An Illusionist's Curiousity

by **Kit Rowan** on October 3rd, 2013, 8:06 am

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Day 66, Season of Fall, 513 AV

Today Kit did not feel quite like haunting the Spot. Too much energy, too many people, and the last thing she wanted after skirting through the slave market with her head down to find the recipient of her next letter was to stand on a stage in front of curious eyes. Instead, she found her way to the people's market. The bustle had begun to change its tune, people visiting less frequently. Most of the rush came in the morning from people ready to grab their ingredients for the day or the week, leaving the evening crowd lazy sleepers and early workers, who only now had gotten a chance to come.

Kit perused their stock of foods and fruits; fish were the staple of Ravok, Kit had gathered, but still they had gathered things from other places. Exotic fruits and ingredients that were browsed mostly by well-dressed slaves. Slaves, Kit thought, that might have been looking for new foods to fill their master's kitchens. Kit overheard a price and ade a face; she could never afford them, not even one. A day's work earned her less!

But that did not mean she couldn't steal a taste.

In Alvadas as an urchin she might have just snatched something for a bite and ran like all the gods were on her tail, but Kit had learned a better way from her father. She focused on what she'd heard the vendor call app-ree-cots and drew a quick, inverted triangle over her mouth. Even the auras of simple objects were enough to confuse her, sometimes, so she needed something to guide its focus, to guide her senses to the part of the aura that she actually wanted to be. Mouth and tongue; taste.

Though she was standing half a dozen feet from them, Kit could taste it; the aura told her just so. Ionu loved variety; colors and tastes and smells. Kit had wondered why, but now she thought she knew; what more than experience provided the tools to make an enrapturing illusion. Kit licked her lips as she tasted the apricots . . . Not her favorite, too tart. She preferred sweet things.

Kit wandered about the market, cutting off her auristics as soon as she was done with the apricot; she had precious little stamina for this magic, and it was best saved for things she truly would like to taste. Apples, she saw,, and was curious enough to draw the triangle over her mouth and extend her taste; it was more mellow than they were in Alvadas, she thought! At least at this stand. Less kick.

The further she went on, the more Kit found herself rubbing at her eyes. She breathed in, counted, tried to find her mind at peace and view the auras again. The cashew; she tasted it and found the sweetness she'd been looking for, smiled and felt her toes curl in pleasure. She could sneak a piece of bread into her room and give it this taste every once and a while, Kit thought. It would be a good meal. The jerky tasted succulent; she could taste the fat as though it was on her tongue and it made her want. She indulged, marching up to the stand and offering a handful of mizas for a small piece of jerky.

She marched with it, tore it with her teeth and marched about the market some more—the texture, aaaah, how could she have forgotten that? It felt so good in her mouth—searching for something else to set her eyes on. She peered at the signs, rubbed her eyes, found the world startlingly fuzzy. Kit started, realizing then exactly what had happened.

Kit found her way out of the market, away from the people and the noise and fell back against the wall. She tore into her jerky and rubbed furiously at her eyes, cursing her carelessness. It had been maybe ten chimes, and she had been peering at auras for a fraction of that! She had thought it would be safe . . . But apparently not.

She waited there a while, breathing in, focusing, watching the world around her carefully. Details began to fade back in; the difference between the tiles of the roof, the details of a laughing girl's face, the curious texture of the ground beneath her . . . But it was not all back, not completely. "It'll get better," she told herself, hugging her arms close to her body and closing her eyes. "I didn't push that far!"

Kit only hoped that it was true.

by **Kit Rowan** on October 4th, 2013, 1:40 am

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The rest of her excursions this evening would need to be done with considerably less magic. But what was there to do? She didn't feel safe going to a bar for very long, and even then she spent more time on the lookout for something that might prove to be trouble than actually enjoying herself whenever she wasn't performing for the sake of it.

What was there to do? She could wander the rooftops and . . . Kit stared at her hand, its features still fuzzy, shook her head no. What else? Kit turned her head and saw a Ravosala passing by, lonely and slow, through the waters of the canal. Kit's mouth turned upward with a sudden idea, and she dashed toward the boat, waving her hand above her head. The Ravosala turned pushed closer to the edge.

