"Of course," is amended to: "Not on my person in this exact moment, unless my chest made it ashore."
Which leads him to the question of where it might have been set. Where did the men see fit to stow him, now that they'd landed on the shore?
But even as that uncertainty wedges like a splinter under a fingernail, John's eyes lok steadily back at Flint. The tent in comparably big, but not so big that it sets a great distance between where John is seated and Flint's desk.
The turn of his hand over the battered chair arm invites: Go on.
It's possible it has come ashore. Likely, even. And if it didn't, it's no difficult thing to cut out to the ship at anchor to fetch the thing, however odd invoking that ledger might seem.
"It would seem ready emphasis that what is true in the North could be made true here without much difficulty."
Their reputations are one thing. But how potent is the effect of those here in the south, far from the Nocen Sea and the pillaging they've done up and down the Tevinter coastline. To say nothing of the fact that Amaranthine pirates are fat, and comfortable, and have been so for Ages thanks to the Accord. If they cannot be goaded forward on the basis of what is good—an unlikely prospect in any place like Estwatch—, then a warning might serve:
Here is what it looks like when a sovereign nation decides it has finished with the likes of pirates. When will the Merchant Princes, half of them allied with Tevinter, decide to come ashore here with a book of their own?
A book, filled with names. A handful of pardons. A score of pirates dangling from the gallows.
Yes, these are powerful motivators. In John's mouth, each of them will take on a foreboding, menacing beyond even what the governor sat in Nassau had intended them to be.
"I'll have it fetched," bears no particular promise of when, though certainly it must occur before the pair of them wade into the quagmire of pirate politics waiting for them in this place.
But it prompts some turn of thought in John's head. This late, more or less concealed from the eyes of their crew and any others passing on the beach, the exertion of the day has begun to make itself known on his face, the lines of his body, the lay of his palm over his left thigh. The fever is gone, but certain discomforts remain; John prefers the burn of overuse in his right to the untouchable, phantom flares of pain in his left, but he has no more choice in this matter.
"Are we intending to make this case together?" he asks, considering the possible approaches alongside the impatience in Flint's face, the need for action that will find no other outlet but seeing to the collection of allies to their cause.
It's a simple answer, as direct as his attention on Silver sat there in that chair is. It has been a long day, but surely this is a possibility that has been accounted for. There is expectation there in the slant of his features; his eye does not fall to the shape of John Silver's leg.
Not so long ago, gathered around a map aboard the Walrus, Billy had made his own propositions about how they might move forward.
Billy is holding the efforts in Nascere together, and cannot propose any such thing now. John turns the concept over in his head all the same. Does it matter, if they speak with one voice? If Flint is seen, rather than shadowed?
"It's occurred to me that you've some experience with walking into an island of pirates and gathering them to a cause."
This is a piece of information he'd had, long before Flint had put it into any greater context.
"Between us the work may go easier."
It should go easier, or else what is John of use for?
He considers this a moment, something shaded in the line of his brow. Perhaps Flint is thinking also of Billy on Nascere, of ghost stories, and reputations. Or maybe he is thinking of something else—some matter whose relation to this moment is almost entirely one of sentimentality, and otherwise of no practical alignment.
(A tent on a beach bears no relation to a study in a fine Minrathous house, but given the right arrangement of chairs and certain attitudes occasionally, the mind does wander in directions otherwise unprompted.)
"Be that as it may," he says. "I think it would be best for us to be seen as not entirely shoulder to shoulder in this."
How much of Billy's handiwork has clung to John Silver?
Enough, surely. Sailors talk. Word carries. Even now, the Walrus men must be speaking even now, conversation scattering like seeds in the wind. Flint, a cannonball in his hand and blood in his beard. John Silver, expression dark with anger and knuckles white around the handle of a tankard, a corpse at his foot. There is some utility in these stories, something that could be traded on.
But that is a secondary contemplation when set alongside—
"How great of a division do you think would benefit us?"
It's a delicate thing, presenting division to the island and maintaining unity among the men. Unless the men were included, along with the cadre of strangers they will be seeking to sway.
There is an itch to say his hand on the table, fetch the discarded pen and smooth the lay of the tripped feathers at its end. He doesn't do that. Instead, Flint hooks his elbows on the arms of the high backed chair dragged out of the Walrus' cabin and up the beach, and lays one hand over the other where he might idly twist the hammered silver ring round his finger.
