Jaelle Beshaley's page

He kisses her hand, and releases it. "Be well.", he wishes. "You may kiss me, if you like.", he offers with nearly successful chasteness. "For luck."

"Aye, for luck," she laughs, running the hand he just released up the back of his neck and pulling his face down to meet hers. "I wouldn't want your stumble into ill fortune to be on my head." She kisses him and then slowly lets him go, ruffling the hair at his nape with her fingers before stepping toward the door. "I'll keep a weather eye open for you at the wharves tonight. Desna keep you, Friar Lubber." With a twinkle and a nod, she lets herself out.

"So, speak of me, to your captain, but do not promise me, for tonight, nor worry on me, nor search for me, if you do not see me. And perhaps... we'll breakfast with the prince?"

"I expect we'll be away with the tide, if not tonight, then in the morning," Jaelle cautions. "You can leave word for him at the Publican House, if you miss us. It's where the captain drinks when we're in port, and Arnando can be trusted to deliver messages for the crew of the Cloud."

"The secret's the captain's problem to wrestle with," she replies decidedly. "My part is only not to tell it. Aye, let me go first and tell the captain you're coming. Find something to occupy yourself with around here for a short while, then make your own way to the wharves. And watch your back. There's enough men eager to lay a sap to the back of your head and steal your purse or your person. If you're not there before dark, I'll have to send the lads out to search the alleys for you." She heads back through the kitchen toward the back door, wrapping her fingers loosely through his to pull him in her wake. "I can't swear we'll be back before Moonday," she goes on, "but if we are and I'm given shoreleave, I could go with you up to Lubbertown. Bound to find some dancers there."

"It can be taught," she insists, "though I may not be the one to do it. The problem is that when you dance, you cannot stop and watch, and when you stop and watch, there is no one to dance. We need another, so that you or I could step out of the dance and observe." She checks the level of daylight filtering in through the tall, narrow windows and sighs. "Even with that, we would need time we don't have. I have to be back on the Cloud before sunset. Do you still intend to speak to the captain?"

"You might find, I know some. I did live, as Caravari. But I've not danced so lately, and not largely, ever. Come Moonday night, I'd rather not embarrass the casino, or myself. OR rather, I'd prefer that embarrassment now, and to plot Moonday's course by the bosun's expert measure, of this vessel."

"Taberna dantza?" she suggests. "The men stomp, and the women spin?" She looks down at her boots and breeches. "You will have to imagine the twirling skirt," she allows with a grin. "I am not dressed for dancing." Arranging his arms around her, she leads him into a dance similar to the one he performed yesterday with Thuvalia to the accompaniment of the carpetlayers' orchestra. "This is difficult without skirts and scarves," she calls apologetically as she moves through the steps. "And music, and companions. Varisian dances, perhaps more than others', are meant for a dozen people at least, not just two."

"She takes what she can, and gives what she must, and takes that back, if possible. And, that might be wisdom, for who she was, for where she lived."

"Aye," she sighs. "That's the way of the Sczarni: to get as much as you can for as little as you can give up. If I were Sczarni, I would have let you sleep and then stolen your purse; and if he were Sczarni, the captain would claim I am his woman and demand more coin of you for the insult."

She returns with Gristav to the casino floor where he danced with Thuvalia the day before. "If you are to be the rube," she points out, "you have little to do but not notice as you are robbed blind; you have no set part to master. Or do you simply want to learn a Varisian dance?"

"Yet, as I recall, Luminita was doing her best. I don't think Thuvalia is."

She laughs. "Poor Luminita: I haven't thought about her since I was a child. I always thought she was a fool for staying with her stepfamily's caravan when the world is large enough for her to make her own way. If your Thuvalia feels ill-used, why should she do her best? In the hopes of being rescued by a rich man like Luminita?" She arches her brows skeptically.

"Sczarni?" she asks sharply. "I thought they weren't allowed to operate in Riddleport."

"Were you joking, at 'Herald', or is there some lesson there, among the many I've not yet learned?"

"Only that twice you boarded the Cloud just ahead of danger and twice helped ward it away," she smiles. "It's why Dawkins said you were an albatross. To spy one at sea is a sign, of good luck or ill or both at once, and when one lights on your mast, well, you'd best treat it with respect until you know which it means to you; perhaps you can change its mind with kindness. They're sacred to Gozreh, and those sailors who don't dance to the Pirate Queen's tune owe some reverence to the Wind and the Waves."

