Pilar's home had too few windows for Billy's taste. He gazed at the two that were near the door as though the afternoon light that was demurely peeking through them were a lover he'd hated to lose.
Aubrieta watched his slack, sunburned face, his vacant green eyes, and his salt-dried, bitten up lips without any shame or concern at being caught. It had been her idea to uncover the windows at all, as neither her mother nor Lorry minded one way or the other. Now she was reaping the benefits of a choice normally reserved for parades, riots, festivals, fires, public executions, and other types of situations that brought people out into the cobbled street.
Lorrigan, whose pale, lightly bearded face was busy embodying all the worry that Billy's couldn't hold, scrubbed one of his sore hands in his messy blond hair and uselessly tugged at the twine-bound ponytail that hung behind his neck.
"So we're where we started," he said, the words pushing out of his mouth like the lazy breeze from a collapsing sail. "And with barely any time."
"You're not exactly where you started," Pilar soothed, her left hand knowingly searching for Lorrigan's right. Not finding it on the table, she began reaching tentatively for the back of his neck. Embarrassed that she may catch him fidgeting, Lorrigan stopped swirling his ponytail around his fingers and took the smaller, darker hand into his own.
"Yer man'll only buy it when the spell were broke," he admitted. "I see 'is point, o'course, but it doesn't 'elp us any, does it?"
Billy finally realized that Aubrieta was staring at him. Her eyes, dark and mysterious to him, seemed to gleam with delight at being caught at last. Clearing his throat needlessly, he turned his attentions to his long-cold tea, picking both the cup and the saucer up from the table to sip at it. His red cheeks grew even ruddier, and Aubrieta pulled some of her thick black hair over her shoulder to put it over her face for a moment.
"I did tell you to wait until I came along with you," Pilar smiled smoothly. "He's very self-serving, and has to be cautiously backed into doing anything that remotely looks like a favor for anyone else. It's a good thing you had wit enough not to pay him to find a willing mage."
"I still don't see what the problem with that would've been," Billy complained, breaking away from his chilly tea cup. "We're castin' off tomorrow early; we won't find a body who can break the spell before then by ourselves."
"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving tomorrow?" Pilar demanded at once, squeezing Lorrigan's hand. Billy could hear only urgency in her tone, but Lorrigan, whose heart's every corner reverberated with the memories of that same tone being used in times past, closed his eyes and sighed.
"I'd planned to tell ya," he admitted quietly, burying his annoyance at his compatriot as deeply as he could. "But not just now. Or like that."
Billy stared down into the cold brown water in his cup with renewed awkwardness, feeling the weight of the "Ya great idjit" that Lorrigan hadn't said.
Pilar stopped squeezing Lorrigan's hand, and he opened his eyes to gaze at her. In the silence, she felt her chest heat up and throb, as though nearly half a lifetime hadn't gone by since the days when the two had freely acted as any randy young pirate and carefree half-copper soothsayer might act. Words that she couldn't afford to say stuck painfully in her throat, and Lorrigan watched her swallow them as a dull ache grew in the bottom of his belly.
Aubrieta gazed at their stranded desire, huge and heavy, like an ocean bound vessel run aground. She could almost hear the shared inward groaning- the choices that couldn't be undone, the debts that had been paid in the wrong ways- and all the time, the time, the merciless rush of time that never ran backward. The young girl turned sharply away from the scene and charged decisively into the kitchen, busying herself with whatever containers she could get her hands onto- the biscuit bin, the tea bin, the fruit basket, the bread box.
"Principesa?" Pilar asked, instantly torn away from her own intimate feelings by the steely claws of motherly responsibility. "What's the matter? Bugs? Mice?"
"We're run out of things, Mama," Aubrieta shot back. She hadn't meant to sound so sharp, but couldn't gulp the words back once they were out of her mouth. "I'm going to the market."
"Right now? While we have company?" Pilar asked, a bit winded by the edge in her daughter's words. She unwound herself from Lorrigan, who straightened himself guiltily in his chair.
"They don't show signs of moving," Aubrieta reasoned, looking over her shoulder at her mother. "If I wait any later, all the vegetables the sellers have left will be half rotted."
"When did we run out of any vegetable, principesa mia?" Pilar replied with a touch of wonder lingering in her tone. "Sirs, I'm sorry to have to turn you out, but-"
"No, don't do that, Mama, only... only send Ser William with me," Aubrieta interrupted as she turned all the way around and leaned on the counter behind her. "You won't mind, will you, Ser William?"
Lorrigan raised an eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest, looking for all the world like his ill-fated father, who had desperately taken work on a ship that flew no flag and had never returned.