"Billy was right about one thing. There is power in a ghost story, and we would do well to use it to our advantage. But I've never walked here. I'm no spirit for for haunting Estwatch, and if they know my name then it's by professional reputation. Intimidating, maybe, but hardly the kind of thing that moves men to take up arms."
The ring is squarish, plain. If he wears it for a few more years, the edges may well go soft from being habitually manhandled.
"Less a division," he says, "So much as a show of rank. You walk in there knowing a handful of names, ready to put them in that book, and with one of Nascere's pirate kings at your heel—who in the South would argue with that man?"
Maybe this had been Billy's design in the end. A reversal, though this doesn't come about as Billy had hoped or where he might see it.
John's fingers flex over his thigh. Thumb presses at his kneecap, aware of the stump just beyond his fingertips, the slow ebb of fever that may pass faster now that they're off the water or may linger, miserably, as it once had.
In the quiet, he weighs the spread of story across the beach and through the town, the speed at which it will travel, how it will take root. What stories and reputations might choke the growth, how it will demand to be fed.
Looks back across to Flint, studying the way the light falls across his face, the expression shadowed there.
"We'd be gambling," John reminds him. "On how intimidating they find an invalid."
One-legged creature, had been the descriptor, not so long ago.
But this point carries a question along with it, easily gleaned in the shorthand that has sprung up between them: Are you certain of this?
There is something shaded in the level of his brow, yes, but in the low glow of the tent's single lamp and the plate of candles propped near the open ledger, his pale eye is clear and sharp and given to gleaming gold in the flicker of light and shadow. His hands stop moving.
"They don't need to find you intimidating. They need to believe someone strong would choose to follow you."
The brief pained flex of a reaction is barely perceptible. Perhaps it passes unnoticed.
How new it is, being recognizable in any meaningful way.
And beneath that flex of reaction at even this glancing acknowledgment of how he might be perceived here, is a deeper, tender thing. A sense of control being passed into his hands, something precious and hard won handed over with the expectation that John will hold it for them both.
There would be no easy way to strip that power from him. See how effective Billy’s work had been on Nascere. Consider how it might replicate itself here, if Flint so chooses.
“Do you?”
Not necessarily the same question. How little they have considered their partnership. How little they have considered the form it will take in such a new environment.
How unexpected this form is; John had not anticipated it or how it would feel to have it set out in front of him, the concept of turning this facade to the waiting tangle of eyes in this place and for Flint to exist within the role he is proposing.
For just the smallest moment, some part of that questions catches. It's a very slight measure of friction, like he has run his thumb across a surface he anticipates to have been worn perfectly smooth and instead find a seam still in need of sanding, or work which might shave it down to the level of everything that surrounds it. But it's both too immediate an impression and too unexpected, and tracing the source of it is impossible to do in the brevity of the moment.
(Is it balking over the reality of what he's suggested, or some rankling at having had the intention behind the thing called into question to begin with? Is it only habitual, like the pain in a joint long clutched right being asked to loosen?)
"I think it would be easy and effective to imply," he says. "And that it would serve the purpose we both want."
This is not quite an answer. Or it is part of an answer, a willingness to take on the role and all it requires of him. What may come attached to it.
Will it rankle later?
That is a question of John’s trust in this man. Flint, who has made himself transparent to John. Will he regret this choice later, putting John forward as the face and conductor of this enterprise?
John, who has withheld so many vital pieces of himself. (Do they matter now, that they are lost to him?)
The silence spins out, stretching between them as John turns the whole of the concept over in his head. Finds his way to the inevitable, the agreement that comes in the form of a nod.
“It would.”
Would it be so different? Hd will still be a mouthpiece in one fashion or another?
“Alright,” is unnecessary, perhaps. “We can see the book brought ashore in the morning, before we make our way into town.”
A beat, and then:
“It’ll serve us regardless, to see who seeks to step around me to speak to you directly.”
Of course there will be someone seeking to exploit the appearance of a division. John knows the potential in such opportunities better than anyone.
That prompts a scuffed breath out, not quite a laugh but not anything else either. John Silver would know something of slippery conversations snuck into the margins of what are meant to be straight forward addresses.
This reminder serves too to knock some of the edges back off the thing, returning it to the contrived theater form it has been conceived as rather than the sharp little needle it had become under even light questioning. It spurs a lopsided slant to form behind the auburn of Flint's whiskers, and a faint glint in the eye as he reaches to flip shut the ledger.
"I'll do my best to avoid cheating you out of six hundred fortunes of Qunari gold."
Sharp edges are more than capable of damage, even when masked in velvet. John knows this. But he has no desire to draw blood, to press for whatever thing lives behind the answer he has been given.
