Sparrow on a Plank Chapter 3: Finding the Right Help

That afternoon, back on Cyrill, the interviews began. While Sal tried to find a boat that fit their criteria (pretty much the cheapest yet fastest ship she could find) Hajime started researching the target. After all, even the best intelligence forgot something. In this case, the cultural dossier had been forgotten. Which meant having to go into the backshelves of the worst library on Cyrill, hoping to find something despite their complete lack of organization. Hajime had learned early on to hate the backshelves.

Sal knew she was going to hate looking for a ship as soon as she showed up at the docks. She was able to quickly find which ships were in her budget, and was even more quickly disgusted by what she saw. The docks weren't necessarily divided up neatly into “good ships here, bad ships here”, but a quick talk with the harbormaster's apprentice sent her in the right direction. She soon had five candidates.

Within minutes, she had the list even shorter; the candidates practically eliminated themselves. One guy had huge forearms and a serious speech impediment; although he definitely looked the part, his inability to properly articulate even basic words like “am” would have driven her crazy within the first few days. If she wanted to succeed in her mission, it would help to not be arrested for murder when she arrived in port. Another had a story for everything. She knew the type; every time he spoke, he would some anecdote for whatever he was discussing. The only way to shut him up would be to get him laid and she wasn't sure that Hajime was ready for that experience. Of course, there was also that one over-kohled pirate who had to be on drugs; although she recognized that some pirate captains were “eccentric” and that they drew power from those “interesting traits”, she needed a captain that wouldn't try some interesting maneuvers while she was onboard and get them killed while pursuing some rich loot.

So it came down to a ruggedly handsome captain with a really nice ship and a rather shifty one with a ship that had seen better days. She had to decide against the guy with the really nice ship. A ship in that condition had probably not seen any actual action and the captain was probably newly minted out; it was likely that he was some rich man who had fallen in love with the sea and thought that piloting a yacht around a race course qualified him as a seadog. A handshake confirmed that he wasn't the man for her; it was firm enough, but the hand lacked any real calluses. She knew a number of rich men that were honest-to-goodness seamen, but this poser wasn't part of that crowd.

On the other hand, the shifty captain had calluses galore, and a quick investigation confirmed her worst suspicions. This guy was the real deal; he had been sailing for almost two score years, and had a reputation for facing the worst that the sea had to offer and always seemed to bounce back from the worst tragedies. He was married to his ship, even though that didn't stop him from the occasional dalliance at a port, and the marriage had changed him just like it would any other man, making him more solid than most bachelors and making him somehow more handsome than his mere appearance. He was covered with callouses, scars, and tattoos, and he wore several layers of clothes that had been patched and repaired so many times that the original fabric was likely gone and completely replaced by thread and patches. He had most of his original equipment, but the gloves he wore were likely for support of his arthritic hands and the hat probably hid a large bald patch.

His ship wasn't in much better condition, as it was covered in barnacles and tar (and most likely held together by those, some bailing wire, and too much spit to think about), and if you looked closely enough you could see the scratches in the boat's wood from cannonballs and monster attacks. She could see that modifications had been made to the ship's keel and rudder, and the ropes may have appeared slack but would tighten in such a way as to maximize the sails' ability to catch the wind. Both masts had been reinforced, yet allowed a certain space for bending. She smiled at the old boat, which had obviously been cared for like a beloved wife, and wasn't the captain's prize possession but part of him, possibly even dearer to him than his own soul. She didn't like to read, but the captains log piqued her curiosity. Captain Jonathan Taylor ran a tight ship for as loose as his lips were.

She haggled, he bargained, and finally a deal was struck. Thankfully they were heading in the same direction, and she was able to use Hajime's and her skills to bring the cost down lower. This would not be a vacation, but she had been worried about keeping busy on the way to Coldport. She had some shopping to do, most on the advice of Captain Taylor, and had to grab her junior associate, but she should easily make the sunrise departure time. She also needed to go by the apothecary's; for as much time as she seemed to spend at sea, she had never grown a pair of sea legs.

* * * * *

For his efforts, Hajime was hardly rewarded. Not that it had been hard to find information on Coldport; just the opposite, actually. The problem was more in determining which information was dross and which was tainted too much to use. He hated this part of research, as he frequently had to determine how to tell the truth from near-truth, and he didn't like guessing. He smiled as he realized that he the intelligence and, assuming the report was up to speed, he should be able to cross-index the information to determine which sources were legitimate, and use them to create a reasonable cultural profiling of the pirate port.

A few hours of work later, and a few false starts, and he was well on the way to creating a profile. He even made notes on several local myths just for completeness' sake. He smiled as he realized that the expedition to Coldport should be reasonably easy; the port served as a retirement village for Jezreel's pirates. Any pirate that had survived more than a few booty grabs were welcome to hang their hat there, and the population was easily one of the oldest of any port. The people there were more relaxed than other pirate ports, and, ironically, had a very good relation with law enforcement; after all, the crimes that most of them had committed weren't technically crimes due to location, and so the local cops just had to deal with the occasional fight. It was almost as if being in a life-and-death struggle had gotten whatever it was out of their systems and they were calmer now.

Yep, Hajime thought to himself, should be easy sailing.

[For the previous chapter look here. For the next chapter, look here.]