Billy looked around himself, startled. The idea of going to market with a young woman that he was still sure was a real and true witch, even if she weren't an entirely evil one, made his tongue thick in his mouth.
Pilar smiled a small, careful smile, beginning to understand her daughter's machinations. "I don't know that Ser William will want to-"
"O'course 'e don't mind it," Lorrigan piped up, slapping Billy firmly on the back. "It's no real man takes occasion to keepin' a woman safe."
"I ain't keen to-" Billy began, turning to Lorrigan with a rapidly paling face.
"To lettin' our Aubri get snatched up out there, certainly, I know," Lorrigan cut in, putting both his hands on Billy's shoulders. "Good man, good man. G'wan and wait for 'er by the door, won't ya? Just 'old 'er purse, don't let nobody steal it. Or if you're not confident about 'at, 'old th' wee basket."
Aubrieta gave a pleased hum as she momentarily scrunched up her shoulders, then made her way into her room to get her coin purse. Billy, who realized that there would be no getting out of this unwanted guard duty, gulped down his cold tea and stood up from the table.
"It shouldn't take you long," Pilar managed, trying her best to keep her laughter out of her voice. "She didn't tell me that we had run out out of anything, so I doubt you'll have to visit more than two or three stalls to get whatever foodstuffs we seem to so suddenly be in dire need of."
Billy lumbered off toward the door, and shortly afterward, Aubrieta made her way out of her room with her leather coin purse and a small shopping basket that she'd woven herself just a few months before. She scooted to her mother's side and gave her a small kiss.
"Divertiti, e ti porterò frutta extra," she said quietly, knowing that neither man in the room would understand her anyway.
"Solo non portarmi un nipote," Pilar huffed half-seriously, giving her daughter's butt a soft swat.
"Non posso promettertelo," Aubrieta answered airily as she wiggled her butt just a tiny bit in response. With a bounce in her step, she made it to the door, slipped her arm into Billy's, and opened the door. It seemed that the entire house inhaled in the warm, salty street air as the two moved through the door and exhaled pleasantly lavendered breath when it closed behind them.
"It never strikes you that she might be that bit overwise?" Lorrigan chuckled, listening to the sound of Aubrieta begin to strike up a conversation with Billy.
"Of course she is," Pilar sighed, laying her head on Lorrigan's shoulder again. "Don't you believe for a moment that young childen simply forget what they hear and see. And she knew the differences in my patrons, even before I could explain anything- before I knew that I should have, I suppose. At first, I thought it was because she might have some talent in magic, but if she does, it has yet to manifest itself in more than extra impish charm."
"That charm's powerful enough on its own- up we get." Lorrigan slipped his arm around Pilar's back and guided her first to stand, then to sit herself down on his lap. "That's better. And I mean... just... ya know, she made eyes at Billy from the minute 'e stepped in 'ere, and-"
"And you, despite hating it with every fibre of your pirate heart, have a father's spirit," Pilar teased. "She does as she likes, and has for some time. All I ask is that she doesn't bring me back children, although if she did, I'd be a hypocrite not to help her raise them."
"Well, never mind that," Lorrigan grumbled. "It's Bull Billy... 'e 'asn't any genteelity, and-"
"Compared to whom?" Pilar asked, amused. "He'll learn no delicacy from you, Lorry the Lewd."
Lorrigan uttered a single squat grunt in response, sitting just slightly wider in the wooden chair. "Plus, 'e's older'n 'er, and-"
"He's not that much older, from the sound of him, and from the sound of the way you talk to him," Pilar chuckled. "In fact, from the way you talk to him, ser, he's your son."
"Aw, now, c'mon," Lorrigan began to protest, despite knowing that doing so would be useless.
"Come on yourself," Pilar scoffed. "You see yourself in him, is what the matter really is. Another 'feckless idjit' with the shadow of debt stretched long over him, getting a girl into trouble without being able to get her out of it. So you're talking to yourself, trying to tell yourself not to get involved- it won't work, Lorry. Obviously, it's too late to keep him away from unfair working contracts or poor gambling choices; you wouldn't have even dragged him here if he didn't owe you money. I wonder, do you keep him playing cards with you so that he doesn't find some crueler cheat to bleed the coin he hasn't earned yet out of him?"
"Oi, girl, 'at's enough now," Lorrigan complained as he shifted himself underneath Pilar for a moment. He patted her hips gently, a more intimate echo of the mild reproof Aubrieta had just earned a few minutes before. "I wish I'd been able to do right by you back then. You know I do."
"Of course I know that," Pilar purred, leaning back into Lorrigan's chest and reaching a hand up to caress the side of his face. "And now, in a way, you do, dragging every single shipmate who comes across a magical item or who needs their fortune told all the way down here to me. There are plenty of alchemic fiend witches right on the docks who'll do more for less coin."