Kit saw the woman sitting in the back. She had a face like the side of an axe and arms toned from days upon days of pushing her little boat through the water. Kit reached into her pocket and pulled out, one, two golden mizas and held them between her fingers, and she saw the Ravosalawoman's eyes pop. "I wanna borrow you till dusk. Sound alright?"

The woman smiled like the sharp end of an axe and pointed toward the empty seat. "You set your ass down here right now!"

Kit happily obliged, stepping carefully down into the Ravosala and settling herself into the seat, held out one gold and reserved the last. "For the end of the trip," Kit said. "You're already getting more from that gold than you're like to get from everyone else put together the rest of the day. Am I wrong?"

The Ravosalawoman chuckled, took the miza and pushed off the side of the canal. "You're not wrong. Feeling generous today, ma'am?" She said, but when Kit did not answer she took no offense. "Got a particular place you'd like to get off at the end?"

The Tarsin Boarding house was where she wanted to go, but that would give her away as a foreigner immediately. Instead, Kit listed off somewhere else near it that sounded likely. "Sounds good, ma'am, I'll try to give you a nice scenic route, hmm?"

"That's the idea," Kit said, examined the houses as they passed by, slow in the water of the lake. The water made soft lapping sounds against the side of the Ravosala, caused it to sway ever-so-slightly beneath them. Since she had . . . Come to Ravok, it had become a familiar, pleasant thing where it had before brought nerves.

"You know, we don't usually offer pleasure rides." The Ravosalawoman teased, pushing them forward into a wider channel. Syna still hung above the canals, and here she glared down at the canals, reflecting her light back up off the water with an ethereal, beautiful, painful light, like fresh snow on a winter morning.

"I imagine that's just cause you don't usually get people paying for them."

by **Kit Rowan** on October 7th, 2013, 12:08 pm

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Kit was not sure exactly where the Ravosalawoman was taking her at the moment, but the woman seemed to know exactly where she meant to go. She led Kit threw a little canal in the Noble's district Kit had not seen before; someone had crisscrossed wires between the buildings, each an inch or so apart, allowed vines to climb up and over the sides. They made a canopy greenery vines upon vines upon vines. "See that?" The Ravosalawoman pointed to the canopy. "One of the Lark daughters had that set up. Commissioned a small army of gardeners. In the Spring, it blooms with flowers like you wouldn't believe. But even now it's beautiful.

"Lark," Kit said, blinking her eyes at the vines, trying to get a closer look . . . Her view was still fuzzy. She could try to cross over the top of that on a courier run but the wires were too thin; they would cut right through her feet if she tried to stand on them. "I don't think I know that name."

"Oh? Can't say I'm too surprised. They're not one of the big three. They're merchants, not quite up to Nitrozian standards but wealthy all the same. Really, it's their slave trading that keeps them afloat. If it weren't for that, Sitanos would have drawn them into his empire long ago."

Kit clenched her teeth, was grateful that her driver was turned the other way, it took a tick to wrestle her expression back under her control. ". . . Interesting."

"For people like you or I? There ain't much need for lark family slaves." She turned back toward Kit and smiled. "But they've a real sense for beauty, that's for sure."

Making an agreeable sound in the back of her throat as she scanned the vines with unclear eyes, Kit searched for some new topic of conversation. "What's the news?"

Her driver whistled quietly. "Well, there's been talk that, ever since last Summer when the Ebonlord returned, he's been pecked at by Lazerin behind the scenes." They pushed out from underneath the canopy into a regular canal, the light glittering on the water's surface like a fine gemstone that Kit could make out even now.

"Yeah." Kit said, looking over the edge at the water, trying to seem nonplussed. Half of the names she heard were nonsense to her, so it was not hard. "Sound familiar." While Kit had not heard of this, she thought it best to seem as though she had. She had been convinced that the Lazerins were family, not a person . . . And yet the Ravosalaman talked about them as though they were. Kit could not ask without exposing her ignorance, so she maintained silence.

Ebonlord, though? Kit bit her lip and thought on it. Perhaps they were lead the leader of the Ebonsstryfe. Would make sense.

