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“All this responsibility is suffocating,” was what that damned princeling said, which is why they’re sitting on the floor of the hallway of the closed palace, guard sent to quarters... spinning a bottle. One of far too many empty bottles, in matter of fact. Turns out even with fine red carpets, marble scuffs up a little when it's got an exhausted noble in her travelling boots, a Naut, an island princess and a Coin Guard captain sitting on it.
(Travelling boots that are actually travelled in. Practical ones, not just the pinchingly tight, brand new leather so many of the nobles bring and attach the name to. Or if they were, de Sardet's worn them in. That alone should have told Vasco that he'd met a damn strange noble. But he ignored it, as he's been ignoring a lot of things, too comfortable in his righteous fury. The heat of fury is better than the empty numbness where his ship used to be.)
The Thélème bishop and the governor of New Sérène, of course, don't leave a mark. Vasco would expect nothing less.
Perhaps Constantin calling this moment of foolishness was down to his new rank making him less able to be attached to his cousin at the hip. Or perhaps it was how hollow-eyed and tired de Sardet seemed on their return from Hikmet, after playing messenger for not one but three lots of self-important idiots. He's seen the lengths Constantin will go to to make de Sardet smile - seen the lad clap her on the back fresh after her defeating the beast in the harbour, when she was still putting away her pistol with shaking hands. Those lengths included self-humiliation. Constantin joked through his own seasickness half the journey, while for her part, de Sardet made helpless attempts to try and heal an affliction centuries older and stronger than even a healer's will. As if she might win over the sea through sheer, stubborn affection.
To be able to lean on New Sérène’s governor through his cousin - Vasco knows Cabral will have thought of it. A harder man might use that. Himself, after a week's trekking and two caravans, he's too exhausted. Instead he sits cross-legged, his drink dangling over his knee, and watches them. De Sardet laughs, Constantin gestures wildly, and it feels like a woodcut of something that has happened many, many times before. Perhaps this is what family is like - the other kind, the blood kind, without rotating crews and rank in the way. Or perhaps the drink has long gone to his head.
Certainly, the drink must be why he's still here, even after the bottle began to spin and Kurt snorted and shook his head and said, "This is the sort of nonsense they were famed for, when they were young. I haven't played it since I was in the barracks. "
Yes, he needs to keep an eye on de Sardet, but this is hardly useful to know. ("Can recite the alphabet backwards while touching her toes, and somehow doesn't throw up. Would make an excellent addition to the navigatory crew." Come to think of it, just "can recite the alphabet," never mind the rest, would be better than half the navvies he's known.)
No, Kurt's right: this is the sort of stupidity novices play in their bunks, and he’s never had any time for it. It can divide a crew, and make rank difficult. But he’s stuck on land – which makes him want to slide into oblivion anyway, regardless of his orders – and this is nothing like an ordinary mission. Officially, he’s no longer a captain. He’s nothing in particular, here. Rank doesn’t matter, so there's nothing to disgrace. And perhaps there’s an off-chance that he missed something when he was refusing to play, brushing up on his navigation instead. (Even if he finds that supremely unlikely, somehow.) So he still hasn't done the wise thing and left them to it. Instead he's here, sitting on the sort of marble floors that usually only admirals get to see, with an island princess next to him and a bottle of rum in his hand. The half-decent stuff, not the grog of journeys.
He really must be three sheets to the wind. Either that, or his life's decided to become a strange dream, and he might as well see what happens in it, before he wakes up back in his cabin with cargo to check.
The spinning bottle halts, pointing at the bishop. "Ah! A dare, or a truth?" Constantin says with unfortunate relish.
Petrus at least looks as exasperated by all this as Vasco feels. He sighs, and then says, with wan amusement, "The Light always points us to the truth."
Constantin grins and takes an overly healthy swig from his own bottle. Then he raises an ever-dramatic finger. "A question, then. Have you ever had a true love , Father?" he asks, with a great lean, a leer, and his eyebrows threatening to mutiny from his face altogether.
"Once," the bishop says, quietly. "She… was a good woman, and very probably unaware of my feelings. May the Light envelop her soul."
