Pasha and Eva sat on the porch of an abandoned store front, spitting grape seeds out into the mud and playing dice while they waited for the rest of their party, sans Ruslan. Ruslan had not been seen all morning.
“They might have given up in this rain.” Pasha squinted through the downpour.
“Their loss. Roll.”
Eva and Pasha threw their dice.
“Ha! Take it off.” Pasha gloated.
“Whore.”
“Pardon me, would it bother you too terribly if we had a sit here?” A figure spoke out of the rain.
“Fine, go ahead.” Eva said dismissively. Pasha picked up his dice.
“We will continue this later.”
“That’s fine.”
Three persons with a variety of instruments settled themselves down on the porch, all sopping wet.
“It’s getting late.” Eva sighed.
“Matvei and Isidor probably went back to the inn.” Pasha dug through his knapsack and took out a handful of raisins.
“In this weather, I don’t blame them.” Eva said.
“Pardon me, but can you spare some food?” The wet leader-figure asked. Eva rolled an apple across the boards of the porch.
“No money? We were like you once.” Pasha grinned and leaned against the building. Eva pitched an apple at his head.
“Once being yesterday morning.”
“We were robbed blind!” One of the wet non-leader-figures said.
“We’ve done that before.” Pasha continued to smirk.
“Haven’t the faintest who did it. One minute we had coins jingling in our pockets, next minute we didn’t.” The leader-figure lamented, taking a bite out of the apple before passing it to his comrades.
“It’s a bad neighborhood, friend.” Pasha slapped at a hand that reached around the corner of the porch. Somebody whimpered. Eva squinted and a potato hit the ground in the alleyway next to them.
“I know. We were warned. But we lost our money, our food, our invisibility cloak, our rings of power, a pair of seven-league boots, and our boss’s son.” The leader-figure cried.
“That’s a rough place to be.” Eva nodded, packing things into her bag.
“Would you two brave souls perchance-”
“No.” Eva and Pasha said firmly.
“We don’t do the hero thing.”
“She’s terribly selfish.”
“So is he.”
“We’re only in it for our personal gain.”
“Only saved somebody once. On accident.”
“Find another questing group.”
They donated a few more apples and half a bag of raisins to the wet porch-sitters before taking off through the rain for The Guarded Inn.
“Thank the gods we got out of that one.” Pasha muttered.
“We don’t mention it to Rus.” Eva said, sliding along the muddy street.

At The Guarded Inn, Matvei and Isidor sat in Matvei’s room, fiddling about with the harp and eating bread with cheese.
“So what you’re saying is that Rus didn’t bring a barmaid up to the room last night?” Matvei asked. Isidor nodded.
“Oh,” Matvei took another bite of his bread, “And that’s why he’s been hiding all day? Because he thought he was having his way with a barmaid and it was you?”
“Well, maybe not exactly him having his way, but embarrassment’s always part of it. I suspect he might be a bit sore.”
“Oh.”
“Why do these things always happen to me?” Isidor dabbed his eyes on his sleeve.
“Hey, hey. It’s Rus’s fault. He was the one who got himself smashed.”
“But it was great!”
“I’m sorry. We should have let Rus have Irina. She wasn’t doing me any good.”
“So you two did come back here. You were supposed to meet us in front of that abandoned shop.” Pasha said. He and Eva came in tracking water across the floor.
“Wipe your feet.” Isidor ordered. Eva stopped, kicked mud and water off of her shoes on the end of Irina’s bed, and draped her soaked cloak across the room’s one chair.
“Seen anything of Rus?” Pasha asked, leaning out the window and taking off his wet shirt. He draped it over the sill before sitting down to take off his flooded boots and socks.
“Not since I left the room this morning.” Isidor sighed, strumming mournfully on the harp. Eva peeled off her wet trousers and tossed them at Pasha to be hung over the windowsill.
“Oh, Isidor. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” He sighed again.
“No, no, it most certainly is. I was the one who wouldn’t let Ruslan and Pasha just battle to the death over Irina, and then let Rus take off for the bar and get sauced.” Eva said.
“…and strategically placed us in the room underneath the two of you so that we could keep tabs on what was going on.” Pasha admitted, stripping down to his shorts.
“Did what now?” Isidor sputtered.
Eva and Pasha froze and exchanged looks, Pasha in his underwear and Eva in the process of removing her wet shirt.
“Uh…” Pasha trailed off.
“Did what?” Isidor repeated himself.
“Pasha’s joking with you.” Eva assured the magician. Isidor furrowed his eyebrows and pink balloons, each containing a toad, appeared near the ceiling. His company fellows politely ignored his display of misplaced magic.
Isidor snatched up Matvei’s harp and started to leave the room at a run before tripping hard over nothing. He picked himself up again and resumed his flight.
In the middle of the room stood half a chair. Eva kicked it and more of the back slid into view. She ran her hand along the top and caught hold of something. The chair appeared fully and Eva held what looked like a ragged brown blanket.
“You wouldn’t have happened to have stolen this from some tall wet men with musical instruments?” She asked.
Matvei shrugged.
Pasha began floating the toad balloons out of the window and into the rain.

Nine