A ship to serve on

“What?” The sneaking suspicion that he would end up with a curious crew consisting of two sets of brothers, an aunt and her niece and a mad old man with an affinity for blowing things up, intended or otherwise, was the main cause of the sharpness with which Brenan gave his response.

“You’ve got a ship?” Inky asked.

“I’d be a pretty lousy captain otherwise.”

“We’re in need of one,” Inky went on, his expression becoming grimmer and more resigned as he added, “we’ve been trying to find a captain willing to take us on for the last two days.”

Brenan noted how the brawnier of the two brothers threw his sibling a worried glance, but his apprehension about embarrassing them ensured that he said nothing.

“Why’s that? I can’t see anything about you that would make a captain unwilling to sign you on.”

“It’s not that we want to be sailors exactly,” Inky’s brother divulged, “we think we know the location of something valuable, but we need a ship to find it.”
Brenan nodded his head, not finding it strange that the brothers didn’t want to talk too much about what they were looking with someone who was just barely more than a complete stranger.

“Where have you been asking around for a captain?”

“This place mostly, we’ve been coming in here a couple of times a day for the last few days without anything to show for it,” the swordsman explained, while Inky cringed in response to his words.

“Good, word gets round fast in the waterfront dives,” Brenan considered how easily the two brothers might have found themselves in a lot of trouble if they had started asking around among the sailors and pirates that frequented the less refined establishments that littered the area surrounding the harbour. The fact that they’d stuck to a place like the Hammer and Anvil suggested that they had at least some common sense and a healthy amount of discretion.

“Yeah, well, we were just about to give up on this and head out to see Uncle Davy,” Inky’s words caused Brenan to cock his head at him.

“Uncle Davy? What are you boys named anyway?”

“Julien and James Caruthers, I’m Julien and this is James,” the swordsman nodded towards his brother.

“And who’s this Uncle Davy of yours?”

“He isn’t really our uncle; he was close friends with our grandpa. He’s supposed to be a merchant living on this island nowadays,” Julien revealed, and then he noticed the thin smile which had formed on Brenan’s lips.

“Alright, I’ll consider taking you on,” the knowledge that there was woman out there in danger of falling into the hands of Veertorian agents was the main reason why Brenan decided to wait with revealing to the two men that he knew Davy.

“First though,” Brenan noticed that James seemed to loose his previous sullenness in response to him stating that he would at least entertain the possibility of helping him and his brother out, “I want to know about the woman.”

“The woman?” Julien tried hard to look inconspicuous, but didn’t do a very good job at it.

“Your brother mentioned earlier that I wasn’t after her,” Brenan felt quite satisfied about having caught the two young men like that, it was always good to know that he could outsmart the people serving under him, “and he was right, sort of, I’m after the ones who’re after her.”

“Look,” Brenan continued once a few seconds had gone by without either of the brothers looking like he was ready to talk, “it’d go a long way towards convincing me to take you on, and you’d be helping her out as well. This island’s not big enough for her to stay ahead of her pursuers for long anyway.”

“Alright…” Julien nodded his head and looked like he was ready to talk.