A sidelong glance—ha ha—is punctuated by another pull from the bottle, and then they are on the move.
They lose sight of the woman almost immediately once they've passed down the four short steps that lead down into the audience pit. But she's a stationary target, and they've hunted trickier. That said, some tactical sensibility must be observed. To wit, the bottle is ditched on a passed table, much to the not unpleased bafflement of the two young men occupying it; the wrist attached to Flint's hand with the most rings on it comes to hook lazily on the pommel of the sword he hasn't seriously drawn in weeks. Most importantly, and perhaps least easily perceived, is something in the face and the sway of the shoulder. The most marginal adjustment in the length of his stride that when taken in combination with the jut of the sheathed sword sends the edge of his dark coat swinging. What is unconscious artifice and what is adopted intentionally is difficult to parse—the man who makes his way down across the floor is not unrelated to the one who was spat up out of the harbor and trudged up into Little Calimshan—, but the point of his intention has altered to such a degree that the angle from which he might be observed has altered with it.
They are people who belong in this place. It would be strange to question that.
That the woman doesn't look up from her ledger when they arrived at her table bodes well. Instead, she sucks down a pull of her cigarette, flicks to the next page on her little book, and it's only one she is exhaling her tobacco scented smoke around the elongated vowel of 'Yeeeees?' that she raises her face to them. "You have ten seconds before you'll be standing in everyone's way, gentlemen."
"Then maybe we should sit," Flint says without blinking to acknowledge the fact that she's occupying the lone chair at the table. "Captain Pearce of the Swift."—there is a ship in every harbor in the world (or worlds) with that fucking with that name; and if not that, then a Daring or a Quicksure or some other descriptive name that might easily be confused with something very like it—"This is my quartermaster."
She looks critically to Silver and takes another drag on her cigarette. Eyebrows raised.
no subject
They lose sight of the woman almost immediately once they've passed down the four short steps that lead down into the audience pit. But she's a stationary target, and they've hunted trickier. That said, some tactical sensibility must be observed. To wit, the bottle is ditched on a passed table, much to the not unpleased bafflement of the two young men occupying it; the wrist attached to Flint's hand with the most rings on it comes to hook lazily on the pommel of the sword he hasn't seriously drawn in weeks. Most importantly, and perhaps least easily perceived, is something in the face and the sway of the shoulder. The most marginal adjustment in the length of his stride that when taken in combination with the jut of the sheathed sword sends the edge of his dark coat swinging. What is unconscious artifice and what is adopted intentionally is difficult to parse—the man who makes his way down across the floor is not unrelated to the one who was spat up out of the harbor and trudged up into Little Calimshan—, but the point of his intention has altered to such a degree that the angle from which he might be observed has altered with it.
They are people who belong in this place. It would be strange to question that.
That the woman doesn't look up from her ledger when they arrived at her table bodes well. Instead, she sucks down a pull of her cigarette, flicks to the next page on her little book, and it's only one she is exhaling her tobacco scented smoke around the elongated vowel of 'Yeeeees?' that she raises her face to them. "You have ten seconds before you'll be standing in everyone's way, gentlemen."
"Then maybe we should sit," Flint says without blinking to acknowledge the fact that she's occupying the lone chair at the table. "Captain Pearce of the Swift."—there is a ship in every harbor in the world (or worlds) with that fucking with that name; and if not that, then a Daring or a Quicksure or some other descriptive name that might easily be confused with something very like it—"This is my quartermaster."
She looks critically to Silver and takes another drag on her cigarette. Eyebrows raised.