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.
If he considers this a strange diversion from their previous tack of conversation, it doesn't show in Flint's face or sound in the low hum of acknowledgement he gives the question.
"Kanowen," he answers instead. "By an Orlesian playwright named Lecerf." It tells the story of an elf whose brothers were all killed when Andraste was betrayed and Shartan was felled; a dalish who journeyed on the long walk from Tevinter to Halamshiral and finds a brief kind of security there in the Dales. It is written with the understanding that the audience knows these things are temporary, it is meant, he is certain, to be one of those ironic tragedies made easily farcical by the wrong troupe of players in front of a less than charitable Orlesian audience.
"You might enjoy it if you could be persuaded to pick up a book."
Lecerf is, if memory serves, an elf herself. And the text itself is not an entirely unhappy one.
A flicker of humor tugs at John's mouth in response, though he doesn't dismiss the thought out of hand.
He has plucked stories from so many different places. Why not a book?
"I've been thinking of what I might present to an audience, if it comes to that."
How had he won the affection of those men camped on the sand outside this tent? Stories. Retellings. They had been true and untrue by turns.
"Our propositions will be better received on the heels of a story," is only stating something known to them both, something Flint might recognize after having spent so long adjacent to John's workings. "And I'd like to carry some new ones into the town with me."
Some stories must be cast off. Some won't fit coming from this mouth. Some John doesn't care to speak aloud anymore. (Doesn't care to invite the possibility of a voice rising up to call out another man's name in response.)
"Ah," a note of understanding, brow rising and falling as if to say I should have known. Too much to hope for that John Silver might have suddenly developed an interest in literature.
"I'm not sure this is the right audience for plays about suffering in the name of temporary respites. But if you were liberal with the details—" his hand comes away from his belt, turning in a palm up gesture.
A wrinkle appears and then disappears at the corner of Flint's eye, some flicker of amusement writ briefly and barely there—so fleeting that it is possible he is hardly cognizant of it as he turns and retrieves a volume from under the stack of ship's records.
"Easily done," he says, producing the small leather bound book with a turn of the wrist. In accordance to the curse of ravenous readers, he had finished it days ago. Why he'd bothered to bring it ashore at all—
(A habit; a man well used to reading and re-reading in the confines of a ship.)
—Well, it hardly matters. He offers the book out to Silver.
"Don't skip past the beginning. It has some relevance later."
The book is heavy in John’s hands, unfamiliar embossed cover and rustle of pages as he thumbs briefly through before snapping the tome closed once more. As all things must, it is at ease in his hands despite how rarely John has ever held any book for the time longer than it would have taken to pass it along to the next person.
“Thank you.”
With a hand opened into the space between them, a shrug of apology as John tells him, “I’d offer you something to hold its place, but i have nothing comparable in my sea chest.”
Which should surprise no one. All the stories John has live inside his head. They shift and evolve and grow from the version one might have first known them as, but John can trace back all these iterations, all the changes he makes and why.
"I'll manage," is punctuated with a dismissive flick of fingers. Likely there will be little time to indulge in simple pleasures anyway, and so it's hardly a loss.
(If all goes well, they will spend so short an interim here before turning back north again that he'll not miss it.)
Here, Flint shifts his weight up off the edge of the desk. From the slanting of his shoulder there is a clear intent in him to return to the work of the ledger, saying as he goes, "I expect you have a campfire conversation or two of your own to attend to."
Certainly there is a campfire that John could situate himself alongside. The men would make space for him. He could speak at length about any given thing, what he and Flint have discussed in here filtered through and made easily palatable to the men on the sand and beyond.
Flint's trajectory too is clear. He will round the corner of his desk, take back up his seat behind it. The ledger waits.
"I do," John acknowledges. "But it will wait for me."
Even worn, weary, one-legged, power dashed to a cold ember in his chest, John still his this: the certainty that he will speak and the men will clamor to hear him.
The book is a solid weight over one thigh.
"If you cared for company while you finish that."
An offering. A newness to it, in spite of everything.
"You and I both know the work out there is more vital than this is," he says, flicking at the edges of the pages with his fingertips. They flutter absently in answer. The ledger may be necessary, yes, but it merely acts to reset their circumstances here—sees to victualing, shelter. What John Silver might say out there stands to make them progress, and they have already spoken about the importance of moving quickly where they're able.