In this moment, the good humor in Flint's face and the satisfying rustle of closing pages marking the end of one portion of the evening's work outweighs the need to bring the proposal into sharp clarity. There has been little and less worth laughing about in the past weeks, since they fled Nascere in search of allies as their efforts were scattered across the sand. The flex of amusement in John's face mirrors echoes the traces of it he finds in Flint's face, though his offering response errs more towards planning as he posits—
"We should keep that up our sleeve, as much as we're able," John suggests. "As keen as I imagine we are to acquire allies, it would be better if they came with intentions to join us rather than tear the island apart seeking what we buried."
"No, I didn't imagine we'd lead with that," has the sense of a dismissive gesture even if his hand doesn't actually move to sweep it away. Possibly because some more legitimate point is to follow: "But the men know it exists, if not where it lies, and we should be prepared for the eventuality that it will become known. There will be questions, then, should we have been too careful with guarding the fact from our new friends."
The only way to keep a secret between sixty men is to have never told them in the first place. The whole of the Walrus' crew had practically seen that chest come aboard with their own eyes, and no doubt has been told of it if they hadn't.
"It will be a factor, whether we prefer it to be or not."
"I'd prefer it be something heard long after a number of other stories."
Which quickly becomes a difficult balancing act.
It would be difficult regardless, managing which stories find their way to which ears. But it would have been easier if John were not now conscious of the roles they've agreed to play. Of how those roles may needle and prick in the weeks to come.
The break in that tension leaves space for the pull of a smile. Consider, the stories they have built up between them. Consider how few of those should be shared honestly, unvarnished and whole.
"We needn't commit to only the fear of that book. I think we could sway the beach by a combination of novelty and intimidation."
"Novelty," he repeats back, though there isn't a question in it so much as there is a flicker of amusement at the prospect. Sure. Why not. Southern pirates have it too easy, grown fat and happy on the Accord's permissiveness. Maybe some of them will find the prospect of a real fight appealing.
A flex of the brow, a slant of the temple. Fine. This is all fair enough. His hand moves to the desk, flattening there so he might rise from his chair.
"Leave it," John tells him, a minor stall on that gathering momentum. "I've given them some idea of what they might say overnight. I can impart the rest of it come morning."
When the ledger is retrieved. When they have an account of those who hold sway and their leanings within the town. When they walk up the road and demand audience with those people, and each of them take on these new roles in tandem.
If there are misgivings over the latter course of action, John does not raise it now.
They have come to some decision on the way forward. John is tired, and his body aches. It would be pleasant enough to simply sit in this tent in each others company, rather than step out from beneath the curtain of canvas and be obliged to draw all parts of himself together once more.
So 'We should send a few men to loiter at the campfires as well,' had really been 'I've sent a few men—'.
Flint's exhale through the nose is heavy and comes with the rising slant of his brow. And here he was, thinking he'd suggested some heavy shifting to the weight of this thing, it says.
And his momentum doesn't still. Instead, he rises to his feet and fetches the bottle—there is always a bottle—from the corner of the oak table. The cup meant to accompany it has heretofore been neglected, however. That changes. Flint uncorks the bottle and splashes a short pour of rum into it. The shape of the tent is not so expensive that it's some imposition to shift out from behind the desk and offer the cup to Silver.
A turn of his hand, some apologetic flex of his expression; he might clarify, split the difference between what they've discussed and what he'd laid out as a ward against men's loose tongues before stepping into this tent.
It's allowed to sit for now, as John accepts the cup. Swirl the liquor within it, as he looks up at Flint.
"Have you finished with that?"
The ledger. The work within it. The work that waits for them outside this tent.
Is there a point at which he might be persuaded to rest?
Unlikely. They have been to sea, occupied with no goal save to cut here to this port of call as quickly as possible, and determined to appear confident over their prospects. There has been no restless pacing the deck, or staying awake for long hours in the evenings, or curtly correctly De Groot's every order by a matter of half degrees. He had loitered easily in the company of the men, and had doused his light as a captain untroubled by their futures might.
Now that he has every excuse to be gripped by activity, he is eager to give over to it.
"For the present."
He makes no move to return to his chair. Instead, Flint loiters there in the lamplight under the pitched roof of tent, tucking his thumb absently under the edge of his belt.
It is not quite an absence of momentum. John can discern the force of it, how it is held in check but not extinguished.
There is a beat of quiet. John looks at him. Observes the hitch of his thumb into that great belt, the fall of lamplight on his face. And he orders his thoughts, considers what might be said.