Constantin's face falls like a landslide. "Oh. I'm sorry. Forgive my blundering."
There's a silence, small but no less awkward for it. Then, unexpectedly, de Sardet says, "My mother used to speak that way of my father." Vasco looks over sharply at that, and she's staring into her cup. "The stories she used to tell of his exploits… there was a way her voice changed, and I always knew it would be about him." She swallows. "Perhaps it's foolish of me, but sometimes I think it would be wonderful, to love someone the way she did him. A way that makes me tell stories of them to anyone who will listen, with my voice so..." She abruptly returns to her bottle, and Constantin puts a hand on her elbow in comfort. Her face is... Vasco realises he's still watching her. He's not sure he can stop.
Unusual, to hear a noble speak of love with any regard. Vasco tries not to think of the book of verse under his bed.
"Not foolish at all," some idiot says, voice quiet, and a moment later he realises it was him. He takes a heavy swig of rum, and tries to ignore the way she's staring at him with a sort of soft, surprised look.
Then it's gone, and she's looking at the wall with a smile that all at once seems not entirely genuine, before glancing to her knees, almost seeming ashamed. She blinks away whatever was on her face, attaching a look of polite amusement, and she's responding to something Constantin said - or rather, declared. It’s so swift, the way she can mask herself.
A few more turns pass, including Kurt giving Vasco the question and him choosing "truth, unless it's something classified by the Admiralty."
Kurt snorts and says, "I once heard Nauts have to get their arses tattooed. So they can moon passing ships with their rank. You know, if all else fails." He's drunk enough he's sniggering at his own stupid question.
Vasco raises a sceptical brow. "I suppose you heard this in the Coin tavern, did you? Well, in answer to your question…" He takes a long, flourished drink of his bottle. "Naut secrets." Then he smiles like a shark.
"Oh, come on!" Kurt cries, while there's a snort or two around their odd little circle. Constantin is all-out guffawing. The sounds echo off the high ceilings and marble floor that make the lot of them, and what they're doing, seem even more incongruous.
Even… yes, even de Sardet is barely holding it together at something so bawdily stupid. Just for a moment her eyes shine, bright and green, and she offers him the sort of half-grin he usually sees before she climbs in through some ill-advised window - then it breaks into huffed, undignified snickering, the sort that makes that striking noble face so very human.
He swiftly looks away, blaming the warmth in his face on the drink. Things like this are why he rarely drinks with his crew. He adds, "It concerns matters that're… essential for strategy."
Kurt's brows knit. "Come on, that's a cop-out and you know it. Sailor, if Naut arses are essential for strategy, I'll eat my damn hat."
Vasco sits back on his palms and raises his eyebrows. "But can you prove they aren't?"
"Damn it," Kurt mutters, "I'm too drunk for this."
Constantin - frighteningly bright this many drinks in; the willowy dainty has the tolerance of an ox - says, "Captain!" An expectant, confused silence ensues, and then: "The Naut captain, not you, Kurt." He nods to Vasco. "I think you'll find that power is now yours."
It's not command of a ship. But it's better than being asked more stupid questions. When Vasco spins the bottle, it lands - fortuitously - on Kurt, who glares at him when asked about how "I was once told that the Coin Guard have to pay the barracks to use their own latrines. That true?" (Turns out not. He's almost disappointed.)
Petrus asks Constantin whether he powders his face, seeing as he clearly perfumes his hair. ("Yes, thank you very much, quite often. It's the height of Sérène fashion. From a man who clearly waxes his moustache." Vasco surreptitiously sniffs a strand of his own hair, wondering if its scent still clings; oil isn't perfume and it helps to make it more manageable, especially after a day of being tossed about the deck by the wind, but the lad has a point. Constantin catches him at it and looks far too amused.)
Siora's turn is rather more serious; it's to dare Kurt to show her where he's been injured most recently, because the man refuses to take enough health potions, as if they and De Sardet can't buy five hundred more. So that turn ends with Siora's amused, frustrated sigh and Kurt rolling his trouser leg up so she can work on his knee, because even a tipsy Siora is better for healing than a sober any of the rest of them. Except perhaps Petrus.
