Trouble in River City

Actually, it's trouble in Kingston. But there isn't a song about that.

Anyway, whenever there's trouble in Kingston, you can bet that Liv is a part of it. And here two unlikely yet unfortunately similar characters meet to cause destruction and mayhem.

Meet Finch! My friend writes from his point of view, and here is when his path crosses that of the children, namely, Liv's, because she's being a loner right now and he needs a good thief. So again, from Liv's point of view.

He was not above four and twenty I would guess, with a long, noble face, high cheekbones, and grey-blue eyes that held secrets, who could say how many secrets? His hair was not long like a sailor’s, with only enough to tie in a short pigtail behind him. He was clean-shaven, with an aquiline nose and basically all the features to suggest that he wasn’t as low-born as his situation presented. Perhaps he wasn’t rich, but he was smart, he was very smart. I’d have to watch myself with him. Clearly he was on no good terms with the law, so a little more trustworthy, and a little less at the same time. His clothes were stained with fresh sea travel. Here was a man who had not been ashore long and did not know Kingston and Port Royal as I knew them. So that was an advantage.

“So,” I began, smiling a little as he lifted his tankard, “what is it you need then? We’ll be square on this, or I’m out.”

He put down the mug after a long draught with a sigh, then reached into his coat. The folded slip of paper produced was weathered from wind and water, but the thick ink, he revealed to me as he unfolded the fragment, was secure and scarcely leaked outside the boundaries. He spread it on the table, facing me, but didn’t take his hand off of it for an instant.

“Who drew up this chit?” I asked. “Pretty hand.”

It was a pretty hand. There were several lines of miniscule writing, looping and sweeping, on the page. My companion smiled a little.

“It wasn’t I. But it signifies little.”

“Are these bearings?” I asked, frowning at the spidery script.

An inheritance there for royal bastard blood...

“Aye, but not complete.”

His finger tapped a blank spot in the steady string of black ink. I stared. It was as if the words there had just seeped away, as if the paper had swallowed them. From the coast of--

My eyebrows knit together as I surveyed the strange message. There was another, and another. Five barren spaces.

“What happened to the rest of it?”

“Never mind that. All I’m interested in is this.”

He pointed to a little picture inked at the bottom of the paper. I glanced over it. It was a miniature of a coat of arms, a simple black field divided through the center by a wavy white line, with a white sun on on either side of this. I read the inscription.

“Sir parvis magna,” I murmured. “Very plain, I’d say.”

“You may say that. ‘Out of smallness, greatness’.”

I flushed.

“Whose is it?” I asked defensively.

“It’s on a ring I wish to commandeer. Belongs to a man by the name of Captain Drake.”

I leaned back with a snort of laughter.

“Then shall we fetch it to Good Queen Bess?”

“I’m not having fun with you, lass,” he laughed. “Regardless of where he got the name, he’s as flesh and blood an officer as ever hoisted anchor. Surely you’ve seen his ship in Kingston Harbor-- the White Swan.”

“Aye.”

The pretty ship came to my mind with its beautiful swan figurehead spreading its wings against the keel.

“So his name’s Drake?” I asked. “Here’s wagering that he’s had to take a load of bilge for that then.”

He grinned, watching me as I gulped the fiery grog.

“All’s one, he’s still a fine seaman and has moved up to post quicker than other sailors.”

“Then he’ll be at the governor’s palace tonight. The governor always invites the officers fresh off the ships, with nary a variation. How d’ye reckon we’ll slip it?”

“Is the governor’s palace impregnable? To attack, perhaps more so, but to a stable hand and a serving girl?”

A smile spread across my face.

“I see. Yet there remains some risk... so here’s the rub. What am I risking for?”

Okay, and now everybody's off to steal a ring! Definitely more Finch to come. He doesn't know who Liv is or where she comes from and she doesn't know anything about him either. He's a devious fellow, should she be trusting a guy like this?

God bless!

Little Flower

Okay, I just realized there's only one of Reese's crew I haven't introduced you to yet! There are more characters, but they join in later on in the story, and I don't want to go out of chronological order yet.