There's little need for the both of them to spend the evening squinting over counts of water casks, and the acquisition of salted pork and druffalo.
"See to the men," he says. As prophesied, Flint does round the corner of the desk and retake the chair.
Flint settles into his chair as John rises out of his own.
The movement is easier now than it had been once, but it isn't seamless. Not yet. (Does anyone but John recognize this?) But the sand underfoot is forgiving; it makes John's disappearance from the tent near-silent.
Zhivka entertains them. She is shrewd and withholding, but if their combined appeal hadn't swayed her, the book of names John delivers onto her dented desktop does. And so they are given free reign, more or less.
Less comes in the form of a captain by the name of Lawson, who takes offense almost immediately to the proposition put forth that evening on the beach. John had been speaking at a pitch, voice rising as all other conversation fell in accordance. He had been aware of Flint, shadowed and attentive at his back.
When Lawson spat into the sand, began shouting, it was past John to him.
By all logic, the duel spares them a makeshift war, perhaps the lives of a number of men. However—
"We might permit Joji to kill him in his sleep," John offers, uneasy. Watching a Flint buckles on the heavy Anders-stolen sword from the last prize they'd taken on the journey here. "Even if the spectacle might benefit us."
It's been a long day. Nearly a year long, if you look at the timestamps of this thread. This, at least, promises to resolve a number of questions with a satisfying kind of immediacy that the hours preceding it have largely failed to.
Progress, Flint thinks as he draws the sword from its sheath and checks the burr bite of the edge under his thumb, is a great lumbering ox. It takes all manner of whipping and cajoling to convince the thing budget, much less at speed. And to what end, exactly? An altar, apparently.
Which, fine. He can spill blood as effectively as any Imperium mage.
"If that man dies by falling onto a knife in his bed, we may as well leave here and begin begging in the streets of Ostwick for all the good it would do us," he says mildly. Satisfied by the nick in his thumb, Flint thrusts the ugly Ander sword back into his belt. The pommel strikes the sheath's decorative plate with a satisfying snap.
"I can beat Lawson. And if I can't, then we'd have been fucked either way."
At least if he dies in a fight with some shit Estwatch pirate, the rest of them will have saved time they might have otherwise wasted on playing revolutionary.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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."
no subject
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 subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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?)
no subject
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 subject
(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.
no subject
"Kanowen," he answers instead. "By an Orlesian playwright named Lecerf." It tells the story of an elf whose brothers were all killed when Andraste was betrayed and Shartan was felled; a dalish who journeyed on the long walk from Tevinter to Halamshiral and finds a brief kind of security there in the Dales. It is written with the understanding that the audience knows these things are temporary, it is meant, he is certain, to be one of those ironic tragedies made easily farcical by the wrong troupe of players in front of a less than charitable Orlesian audience.
"You might enjoy it if you could be persuaded to pick up a book."
Lecerf is, if memory serves, an elf herself. And the text itself is not an entirely unhappy one.
no subject
He has plucked stories from so many different places. Why not a book?
"I've been thinking of what I might present to an audience, if it comes to that."
How had he won the affection of those men camped on the sand outside this tent? Stories. Retellings. They had been true and untrue by turns.
"Our propositions will be better received on the heels of a story," is only stating something known to them both, something Flint might recognize after having spent so long adjacent to John's workings. "And I'd like to carry some new ones into the town with me."
Some stories must be cast off. Some won't fit coming from this mouth. Some John doesn't care to speak aloud anymore. (Doesn't care to invite the possibility of a voice rising up to call out another man's name in response.)
no subject
"I'm not sure this is the right audience for plays about suffering in the name of temporary respites. But if you were liberal with the details—" his hand comes away from his belt, turning in a palm up gesture.
Well. That much is within the man's wheelhouse.
no subject
We encompasses them both, the men on the sand, beyond them in the town. Pirates all, yes, and prone to embellishing what serves them.
Telling a story concerns itself always with the truth, in as much as one much know a true thing to discern how it must be changed.
(John Silver walked out of the surf, fully formed.)
(A man walked onto a dock with empty pockets and a dead man’s name.)
“Let me borrow it when you’re done. It’ll tide me over until I’ve decided how much of our exploits we should lead with.”
Consider the coast they blasted to pieces in the wake of Miranda’s death.
