"You seemed to have indeed received enough pleasure from our meeting," she pronounced haughtily, and Thorington clenched his jaw. He indeed might have held her in his arms slightly longer than it was appropriate, but he had assumed the rules of decorum were hardly to be followed to a T considering they had just concluded a tavern brawl. He was already regretting holding her fingers in his, and pretended to be busy with studying his new weapon.
"You could not wish for a finer pistol." Thorington jerked his head up and saw the cartographer standing in front of the table, which Thorington himself and Captain Leary were still occupying. "I have found its agnate in the pockets of the second of our assailants." McGrey's voice was gleeful, and he showed Thorington a pistol. It was clearly manufactured by the same armament manufacturer and perhaps even by the same gun artisan. A longer barrel, stock with a lesser curve, it was no less every bit of the exquisite example of pistol perfection. Thorington narrowed his eyes at the cartographer.
"Where did you go to, McGrey, if I may ask?" The Captain growled, but nothing seemed to stir the grey haired man out of his blissful serenity.
"To look ahead. If we are leaving at dawn, I decided to familiarise myself with the weather's expectations for tomorrow." The cartographer stretched his hand ahead, helping Captain Leary to climb off the table. The cloud of white ruffles of her underskirts fell around her shapely strong legs, and she fixed the ostentatious top hat that by some miracle had stayed on her curls all through the conundrum.
"What brought you back then?" Thorington sneered, also sliding off the table.
"Looking behind," McGrey quipped, and Thorington gave him a sarcastic look from under his brow. "Nasty business, these pub brawls. Still, everyone is in one piece."
"Not thanks to you. You seemed to have missed all the gambol." Thorington glared at the cartographer and then shifted his irritated eyes at the redhead. She stood, her back straight, and he realised she was attentively watching Philip amicably conversing with her curvaceous companion by the wall. Both held glasses in their hands, no doubt already full of the inn's best red, and Thorington saw the corners of the redheaded captain's lips tense and twitch in distress.
"I have also found this among the wharfmen's possessions," McGrey continued as if not having heard Thorington's previous line. He opened his palm, and on it Thorington saw a very small pistol, only several inches in length, with elegant engraved grip, intricate silver pattern running down the front strap. "Perhaps, for you, Captain Leary?" The cartographer gave the redhead a small bow, and Thorington saw her strange slanted eyes fall on the weapon. He saw them burn with the passion of a fellow gun enthusiast, but then she bit into her bottom lip and as much as stepped back from McGrey.
"I thank you, sir, but I abhor violence. And besides our code advises us against using the gunpowder weaponry." Thorington felt his temper rise. She surely did not have to rub the preposterous libertine values of the likes of her into their faces.
"You didn't seem to abhor violence when you decorated the head of a docker with the contents of a salad bowl. Or when you were dangling off a chandelier just now," he threw to her, and she twirled on her heels and glowered at him.
"If you are hinting that I owe you a debt, Captain Thorington, I am aware of it. And it aggravates me no less than you." She haughtily jerked her chin up. "But the Leary always pay their debt. I will not forget your service." She sneered venomously through her teeth, and he saw red. Perhaps she had not been hinting that he had been too friendly towards her, but he had been just scolding himself internally for exactly that, and her words made him livid.
"You can consider yourself free of it. For you to not have an opportune moment to repay it to me would be the best reward for me." Thorington gave her an unpleasant sly smile. She could take his words any way she wanted, either as him wishing no misfortunes to befall either of them, or, as he indeed meant it to be understood, as him expressing the desire to never see her again. Judging by how her nostrils flared and the now bright green eyes narrowed, she was perceptive enough to uncover the genuine connotation of his words.
Without as much as another glance towards Thorington, Captain Leary gave the cartographer a small nod and marched towards her companions. Thorington saw her exchange a few words with the chestnut haired beauty, she gave Philip an amicable smile, and then followed by her beastly crewman she left the inn.
"Has Captain Leary left already?" Capt. Baggins approached them, and Thorington saw the diver's nose twitch. "I was planning to thank her again for her hospitality."