Considers that he is tired. Considers the bucket set by the loose-flapping entrance of the tent, the cover slightly askew and whether or not it is fresh water.
"Do I resemble the man you first met?" is an abrupt question.
Practical, perhaps. To whom on this island does a man resembling John Silver owe money? (Had he been John Silver then? Will someone call out a different name and repeat it if he does not answer?)
It prompts a certain narrowing of attention—a thing gone broad and blunt re-honing itself back to a point. A brief measurement is taken across a series of glances. If any of them are meant to ascertain the purpose behind the question, none visibly hooks into one conclusion or another.
No. John Silver here tonight, sitting in that chair, looks nothing like the man scraped out from a merchantman's hold. But that man has been playing at something too, and so drawing a line between the two may be as useless as pointing out the ones which no longer exist.
"You might shave the beard if it concerns you," he says.
"No," is a measured deflection, vague in spite of its firmness. No, he is not concerned. No, he does not intend to shave the beard.
(Would he look as ill as he feels without it? He is thinner than he was; there are days where he feels hollowed out by pain, and it is harder to disguise as he once was, clean-shaven and easily masked behind a bright smile.)
Even without the beard, he couldn't fit himself back into the shape he'd once occupied.
"Remind me," John says, leaning back in his chair. The wince as he stretches out once leg is masked in the shadows cast by the lantern, the candle on the table. "What was that story you were reading, just after we cast off?"
The title John had seen at a glance, something unrecognizable to him but worthwhile enough that Flint carried it onto this ship with him.
Later, John had implied. Questions could be asked later, and it is later and they are alone in this tent and the men's conversation has been reduced to a murmur of sound beyond the flap of canvas. John could say a great many things, but he wants to hear Flint's voice more than he wishes to make his own into a rudder.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Which leads him to the question of where it might have been set. Where did the men see fit to stow him, now that they'd landed on the shore?
But even as that uncertainty wedges like a splinter under a fingernail, John's eyes lok steadily back at Flint. The tent in comparably big, but not so big that it sets a great distance between where John is seated and Flint's desk.
The turn of his hand over the battered chair arm invites: Go on.
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"It would seem ready emphasis that what is true in the North could be made true here without much difficulty."
Their reputations are one thing. But how potent is the effect of those here in the south, far from the Nocen Sea and the pillaging they've done up and down the Tevinter coastline. To say nothing of the fact that Amaranthine pirates are fat, and comfortable, and have been so for Ages thanks to the Accord. If they cannot be goaded forward on the basis of what is good—an unlikely prospect in any place like Estwatch—, then a warning might serve:
Here is what it looks like when a sovereign nation decides it has finished with the likes of pirates. When will the Merchant Princes, half of them allied with Tevinter, decide to come ashore here with a book of their own?
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Yes, these are powerful motivators. In John's mouth, each of them will take on a foreboding, menacing beyond even what the governor sat in Nassau had intended them to be.
"I'll have it fetched," bears no particular promise of when, though certainly it must occur before the pair of them wade into the quagmire of pirate politics waiting for them in this place.
But it prompts some turn of thought in John's head. This late, more or less concealed from the eyes of their crew and any others passing on the beach, the exertion of the day has begun to make itself known on his face, the lines of his body, the lay of his palm over his left thigh. The fever is gone, but certain discomforts remain; John prefers the burn of overuse in his right to the untouchable, phantom flares of pain in his left, but he has no more choice in this matter.
"Are we intending to make this case together?" he asks, considering the possible approaches alongside the impatience in Flint's face, the need for action that will find no other outlet but seeing to the collection of allies to their cause.
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It's a simple answer, as direct as his attention on Silver sat there in that chair is. It has been a long day, but surely this is a possibility that has been accounted for. There is expectation there in the slant of his features; his eye does not fall to the shape of John Silver's leg.
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Billy is holding the efforts in Nascere together, and cannot propose any such thing now. John turns the concept over in his head all the same. Does it matter, if they speak with one voice? If Flint is seen, rather than shadowed?
"It's occurred to me that you've some experience with walking into an island of pirates and gathering them to a cause."
This is a piece of information he'd had, long before Flint had put it into any greater context.
"Between us the work may go easier."
It should go easier, or else what is John of use for?
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(A tent on a beach bears no relation to a study in a fine Minrathous house, but given the right arrangement of chairs and certain attitudes occasionally, the mind does wander in directions otherwise unprompted.)
