Unlike last time, Jim decided to vacate the premises of the academy a good day before the calamity was set to arrive on the farthest eastern parts of Mitelos.
He stretched his hands in the air, put on his newly bought pink leather boots and left the dorms with a pep in his step and whistle on his lips.
Quite naturally, he was then immediately interrupted before he’d even made it halfway across the courtyard.
“You’re leaving? It’s happening, isn’t it?” Katniss asked quietly as she siddled up to him during his walk. Her new brown cloak fit her relatively better, and Jim noted that she had learned at some point in the last few months that water could be also used to wash hair.
“Not in the open like this,” Jim hissed back at the girl, not letting the expression on his face change, but turning his eyes to look suspiciously at the other students bustling around.
Today was the day of the final exams, but they would occur later in the afternoon, so it wasn’t too odd to see students still leaving the academy grounds and its neighbouring buildings for some carousing in the city.
“Oh, ok,” Katniss said. “Fancy a stroll?” Was what she eventually settled on.
Jim pulled a face at the girl with whom he hadn’t had much to do in the last months. After she’d exhausted her use as a plus one to that meeting with the Ezengerdian, they’d barely even said hello to each other in the classes they shared. A proper distance considering their vastly differing social classes.
“Family emergency, I’m afraid. I need to go to Riche post-haste. The exams will have to wait,” Jim explained briefly.
“Horrible that,” Katniss agreed. “As a distressed friend of similar circumstance, may I tag along?”
Jim turned his head to stare at the girl, who was giving him a stubborn look. “You pay your own ferry,” he told her. “And we’re telling the guards you’re my escort, no one will believe that you have family in Riche.”
Katniss nodded silently with a wistful look. “To think an emergency like that would make me miss out on the final exam after all the preparations I did,” she said.
“It is very unfortunate,” Jim agreed as the two of them slowly passed through a still bustling city. “No visit to the library?” he eventually asked, remembering that the girl had been lugging a large bag of books the last time they’d tried escaping the city together.
Katniss shook her head. “It would be nice to use the excuse of the chao- of the exams, to permanently borrow some of the more, eh, rare pieces of literature. But I don’t want anything to mess with my accompaniment to your family emergency, there are priorities to these things.”
Jim nodded seriously. “You understand what is most important, at least,” he determined with a sniff.
Their surroundings shifted again as they started reaching the docks, the squawks of parrots and the din of sailors filling the air. There was also a very bad fish smell in the air. The joys of summer, one could say. Katniss looked at everything with a distant look on her face, drawing some confused glances from the people whose eyes she inadvertently met.
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” the girl eventually said. “How nothing will ever be the same.”
“Talk about yourself,” Jim muttered with a sigh. “I’m absconding to a life of leisure, as is proper. The third circle certificate issued by the guild will placate my family.”
They finally reached the large ferry that went, on a regular basis, to cross the lake dividing Sredina and the Richean port-town of Tolon. The ride would take two hours, which was also the intermission in which the ferries departed, unless one wished to commission a private boat.
Jim saw no need and stepped towards the bored looking sailor standing in front of the ferry’s boarding plank.
“One entry,” he said to the man.
“Make that two,” Katniss interrupted, squeezing the sailor a silver coin that she’d probably stolen from somewhere.
“Good that you came, this is the last one out, military is seizing the boat in Tolon for some reason, gonna use it for some exercise of private vessel mobilisation or something,” the sailor told the two of them, putting away the coin.
Jim and Katniss shared a glance.
“Odd that,” Jim eventually said before stepping onto the plank and boarding the rather large ferry alongside his accomplice. He went to sit down on one of the benches facing the large city, intending to watch it disappear into the distance alongside all his worries.
“Did you meet Harry much after?” Katniss asked, sitting down next to him but very politely leaving an open space in the middle.
Jim briefly put a finger in the air to make sure he was sitting upwind from her, before answering.
“After we resolved that little hiccup at the church, there wasn’t much more need,” Jim said. The man had sought him out a few times with his group of adventuring friends whose quest he’d interrupted in Mitelos, something about a rune network being discovered underground in several places in the region.
Harry had asked him on those visits if he’d seen anything new, still believing Jim was a seer, Jim, obviously had replied with a no, since he had no new information to give.
Harry had still shared his part of course, primarily noting that Ezengerdians were sniffing around the Mitelosian part of the lake surrounding the capital (perhaps the headmaster was stationing his ritual there somewhere?), but that had been the extent of their talks.
“He was a nice man,” Katniss decided arbitrarily, obviously not even having known Harry all that much.
“He was certainly…” Jim started, before pausing, “one of the many people I have met of all time.”
“You mad-” Katniss started before the two of them were suddenly interrupted by a loud shout.
“What the hell are you two doing?” a girlish shriek came from the shore, the ferry not having left yet.
Jim and Katniss looked up to see an absolutely fuming Dew Waterflower staring at them from the dock with her fists on her hips.
“Gods why does she appear everywhere?” Jim muttered as he looked down, pretending that he hadn’t seen or heard the annoying classmate.
