Raleigh could make out the voice of her captain on the other side of the door immediately after she knocked. She pushed the door open, stepping inside Raines’ quarters. “Captain,” she said, nodding her head in a respectful manner. Her eyes scanned him for a moment, her taupe colored gaze eventually locking with his. She drew in a sharp breath before advancing towards him, standing across the table from him. The smell of the herbs burning in his pipe burned her nostrils as she inhaled, though the smell gave her something of an odd comfort, as it had become as familiar to her as Raines himself. Without further hesitation, she lifted her arm, which had been slightly hidden behind her, and proceeded to drop a freshly severed hand, still dripping blood, onto the table, careful to miss the daggered down map.
“Rogers,” she said rather simply. “You remember him, don’t you? Weird looking bloke we picked up back in Egjora a few months back?” She paused, for dramatic effect more than anything, letting her captain recall the memory of which crew member she spoke of. “Suffice to say I have had enough of his knobbly fingers pinching at my backside whenever I passed by him,” she said, no hint of remorse to her voice. “Shame, really. He could have been an asset,” she added, though she shrugged her shoulders slightly. She looked at Raines with a rather sharp glint in her eyes. “I’m not sharing quarter with the crew anymore,” she said, rather matter-of-factly. “I’ll sleep in the damned galley if need be. You know I can hold my own when I’m awake, captain, but all it’s going to take is one of the crew to make a stupid decision while I sleep. Most of those men haven’t been with a woman since they took up with you,” she added, her voice slightly low - she knew that her captain would get the point she was trying to make. She had the respect of the crew, but there were always bad eggs coming out the hen house.
“Berth’s going to need a good swabbing,” she said, clearing her throat so as to indicate that her moment of showing even remote fear was over. “ Don’t suppose the crew’s going to want to be sleeping with the smell of a slaughterhouse lingering in the air,” she said, hinting at the metallic tinge the air in the crew’s quarters had no doubt taken on with the spilled blood.
Turning her body sideways, Raleigh planted her hands firmly on the edges of the table, using the palms of her hands to hoist her body up so that she could perch herself, sitting on the edge. The blade fastened at her side clanked against the wood, and she pulled up at the whip on her belt to keep it from being caught beneath her. Her boot-clad legs dangled several inches off the ground, as she was a woman of rather small stature. She reached into her corset, fishing out a small, roughly smithed flask from between her breasts. Pulling the cork out, she went to take a drink of whatever liquid it housed, finding it to be dry. Wrinkling her nose, she placed the cork back in and tucked the flask back into her corset, leaning instead to one side and swiping the half full bottle of rum that sat on her captain’s table. She took a long swig from it, but didn’t place it back on the surface of the table just yet.
Instead, she twisted her body, leaning so she could see the plotted out direction on the map, using the hand that did not hold the bottle of rum to pull her hat from her head, her blond hair falling down around her shoulders in twisted waves from the salty sea air. Setting her hat down beside her, she used her finger to point at the plotted location of their target vessel. “Do we know what mercantile this merchantman is carrying?” she asked Raines, a slight tone of concern to her voice. “Galley could use a replenishment of rations in the relatively new future,” she said thoughtfully. “Myself, I could use a wardrobe replenishment, a clothier wouldn’t be the worst case scenario,” she added offhandedly, tugging at a loose thread coming from the corset she wore.
She took another rather hefty swig of the rum, this time setting the bottle back on the table and hopping down. She made her way around the table so she stood next to her captain this time, focusing on the map once more. “Looks to be a fairly straight on course,” she said, eyes shifting to the compass, the map, and then back up to Raines as she straightened back up. She looked up at the captain, grabbing her hat back off the table and placing it back on her head. “What’ll you have us do after boarding, Captain?” she asked, a bit of a grin on her lips - clearly hoping the captain was about to give her permission to get into a bit of ‘trouble’ aboard the ship they were going to intercept.