faderift | [closed] empty chairs

WHO: Max, Vane, & Flint
WHAT: An alliance of sorts.
WHEN: Post-death announcement, pre-not-dead!reveal.
WHERE: The Walrus, Kirkwall harbor.

In the dark, the Walrus could be one of a dozen other ships in Kirkwall's murky harbor. The soft watch calls and intermittent trill of a boatswain's whistle might be identical to those used on the merchantman at anchor beside her, and the lit lamp in her cabin is but a single orange eye burning in a flock of others like it. In at least one or two of those trade ships, captains must be holding lavish dinners - some celebratory evening after weeks of chasing the coastline and fighting early summer airs to reach port in Kirkwall with it's abundance of fresh meat and good wine. Their shapes are silhouetted as anonymous shapes against warped and gold tinted glass. There a laugh passes through a cracked window and carries across the open water. Here, a bell is struck.

Come morning, there will be men gathered on the ship's rail to throw some token of Mr Silver's into the sea (and it will occur to Flint then that it seems an inappropriate place for it; that it would be better to have buried it in the ground somewhere). Tonight, the light in the Walrus's cabin blinks slowly in the dark as it's rocked to and fro on the hook above their heads. The gathering occurring below it in this hour has neither the air of celebration or ease, or of grief or catharsis, or of anything at all except a sense of something straining against a bent shackle.

Flint, sporting a bruised eye darkened to a stark purple in the lamplight and unwrapping a sheaf of papers, is asking the woman in the chair opposite: "How much did he tell you about our business in Llomerryn?"

He doesn't refer Charles Vane, splayed there in the room like a large reclining cat on the cabin's built in bed. It's assigned exclusively to the empty space in the room about them.