“Family emergency!” Katniss shouted back, drawing more eyes to their discussion.
“You’re from Mitelos!” Dew shouted. “You don’t have family in Riche!”
“It’s for Jim!” Katniss shouted back. “I’m just emotionally supporting him!”
“You’re missing the exams to emotionally support that idiot?!” Misty shouted back. “What about your scholarship!”
“Friendship over glory!” Katniss replied.
“She’s not my friend!” Jim suddenly added his voice to the din. “More like a maid! Or something!”
“Really?” Katniss whispered at him.
“You two buffonish truants, I’m getting a professor!” Dew shouted, seemingly ready to storm off and escalate the issue.
Jim, who had kept track of time and knew the ferry was going to depart any second now, couldn’t help but send over one last jab. “Tell them I had to go because my mom was diagnosed with Ligma!” he shouted.
“What’s Ligma!?” Dew replied, confusedly.
“Ligma balls! Hahahaha! See you never dumbass!” Jim shouted, just as the sailor who’d been collecting boarding fees jumped on the deck and pulled up the plank.
Dew ran red in the face and raised her hand, looking like she was about to sink the ferry with a water spear. “I’ll get you for this, Jimothy!” she shouted, before an armoured hand suddenly clasped itself on her shoulder and she turned around to see that two unamused guards had come over to inspect the commotion.
“Hah, serves her right!” Jim exclaimed as the ferry was kicked off the dock and started drifting towards Riche before picking up speed as the sail was unfurled.
Dew was now arguing with the black-clad guards on the dock, angrily pointing at the departing ferry.
“That’s a bit mean, she’s not going to… well, potentially be alive the next time we return to Sredina,” Katniss whispered to him.
Jim suddenly quieted, watching the large city which would soon descend into chaos drift further and further away as they sailed the placid lake Waterflower’s family had helped create.
“Way to put a damper on things, you’re the worst maid ever,” Jim complained quietly with a complicated look in his eyes.
Katniss for her part, remained silent, and remained so for the last of the boat-ride.
Jim didn’t particularly care, having immediately flagged down a wandering waiter to order some coffee, already giddy from excitement at returning back home.
The ferry docked in Tolon two hours after its departure from Sredina to a regiment of soldiers clad in black iron armour and wielding similarly colour-coded halberts.
Jim and Katniss quietly disembarked and only began talking again after they’d made their way clear of the docks and the other passengers they’d spent two hours with.
“What now?” Katniss asked nervously while Jim simply took in the sights of actual civilization.
Cobbled streets, old charming buildings with rustic signs talking of cafes, eateries and a smattering of public parks.
Tolon was smaller than Sredina by a magnitude of five, it was also more beautiful by a magnitude of five.
Unaffected by wars, conflict, or even economic distress for hundreds of years, it was the perfect, quintessent, Richean town.
Kids playing in the street instead of begging, dressed smartly instead of wearing rags.
Gentleman and ladies of good breeding walked about with the proper posture and the clothing that was as fashionable as it was avant-garde, wide impractical dresses for the women and frock coats for the men.
The bakers and hawkers took off their caps in greeting as potential customers passed and laughter spilled out of wineries where one could partake in a glass of anything one desired alongside a charcuterie board and a thick cigar.
“What now?” Katniss asked again, more urgently.
Jim sighed, the perfect moment slipping past his fingers like water in a… sieve. He looked around the bustling central square they’d entered from their way to the docks.
“My family’s mansion is on the coast, shipping routes, you know how it is. We still have a way to go. It’s only afternoon, so a carriage should take us to the main port on the northern sea, where we can take a room and then go to my estate tomorrow.” He paused, before furrowing his brows. “Wait,” he turned to Katniss. “What do you mean, what now? Buzz off!”
Katniss awkwardly looked above Jim’s head, which considering that she was somewhat shorter, meant she craned her way comically towards the sky.
“You seem to know what’s happening more than me, so I think I can maybe survive longer sticking with you,” she eventually said. “We can keep working on external mana sensing together,” she proposed. “Nothing but room and board for the service, cheapest mage in the west!”
Jim grit his teeth at the suggestion of more work, before remembering his vow to the lich, whose memory spell he’d almost grasped. The only thing missing was more awareness of mana interactions due to the spell having to do with other people.
If he ever found the person who’d gotten him into that mess with Quatzel, he was going to punch their lights out.
“Fine, you can come!” he eventually shouted angrily. “There’s probably space in the servant’s quarters somewhere,” he grumbled, before pausing and narrowing his eyes. “Or maybe the barn for the carriage horses,” he said, trying to disgust the other girl into leaving.
“Oh, I love animals!” Katniss exclaimed happily. “They’re so warm! Do you also have bales of hay to sleep on? That would be so much more comfortable than the floor I had last time.”
Jim sighed as he realised that the Mitelosian girl’s standards were so low he couldn’t even effectively insult her.
“Let’s find that bloody carriage,” he eventually grumbled. “It’ll be a six hour drive.”
“That’s great, last time I had to walk!”
-/-
AN: Book 2 slowly closing out... Katniss kinda cute idk...