"Here. This is about your size." The cartographer suddenly pushed the small pistol towards the diver, who eyed it with astonishment.
"I cannot take it." Doubt coloured Capt. Baggins' feature. The gun indeed looked rather small, and as short and lean as the man was, he was after all a former military officer, and there was something rather feminine about the weapon he had been offered. "I have… I have never used a top break revolver in my life."
"And I hope you never have to. But if you do, remember this, true courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one." The cartographer announced, making Thorington wonder whether he had attended an opium den during his absence from the inn, and then he dropped the pistol into Baggins' hand, and regally walked away from them.
Thorington shook his head and left the diver to handle his confusion alone. He came up to his crew, most of them had already assembled around one of the still standing tables. Most of the furniture in the inn was being returned into its proper position, the fallen after the punch-up had been dragged away, a medic was called from the city infirmary and was tending to those wounded but still standing. The piano man had returned to his instrument, and despite a large black eye blooming on the right side of his face, a merry tune had already filled the room.
Suddenly some loud noise came from outside, the entrance doors flew open, and some strange dishevelled figure rushed inside.
"Thieves! Fire! Murder!" The man was yelling, flailing his arms, and Thorington's hand habitually flew to a small pepper-box pistol he had hidden in a holster under his waistcoat.
The man was making so much noise and taking so much space, his long shaggy looking coat and scarf wrapped around his neck numerous amounts of time were flapping around like wings of a giant dirty bird, and he was huffing and puffing so loudly, that the crowd in the inn froze and all eyes were on him. The pianoman stopped his playing, and Thorington saw one of the multiple revolvers glimmer in Philip's hands. He had always been exceptionally fast in drawing his weapon.
"Reginald! It is Reginald Brown!" McGrey suddenly announced cheerfully and stepped towards the man. The latter was still panting, his hands moving constantly, and Thorington once again shook his head in disbelief. With each new adventure, now confirmed by MvGrey's choice of acquaintances, Thorington was more and more confident that the cartographer had most likely taken to the "pipe," was even more likely mad, and most definitely unreliable.
"What on Earth are you doing here, Reginald?" The cartographer asked, his tone concerned, and the man boggled his eyes and grabbed McGrey's shoulder.
"I was looking for you, Ian. Something's wrong. Something's terribly wrong." The one called Brown rasped out and opened his mouth, but then stopped in his tracks, his jaw still hanging loose.
"Yes?" McGrey encouraged him to talk, with a patient expression on his face.
Silence rang in the room, everyone was staring at the ridiculous man, but he did not seem capable of starting to speak. He then took a few shuddered breaths in and mumbled.
"Just give me a minute. Um… Oh! I had a thought, and now I've lost it. It was… it was was right there, on the tip of my tongue!" The madman was lisping, and moaning, and Thorington cringed.
'More like poppy tears are on the tip of your tongue,' Thorington thought irkedly.
The man finally gathered the remnants of wits he seemed to have left and started rambling frantically.
"Last Bridge is sick, Ian. A darkness has fallen over it, nothing works anymore. At least nothing good. The air is foul decay, but worse are the pests."
'Definitely, bells in the belfry,' Thorington confirmed to himself.
"Pests? What do you mean?" McGrey asked cautiously.
"Pirates, Ian. And many of them. Some kind of spawn of the pirates of the Northern Seas, or I'm not a cartographer." The man flailed his arms in the air again, and Thornton heard a derisive snort from Philip. "I followed their trail. They came from a den in the South of the port, they have their lair in the old Elrond factory."
"But the old factory is abandoned," McGrey mumbled.
"No, Ian. It is not. A dark power dwells in there, such as I have never felt before. It is the shadow of an ancient horror. One that can summon the spirits of the sea." The madman switched to eerie low howling, and from the corner of his eye Thorington caught the sight of Killian twirling his finger near his temple.
Suddenly the one called Reginald grabbed McGrey and shook him violently.
"I saw him, Ian. From out of the depth, Davy Jones has come!"
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