"First Mate Jaelle Beshaley, of the Flying Cloud, where in that first night latest, I found a hammock less restful than a rug, and they found me more useful than a hammock's space. Jaelle, Larur. Larur, Jaelle."

"Not First Mate," she puts in hurriedly. "Just sailor in good standing." She offers her hand frankly.

"Were you?", he asked, as if she might have been in his mind to know what he meant. "Were you prepared to avenge Her? Or the insincere use of Her Name? Is that your understanding of Her?"

"Does she need me to avenge her?" she smiles. "If you make a habit of invoking her to seduce women, you'll eventually meet one happy to rob you in the aftermath. Or one who has a jealous and powerful lover. Those who scorn Lady Luck taste her displeasure soon enough."

"Dear Lady", Gristav addresses the sense beyond the statue, "The kiss to Your favor has founded us as friends. Thank You."

"They say she looks after fools and children," she smiles as she continues down the corridor with Gristav, "and Dawkins thinks you're an albatross. You could be her herald unaware."

The kitchen is empty when Jaelle and Gristav enter. She places the pie where instructed as he stows the stew.

"If we're quiet enough, we might get to introductions later.", Gristav adds with a smile and a look of intent. "Or if your thirst is greater than your hunger, there's a taproom off the casino floor..."

"I just had an ale at the tavern," she points out. "You don't have to get me drunk, remember? I've already said yes."

No one is in evidence as they cross the casino floor; anyone around the Gold Goblin this afternoon is upstairs or behind closed doors. As they cross the marble atrium, she pauses at the statue of Desna. "You claim not to be a friar," she says lightly, "and yet you live in her shrine." She opens a pouch at her belt and lays a copper coin in the idol's palm.

"It's the grand doors you're worthy of, but the kitchens for which I've the key. So's not to offer any offense to a lady's station, would you stand by the front, while I open the doors from within, or would you come with me, through the kitchens?"

"The kitchens are grand enough for me," she assures him, "and the sooner I'll set my burden down." She follows him around the north wall of the building to the small porch at the back door where the firewood is stacked.

"Thank you."

She laughs. "Most men I know would not take being compared to a simple friar as a compliment." The brass dome of the Gold Goblin is glinting in the afternoon sun as they approach the casino.

"It's no mission, it's a casino, or it will be. The... acolytes are all the sort to support and secure such a setting, and not the type to be prone to judgement against us on a moral basis. Thugs, blades, rakes, raconteurs, keen eyes and minds, a pretty dancer, a prettier wizard, who, perhaps, you'll teach to dance? And the anchorites are Saul Vankaskerkin, and Larur Felden, my 'friend of some years', who can confirm, that I haven't recently put on 'Gristav', with an eye toward deception."

"Aye," she points out quickly, "unless he's your accomplice and you've already coached him what to say when asked. A casino?" she gives him an appraising glance. "I could see you in a mission first, wandering the streets, doing good deeds for dogs and old men," she smiles, "kissing women in Desna's name."

"There is a girl you might teach to dance as the Varisi she is, but cannot dance as. And a harridan you may humble by being a better teacher, if not a better dancer. And if you weren't on your way to my room, that might have brought you closer, or brought you back. There are, some ten folk there, fed on the leavings of retiring street vendors, bought nightly by a pair of aged batchelors. But they are decent folk, good folk, the most of what I've seen of them. And the one old friend I mentioned, he is there. And the mass of them, the any of them, might have drawn more interest than I, I thought, before I knew, that I had your interest. Your intent."

Jaelle is carrying the pie, seeming a little more relaxed now that the two understand each other. She listens to Gristav's description of the inmates at the Gold Goblin with bemusement. "What is this place, another mission like the Rotgut priest's? Two old anchorites taking in strays off the streets and feeding them on charity? They won't mind ... what we're intending on doing under their roof?"

"Aye, 'twill be either pleasant or swift, I think you said," she answers archly, draining the last of her flagon. "If we've a cargo run to make, let's make it. Duty before shoreleave."

"Would something like that, be acceptable?", he asked.