Consider the crew that sailed into a hurricane and came out whole.
no subject
"Easily done," he says, producing the small leather bound book with a turn of the wrist. In accordance to the curse of ravenous readers, he had finished it days ago. Why he'd bothered to bring it ashore at all—
(A habit; a man well used to reading and re-reading in the confines of a ship.)
—Well, it hardly matters. He offers the book out to Silver.
"Don't skip past the beginning. It has some relevance later."
no subject
“Thank you.”
With a hand opened into the space between them, a shrug of apology as John tells him, “I’d offer you something to hold its place, but i have nothing comparable in my sea chest.”
Which should surprise no one. All the stories John has live inside his head. They shift and evolve and grow from the version one might have first known them as, but John can trace back all these iterations, all the changes he makes and why.
no subject
(If all goes well, they will spend so short an interim here before turning back north again that he'll not miss it.)
Here, Flint shifts his weight up off the edge of the desk. From the slanting of his shoulder there is a clear intent in him to return to the work of the ledger, saying as he goes, "I expect you have a campfire conversation or two of your own to attend to."
no subject
Certainly there is a campfire that John could situate himself alongside. The men would make space for him. He could speak at length about any given thing, what he and Flint have discussed in here filtered through and made easily palatable to the men on the sand and beyond.
Flint's trajectory too is clear. He will round the corner of his desk, take back up his seat behind it. The ledger waits.
"I do," John acknowledges. "But it will wait for me."
Even worn, weary, one-legged, power dashed to a cold ember in his chest, John still his this: the certainty that he will speak and the men will clamor to hear him.
The book is a solid weight over one thigh.
"If you cared for company while you finish that."
An offering. A newness to it, in spite of everything.
no subject
"You and I both know the work out there is more vital than this is," he says, flicking at the edges of the pages with his fingertips. They flutter absently in answer. The ledger may be necessary, yes, but it merely acts to reset their circumstances here—sees to victualing, shelter. What John Silver might say out there stands to make them progress, and they have already spoken about the importance of moving quickly where they're able.
There's little need for the both of them to spend the evening squinting over counts of water casks, and the acquisition of salted pork and druffalo.
"See to the men," he says. As prophesied, Flint does round the corner of the desk and retake the chair.
tfw shenanigans morphs into "ok, but a duel"
The movement is easier now than it had been once, but it isn't seamless. Not yet. (Does anyone but John recognize this?) But the sand underfoot is forgiving; it makes John's disappearance from the tent near-silent.
Zhivka entertains them. She is shrewd and withholding, but if their combined appeal hadn't swayed her, the book of names John delivers onto her dented desktop does. And so they are given free reign, more or less.
Less comes in the form of a captain by the name of Lawson, who takes offense almost immediately to the proposition put forth that evening on the beach. John had been speaking at a pitch, voice rising as all other conversation fell in accordance. He had been aware of Flint, shadowed and attentive at his back.
When Lawson spat into the sand, began shouting, it was past John to him.
By all logic, the duel spares them a makeshift war, perhaps the lives of a number of men. However—
"We might permit Joji to kill him in his sleep," John offers, uneasy. Watching a Flint buckles on the heavy Anders-stolen sword from the last prize they'd taken on the journey here. "Even if the spectacle might benefit us."
A win will benefit them. A crucial difference.
no subject
Nearly a year long, if you look at the timestamps of this thread.This, at least, promises to resolve a number of questions with a satisfying kind of immediacy that the hours preceding it have largely failed to.Progress, Flint thinks as he draws the sword from its sheath and checks the burr bite of the edge under his thumb, is a great lumbering ox. It takes all manner of whipping and cajoling to convince the thing budget, much less at speed. And to what end, exactly? An altar, apparently.
Which, fine. He can spill blood as effectively as any Imperium mage.
"If that man dies by falling onto a knife in his bed, we may as well leave here and begin begging in the streets of Ostwick for all the good it would do us," he says mildly. Satisfied by the nick in his thumb, Flint thrusts the ugly Ander sword back into his belt. The pommel strikes the sheath's decorative plate with a satisfying snap.
"I can beat Lawson. And if I can't, then we'd have been fucked either way."
At least if he dies in a fight with some shit Estwatch pirate, the rest of them will have saved time they might have otherwise wasted on playing revolutionary.