Find out more

“The twins are staying in my house.” Davy told Brenan, and he must have picked up on Brenan’s change in expression because he added right away. “They’re not the freeloading types, I had to fight with them to get them to settle in just for the night.” Brenan relaxed a little, and made a mental note to stop playing cards with Davy, the man read him too well. “The two were pretty discouraged by the time they came to me for help.” Davey continued, “The wanted to show how independent they were, but after a week of badgering all the captains in the harbor about sailing out to make their fortunes, they realized that most captains were more interested in a regular payout than a goose chase after a monster haul.”

“Do you think they’d be useful as crew, or just because they may have a lead on an old vault?” This schooner is too small for passengers.

“Well they are as green as a sougrapes, but they're no slackers, and both of them are pretty bright in their own ways.” Davy looked around the ship, before he added in a quieter voice “I don’t know who, or how, but you’ve made some enemies with your tendency to get involved when you see…” Davy held up his hand as Brenan started to object “… things that aren’t right. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few more people who can hold their own in a fight.” Brenan looked Davy over wondering what he had heard and decided that Davy had told him as much as he was going to.

“Right,” Brenan told him, “I have to talk to someone about a cargo he wants shipped, but I’ll stop by your house later this evening to see if I like them. I guess I owe you at least that much for steering Kyle and Tyler my way.” Brenan deliberately didn’t mention Walter Ambrose’s name to Davy, He knew that Davy didn’t care much for the merchant. For that matter Brenan didn’t like him much either, but business is business and his reserves were being spent faster than water down a toilet.

Davy nodded once and moved back towards the gangplank, he paused as he reached the top looking back over the ship's neat deck, for a minute Brenan wondered if Davy missed the life of a sailor. He was wildly successful as a operator of the shipyard, in the past four years he had become one of the island's elite, but Brenan knew he would miss the freedom of the open horizon with a trade wind on your cheek.

He had been approached by Ambrose earlier in the week soon after he first settled on the price of the schooner. Ambrose must have had a spy in Davy’s yard because that evening he sat down in a bar stool next to Brenan and started asking him how long it would take to get his new ship ready to sail. Brenan resisted the urge to pick the small insistent man up and toss him out the doors as he pressed him for information. There was something about the set of the merchant’s small eyes, and the way they remained still and cold even as the rest of his face smiled that Brenan didn’t care for, but when Ambrose told him how much money he was willing to pay for a delivering a load of freight to Veertor Brenan filed the information away.

With Red, Cindy, Michaels, and Kyle and Tyler, Brenan pretty much had the crew he needed to ship out with, if the twins Davy was pushing were any good at all, he should be ready to sail as soon as Red arrived. Brenan was getting itchy sitting in port anyway, and with the incident with Sasha earlier today public knowledge it was best to fill his sails and move out to sea.

As he looked over the deck and rigging he noticed that neither Kyle nor Tyler was anywhere to be seen. Sticking his head down the aft hatch he saw pretty much what he expected. Both the men were lounging on sea chests near the galley watching Sasha move about the small kitchen looking in cupboards and wiping out pots that weren’t as clean as they should be.

“Kyle! Tyler!” Brenan bellowed down the hatch using his ‘storm voice’ and laughed to himself as he saw the startled men nearly fall onto the planking of the lower deck. “Get up here and get to work, you lazy landlubbers!” Brenan gave them a list of jobs long enough to keep them busy for the rest of the afternoon. And ended with “And if I catch you two mooning over Sasha I’ll have you scrubbing the ship’s hull – FROM THE BOTTOM!” Feeling much more like a captain than he had so far, Brenan vaulted over the deck railing and landed on the wharf a good six feet below. There was little he could do to keep shipboard romances from developing, but he would make it clear to all that they had better not effect either the sailor’s or cook’s performance.