This is Suyin, thirteen years old, a little shadow. This sampling's from Reese's POV, because Liv has gone and, surprise surprise, got herself into what looks like trouble. Again, the accents here are pretty thick again. Suyin has a very pretty, purry Singapore accent, and it just seems to go with her personality so well.

I may have been half-sleeping, sitting there slumped on the ground. But I still felt the moon against the right side of my face, streaming in almost tangible beams through the opening. The light flickered against my eyelids. I opened my eyes. The moon was stable there again, a white half-orb beyond the window and over the thick treetops.

“Suyin,” I said, “I know you’re here.”

A slender figure materialized out of the shadows.

“You on’y one what a’ways know I am her’.”

She crouched beside me, her slanted eyes reflecting the light of the moon. She wasn’t wearing her hat.

“Why are you awake, flower?” I asked.

“Bad things afoot. Liv is on de game.”

“What?”

“She go out, but not come back. Netta waits up for her, Suyin goes and follows. No one see.”

“Where is she?”

“Kingston.”

“What is she doing?”

“She is on de game. Not alone. Wit' a man.”

Something inside suddenly felt cold.

“A man? What kind of man? Did he-- was he touching her? Where did they go?”

Suyin shook her head.

“No, no, just game. No play footsie. I see them, they no see me, Suyin could put a very nice knife down in his eye and den he see nothing, never ‘gain. But no. Just game. They go to Gull Roost.”

“The Gull’s Roost? By the docks?”

“Aye.”

I was up in an instant and heading for the door.

“Suyin, get Kutch and Netta. Tell Netta what’s happened and tell Kutch to come to me. And you,” I paused with the door open, turning to point seriously at the child, “you stay here and you go to bed. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, Reese.”

I spared her a small smile before I dashed out. She was worried, after all. And so was I.

Suyin's a strange character, and I hope that translates well here. Although she's only a little girl, she's very protective and has a strange sense of humor that contrasts weirdly with her nature. I think it's because largely, she doesn't understand concepts such as death. She never really thinks that hard. I think she mostly thrives on the notion of keeping the family together and generally having a good time.

Well, tell me what you think of her. She's my strange one, but I love her anyway.

Il Cuocina e Fratellino

Today I'm going to introduce... not one... buuuuuut two (*gasps all around*) characters from Kingston, sister and brother. These are two of my favorite characters, and they'll luckily introduced in the same scene.

First up, Antonetta Fiore de Luca. But she's never called that. This is Netta, the matriarch, the cook, Reese's right-hand lady. She's also fifteen. I often have to remind myself that she's fifteen. I don't think she remembers either.

Then there's Ascanio Oreste de Luca, her little brother. At ten years old, he's the baby of the group and I have a soft spot in my heart for this chubby little philosopher.

This segment is again told from Liv's POV. (I most frequently use Liv's, she has this grouchy method that I kinda click with.) I hope you understand everything, most of the characters in this book seem to have very thick accents.

Reese sat at the head, at his left on the stool was Kutch, then Suyin, and then a tiny, chubby boy with tan skin and large, serious, sensitive brown eyes under his black, cowlicked hair. He was a handsome little fellow, Ascanio, his tiny mouth pursed in seemingly perpetual thought. I sat on the other side with Buskin, who was leaning forward, elbows on the table, to discuss something eagerly with Suyin and Ascanio, who listened with grave interest. I was trying to speak with Reese and Kutch about the possibilities of war with France, but it was difficult with Kutch. He was watching the green arch, and, at intervals, bashing his knife against the table and yelling at the top of his lungs, drowning conversation,

“Netta! I’m starvin’! Where’s the grub?”

There was a string of Italian yelled in response. Ascanio looked up from the steady stream of chatter.

“Kutch, she saya you head be fill’ with cow guts.”

Kutch shut his mouth and shot the little boy a glance out of the corners of his eyes.

“Aye. Thankee, ‘Scanio. Nettaaaaa! I’m a hungry headful o’ cow guts!”

First a big pot appeared around the arch, clouds of steam billowing from its top, its handles clutched by two strong brown hands protected by rags. Then a slender but supple young girl followed, supporting the weight easily, dressed only in a loose blouse and a cream-colored skirt, and with a flick of her neck she tossed the dark locks of bushy, curly hair out of her olive-skinned face. It was a noble, elegant face, annoyance playing about the beautifully curved lips and a grudging smile in the bright eyes.

