[Gonou has been scanning the other prisoners' faces at each of his shifts today, looking for Jedao. It's when he's marched up to the oars that he finally spots him, and speeds up to settle himself at the place on the bench beside him, holding his hands out placidly for the manacles before he closes them around the oar and begins to row.]
How are you?
[He keeps his voice to an undertone, hard for any others to overhear past the creak and groan of shifting wood.]
Perversely, privately, Jedao likes the Oars better than anywhere else on the ship. He can lose himself in the motion, and the heaviness resisting his arms as he pushes and pushes is reassuringly solid when everything else is suddenly a void of insubstantial whispers to his missing mothsense. Even the ache in his hands and back are - anchoring.
"I'm alright," he promises, after blinking for a moment. "Worried, mostly."
There is, indeed, something meditative about the steady effort. Gonou, for his part, likes that being chained to the oars mean that the Advocates' surveillance is significantly less strict up here.
He offers Jedao a tiny smile.
"Have you -- ah... had the chance to talk to Mr. Flint recently?"
"I like... at least some of his ideas," Gonou notes, light and a little wry: if Jedao's talked to Flint, then he's almost certainly heard those ideas himself.
"But there's such fiery rhetoric," Gonou says, absolutely straight-faced.
After a beat, more seriously, he continues, "--It's hard to manage a complex plan when we can't communicate freely." Or, in fact, rely on communication at all. "I'm just worried about, ah... the part of the plan that seems to assume it's as easy to take this ship as it is to take a pirate ship."
"I don't think it's going to work," Jedao says bluntly. "Ships like this -"
And the Barge isn't the Revenant and the Galley isn't either, but still. Still.
"But not doing it is going to work even worse. And I don't think we'll learn very much more without trying it, if the Advocates know as little about real operations as Barge wardens did."
"...no," Gonou admits, lifting his chin for a moment to look away over the banks of oars before he ducks it again to hide the movements of his lips. "I don't think it's going to work, not the way Mr. Flint thinks it will. But I do think that we may do enough damage to change something, even if taking the ship is impossible. Even if all we do is handle some of the crueler advocates...."
He's cautious enough, even speaking in a bare undertone among the loud creak and groan of the oars, that he won't say kill. But if death is permanent here -- and he'd been told as much early on -- then death for the cruelest advocates would make a meaningful difference for the prisoners that survive.
"Anyone I should be careful to watch out for?" He's been making his own observations, of course. But any prisoner would want to know who to worry about.
Lightly, Gonou murmurs, "Well, there's Sakazuki, of course. He did point himself out. And another man I noticed -- dark hair, green jacket with a high collar? I did not catch his name."
He'd been mercilessly tasing one of the Galley's veteran prisoners. Getting his attention had seemed unwise.
(Jedao, he can't help but notice, is much better at being subtle with this than he is.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sometime between signing on to Flint's mutiny and doing anything violent about it
How are you?
[He keeps his voice to an undertone, hard for any others to overhear past the creak and groan of shifting wood.]
no subject
"I'm alright," he promises, after blinking for a moment. "Worried, mostly."
no subject
He offers Jedao a tiny smile.
"Have you -- ah... had the chance to talk to Mr. Flint recently?"
no subject
no subject
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"There isn't a plan," he groans, sounding pained. Not really.
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After a beat, more seriously, he continues, "--It's hard to manage a complex plan when we can't communicate freely." Or, in fact, rely on communication at all. "I'm just worried about, ah... the part of the plan that seems to assume it's as easy to take this ship as it is to take a pirate ship."
no subject
And the Barge isn't the Revenant and the Galley isn't either, but still. Still.
"But not doing it is going to work even worse. And I don't think we'll learn very much more without trying it, if the Advocates know as little about real operations as Barge wardens did."
no subject
He's cautious enough, even speaking in a bare undertone among the loud creak and groan of the oars, that he won't say kill. But if death is permanent here -- and he'd been told as much early on -- then death for the cruelest advocates would make a meaningful difference for the prisoners that survive.
no subject
no subject
He'd been mercilessly tasing one of the Galley's veteran prisoners. Getting his attention had seemed unwise.
(Jedao, he can't help but notice, is much better at being subtle with this than he is.)