And after a turn or two more, when Siora has asked him what Naut piercings mean - "Treacherous crossings completed. Or we simply like them" - it's Vasco's turn to spin the cursed bottle.
It lands… on de Sardet, who looks startled and laughs. "Here I was enjoying all this wonderful blackmail material."
He thinks about it, oddly paralysed, when his job is always to think ahead. What will he say, if she chooses dare? He could perhaps think of something, but he's watched her run around enough for others' whims. It just seems cruel to extend that. And truth… he has no idea.
"I'll choose truth," she says, brightly. "It makes such a change when you're a diplomat."
Shit.
He raises a brow. "I'm sure it does." And then the question falls out of his mouth, far too earnest for such a foolish game, but he can't quite help himself: "If you could take a ship to anywhere in the world, where would it be?"
She blinks at him. And then puts a hand to her mouth and seems to think, really think it over. "Do you know, I've never thought that far. I had these… dreams of vast oceans and great forests, but I never solidified them to any particular place. It never seemed worthwhile. I always thought I'd go on business for the palace, or" - and she puts a hand on Constantin's arm and smiles apologetically, addressing him now - "where you went."
Constantin blinks at her, looking like he's just taken a blow. He must have known that? But he says, "Surely you must have had dreams of somewhere. There's no need to hold back on my account."
"Honestly?" She smiles, and leans her face on her hand. "I dreamt of perhaps seeing some mysterious new place where they had no idea who I was, with wonderful, fascinating people." And she smiles at Siora, who looks startled and touched. And then… astonishingly, when she's had a few, she talks with her hands almost as much as her cousin. "With coasts, and great trees!" And then she looks at Vasco, and there's something bashful in it. "And when I was young, sometimes I dreamt of... a true ocean voyage, not the brief, rare journeys to Thélème or the Bridge. To truly try and understand where the great ships I'd see in port went. And I realised on our journey that, well. There I was." She ducks her head. "So I've gone… well, I've had everything I was looking for." And then she laughs, awkwardly. "Forgive me, I'm going on." She drinks, with a huff of laughter.
“I… see,” he says, and perhaps he’s beginning to.
He thinks he's still looking at her. He's had enough passengers be matter-of-fact, or regard a ship voyage as an unfortunate necessity; even he and his fellow Nauts view the sea as their home, not the ideal home. He didn't think that her lack of complaint was more than politeness, and then arriving at the island in one piece. Perhaps at the start he was too busy staring at the dainty twirling across the decks to see the comparatively solemn one quietly smiling in Constantin's wake, making sure her sword was clean after a fight with a damn beast - the one who kept bothering the crew with questions and made Jonas laugh the second day they were at sea. The one who exchanged wary pleasantries and awkward smiles with him but left him to his business.
Making bad time and too airy about it by half, he thought of her on that first day, considering the tide would soon be against them and someone would very literally have his head if they lost the son of the damn Prince d'Orsay. Intelligent enough to be an issue, if she took a dislike to him and the crew. Sharply intelligent, and assessing him just as much in return. And… honourable. More honourable than he'd expected, though perhaps she thought that the voyage would begin faster with the cabin boy on board and the captain less twitchy. (No, that was unfair. Her rank might have protected her and she had a bodyguard, but she went into a room full of thugs to drag Jonas out by his ear. And Flavia and Lauro would have found a way to "casually" warn him if they thought they had a problem passenger, and there was none of that.) And she was clearly, exhaustedly fond of her cousin. So fond she'd fight a monster for the lad and, as they found out later, drag him out of a den of kidnappers.
A strange woman. A brave one, he was beginning to think, on that first day - genuinely so, even behind the air of casual confidence that came with her rank.
Now he’s seen her fight nádaigs and argue down Bridge captains just so her friend can truly grieve, and laugh at his muttered comments even when the Inquisitors have just threatened to burn them all... Now he’s seen her break into a damn Naut warehouse to find his file and try to tell him haltingly what little she remembered of the d’Arcy family - even with her seeming confused horror at Naut contracts that had made him think she’d never understand, that it would be yet another instance of Nauts being strangers to be avoided…
Well. Now he knows. But he suspects thinking about that will just get him more turned around.
