Molly meets Darque. Love at first...wait. He's blind...
Gerard is in his cups with a tall, bearded, and grim Minosan captain. The captain's rich brown wavy hair is shot with grey, and his red and brown velvets have seen better days. Oddly, he's wearing two eyepatches, one over each eye, and he carries a quarterstaff, leaned against his shoulder, rather than a cutlass. Gerard laughs uproariously at something, presumably by his companion. Molly arrives at the door in the unusual company of a grizzled and thoroughly drunken elderly seaman, who may have just recently been seen leaving this establishment. "That one?" She asks with incredulity. "The one at Danger's table?"
Darque rumbles, "She was last seen rolling round and round the whirlpool, trying to paddle out of it."
Molly tosses a coin to the old sailor in response to a slurred and mumbled answer and moves further into the room. She quickly aquires a mug and a bottle of rum and, with determined agenda writ large on her face, heads towards Gerard and Darque, bottle held out before her like a beacon of, well, rum. "Captain Danger, what a pleasure to find you here." She gives a little nod towards Darque, pauses uncertainly, taking in the two patches, and adds "And your companion, too, of course."
Darque cocks his head, and sniffs, twice.
Gerard looks over from his reversed chair. "Ah! Molly McGlanworthcuddy. How's the gearwife life? Have a seat!"
Molly slides into a seat, uncorks the bottle in one of the traditional Minosan manners- with her teeth- and after pouring her mug makes a show of placing the bottle to the center of the table. "Oh, the gearwife life is fine as can be. Must be, as I haven't managed to blow myself or the husband up yet. Not nearly wet enough, though, I do have to say."
Gerard just blinks at Molly, seems to be about to say something, possibly of a rude color, when his companion clears his throat. "Oh! Darque, this is Molly Glanworth, formerly Bloody Cute Molly of Discordia's crew. Molly, this is Captain Darque of the Echo Rei."
Darque lifts up slightly, not quite standing, and bows his head. "Charmed," he rumbles.
A grin of victory blooms on Molly's lips as she bows her head to Darque, purely out of habit, one might assume. Though Gerard may well mistake that grin for one a bit more bawdy in nature. "Captain Darque, is it? How fortuitous! Why, I've just been out makin' the occasional inquiry as to your whereabouts."
Darque grunts and sits down. "I don't owe you money, do I?"
Molly 's head shakes as she answers, "No, sir. Never met you before in my life. But I'd heard rumours that you've just come in from out Minos way. Might be I have a few questions." She looks to Gerard and adds, "But I'm happy to hold my tongue if I'm intruding on some important drinking time."
Both men snort. Gerard offers, "Women enhance drinking time. Well, some women. Even the married ones." Darque screws up his face at that bit.
Molly chuckles and replies, "Thus my bringin' of the rum. I know how to pull my weight, sirs. Since I'm not in a position to be doin' much in the way of lap-sitting."
Darque hmms. "I suppose married women do take up more chairs. Never looked at it as a seating arrangement." His hand finds his cup.
Gerard offers, "Darque was married once. Didn't much care for it."
Molly suggests, "Not for everyone, no. Can be a bit like goin' for a walk in the rigging sometimes, marriage." She takes a sip from her mug. "So." She nudges the talk away from the dangerous shallows of marriage like a conversational tugboat, "Minos. Things are getting worse quickly now?"
Gerard watches Darque. 'Course the man in blind, so he doesn't know that, but Molly does.
Darque snorts again, swigs his drink. "Smells like the underside of an undine's arse. It's all the water going somewhere and not comin' back, see. We're getting marshes fed by rotting sealife that don't make it out in time. Like kelp, mostly, but some fish."
Molly suggests, "Not for everyone, no. Can be a bit like goin' for a walk in the rigging sometimes, marriage." She takes a sip from her mug. "So." She nudges the talk away from the dangerous shallows of marriage like a conversational tugboat, "Minos. Things are getting worse quickly now?"
Molly 's nose wrinkles in sypathetic disgust. She mutters, "Never actually sniffed one of those, myself, an' ain't 'tall likely to ask the undine I know to let me, but I reckon I catch the idea. You got any idea how much we've lost? I mean, how big are these new rotmarshes?"
Darque shrugs. "All the islands are surrounded by them. I figure the deeps are the only refuge for the fish. And those damned crabs are all over the place. Damn things are like cockroach monkeys mated with lobster turtles."
Molly takes a swallow from her mug, a loud, audible swallow. She grumbles, "Sound just lovely. Just the sort of things I'd want home to get known for." She looks from Dargue to Gerard, her next question going to whoever cares to answer, "Anyone out there got any plans? What's the word from the Commodores?"
Darque growls, "They're sitting on their arses. Well...not exactly true. They're battening up THEIR sphere of influence, just taking care of their own symptoms, not lookin' at the problem."
Gerard says, "Julian had a brilliant idea using trumps, but that may not actually work."
Molly raises an eyebrow to Darque, not that he'd notice. "I'd've thought better of the Commodores. Guess the high'n mighty are the same all over." She blinks and tips her mug towards Gerard. "Er...present company excepted, 'course, sir." She gives a little nod and says, "The Lyonesse funneling idea? I think it's completely mad. Don't mean it won't worse 'course. Probably more likely a mad idea would be the trick, innit?"