"Sounds like the kind of tale that ends with the girl dying and the man drinking to her memory in some tavern years later," she demurs a bit tartly. "But instead we've a pot of beef stew to deliver, and blueberry pie. The Lay of Gristav and Jill, Provisioners of Victual isn't quite so grand in the telling."

"I am not the captain's woman," she clarifies firmly. "He has never... and I have never. A ship is too small for that weight, and I would never ... 'fraternize' with a man who can give me orders. As for you, the captain trusted you not to tamper with the Cloud's secret; I see no reason why you would go down to the wharves and start announcing loudly that I'm not Josper Creesy's common-law bride." She gives him a slight smile. "You want to brag to your friends how you got lucky over a couple of ales, I have no problem with that, as long as they aren't all sailors."

"It was a pretty shrug. The curve it made, with your neck...", he says, tracing the curve with his eye and mind, "...asks to be traced with kisses."

"But you had not. Have not. Should I pledge, in proof of my regret, not to kiss you, until you, kiss me? Or would that be it's own cause for regret? I would hate to be regretted."

If his goal was to match the Sarenite priest's acumen in drawing the heat to her skin, Gristav has succeeded. She flushes as she looks away. "Aye, harder to slip into the brush. And the crew ... I have to work with them. Not that there's any of them makes me regret it," she clarifies quickly. "To most other men, I'm the captain's woman ... and the captain does nothing to clear up the confusion; it keeps me from spending my shoreleave fending off boors in dockside taverns. But we're not on the wharves ... and the captain trusts you, so you're not a good-for-nothing lout...."

"Say, how are you aboard? No, rather, how are you a-sea? It's not a usual trade, for a lady...?

"No," she responds, "not usual, to be crew rather than cargo, at least. Most assume I'm the captain's woman or I wouldn't be aboard. Fine with me that they think so; they're more likely to leave me be." She looks at him a moment and gives a half-shrug. "I grew up crossing the land in wagons. I don't see that there's so great a difference in crossing the water in boats. One follows the stars, in either case, and takes her home with her."

"Didn't know my sanity was in question," Jaelle smirks, "although I did agree to spend a few hours of the afternoon in your company. Is that enough to mark me as suspect?"

"Would you ask the same questions you asked of yourself for me?" she asks. "My name you've heard; if I'm like to spill the Cloud's secrets, it's the Captain's problem and not yours. That leaves only if I've designs on you." She takes a sip of honey mead, and the mistress of the Duck emerges from the kitchen, steaming saucers of stew in her hands. Jaelle's eyes smile at Gristav as the arrival of their meal interrupts the conversation.

Jaelle lets Gristav's flood of words flow around her like the Cloud weathering the swell in the harbor. "There's a quarter hour's worth of conversation covered in two minutes," she remarks, unperturbed. "Now that you've asked and answered all the questions I might have thought of, must we sit in silence until our lunch is done? Or should we ask to have it boxed to take it away with us?"

As the proprietress retreats to the kitchen to have their meal prepared, Jaelle arches a brow at Gristav. "The frozen north gambit might have been more effective were it not high summer outside," she suggests, not unkindly. "You could even have suggested we huddle closely together for warmth."

Jaelle smiles at Gristav quizzically. "Qadira? That's the other end of the world, isn't it? You've been there?"

"No, I'm to be the rube, and be orbited by the ladies, and removed of all my valuables. I've considered investing in pants of cloth-of-gold." He grins, joking. "But after the 'act', there is the rest of the evening, and I'd rather support the theme than work against it. As well, if the theme goes well, it may be revisited. Further, Varisi are a large part of this town, and I'm liable to be here long enough to see value in being able to blend, if not pass. And Finally...", he grins again, "What else could I reasonably ask your advice on?"

"Ergela en Iruzur," she grins, and Gristav recognizes the name as the same Thuvalia used for the dance. "Then you should not look Varisian, at least for the dance; you must be a proper gadjo." She replaces the scarf on the cart and picks up a tall Taldan hat, setting it on his head and pulling it low over his brow and ears. "There," she nods, pulling a dignified face, "now you are fit to have your pockets emptied by the Sczarni. Add a proper frock-coat and some lace at your wrists. Or," she removes the hat and replaces it with a battered and shapeless straw version with a wide brim, "go as a farmer, his harvest newly turned into coin in his pocket, ripe to be gleaned by the caravan girls in the market square."