The foolish game goes on. Constantin finds a quill and ink from upstairs and draws a sloppy moustache on a stern portrait of his grandfather, at de Sardet's behest - not much of a dare when he was clearly raring to do it. More meaningless questions, more rambling stories as the drinks go down too easy - until, unfortunately, Constantin has the bottle. And it lands on de Sardet. He says, with relish, "Well, cousin. Truth or dare?"
De Sardet laughs. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I? Let’s see… dare.”
And Constantin raises his chin and looks far too proud of himself. That should be the sign everything’s about to go wrong. “I dare you… oh! Remember this one from our old days? I dare you to kiss the prettiest one in the room. Myself not included.” And he smiles like a fiend.
Petrus starts, “Your Excellency, I doubt that - “
De Sardet gapes at Constantin. It’s almost fascinating – in its awful rarity, like a shipwreck – to see the diplomat mask fall and her truly panic. “I really don’t think that would be...” Of course she'll call off this foolish game.
But then all sense goes out of the window. Because her gaze is trailing past the rest of the circle and lands with surreptitious specificity – oh.
Vasco stares back at her. Raises a brow. Really?
Green eyes widen. And if he thought he’d been deceived by drink and the lanterns... the way she blinks, caught-out, flushes and looks swift to a wall like it fascinates her – that confirms it.
...Really?
He stares at her carefully turned-away face, where she seems to be examining the parquetry. There's not been even a hint of impropriety, other than some seemingly heartfelt compliments on his sailing. He’s had the odd land-dweller over the years – safer than crew, though truth be told he rarely had the time either way – and he’s gathered that a fair few find him handsome, but the high-born are different. Enough nobles are put off by how sea-weathered Nauts are and a faceful of tattoos. Some of the dainties seem to find their ink exotic, good for a quick tumble, a little scandal and denial in the morning, but... she's never seemed the type. There's something too damn earnest about her. He suspects she lies to nations and politicians; not those she knows, or… might want to befriend. She doesn't seem the type to mock, unless it's an Inquisitor.
She darts one more glance at him – as if to check he’s forgotten her misstep – but he still hasn’t looked away. Instead they’re caught, and he knows they’re staring stupidly at each other, but... it’s the damn drink.
Pretty.
And now he’s falling into considering it, the thought like a riptide that’s been lying somewhere innocuous and just waiting for him to be drunk and stupid enough. She even looks like a noble - he thought it upon their first meeting. Tall and striking, with those sharp marble-carved cheekbones and the practical tied-back hair: shrewd, a court portrait waiting to happen. Those eyes, like moss. So very warm when she wants them to be – and he suspects those moments are the truth of her. The sweep of her lashes when she laughs, the soft-looking fullness of her mouth – he supposes it wouldn’t be a trial.
“Ah,” Constantin says, with the smug certainty of a body dropping off a cliff. “I see you have somewhat briny tastes. Wouldn’t you agree, captain?”
That's enough to break their foolish trance.
De Sardet glares at her cousin. “Constantin.”
Sadly at that moment a nádaig doesn’t smash through the window, nor does a Bridge delegation burst through the doors with a message of war. Either might be preferable. Shit.
“How about this?” – and Constantin gestures with an arm, still holding a bottle. “There’s a storage cupboard over there, to save your dignity. Honestly, it can be a kiss, or you can arm wrestle, for all I care. Just as long as it sounds like something interesting is happening. And as long as he stops sulking.”
“Sulking,” Vasco echoes, flatly. (Certainly it’d cause a diplomatic incident if he assassinated the governor of Tír Fradí, and Cabral would have him keelhauled, but at least de Sardet might help him.) He squints at the door and wonders -
“What’s it for?” de Sardet says, of all things. She too is staring at the door.
Constantin looks at her like she’s an idiot – ironic, considering. “Grain, I think. And it leads down to the kitchens. Does it matter? ”
It’s not about mattering; it’s about holding off the inevitable.
