Baker and Jones Pt. 02 - Ch. 01

Chapter One

Cordelia isn't thinking about the sea breeze anymore. She isn't. She isn't.

It is more prudent to consider the gulls squawking overhead; why must they make such squawking sounds as they flutter together? Is it simply for the function of locating one another, and if so, does this mean they worry about collisions, and if so, could this possibly imply they rely more on sound than sight?

Annette might argue they simply do so because it is in their nature to do so, or, if she suspected Cordelia was considering the possibilities with too much effort, she would insist they do it because they experience joy. She'd suggest gulls experience a depth of emotion rivaling that of a person, and as such, that Cordelia must accept they are sentient.

She grins and removes her gloved hands from the railing of the ship, content in her evaluation of the gulls and eager to see what Annette would actually propose regarding their noise-making, when yet another frigid burst of sea air crashes through her face. Her hair tangles across her skin, itching some spots and tickling others, and she races to quickly redirect it away from her nose and mouth and eyes. Her smile evaporates, and feeling far less poised than a few moments prior she accepts defeat and retreats inside the deck to return to Annette.

That man in the corner is on his fourth cigarette in the last hour. Claude. He looks like a Claude.

Annette sits patiently inside the gallery of the steamboat, resting along the bench with a book lazily placed in her lap, closed. It's her favorite, the Ballad of Lady Heartshall, a riveting tale of a woman dressing as a man to fight in a battle for her country, though presently Annette seems more interested in watching the swells out the window. If the rocking of the ferry bothers her in any way, she doesn't show it, and while it had taken Cordelia the first two hours of the journey to steady herself Annette adapted almost immediately.

Those are Kingshead brand. Primarily manufactured in and around Hulvier and especially popular amongst members of the various rugby clubs.

"Miss Jones," Annette perks up as she approaches, her eyelashes batting quickly as though returning from a slight daze. Her face opens in a wide but pleasant grin, and for not the first time Cordelia admires the freckle that sits directly at the helm of her nose, which moves ever-so-slightly when her face does.

Shoulders are too narrow. Either he's a poor player or Claude's not on the team at all. Perhaps he smokes them to fit in.

"Annette," Cordelia lowers herself down to sit beside her, eyes occasionally flicking around the room.

"One almost could believe we'd be under attack at any moment with such frantic gazing," Annette remarks, resting her back against the wall of the ship, blocking out some of the window.

"Don't like boats," she huffs back.

"How were the gulls?"

"Loud. I think they might experience joy."

Annette laughs lightly, which settles something inside Cordelia. "Well, if gulls might feel joy, perhaps we should read them Shakespeare to see if they cry as well."

He just checked his pocket watch again. Even with three hours left in the journey he's agonizing over the return. Or arrival. Either.

"Have you ever been to Hulvier?"

"Up north?"

Cordelia shakes her head. "It's east."

"You always think it's east, but it isn't," Annette chirps. "If you must be technical I believe it's northeast, but no one would call it anything other than north."

"Regardless, have you ever been?"

"Not that I can recall," she shrugs. "The Sisters might have brought me there once on some holiday, but I remember nothing."

No wedding ring. Small box in his pocket? Proposal? He'll change his mind on the fourth cigarette halfway through.

"It's atrocious," Cordelia shifts to sit a little closer to her.

"Why do you ask?"

"Polite conversation."

Annette smirks once more, tilting her eyes up to meet Cordelia's and flashing a knowing look. "Is this about the man on his fifth cigarette?"

"Fourth," Cordelia complains.

"He gave up on the second one after a few puffs because the tobacco was stale, then quickly lit a third," Annette recounts. "You must have missed it."

"Claude's from Hulvier."

"I know." A pause, then a muttered: "He seemed more of a Henry to me."

"It's the brand of cigarettes, isn't it?"

Annette's eyes widen, either out of amusement or out of amazement. "You read the brand from this far away?"

"I saw it as I passed him," she furrows her brow at Annette. "How did you figure it out?"

"He has a train ticket from Hulvier to Danford that he read out to the bursar. We were in line directly behind him."

"I see."

A guess: "How I adore the way your mind works, Miss Jones."

Cordelia watches Annette for a moment to study her expression, deciding whether or not she'd amend her prediction. Annette, for her part, scrunches up her eyebrows as she stares amusedly back at her.

"Such a circuitous thinker," she accuses.

Incorrect, Cordelia decides on her prediction. She'd expected Annette's next phrase to lean towards compliment rather than snark, though perhaps it's wrong to assume Annette would ever resist the effort to display wit.

Not wishing to be left behind in conversation, Cordelia folds her arms over her chest and tries to ignore the rocking of the boat. "I'd not risk missing the most exciting routes to deduction. If I were too straightforward, how would I maintain my air of mystery?"

"Right, yes, a closed book," her companion mocks. "You are a mind kept under lock and key."

"I'm mysterious," Cordelia frowns.

"Adorably so."

Compliment.

Cordelia logs it and clears her throat. Releasing an exhale at the same rhythm of the boat's downward descent upon a wave in the hopes it might help. It doesn't. "I suspect that no one has so thoroughly thrashed my reputation as a detected and enigmatic intellectual as you have, Miss Baker. Who would believe me unimpeachable in my senses with you beside me, impeaching them?"

"At this rate, perhaps you'll be my assistant some day."

Instead, Annette is quiet. She turns her face to gaze out the starboard porthole, studying the rise and fall of water. Surely she is logging the rhythm and intensity of the waves, studying them to deduce whether or not one could expect them to abate anytime soon, just as Cordelia is. Surely.

She waits a moment longer to see if Annette would speak. Still mute. "I see us more as partners in all endeavors."