"Shall we shop then? Would you lend a lady's head for hues, a gypsy's gift for garish grace, and fit a fabric to this fae fool?"

"Zara Varisi baten zati bat jotzen?" Jaelle asks, eyeing him critically. "Zer dantza al da?"

The ferryman's directions take Gristav and Jaelle to the north of the Mystery of the Gate, the large circular inn and conference center owned and operated by the Cypherlodge and through the marketplace in Leeward Common where he and Samaritha shopped for dinner yesterday.

"The Cloud won't leave till the tide turns," she belatedly answers the question he asked on the west side of the river. "This evening at the earliest, more likely in the morning. I'd not worry they've weighed anchor without me for some time yet."

As the road they're walking turns northward toward the pocket formed by the rocky ridge hemming in the town, Gristav spies a cobblestoned courtyard ahead on the left, where a worked-iron fence directs traffic around several small tables and chairs in front of a low, comfortable-looking building with latticed windows and overflowing flower boxes. A wooden placard hanging outside depicts a confused-looking duck which seems to be facing three directions at once.

She shrugs. "I don't know much of Riddleport outside the wharves and Lubbertown," she admits a little sheepishly. "And what I know of the wharves is that you don't drink there without your crew to watch your back. You can buy a good stew and a loaf of bread in Lubbertown, but it's a long walk from here."

"I told the priest," she goes on, "my schedule's not my own to set. We're never in harbor long, not long enough for me to dance with your friend. We are in harbor often ... but not long."

"SAY! Can you dance, in a Varisi fashion, as your color suggests you might could do?"

"'Dance?'" she gives him a quizzical glance. "Aye, I suppose so. Not as well as I can sail." She grins.

"Nay," she says, shaking her head. "Let's just be on our way."

Assuming Gristav agrees to depart, she doesn't speak until they are out on the street once again. She turns around to make sure no one is near enough to overhear and then asks, "What did you say to him? He seemed hearty enough when you left him for a man who didn't get what he was hoping for."

"And you, Miss? How am I welcome to call on you?" He smirked, and said sotto voce to a dutifully half-attentive Arnando, " 'Often'?" Pointedly crossing his hopeful fingers, he smiled at her.

Jaelle doesn't respond to him in the same playful manner. "You're done here then?" she asks, glancing over her shoulder toward the shipwright's table a little tensely. "That was brief enough. Was it pleasant?"

"My silence could be bought.", Gristav grins, then puts on a mathing mask. "At least in theory. I mean, I have been offered coin to shut up. Never actually received any... never really shut up. But the theory holds."

"A king's ransom, it would take," Jaelle laughs. "We could take up a collection; it would be a truly noble cause, and surely everyone who's ever met him would contribute."

The bearded man has paid no more attention to the pair's entry than to glance up when Arnando greeted them and then return his attention to his pint. Gristav takes the opportunity to compare the figure at the table with the memory of the interloper, seen briefly from above in dim light. The man at the table seems brawnier, both more muscular and less athletic. The man climbing the rope had been lithe and sinewy. And while he had been wearing a cap, there had been dark hair escaping from beneath it. He could have shaved off his hair; less likely that he could have bulked up to such an extent in only a few days. Gristav concludes that it's not the same man.

"Aye," Jaelle answers, giving Gristav a tentative glance before crossing toward the bar, "we weathered the swell. Fished a waister out of the harbor before he could be landed by another ship. Stealing myself a bit of shore leave after towing him back to his berth. You won't rat me out to the captain, will you?"

"I'll tell him I feel I have something of a welcome aboard, but I haven't truly tested it yet. And I've not been below, in any case, only favoring the breeze in the tops. He'll want me to pledge to a report, at which I'll be confused. When he makes it clear he means the Cloud..." Gristav stopped with a hand on the unopened door. "Then I'll say, 'The ship? I had meant the girl.' "

She laughs. "And you think you've a reasonable prospect of being invited below if you play your cards right, do you?" she asks flippantly.

"You're not unlike Her, you're more like Her. Black, and bronze, and beautiful."

