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!