"'Course, the big thing that's changed is how they mean to fight it out. You heard of how they're cracking down on the Rising Dawn?"

Kit cracked a smile. Had she heard? "Yeah. Yeah I have. They're doing some raids to ferret them out, aren't they?"

The Ravosalawoman blinked. "Well now," they said, looking over Kit as though for the first time. "You're not quite so out of touch as you seem. Yeah. Yeah they did. Lazerin and the Gu'tral have been trying to see who can snag as many of the Dawn as possible, prove who deserves control of the Ebonstryfe most." Gu'tral was the Ebonlord's name, then? Noted.

Shaking her head, Kit sigh and lounged back in her seat, stared at the sky. "Sounds like an awful mess."

"If you don't mind me asking," the Ravosalawoman leaned forward, stopped pushing the boat forward. "What is it that you do, exactly?"

Oh, so she'd caught this one's interest? Careful, Kit . . . No need to blow everything trying to impress the transportation. She shrugged. "I'm a courier, I sometimes hear things." There, proper context for how Kit had learned the information, without details. Just 'a courier' didn't sound all that interesting. 'The personal courier of Valerius Nitrozian' did. She doubted the Ravosalawoman would want to know more.

"Well that's fair enough," they said, and began pushing the boat forward again. "It's easy to hear things when you're playing delivery girl, ain't it?" She smiled, winked. Kit clasped her hands together and nodded.

"I hear they managed to catch the leader of the Dawn. There'll be an execution. In twenty-five days."

Kit sat up, raised an eyebrow. "Now that's news. Anything more on that?"

The Ravosalawoman clucked her tongue, held out her hand. "How about that other gold you promised me?" Kit smiled, drew the gold from her pocket and put it in the woman's hand. "If you ask me, this'll be the Ebonlord's best chance to prove he deserves the spot, and Lazerin's best chance to cement himself as the new rule. Maybe even the Voice will come from her sabbatical to see. The one who stands in front of the crowd, cleaves that Dawn bitch's head from her shoulders? Our Lord and Lady will smile on them."

by **Kit Rowan** on October 11th, 2013, 4:53 pm

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Time passed. The sun dipped close to the sky's rim, colored the sky like splattered blood. Kit leaned forward, propped her chin on both hands and watched the city go by, shook her head. How could a city with such a rotten heart be so beautiful?

Oh right, city of lies.

"About to drop you off, now." the Ravosalawoman said, testing the air, pushing off the edge of the canal, Ravosala making ripples in the water as it moved. "Won't be five more chimes. You know," she said, considering. "There might be one more thing. One more new thing." She did not turn away from her work, did not look at Kit. "I hear there some nuits might have come to town."

"Nuits?" The Ravosalawoman looked over her shoulder, smiled slyly. "I've already given you plenty." Still, Kit pulled a silver from her pocket and put it in the boat. "What's a nuit?"

"Shambling corpse, body thieves," the Ravosalawoman savored the sound of the words as she spoke them, pushed off the canal's edge again. "They're dead, and given life by dark magic. Their bodies rot with time, and to stave off Dira's scythe and take the bodies of the dead for their own." Another push. "So they say." Clack, another silver in the boat. "There's this place called Sahova, filled with wizards, all of them nuit, all of them dead. I've heard it said that a few came into Ravok, recent. Nothing definite, mind . . ."

Kit had heard stories of Sahova, though 'nuit' was a term she had never had explained completely until then. Kit hmmed, crossed her legs, bobbed her foot. Her father had told her to never trust a wizard. Perhaps it would be best to avoid these nuits, then?

"Why are they here?"

"Did I say they were? All I said was that there were rumors. Might not be true at all." They stopped, Ravosala scrapping against the canal side. "Here you go, miss." The Ravosalawoman grabbed at the edge of the canal to steady her boat so Kit could get up and out. "Enjoy your evening."

Kit frowned, stood up in the boat and stepped out. She watched as her Ravosala pushed off, sailed down the canals. Only when it was out of sight did Kit huddle in on herself and begin the march toward the Boarding House while she still had light to see by.