"Mostly I get Besmara," Jaelle shrugs, "but she's a heartless b#~%~; men who try to flatter me by saying I'm like the Pirate Queen don't get very far." As the Publican House comes into view on the street ahead, she hesitates. "I'm not sure me being with you when you meet the shipwright is a good idea. It might be swift, but if you're not telling him what he's expecting to hear, it won't be pleasant."

"But most true, and most telling? Your blush for the priest. Your captain may have your contract, your word, even your love. But not your heart entire. And if there is space in your heart, if the hovel's Hierophant might turn the face of the Queen of Ships, then a Jack might have a part to play. A Jack, or a Fool. That card hasn't turned yet."

Whatever it is about Father Kreun that made her blush, mentioning him -- or perhaps her reaction to him -- brings the color to her cheeks again. "Aye, well," she replies, "a girl can admire a handsome man, no matter how spoken for she may or may not be. I've never been a great one for piety, but the Dawnflower is the blonde with the angel wings, aye?" She tosses her own black curls a little scornfully.

"Oh, but you do think you're charming," she breathes as their lips part. "Still, that was reckless. How do you know I'm not the captain's woman?"

"Wait. Do you, actually, think I'd have let that old man drown?"

"Aye, but he didn't drown, did he? When you missed, others were ready to throw the rope and haul him in. You could afford to keep up your act without the cost of an old man's life ... not that there aren't those who see a stranger's life an acceptable cost to fill their purse."

"You've missed some maths. The rope and grapnel; of what use were they to the me that you imagine? If I had planned to be aboard, and to have the crew entranced, then haven't I been below already, while they were? Remember, I awakened them. At a time of my choosing."

"You carried them aboard yourself," she shrugs as they approach the river, "as props to paint yourself the hero, and set the grapple after you'd been below. Or besides the woman, you had men in a boat supporting your story of trespass averted."

"So what possible use, then, to stroll past you today, just as the rooftops screeched? Or was the wave another of my conspirators?"

"Aye, that's a poser," she muses, stepping onto the ferry. "Perhaps you're so sure of yourself you couldn't resist returning to the scene of your crime, just to show how clever you are. Or perhaps you were simply on the wharves when you saw the tide draw back and realized you needed somewhere safe to weather the swell."

"There's more, you know," she goes on. "Why are you admitting all this to me if you've been working with the shipwright all along? Well, either you think you're so charming that I'll throw in with you rather than betray you, or you intend to overpower and silence me so I'll never tell the tale back at the Cloud. Either way, it's possible you overestimate your prowess."

"It's unlikely you're as clever as all that," she admits as she steps off the ferry onto the west bank of the Velashu. "But it's well to be prepared, just as it was unlikely old Padraig let himself get swept into the sea to lure you into a trap ... though I've known some brigands would stab you in the back after you'd hauled them out of a well without a second thought. It's their nature."

"So you're meeting the shipwright at the Publican ... to tell him what? That you've been aboard but not below? And that below will cost him more gold? And now I've invited myself along, either I'll prove how close you've been and can be again ... or you're thinking to sell me to him and let him get the captain's secrets from me at his leisure." She smiles. "No, not at the Publican. You'd be meeting him in the Wharves or Rotgut if that was your plan. Old Paddy could even have been in on it with you. 'Where's your home?' you say; 'A flophouse in Rotgut,' he says; and the pair of you walk me into Rag's End to meet a gang of thugs. That would have been clever. I'd have fallen for it," she congratulates him.

"You were a plant to get a look at the Cloud?" Jaelle frowns. "The woman on the wharves, was she distracting the men for you to sneak below? And then you pretended you'd repelled boarders? Are you even a real lubber, or was your muddle throwing that rope all for show?"

Some strides later, he asks of Jaelle, "Would the Publican serve? I have a previous meeting that was arranged before the screech, it should be either pleasant or swift, and then if you preferred another setting, I should be free to go where you'd like."

"The Publican House for a previous engagement?" she asks. "You do know how to sweep a girl off her feet. Who are we meeting? Some other girl who chanced her way between your lips and Desna? Here," she guides his steps northward, "if we're headed to the ferry, let's go through Leeward rather than back down the wharves." Their heading is now toward the smoking chimneys of the Gas Forges.