William, a taciturn quartermaster arrives, following Aethan.

Ian is, with an air of amused resignation, in the process of taking off his coat. and leaving it on a chair.

Catalana slinks in, arm in arm with Wash. She remarks to Wash amused. "I imagine people would pay to see Ian manhandle you."

Aethan may have been on the way to the command center, but when he sees the other three on the way to the pool, he stops, his hands sliding into the pockets of his coat, which is at least unbuttoned, his only sartorial concession to the weather. "Some people already have," he says, catching Catalana's statement. "I remember some bets placed at a tavern on Stormward."

"Certain people. More that would love to see us both go into the pool simultaneously." Wash muses. He directs sailors to space the kegs of beer and bottles of rum that he bought from the Ebb and Flow around the pool.

Ian watches Wash get ready, eyebrows raised. "This is starting to feel like a show fight." His tone suggests that this is a bad thing.

Catalana assures Ian, "It's hardly a show fight." Definitely playing both sides, "I imagine you'll get Wash in before he gets you." Glancing at the kegs, "Especially if those are involved."

Aethan does not seem to be about to join them in the pool -- instead, he goes to one of the chairs, dragging it a little bit closer and sitting down. He settles back, stretching his legs out in front of him and lacing his fingers behind his head as he relaxes. His gaze moves from one to the other, though he's quiet for now.

2 Whitehawk Guards arrives, following Evonleigh.

Wash says, "Well, the drinking first, the fighting may come later." Wash admits. "We might skip the drowning part?""

Catalana goes over to the pool and sits down on the edge, dipping her toes into the water. "I suppose I can live with drinking and fighting."

Ian nods towards Aethan. "That looks like an audience to me." He has divested himself of his jacket, and is thus left in a loose fitting off white linen shirt. And pants too, obviously.

"Make sure you put on a good show," Aethan replies with a brief flash of a smile. He does not seem to be ready to go in, but is in fact sitting in a chair near-isa the edge of the pool, close enough for conversation with those who are inside it.

Catalana grins cheekily at Aethan, "Wish to make a bet?"

Wash sets out to make sure everyone is comfortable with the drinks available, and then strips off his shirt, rolls up his trousers and wades into the pool. Hot summer nights are meant for this sort of activity. "I've heard of wrestling techniques, all about leverage and strength where two men oppose each other on a rock during low tide. Each tries to force the other off without moving their feet."

Evonleigh hasn't been to the Kay before -- so it's awkward for her to come peering around looking for Aethan. Still, somehow she doesn't seem to shy as she smiles at the group gathered around the pool. "Is that one of the brothers I was beginning to think you made up?" she says with a smile for the Kennex lord that's unfamiliar to her, though she's heard plenty of stories about.

Ian takes a seat by the pool. "Hard to get any kind of effective leverage without moving your feet." He should know. He's tried. He gives Evonleigh a confused look. "You've met me before ."

Ian takes a seat by the pool. "Hard to get any kind of effective leverage without moving your feet." He should know. He's tried. He gives Evonleigh a confused look. "You've met me before ." (Re for Wash)

"Maybe," Aethan replies to Catalana with a little huff of amusement. "Now I won't even be able to blame it on the drink." He looks up, though, when Evonleigh speaks, and his smile widens slightly, sitting a little more easily on his face. "Yes," he says. "Not by blood, but no less a brother for that. She meant Wash, Ian. Lord Wash Kennex, Lady Evonleigh Whitehawk." He gestures for her to join him in another chair.

Ian ohs. "Right. Yeah, Wash might as well be our brother."

Wash wades across the pool to Catalana's side and leans out to offer Evonleigh his hand at ankle height. "Porter is the other brother. Who has Porter's eye these days? I'm more of the adopted in-law. Call me Wash. Do you want a drink?"

Catalana beams at Evonleigh, "Hello! I'm Lady Catalana, Wash's wife." Glancing at her cousins she mildly complains, "My cousins love him more than me I'm pretty sure."