Darque lets out a bark of a laugh and toasts the girl, then drinks deep.
Gerard simply snorts, "Hah. If these people are supposed to be reflections of my family as some seem to think, they're doing a piss poor job. I think they've just grown complacent."
Molly grunts into her rum. After swallowing a good bit more of it she thunks the mug down and grumbles, "I don't like it. Don't like bein' out here doing a bunch of bloated nothin' while my home drains away to Depths knows where."
Darque's's mood turns sour, and he barks out, "Won't do you no good being there, girlie. That's why I left! Nothing the morons in charge can do, we're turning into Alhambra as they make bargins with each other and build longer docks trying to reach the oceans, and the cooks try to figure out how to eat those damn crabs. Which you CAN'T, by the way. They smell worse than my exwife. Something's taking our water, and all we can do is go elsewhere and take someone else's water. WAY OF THE WORLD, girlie. WAY OF THE WORLD."
This time, it's Gerard's turn to clear his throat.
Molly leans back in her seat, as if trying to avoid the flow of Darque's considerable wrath. As he winds it up, she snaps back at him with, "I can't accept that. Minos's always floated with pride, and I can't see us scattered to the winds to become...What are you suggesting?" She continues on, not noticing Gerard's throat clearing, "Water piracy? How would we transport it anyways? Or you saying the best bet is to cut our moorings and leave Minos to rot?" She pauses to take an irate breath and finally notices Gerard again. "Er. Sorry, sirs."
Gerard suddenly looks thoughtful. "Water pirates. That has some merit..." His voice wanders off as he thinks.
Darque say, "Minos is already rotting! Let the Salt Wives figure out what to do with it. A ship can't sail with its hull mired in muck, missy."
Molly places her hands firmly on the table and leans forward towards Darque far enough that she rises from her seat. "No, but a crew gets out the ropes and shovels an' they dig and they HEAVE until their ship is free. What they don't do is just give up an' jump overboard to the sharks." She adds after a breath or two a rough, "Sir." She settles back down and looks at Gerard over her drink as she sucks it down.
Darque barks another one of those one-note laughs. "We ARE the sharks." He takes another swig as if that's somehow a final word on the matter.
Gerard seems too distracted to follow the outbreak. "Molly...the Optomist...how does it work? Can you and your husband reproduce the motors?"
Molly grumps wordlessly towards Darque and turns to just stare at Gerard for a moment. "The Optimist, Captain? she's steam-powered, but I haven't been allowed into her workings." She adds a small, almost unspoken, "Yet." She rolls her rum around its container for a moment before answering, "I imagine my husband could pull off most anything, but I don't see why. Minos has ships aplenty, and steam won't help with the muck."
Gerard's eyes twinkle. "No, but sails have a bitch of a time pulling iceburgs."
Darque slams his tankard down. One gets the impression that he'd be blinking at Gerard if those eyepatches weren't there. "You're mad," he states, simply.
Molly almost laughs, almost, but that eye twinkle might be infectious. "Aha! They do. That they do." She looks to Darque and nods, turning back to Gerard quickly. "You are mad, Cap'n. Quite mad. An' this is a mad, mad situation we're in." She whips a box the size of a large book out of her coat and starts pushing keys and flipping levers. "But to pull that off, we'd need a good idea of the rate of drainage and...probably a number of the special ships. Hmmmm." Ticky ticky ticky goes her fingers on the box.
Gerard says, "Push or pull, no matter to me. Minos herself will melt them."
Darque simply grunts.
Molly makes a note in a small book and slips both book and box back into her pockets. "That may work as a bit of a stopgap, but unless you plan to fund a fleet of iceships for the next few hundred years, someone's going to have to find a way to plug the actual leak."
Gerard says, "A really big rock down the whirlpool?"
Molly says, "Same sort of pulling ship an' a bloody great big platform might help with that, too." She takes another sip and turns to Darque. "Speaking of. Who was it was paddling their way out of the whirlpool? You were telling a tale when I arrived. They see anything out there?"
Darque....well, stares at Molly. The eyes are hidden, but the body language is there. "It's an expression. Like being up a creak without an oar. No one with any sense goes NEAR Krast's Lament."
Molly slumps in her seat. It's probably loud enough that Darque can actually hear it. She says lamely, "Well...I've known plenty of folk without any sense." She gives Gerard a look that might be a flounder for backup, or might be an apology for looking like a fool.
Gerard says "I have sense. I keep it in my codpieces for safe keeping, with my loose change and a compass."
That clearly wasn't exactly the sort of backup Molly had been looking for, as she slams down another swallow of rum. She doesn't seem ready to leave the whirpool alone, though. "Couldn't we fit up a ship near to scuttle-ready, a leaky old barge or sommat, load her with a boulder, set her course for the 'pool, and pray. A lot? Or...start sending all our used-up ships out there. Eventually have to plug the hole, we send enough down, right?"
Gerard shakes his head, as Darque seems to be settling down to some serious drinking. "No one knows what caused that thing. It's been there forever, and we never lost sea levels before. Besides Krastos, that is...it's said that's where the Lost Sea was. But it's been ages since that happened."
Molly nods, quiets and, herself, settles down into some serious drinking.