of gold, silver, and crimson did with the laws of nature, floating above his staff, swaying in a perpetual, hypnotic motion.