"Be that as it may," he says. "I think it would be best for us to be seen as not entirely shoulder to shoulder in this."
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Enough, surely. Sailors talk. Word carries. Even now, the Walrus men must be speaking even now, conversation scattering like seeds in the wind. Flint, a cannonball in his hand and blood in his beard. John Silver, expression dark with anger and knuckles white around the handle of a tankard, a corpse at his foot. There is some utility in these stories, something that could be traded on.
But that is a secondary contemplation when set alongside—
"How great of a division do you think would benefit us?"
It's a delicate thing, presenting division to the island and maintaining unity among the men. Unless the men were included, along with the cadre of strangers they will be seeking to sway.
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"Billy was right about one thing. There is power in a ghost story, and we would do well to use it to our advantage. But I've never walked here. I'm no spirit for for haunting Estwatch, and if they know my name then it's by professional reputation. Intimidating, maybe, but hardly the kind of thing that moves men to take up arms."
The ring is squarish, plain. If he wears it for a few more years, the edges may well go soft from being habitually manhandled.
"Less a division," he says, "So much as a show of rank. You walk in there knowing a handful of names, ready to put them in that book, and with one of Nascere's pirate kings at your heel—who in the South would argue with that man?"
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John's fingers flex over his thigh. Thumb presses at his kneecap, aware of the stump just beyond his fingertips, the slow ebb of fever that may pass faster now that they're off the water or may linger, miserably, as it once had.
In the quiet, he weighs the spread of story across the beach and through the town, the speed at which it will travel, how it will take root. What stories and reputations might choke the growth, how it will demand to be fed.
Looks back across to Flint, studying the way the light falls across his face, the expression shadowed there.
"We'd be gambling," John reminds him. "On how intimidating they find an invalid."
One-legged creature, had been the descriptor, not so long ago.
But this point carries a question along with it, easily gleaned in the shorthand that has sprung up between them: Are you certain of this?
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"They don't need to find you intimidating. They need to believe someone strong would choose to follow you."
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How new it is, being recognizable in any meaningful way.
And beneath that flex of reaction at even this glancing acknowledgment of how he might be perceived here, is a deeper, tender thing. A sense of control being passed into his hands, something precious and hard won handed over with the expectation that John will hold it for them both.
There would be no easy way to strip that power from him. See how effective Billy’s work had been on Nascere. Consider how it might replicate itself here, if Flint so chooses.
“Do you?”
Not necessarily the same question. How little they have considered their partnership. How little they have considered the form it will take in such a new environment.
How unexpected this form is; John had not anticipated it or how it would feel to have it set out in front of him, the concept of turning this facade to the waiting tangle of eyes in this place and for Flint to exist within the role he is proposing.
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For just the smallest moment, some part of that questions catches. It's a very slight measure of friction, like he has run his thumb across a surface he anticipates to have been worn perfectly smooth and instead find a seam still in need of sanding, or work which might shave it down to the level of everything that surrounds it. But it's both too immediate an impression and too unexpected, and tracing the source of it is impossible to do in the brevity of the moment.
(Is it balking over the reality of what he's suggested, or some rankling at having had the intention behind the thing called into question to begin with? Is it only habitual, like the pain in a joint long clutched right being asked to loosen?)
"I think it would be easy and effective to imply," he says. "And that it would serve the purpose we both want."
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Will it rankle later?
That is a question of John’s trust in this man. Flint, who has made himself transparent to John. Will he regret this choice later, putting John forward as the face and conductor of this enterprise?
John, who has withheld so many vital pieces of himself. (Do they matter now, that they are lost to him?)
The silence spins out, stretching between them as John turns the whole of the concept over in his head. Finds his way to the inevitable, the agreement that comes in the form of a nod.
“It would.”
Would it be so different? Hd will still be a mouthpiece in one fashion or another?
“Alright,” is unnecessary, perhaps. “We can see the book brought ashore in the morning, before we make our way into town.”
A beat, and then:
“It’ll serve us regardless, to see who seeks to step around me to speak to you directly.”
Of course there will be someone seeking to exploit the appearance of a division. John knows the potential in such opportunities better than anyone.
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This reminder serves too to knock some of the edges back off the thing, returning it to the contrived theater form it has been conceived as rather than the sharp little needle it had become under even light questioning. It spurs a lopsided slant to form behind the auburn of Flint's whiskers, and a faint glint in the eye as he reaches to flip shut the ledger.
"I'll do my best to avoid cheating you out of six hundred fortunes of Qunari gold."