"Lord Ian, my friend and sometimes mentor, no one's imagination could come up with the reality that is you. They would all fall short by a foot, I think." Evonleigh smiles at Aethan, then moves carefully toward the pool to shake Wash's hand. "Ah, that's right. I have heard of you, of course, and perhaps your adopted in-laws' fondness of you made me think of you as their brother. Evonleigh." She offers her hand to Catalana next. "I'm certain that's not true." She shakes her head at Wash. "I'm fine for now. Who was about to fight? I'll make for a good audience member at that," she says, her ears having picked up on the conversation while making her way to the pool. She moves to perch on a chair near Aethan, now hands have been shaken.

Ian shrugs to Wash. "Last I heard, he was chasing after some Redrain woman. Harder to keep track now that he can't get me to deliver his love letters like when I was a kid. "

"Not //more//," Aethan replies to Catalana with a shake of his head, though he looks a little chagrined that he clearly forgot to introduce Catalana. Another thing he can no longer blame on the alcohol. However, he is still smiling, so maybe he's joking. "I think there was some talk of water wrestling. I only caught the end." He nods at what Ian says, though, before he reaches to offer his hand to Evonleigh. Though not to shake. Probably. "He wrote me about going up with us to help Crovane," he says, "so that sounds about right."

"They adopted me however, which proves their lack of taste." Wash adds. He gestures for a large sailor in Kennex livery to bring him a peppered vodka mixed with lemon. "I was challenged to put Ian in the water against his sense of decorum. A little too loudly though, so the element of surprise is gone. Now a tactical man has to assess their remaining assets. A feat of arms is the least likely to succeed. Manipulation has more chance of success, but an almost one hundred percent chance of exasperated sighs. The target has weaknesses, but compensates for the ones he knows about. Assets? A new one has appeared. You say you're his student Evonleigh?"

Catalana snickers at Wash's assessment, yet warns him, "If he ends up in bed before you get him in, I will be disappointed."

Wash says, "I can avoid your disappointment by relocating Ian's bed to the pool." Wash says with quick aplomb."

Ian sighs. "Going after a Crovane Lord's wife sounds about right," he decides. Then he gives Wash a pointed look. "If you don't think I'll throw her in too if she tries, you're wrong. "

Catalana glances at Ian, then back to Wash. "As long as I don't end up waking to Ian looming over us in the dark, go for it."

Aethan's hand taken in her own, Evonleigh laughs at the camaraderie among the brothers and cousins and husband and wife. "Oh, no, not a student of the martial arts. He's only taught me a couple of times, and I'm sure he wouldn't like to be credited with that, as I'm still a novice," she says with a grin. "And I don't doubt he'd throw me in. He'd probably decide it's a great learning moment and give it some tactical name, like naval warfare."

"Most people he's taught start out as novices," Aethan points out reasonably in reply to Evonleigh, though still with the smile -- though it's smaller than some others' might be, it's no less genuine for that. "It would be a difficult feat not to claim any of them." Ian's comment, though, has him reaching up with the other hand to run his face. "Let's hope not," he says. "I'd prefer this go smoothly. Though I suppose if it doesn't interrupt the maneuvers, I don't care whose wife he beds."

"Boy punches sharks for fun, but doesn't want to get a little wet." Wash mutters. "Right. Well a novice student, still an asset, but downgraded in usefulness. Let's analyze the targets motivations for weaknesses." Wash raises his voice. "Hey Ian! Why don't you want to get thrown in the pool?"

Ian shakes his head to Wash. "Zoey is the one you'd have to worry about if you messed up the bed. You might have to skip town once she gets back. She's a good shot with a bow." A pause. "You probably remember that." He doesn't dignify the question with a reply more articulate than a snort.

Catalana shares with Evonleigh, "Oh yes. As children Aethan would make us line up and order is about even when it was meant to be a fun day out swimming and picnicking. Once he tried to withold sweets because we weren't ship shape."

