Back to the ship

“So,” Kara began, and the long pause that followed gave Tir the distinct impression that she was struggling to come up with anything to say, “You’re a pirate then?”

“Well, yeah… I guess that’s one way of putting it.” At least there wasn’t the same undercurrent of fear appearing in her voice, Tir thought as he offered his reply to her question.

“Was that a stupid question?” Kara suddenly sounded very nervous as she and Tir carried Carmine between them as they came round the corner of a house.

“No, not really.” Tir opined, realising that Kara’s nerves and her lack of proper social contact ever since ending up as her uncle’s ward probably meant that she was having a hard time keeping their conversation going, and that he should do his best not to reject her or anything. Of course, Tir had a few things on his mind as well.

He’d gone out in search of a good time, then had tried getting hold of a sweet young thing, and had ended up with two of them. And that would have been great, if not for the fact that one of them was a virgin and had quickly begun to grow on him to the point where the thought of allowing another man to touch her was making him angry at himself, while the other was burdened by apparent self-destructive tendencies and might want to try and make him marry her once she awoke from her ****-induced coma.

“Look,” Tir started off, but then it was his time to make an awkwardly long pause as he struggled to find the right words, “we aren’t honest seamen, but we’re not bloodthirsty bastards either. We’re not roaming the seas looking for people to **** and ships to sink or anything like that.”

“Then why are you sailing out there?” At least Kara was now beginning to sound less tense.

“We…” Tir corrected her.

“Sorry, we…”

“I’ll tell you once we’ve lifted anchor and set out, okay?” Tir didn’t want to talk too much about the fact that the Peregrine would be searching for vaults. It was his first journey aboard the ship, and he wasn’t exactly sure how open he could be about their aims.

“Oh, okay.”

“So why did you decide to bring me along?” Kara asked Tir a little while later.

“I brought you along because you’re beautiful and deserved better than wasting your youth back there.” Tir had decided that Kara could do with an honest compliment or two, although his efforts to offer them to her were hindered somewhat by the fact that he wasn’t exactly suave.

Still, Tir’s bluntness seemed to have been for the best, since Kara shone up and offered him a very pretty smile.

“Do you really think I’m beautiful?” She asked her question as though she was expecting him to reveal that he was merely subjecting her to a cruel and unfunny joke.

“Yes, and this is our ship.”

“You’re back early, Tir,” the man keeping guard aboard the Peregrine observed as he, Kara and Carmine came up the gangplank, “and you’re bringing gifts I see.”

“Yeah, Castor,” Tir grinned at the man, “have we got room for them onboard?”

“Sure, you can stick them in the whore cabin for now, and the captain’ll probably set them up with a room of their own later on.” Castor replied.

“Great, I’ll get going then,” Tir said, not wanting to get involved in any lewdly suggestive conversation with Castor when Kara was around.

“The whore cabin?” Kara asked once the three of them were below deck.

“Uh-huh, it’s the spot where the whore that goes along with us on our journey is supposed to sleep.” Tir explained, anxious that Kara would get the wrong idea.

“It’s a lot better than having to sleep with all us guys in the crew hold.” Tir added, but Kara simply nodded her head as he led her and Carmine the last few yards to the cabin in which they were to spend the night.

It turned out to be a tiny little room with a wooden bunk-bed on each side of a small table and little else; with a small porthole to let at least some small portion of light into it, and Carmine was soon placed on her stomach in one of the bunks.

“So…” Tir began, reminding himself of the fact that he needed to be gentle with Kara, “do you want to go to sleep straight away or could I stay for a little while?”