“You a gonna let me carry thees, eh you, you big man?” she demanded, even though I knew she was having no trouble whatsoever.

Kutch jumped off his stool, sprang off the table, narrowly clearing my head, and swept the pot, rags and all, from Netta’s hands.

“Oh aye, let him take the whole thing,” Buskin snorted.

“Good luck to us ever seein’ a bit o’ that,” Reese chuckled.

Nonetheless, Kutch still brought the pot to the table and set it on the wooden board in the middle. I didn’t know why Netta fussed so much over the table, it was damaged enough already. She settled next to Buskin, tapping his backside to indicate that it belonged on the bench-- we were about to eat-- then began dishing out bowlfuls of rice covered with fish and sauce.

“Wha’d’ye call thes?” asked Kutch, shoveling in a mouthful with his fingers.

“Risotto.”

“Risotto.”

“No. Ri-soh-to.”

Clenching his fingers together, Kutch leaned forward and shook them at her.

“Risotto!”

She twisted her mouth at the fingers.

“You no have to--”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, leaning back with a smile.

So there they are, my little Paesani. I hope you like them! Tell me exactly what you think of them though, be cruel! This particular sampling doesn't feature much Ascanio, but there's more to come!

God bless!

Buskin the Urchin

It's been a few days since I posted-- there've been exams and all sorts of lovely horrible things that I don't like at all. Anyway, I figured now would be a good time to present you with another one of the crew.

Again, this is near the beginning, I have this dread of putting samplings out of chronological order. That would just be confusing. They're a little off, but all of them are from the beginning, so I figure that doesn't matter so much :) Told from Liv's perspective, we meet Buskin.

Children were rarely clean in Kingston, but Buskin was dirtiest by far, to the point of which I believed his skin was permanently stained almost the same walnut color as his scruffy hair. Jewelry of all sorts bounced on his bare chest under his tattered jacket-- Japanese jade, Brazilian beads, African amulets-- some worthless, others priceless, all so dirty that no one could tell, so no one ever tried to have them off him. I watched as he accidentally ran right into the flabby paunch of an overweight merchant in an extravagant wig, who shoved the small boy almost sprawling with a curse. What a costly bit of temper. I didn’t see Buskin’s nimble fingers at work, but I hadn’t a doubt that the tradesman was now lacking a wallet. The boy looked up, knowing how well I liked the roof of the smithy, slanted, secure, with ample attraction to the warm Jamaican sun I loved so much. He leapt off a barrel, caught onto the hanging sign, and hooked his foot over the top of it. He began to lever himself up, reaching for the makeshift rain gutter, but I extended my hand and pulled him up instead. He perched by me and poured the contents of the wallet into his lap.

“Reese sent me to find you,” he told me.

“How much is there?” I asked, ignoring him.

“T’owd gobdaw don’t fetch much,” he answered, lifting his eyebrows. “Four bob an’ two tanners.”

“Are the ships in?”

“Middlin’ near to it, last I saw.”

“What does Reese want?”

He shifted.

“He wants you home.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.”

I rolled onto my back, sat up, and frowned at my knees.

“Is Suyin on the game?”

Buskin knew where this was going. He moved out of arm’s reach.

“Aye.”

I knew where this was going too. Quicker than he could dodge, I leaned over and caught him by the wrist.

“And Kutch? Where’s Kutch, eh?”

“On the game.”

“And Reese, the big man, where is he?” I queried, lifting a derogatory eyebrow.

“At home.”

“Where is he, Buskin?”

I glared at him. He tightened his lips and turned away. Sometimes Buskin was less comfortable with the truth than he was with falsehoods.

“The Naval docks.”

I released him, and he sat there, sullen and annoyed that he had been caught lying even when he was so good at it. He never liked conflicts and he hated it worse when he was involved.

Well, here he is, aged twelve, munchkinny, in all his dirty, superstitious glory. This little guy was the first to join Reese's gang a few years back. Tell me what you think of him! Criticism welcome!

God bless, everybody!