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In this moment, the good humor in Flint's face and the satisfying rustle of closing pages marking the end of one portion of the evening's work outweighs the need to bring the proposal into sharp clarity. There has been little and less worth laughing about in the past weeks, since they fled Nascere in search of allies as their efforts were scattered across the sand. The flex of amusement in John's face mirrors echoes the traces of it he finds in Flint's face, though his offering response errs more towards planning as he posits—
"We should keep that up our sleeve, as much as we're able," John suggests. "As keen as I imagine we are to acquire allies, it would be better if they came with intentions to join us rather than tear the island apart seeking what we buried."
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The only way to keep a secret between sixty men is to have never told them in the first place. The whole of the Walrus' crew had practically seen that chest come aboard with their own eyes, and no doubt has been told of it if they hadn't.
"It will be a factor, whether we prefer it to be or not."
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Which quickly becomes a difficult balancing act.
It would be difficult regardless, managing which stories find their way to which ears. But it would have been easier if John were not now conscious of the roles they've agreed to play. Of how those roles may needle and prick in the weeks to come.
The break in that tension leaves space for the pull of a smile. Consider, the stories they have built up between them. Consider how few of those should be shared honestly, unvarnished and whole.
"We needn't commit to only the fear of that book. I think we could sway the beach by a combination of novelty and intimidation."
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A flex of the brow, a slant of the temple. Fine. This is all fair enough. His hand moves to the desk, flattening there so he might rise from his chair.
"I'll pass word for your spies of choice."
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When the ledger is retrieved. When they have an account of those who hold sway and their leanings within the town. When they walk up the road and demand audience with those people, and each of them take on these new roles in tandem.
If there are misgivings over the latter course of action, John does not raise it now.
They have come to some decision on the way forward. John is tired, and his body aches. It would be pleasant enough to simply sit in this tent in each others company, rather than step out from beneath the curtain of canvas and be obliged to draw all parts of himself together once more.
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Flint's exhale through the nose is heavy and comes with the rising slant of his brow. And here he was, thinking he'd suggested some heavy shifting to the weight of this thing, it says.
And his momentum doesn't still. Instead, he rises to his feet and fetches the bottle—there is always a bottle—from the corner of the oak table. The cup meant to accompany it has heretofore been neglected, however. That changes. Flint uncorks the bottle and splashes a short pour of rum into it. The shape of the tent is not so expensive that it's some imposition to shift out from behind the desk and offer the cup to Silver.
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It's allowed to sit for now, as John accepts the cup. Swirl the liquor within it, as he looks up at Flint.
"Have you finished with that?"
The ledger. The work within it. The work that waits for them outside this tent.
Is there a point at which he might be persuaded to rest?
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Now that he has every excuse to be gripped by activity, he is eager to give over to it.
"For the present."
He makes no move to return to his chair. Instead, Flint loiters there in the lamplight under the pitched roof of tent, tucking his thumb absently under the edge of his belt.
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There is a beat of quiet. John looks at him. Observes the hitch of his thumb into that great belt, the fall of lamplight on his face. And he orders his thoughts, considers what might be said.
Considers that he is tired. Considers the bucket set by the loose-flapping entrance of the tent, the cover slightly askew and whether or not it is fresh water.
"Do I resemble the man you first met?" is an abrupt question.
Practical, perhaps. To whom on this island does a man resembling John Silver owe money? (Had he been John Silver then? Will someone call out a different name and repeat it if he does not answer?)
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No. John Silver here tonight, sitting in that chair, looks nothing like the man scraped out from a merchantman's hold. But that man has been playing at something too, and so drawing a line between the two may be as useless as pointing out the ones which no longer exist.
"You might shave the beard if it concerns you," he says.
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(Would he look as ill as he feels without it? He is thinner than he was; there are days where he feels hollowed out by pain, and it is harder to disguise as he once was, clean-shaven and easily masked behind a bright smile.)
Even without the beard, he couldn't fit himself back into the shape he'd once occupied.
"Remind me," John says, leaning back in his chair. The wince as he stretches out once leg is masked in the shadows cast by the lantern, the candle on the table. "What was that story you were reading, just after we cast off?"
The title John had seen at a glance, something unrecognizable to him but worthwhile enough that Flint carried it onto this ship with him.
Later, John had implied. Questions could be asked later, and it is later and they are alone in this tent and the men's conversation has been reduced to a murmur of sound beyond the flap of canvas. John could say a great many things, but he wants to hear Flint's voice more than he wishes to make his own into a rudder.
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tfw shenanigans morphs into "ok, but a duel"
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