Chapter 203: Respectable, By Some Definition

Inside the building, an entirely different world unfolded.

Heat came first, close and heavy enough to make a man feel it behind his eyes. Noise came next, dice rattling to the left, sailors hollering over one another at three tables at once, and a fiddle sawing away underneath the whole racket at some tune nobody present appeared eager to dance to.

The smell saved its entrance for last, which was probably the room’s idea of a joke. Tallow smoke hung thick enough to taste, spilled rum had gone sour in the boards, and sweat, roasting meat, and some beef with more blood in it than normal fought for the same miserable bit of air.

Enzo, of all men, actually broke stride for half a step and coughed twice before finding his feet again. Jim, close behind him, muttered that he needed a moment to appreciate the place.

James took it all in without saying much, which was his preferred way of appreciating information.

It had been a warehouse once, and not very long ago either. The tar and hemp still clung stubbornly to the beams beneath everything. The owner, with more enthusiasm than wisdom, had painted two enormous fighting cocks across an entire wall.

One miserable bar went down one side of the room, dark and sticky beneath two lanterns, with bottles racked behind it in an order that made sense only to the man who had put them there.

Beyond it, gambling tables crowded the floor in loose, shifting rings. A leather cup rattled through a game of hazard at the nearest, cards slapped down hard over a hand of put at the next, and men leaned across both tables to shout at the dealers and one another with enthusiasm.

Coins were already changing hands faster than any man could count them, which was generally a good sign that one was about to lose their shirt and breeches.

Then, naturally, there were the women. Out the dozens present he spotted one raven-haired whore leaned over the pit with her bodice laced loose enough that there was little left to wonder about, her full and generous chest nearly spilling whenever she leaned forward to watch the birds. She watched the blood with every bit as much interest as the sailors beside her.

Away, one sat at a table over with her skirts hiked and a man’s hand high along her thigh. She laughed softly at whatever he whispered and showed no particular hurry to make him move it.

James looked over the whole establishment and reached a conclusion that seemed difficult to dispute, how one man could commit every sin worth the name inside this leaking establishment and never once have to trouble himself with stepping back through the door.

The cockpit itself sat a few feet below the main floor, surrounded by a low grade polished smooth by the hands of men who leaned upon it while shouting.

Some fight was already well underway by then. Two birds came at each other in short, vicious bursts, steel gaffs flashing where nature had originally supplied them with simpler weapons. Feathers covered the sawdust, with dark patches of blood spreading through them in several places.

One bird had lost an eye altogether and seemed to regard this as an inconvenience rather than a reason to stop. It fought half-blind and twice as mean for it.

"Five on the grey!" The sailors gambled without remorse.

James let the spectacle be and brought his five fools into a knot near enough to the bar.

"Right."

He kept his voice low, Flynn’s accent still riding underneath it. "We’re lookin’ for some respectable lads in this town who can point us toward good hands. Sailors gone idle, deserters gone to ground, couple hundred of ’em, if this city can spare that many."

He looked around at the five before him, none of them looking anything alike. "Scatter, the lot of ye. Find me one name apiece worth trustin’, we’ll compare notes once we’ve got ’em, then sort the good from the useless."

Bonnet frowned, plainly puzzled, the ruined cutlass still tucked beneath one arm as if it were a child he had decided to raise.

"Forgive me, Captain, but respectable strikes me as a curious word to use in a room such as this."

James clicked his tongue. "I don’t mean their immortal soul, Bonnet. Just some crimp, boarding-house keeper, some fellow who knows which idle hands in this city’ll turn up sober come mornin’, and which’ll drink their own advance before we’ve departed."

Jim barked out a laugh loud enough to make a few heads turn.

"Cap’n, ye’d have better luck findin’ a nun!"

Enzo was already smoothing his cravat, his eyes bright. "Information travels through a kitchen the way it travels through a bed, Capitano, and much faster besides. This task shall be no problem."

Kwaku offered nothing but one flat sentence, delivered without the smallest change in his expression.

"I will ask someone. If they decline to answer, I will ask again."

Tomás nodded and turned towards the room, one hand raised in a small farewell.

In a single breath, the five of them had scattered in five different directions, like smoke from a snuffed candle, leaving James alone in the middle of all that noise with nothing to do but find himself a drink and begin to listen properly.

He crossed to the bar and took a stool worn smooth by better men than himself.

Only then did he think to loosen the cloth tied over his nose and mouth, pulling it down until it hung loose around his throat. Some masked man drinking alone at a bar was about as subtle as a trumpet in church.

Fortunately, not a soul in a room like this was likely to waste a second look on any stranger’s face. James’s hat brim was already doing most of the hiding for him, and a man couldn’t sensibly drink rum through a rag over his mouth anyway. He had no intention of going thirsty for the sake of a disguise that nobody here was likely to see through.

Then one whore reached his elbow, without any hurry at all.

"Ye’ve got the fresh-off-the-water look about ye, love."

Her hand brushed lightly on his forearm. "Lonely enough for company, I’d wager, and I’ve got just the cure for that, if ye’ve the right coin."

"Sure, and that’s a fine generous offer, so it is."

Flynn’s voice wobbled outwardly.

"But I’m already spoken for, truth be told, and I’ll not trouble ye further than that."

She looked him over once more, entirely unoffended, then gave a shrug with genuine ease.

"Yer loss, love."

And that was the entirety of it, the woman ignoring him for easier customers.

Privately, and with no intention of sharing the thought with her or anybody else in the room, James admitted that there were two women aboard the Grand Dame considerably more likely to skin him alive than any bird in that pit had managed all evening.

He had no particular desire to discover which of the two would reach him first.

Silver on the bar, and the barkeep poured him rum, while James, still wearing Flynn’s accent, put the question to him plainly.

"Tell me true, friend. What’s the state of sailors driftin’ through this city these days?"

"Hmpf, deserters been washing ashore here three years now, since the peace."

The barkeep wiped a glass he had no intention of cleaning, his eyes barely lifting from the work.

"Longer than any man would’ve guessed."

He set the glass down without having improved it and reached for another that looked every bit as filthy. "Most of what comes off them ships is lazy, drink-sodden, and fit for nothin’ a captain in his right mind would want."

"And the rest of it?"

"Them barrel that size always turns up a few good hands buried down at the bottom."

He gave a flat, weary shrug.

"The trick is findin’ ’em before the drink does. Most nights, the drink wins."

James finished the last of his cup and laid more silver on the bar, enough for the drink and enough besides that the barkeep would magically forget his face.

That was answer enough to work with, he reckoned.

He rose from the stool and turned back into the noise, ready to find out what his five fools had managed to dig up between them.