"I've never claimed to be useful," Evonleigh says brightly to Wash and grins a little at Aethan. Catalana's story draws a bright laugh. "Oh, how ruthless a little admiral he was," she says. "I thought we meant Ian regarding throwing me in the water. I don't think Aethan would." She narrows her eyes at him thoughtfully. "The worst he's done is told me I have to wear ugly boots sometimes."

Aethan turns a slightly narrow-eyed look on his cousin at the recollection, though a moment later a little snort of amusement escapes him. "You should be thanking me for it," he says. "I'm taking credit for how you turned out." He leans back, his gaze finding Evonleigh again. "I said silk slippers were probably not ideal for what we had in mind," he continues. "I'll concede the boots, though I don't remember specifying they needed to be ugly."

"I don't remember that," Ian says to Catalana, perhaps forgetting the fact that he's ten years younger than Aethan is, and nobody else was still really a kid by the time he was remembering anything.

"Withholding sweets.' Wash tsks. "Ian. How much silver would it take for you to take a dive, literally and figuratively?" Wash is still exploring methods of getting Ian into the pool.

Catalana apologizes to Ian, "I was only ten or so, I think you were a tiny little baby." She scoffs at Aethan. "I recall Porter and I hatched some elaborate scheme to throw you in the water and escape with the treats." Really thinking about it, she checks with Aethan, "Did we succeed?I can't remember now."

"Perhaps put the vodka in the pool," teases Evonleigh as a way of getting Ian in, before turning to smile at Aethan. "Fine. Ugly was my word. You are correct. You Kennexes are so very literal." She looks interested in the story of the boys as children. "Aethan's told me some stories of his youth. It's hard to picture him then. I'll have to get the embarrassing stories about him when he's not listening, though."

Ian eyes Wash. "Depends on how long before you stopped telling anyone who'd listen about the time you threw me in the pool because your wife asked you to."

"It's much more fun to tell embarassing stories while they are there to listen, and squirm. Or sing songs about them. I mean, you might even get them riled up enough to charge into the pool to keep you from singing." Wash isn't talking about Aethan though, he side-eyes Ian.

"Mm." Aethan sits back thoughtfully at the question of whether they were successful or not, though after a moment he shakes his head. "I don't think so. Once Porter got tall enough to throw me in the water, he wasn't much motivated by sweets anymore, unfortunately." He crosses his legs at the ankles as he settles even further back on the chair, "I'm sure you'll hear some while I //am// listening, if you stay long enough." He sounds resigned, though not particularly worried about it, and he lifts a hand to gesture once Wash speaks, for emphasis, though his gaze cuts to Ian as well then.

Catalana agrees with Wash, hopefully tempting Ian into the pool, "Do you have any stories about Ian?"

"My siblings have no embarrassing stories about me. I was the perfect child," says Evonleigh with a toss of her head, but there's a smirk that suggests that's not true. "An embarrassing Ian story sounds like just the right sort of diversion. And even better if put to music," she agrees. "Let's hear the ballad of the Kennex lad," she tells Wash. "Lady Catalana, did I hear you are newly returned to Arx? I hope you will be staying for a while."

"The second most embarrassing story about Ian, and I'm cutting my own throat here by telling it, because I didn't fare too well myself..." Wash begins. "Was when we both ended up on an upside down longboat overnight despite the shore being only three hundred feet away. Easy swimming distance. The only way to keep ourselves from rolling off into what we thought were deadly razor-sharp reefs were to lash our belts to each other and sleep back to back on the keel. Do you remember why we thought the reefs would kill us if we fell off Ian?"

Ian gives Wash a sharp look, a genuine sharp look. He must have hit a nerve with the song thing. "I've drowned people before," he reminds his cousin. "I know how to do it." He's got to be joking, but his flat voice makes that hard to be sure of. But the story Wash winds up telling is different. "I remember why Porter TOLD us the reef would kill us if we fell in." His gaze slides sideways to Aethan. "I also don't remember Aethan contradicting him"

Catalana already giggles at the tale. "Well. You have to tell us." Gesturing to server she gets her own vodka and lemon.