And she looks at Vasco – and lingers, gaze tracing over his face, just brushing his mouth before she can quite hide it. Like she’s actually considering it. Like the reasonable noble passenger is willing to take him into a room, take his face in her hands and -
“Will it make you be quiet?” falls out of Vasco’s mouth, and then he realises he’s said it.
Constantin grins. “Few things can. But on this topic, yes.”
Vasco sighs and stands, offering a businesslike hand to her across the circle. “De Sardet.”
For a moment she just looks at him, wide-eyed - and then she takes his hand, climbing to her feet. The others might be staring at them, but he can’t bring himself to care.
Somehow her hand doesn’t leave his, even as they’re entering the storeroom and closing the door behind them. He can’t help noticing that. Or the warmth of it, and – they took off their gloves, sometime when this all started.
Then they part. He leans against the wall, and de Sardet says, quietly, ducking her head, “I think Constantin’s remembering that dare rather more fondly than I do.”
He lowers his head to catch her gaze, looking at her questioningly.
Yes, she’s definitely flushed, eyes shining. He’s never seen her like this before. He doesn’t know if it’s the drink or the embarrassment of their situation. Both, most likely. He’s probably as bad. She says, “Neither of us were often picked, but him… moreso than me. It happened to me only once, I think.” She smiles, wan and not a smile at all.
He frowns at that, because how someone could look at her and not think she was -
She touches two fingers to her mark of bonding, as if that explains everything. As if it explains anything.
“They were idiots,” he says, matter-of-factly. (And for a moment he remembers the brief couple of times he’d be in barracks or midships; the attempts at distraction, the foolish dares to flatter the sea-given, so then he can pretend at least someone wants him. Not like his parents. It’s not often mattered, a Naut is a Naut, but… children can be cruel.)
Her eyes widen, mouth opening, and for a moment she doesn’t look very much like Legate de Sardet at all.
“I said ‘something interesting,’ cousin, not a diplomatic meeting!” comes the muffled call through the door, and Vasco reconsiders his urge to strangle Constantin.
She looks away from him again, taking a safe step back. “Yes, well. I think… What do you think of, of arm-wrestling, Captain?” And she laughs, nervous and thready and like he’s never heard from her before.
And perhaps it’s that she deserves more than some foolish young fops rejecting her out of hand, even if it was long ago. Or perhaps some young, stupid sea-given is standing there, feeling the sting of such rejections all over again. Would it really be such a dreadful idea? he thinks - and then he realises he’s said it.
The words hang in the silence, loud against the muted muttering of voices outside the door.
And now her eyes are definitely wide, and for a moment she just looks at him. “You mean… what Constantin suggested?”
She's a damned noble, casually entitled and wielding her title like a weapon. By the tides, she's royalty. And he’s just...
“Yes – I mean no.” He grimaces, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Ignore me, de Sardet. The drink’s gone to my head.”
But that considering look is on her face again, her brows rising and her eyes tracing his face. “It might be easier to get it over with. That way I’ll have to be less creative with this story when he asks,” she says, with a lopsided smile that he realises he’s staring at. “And Constantin is always telling me to live a little. Surely a kiss with a handsome young captain would be one for his books.”
He sighs. “You can have this, for your ‘books.’ And then we’ll never mention it again, or the admiral will toss me over the side.” He realises, dimly, that he’s taken a step or two towards her, a hand reaching out as if to touch her. He stops, clenching his fingers.
But she’s… stepping towards him, not away. “Of course. And we can both pretend that I don’t find you…” she starts.
“...Pretty,” he finishes with a tilt of his head, his voice flat. But he’s unable to keep the laughter entirely off his face.
Her startled laughter again – genuine this time, the sort he’s rarely heard, soft and smoky and unexpectedly going down his spine. (The drink. It’s definitely the drink.) She grimaces, more human than the marble-faced diplomat, unbecoming and yet... “That, yes. I’m so sorry.”
“No, I’m flattered,” he says, dry but too honest. He stands still and pointedly waits for her as she takes one tentative step towards him, then another.