"I ain't 'elpin' to pay nobody's 'abits," Lorrigan objected, seizing upon the one topic in Pilar's accusations that he felt he could bite into safely. "Took me too long to kick them poisons m'self."
"I daily bless the gods that Aubri isn't into that," Pilar admitted. "She could hide easily enough, if she were, but thank all that's good, she has a righteous hatred for every poison peddler alive. Hates when I take patrons who are fiends, too."
"Well, look what the one bugger did," Lorrigan exclaimed, incredulous.
"That wasn't the poisons," Pilar mused, unconsciously bringing her hand down low enough to toy with the knot of the delicate cloth that covered her eyeless sockets. "Emile was vicious and wicked all on his own."
"Brainweed can't've helped," Lorrigan muttered. His right hand pulled Pilar's right hand up and behind his head, then returned to Pilar's hip once she began playing with his ponytail.
"So Aubri says when we have the same argument," Pilar chuckled, enjoying the feel of Lorrigan's thin, soft hair. "And before I could finally get her to talk about it, she used to play all sorts of awful pranks on him, nevermind that he was her father. Pickpocketing him, putting bugs in his tea- I think once she may have put pepper oil into his wash water."
"He weren't no man, let alone father," Lorrigan grunted as he momentarily squeezed Pilar's hips a bit more tightly. "Deserved what 'e got."
"She says as much. She used to ask precisely when he was hung, but I never told her, because I knew she intended to celebrate it like a holiday," Pilar sighed. "I'll never tell her, but she gets that evil sense of pleasure right from him."
"But she'll wind up a good woman in spite of 'erself," Lorrigan said firmly. "Make some man a strong minded wife, innit?"
"Oh, that's without question," Pilar smiled gently, picking Lorrigan's left hand up from her hip and guiding it around her waist. He adjusted himself by pulling her a bit closer in to himself and snuggling his chin onto her left shoulder. "She'll be a demanding wife and a powerful mother. She's already trying to take me in hand; you've just seen her do it."
Lorrigan gave a short and quiet harumph, sensitive to how close he was to her left ear. "You'll send for me when it happens, won't you? When she gets a man, a child, or both?"
"Of course, Papa," Pilar breathed, leaning back just slightly so that she could be easily kissed on the lips. She knowingly teased the man beneath her further with a well placed left hand. "You know she takes to you. If for some wayward reason she won't do it herself, I'll have someone send you word."
"Oi, c'mon 'en, c'mon," Lorrigan objected, picking his head up from her shoulder and shifting around beneath her again. "I just care for ya both, that's all."
"And that, to most of the rest of the world, is called having a father's instinct," Pilar smirked, feeling his grip both around her waist and on her hip tighten just slightly. "Perhaps it's the slightest bit out of place for a child and a woman who aren't yours, but-"
"Oh, not mine, are ya?" Lorrigan growled, unable to brush off Pilar's teasing and obvious advances any longer. "Aching somethin' mis'rable for a reminder, are ya?"
"A reminder of what, ser?" Pilar shot back with mock indignance. "I'll have you know that I am a respectable lady; it says so on my door."
"Right; up we go 'en, milady," Lorrigan grunted, ungraciously leaning forward to get his right hand under Pilar's skirts. Pilar screeched with pleasure and surprise at once, clamping both of her hands on the firm forearm around her waist as though it were a life-saving bannister. "Teach ya what ain't mine. Ain't mine? This ain't mine? Mmff, from the feel of it-"
"Lorry!" Pilar cried, excited and scandalized. She felt the cool air of the house suddenly rush over her legs and began pawing around in the vain attempt to find the hems of her skirts. Behind her, she could hear Lorrigan's hum of approval as he stuck his adventurous fingers into his mouth for a moment. "I don't know that the children be gone quite that long!"
"Hmm," Lorrigan scoffed, the sound vibrating in his throat and chest. He unabashedly took his fingers out of his mouth and put his right hand dangerously high on Pilar's bare brown thigh. "An' 'at boy knows what's good for 'im, if 'e makes it to that door while I'm still at work 'ere, 'e'll turn 'imself right 'round and march 'imself to a tavern. Take Aubri with 'im, show 'er a good time."
Pilar mashed her lips between her teeth and gave little squeaks of pleasure as Lorrigan shifted himself underneath her yet again. Both partners knew the course was irrevocably set when she sat suddenly upright as though electricity had just run from the pirate's hips straight up the entire length of her spine.
"There we are then, eh? Feel yerself reminded, milady?" A comfortable leer settled itself on Lorrigan's face when he received nothing but barely audible pops of high-pitched sound as a response. "Awright then, let's send me off proper."
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