Annette pulls herself back to face Cordelia. Her head tilts. "How kind and unprompted of you."

"You're too prone to snark and wit to be solely an assistant," she tells Annette. "No one could believe you to not possess more authority."

"Perhaps we could use that to our advantage - convince someone that I am secretly the detective in disguise, causing them to overlook the real detective: you."

Cordelia leans forward, intrigued. "Do you believe it would work?"

Annette snorts decidedly. "Unequivocally not. You're too grand of a personality to ignore."

The two of them fall back into comfortable silence - or rather, what Cordelia hopes is comfortable silence for Annette. She is preoccupied with the turning in her stomach, the disorienting of her balance. Each ticking second in the swells feels as though time has stalled, and no efforts to count the passing miles has yielded any relief for her.

Annette returns easily to her reading, her legs tucked efficiently underneath her as she lays back into the starboard wall. Cordelia plants both of her feet firmly onto the floor of the steamboat, determined that if she were to succumb to seasickness, she would do it with both feet on level ground. She resolves to overcome the discomfort with her greatest effort at patience.

Coincidentally, patience is not amongst her strengths.

"Christ, how much longer?"

"Fifteen minutes less than the last time you asked me," Annette replies without looking up from her pages.

"I long for the day they simply construct a bridge from Emril to Kereland." Cordelia huffs. Then, for good measure, disdainfully utters, "Boats."

For Annette, this seems to warrant a full closing of her novel. "A bridge from Emril to Kereland? With such practical ideas as that it's a wonder you're not a Baron."

The detective releases a laugh. One, which Annette apparently has decided felt mechanical and inauthentic. She leans forward, entering Cordelia's field of view with a look of sympathetic concern on her face.

"Do you need another trip out into the air?"

"Hate the breeze," Cordelia grumbles.

Annette is on the case. "Smell or feel?"

"Hair gets in my eyes."

"Just take my hat."

"Doesn't go with my outfit."

She chuckles. "I could braid your hair."

"I'm not a braids sort of woman."

Out of the corner of her eye, Cordelia notices the presumptive rugby player light his fifth - sixth - cigarette.

"You ought to sheer your hair down, as you did with me," Annette suggests, perhaps humorously. She ruffles a hand through her own short hair, red and wavy. "I quite liked it at first."

Cordelia continues watching Claude. "Do I seem the sort of woman who ought to take up smoking?"

Annette leans in close enough to threateningly whisper. "Should you ever wish to share a bed with me again, you'll abstain from acquiring that new vice."

"Puritan," Cordelia complains.

"Not if our nighttime antics are to be believed."

Cordelia makes an amused noise. For a moment, the inconsolable waves are nearly tolerable. The rocking of the ship can almost be forgotten - indeed, even the world beyond the bounds of their chugging steamship might even cease to occupy her mind. A temporary reprieve from the horrid burden of her thoughts.

It does not last.

The letter, imperceivable in its hidden place in her breast pocket, suddenly feels quite heavy. It had arrived just days before their departure - ended three different fantasies of Cordelia's, solved at least one mystery, and opened up many more.

And it terrifies her in a way nothing has ever dared to before.

"I'm going to watch the gulls again," Cordelia mutters placidly, hoping not to rouse the suspicions of her companion.

Annette bobs her head and flashes a sympathetic look. "Perform a monologue for them, if you'd be so kind. We require more data to assess if they've complex emotional worlds."

Immovable object versus unstoppable force. The desire to love Annette, be at her side constantly and unendingly, to let her into those parts of Cordelia which she might find reprehensible and let her find something salvageable; and the fear of what might happen if she ever could be allowed to witness it all.

The anger. The dread. The uncertainty. The savagery. The inability.

Protect Annette. Even from yourself.

And so, on the outside deck, forcing herself to ignore the assaulting gusts of wind in her face, Detective Cordelia Jones retrieves the letter from its hidden place, holding it with a sense of world-crushing gravity, and allows her eyes to scour over its contents.

Sometime later, land is sighted. Kereland.

Annette's homecoming.

And all Cordelia can do is think of the many, many, many, horrible ways a person with malice might kill an innocent soul -

And wonders just how capable that person is.

The First Reply - Eleven Years Prior

To Sonia Helenska of the Cold Waters,

Allow me to extend my own greetings back to you, with the expectations of what I hope will be a vibrant friendship of the written word. I've long carried an admiration for those who could command pen and parchment to their will, though I possess neither the creativity of fiction nor the patience for history. I instead indulge my hobby in simple correspondence; and it is such indulgence that I hope will be a rapturous partnership between yourself, myself, and the beloved postage which connects us.

I must say, your Emrish is quite good, such that I could scarcely believe it is not your native tongue. I've great respect for those who give themselves to multilingualism; try as I might, I can never stick through more than the paltry elementary exercises I force myself through. Knowing these letters are an opportunity you are undertaking to supplement your practice in the language, I endeavor to be a consistent and fair judge of your skill. Rest easy in the knowledge that I will consider any critique of your aptitude to be merely constructive, with no bearing of your intelligence at large. Should we be communicating in Tuscovy instead, I am unashamed to admit I would not be fairing quite as well as you are now.

I am glad to hear you've a brother you are close with, and a family of some repute; though, I must admit, I find the tradition of discussing lineage and nobility prior to all else to be a tedious one. I'm much more interested to ascertain your thoughts regarding Tuscova at large. What sort of country do you find it to be? What ought an Emrishwoman such as myself think of it from a distance? If any meal were to be placed before you at this moment, which would you be most glad to receive?

With anticipating hopes for your bounteous next letter,

Cordelia Jones, of the Pen.