She gives him another moment, carefully still except for where her hands are restless at her sides - as if she expects him to wrench open the door and flee, or maybe lock himself in the cellars. She gives him that awkward, endearing half-smile again. “Don’t worry, it won’t be a moment. Just enough to let Constantin… well.” And then she sobers and she’s looking at him, eyes bright and roving over his face.
He forgets how tall she is, sometimes, until she’s standing before him – the lean grace of her, the sort she uses but seems so unaware of. He feels her hand on his cheek, gentle but sword-calloused from a rapier. Her eyes linger on his mouth. She leans in, slowly, and he feels the heat of her. He closes his eyes, and then…
Her mouth brushes his: light and sweet and barely a peck, something good for parties and court. But her lips are softer than he thought they’d be, and somehow he can’t help chasing that thought, chasing her -
The plan was to stay still, rather than running away to the nearest dock and setting sail. To let the noble have her kiss, and then it might be a joke for bored evenings around her campfire until he can weigh anchor - or better yet, forgotten when the drink wears off, just another foolish moment in his extended shore leave.
The plan was not to kiss back. And yet his mouth is moving under hers.
She tenses, hand tightening a little against his face in her surprise, and then… she doesn’t move away.
He hears her draw in a small, sharp breath before she leans in, their lips meeting again: a longer brush this time, questioning, that becomes a press. Her mouth lingers, and he - he’s leaning into it, he realises dimly, and... they're still kissing.
Her thumb strokes over his cheek, his chin, absentminded and with that unexpected quiet sweetness she tries so often to hide, because courts think it's weakness. It gathers behind his eyes and makes him ache, and he tells himself that's just the drink, even as he kisses her harder. And then he can't think of anything at all except the softness of her lips, the brush of her lashes against his skin, the hot face against his. She tilts his head to find the right angle, chasing the kiss – and perhaps that’s what makes him well and truly open his mouth against hers, needing to feel just a little more of her. She makes a small, startled sound he suspects he’ll hear in his dreams. And then the careful, polite highborn noble opens up for him in return and pulls him closer, both hands on his face now, and all he can do is sway into it, even as he knows he’s deepening the kiss far beyond something respectable.
She tastes like rum, and it feels… It feels like that first proper climb on the ropes, or having to dive off the side, heart in your ears, the second before you hit the water. Praying you haven't misjudged the jump, everything in you tingling and illuminated and alive. He hasn't done something this stupid in years. And he suspects it's been some time for her, though why would anyone not…? She kisses like it's been an eternity and she's felt every moment of it, mouth hot and fierce against his and yet somehow… disbelieving. He can't drag himself away. His hand tightens against wool and silk and embroidery - her sleeve, probably creasing that fine court doublet. He's had filthier, and yet he’s not just unsteady from rum. He's had those where it could be anyone with them, and it's no more than scratching a mutual itch. This...isn't that. It's…
She breaks away for air, sudden enough it leaves him dazed. They stare at each other, panting. His head swims, his heartbeat loud in his ears. He's about to apologise, to say that he only wanted to give her damned cousin something to gossip about…
Her eyes are dark, and her mouth's reddened, and she's looking at him like she's somewhere between shocked that happened at all, and like the idea's just occurred to her and she can't believe it's taken so long.
He pulls her back in and kisses her like a man drowning. She makes a startled, relieved sound against his mouth. Her hand drops from his back, scrambles for a moment and finds his waist, tightening against the leather of his coat until he thinks that somehow through four layers she’ll find skin. Tides, he wishes. He suspects she does, too. All his irritation at being scullied, his impatience to return to his ship – he wasn’t prepared for this. He’s not sure anything could have quite prepared him.
He can’t help himself; can’t help pulling back, stroking a stray strand of hair out of her face. Soft - her skin is so soft, and flushed pink, and he can't believe he ever found her remote-looking. He just needs to look at her: to see the sweetness of her red mouth, the way her lashes brush her cheeks as her gaze follows his hand and then she looks at him, eyes moss-green and wary and so very wide. And she turns her face into his touch, eyes still on his. He stares, wondering how he never knew. How it seems she didn’t either.
He doesn't know which one of them moves; how they end up kissing again, her mouth soft and hot and desperate against his.
They both freeze at a sharp bash of the door. He realises abruptly that his hand is on her back, clenched in her doublet, and he’s quite certain the Lady de Sardet’s tongue is in his mouth. That her hand’s still cupping his face, gentle rather than demanding like the rest of her - as if anything about him could be delicate, as if -
Another knock on the door, and it shakes in its frame. “You can’t keep tormenting them, Constantin."
And then his arms are empty, and de Sardet is throwing open the door and saying, tone bright and only just avoiding manic, "Kurt!"
"You all right, green-blood?"
She laughs, and if it sounds breathless, it’s probably just Vasco’s fevered imagination. One he thought he’d learned to repress when he was younger and stupider and not usually in charge of a crew, but apparently not. She says, "Fine. We were just… wondering how long we could go until Constantin thought we'd fallen into the larder."
While she’s distracting Kurt, Vasco briefly wipes a hand across his mouth. Then he stands there, and crosses his arms, and tries not to think about what he's just done. A brief, stupid mistake, that's all.
The passenger who got him scullied. The niece of the Prince d'Orsay.
(A woman who fought a monster for her cousin. Who stops to help anyone who asks for it. Who actually wanted to sail with him and his crew, and speaks with quiet reverence of love - )
It could be worse, he supposes: at least it wasn't Constantin. She may be decent, but that's no reason to go sticking his tongue down her throat like some starstruck novvie.
He sighs. “I take it we’re no longer imprisoned?”
Kurt gestures grandly, and De Sardet says, “Freedom!”
For the briefest moment her eyes meet his, and he feels them both make the decision.
They head out of the damned storeroom that he’s going to do his best to forget. They have a mission. And no matter how often the crew find veiled ways to call him boring and think he hasn’t noticed – usually while they’re five deep in the rum themselves – he is, if nothing else, a professional. People make drunken mistakes around Nauts. He’s encountered enough blackmail material that he’s tried to consign to the back of his head over the years.
Kurt snorts and says, "I bet on arm-wrestling, myself."
She gives Kurt a sheepish grin, and even with her drunkenness, it’s convincing as a thing of awkward comradery, rather than having been kissed half-senseless in a cupboard by an idiot. “Arm-wrestling, and plotting our escape.” A diplomat through and through. He’d find it impressive, if he weren’t thinking of -
(The second before she was gone. The softest sigh, like she regretted having to stop. Her eyes on his, dark and startled and again, wondering. Like she was truly seeing him at all for the first time, and – worse – like just for a moment, she was watching him have the same thought about her.)
“There’s a veritable warren under there,” Vasco says, dryly.
“Aha! I knew it!” Constantin calls. “Lady Morange talked about this fascinating new invention, I think she named it something like a ‘panic chamber’?”
“Baffling,” Vasco mutters, and sees them accept it as his usual offhandedness. Perhaps the bishop’s eyes are sharp on him, but the bishop’s eyes are always sharp. He’s not about to answer questions; the man isn’t his admiral.
He sits down, because he’ll play another round or two, for the sake of appearances. It’s doubtful something that stupid will come up again. Then he’ll find an excuse to extract himself and never, ever put himself in a situation this idiotic again. Even if it threatens again to end like -
To end like that.
Constantin says, “I think the bottle was yours, Father.” It’s as de Sardet sits down that Constantin leans over and says in her ear, so quietly that Vasco has to read his lips, “Liar.” For the shortest second, his eyes meet Vasco's - more than long enough. Then he grins at her, brief and smug, before turning and adding with easy lightness, “Ah, I see it’s Kurt’s turn to endure some misfortune.”
For a moment, Vasco feels her eyes on him. He looks up, just long enough to meet green eyes – worried, and dark, and thoughtful, and with that look where she’s just learned some new piece of information and is wondering whether it’ll be relevant. Whether she should do anything about it.
He looks away first, and watches the damn bottle spin.