One eyebrow raises at Evonleigh's assertion of perfection, before Aethan lets out another little huff of amusement. However, he does not argue, and instead looks back to the pool now that Wash is telling embarrassing stories, and not about him, either. "Sometimes it's best to find things out for yourself," he says in response to Ian's words, a little loftily, though his deadpan is not quite as good as his brother's at the moment, which is unusual. He must be in a good mood.

"That shav Porter introduced us to had so many scars on his body I couldn't tell where his features had been to start with. It was downright creepy where they ended up." Wash points out. "How were we to know that was ritual scarring and typical for his tribe? Porter said the reef was out there, but it's still Ian's fault we capsized. Admit it."

"I remember once going out on a lake, an older boy rowing myself and my younger sister. He pretended to see a shark in the water -- we didn't believe him, of course, thinking we knew for a fact sharks are not inland creatures..." Evonleigh says. "But then his brother started shouting on the shore for us to hurry back because he could see their fins... so the brother began rowing faster and faster until he suddenly jumped up and capsized our little boat. Kenna and myself swam faster than we ever dreamt possible. Of course we didn't see the boys laughing until we finally got to shore." She shakes her head. "Absolutely ruined my dress," she adds with a little sniff.

"I wasn't TRYING to say that Lady Catalana was out of your league," Ian insists to Wash.

Catalana just sips her vodka, eagerly hoping for an escalation.

Ian adds to Evonleigh: " That explains why she didn't believe me about the sharks."

"You said, and I quote: 'Catalana's eyesight isn't that bad!'" Wash says loudly. "We were reeling in a sunfish as large as a man and I said: 'Catalana will love to see me next to this fish out of water.' It's common knowledge that you never insult a man whose anchoring the line when you are pulling in a six hundred pound fish. If you can't handle the fish, don't put both hands on the line."

Aethan looks over at Evonleigh at her story -- he's heard the other, of course, but this one is new. He squints, as though trying to imagine her doing just that, before his smile widens a little bit. "I feel as though Lady Kenna might have gotten quick revenge," he says, "in the form of several punches to the face. Yours was probably more thought-out, and subtler." His expression takes on a more thoughtful look, as though imagining what Evonleigh might have done to get her own back.

Catalana gasps loudly and dramatically at Ian. "You said that?! " She adds a huff at the end. Yep. Absolutely insulted by him.

Ian gives Wash a frustrated look. "It wasn't an insult. You said she wouldn't be able to tell it and Porter apart. Porter looks nothing like a sunfish."

"Perhaps," says Evonleigh to Ian with a smile. "Glad you both survived, at any rate." Her eyes dance from Kennex to Kennex, before her gaze alights back on Aethan and she laughs. "We were very young. I don't know that either of us got much in the way of revenge. I don't have a satisfying story to tell you now, I'm afraid. I'll have to think up a better resolution for the next time I tell the tale." She smirks at Catalan's outrage, and glances back at Ian for his reaction, then laughing aloud at his reply. "Clearly he's more of a codfish."

"What I said was a fish out of water, then you said Catalana's too good for a fish out of water. Which is what they call shipwrecked Graysons." Wash points out. "I said the porter thing four hours earlier when we first saw it!" To Evonleigh, Wash explains: "Sunfish are quite possibly the ugliest fish in the world. And they can survive anything, even being bitten in half. It's like they are half ugly and half stupid and a tiny smidgen of fish. And Ian was of the mind that Catalana wouldn't like to look at either of us."

"Please do. Now I have to make up my own ending, and I'm not very imaginative." Aethan looks back at the others in the pool then, and he has to let out a laugh then. A real laugh, not just a huff or a snort of mild amusement. "To be fair, Porter's made the same face as a sunfish a time or two," he offers, though mostly he does not mar the tale, content merely to interject here or there.

Ian snorts. "At least not until you'd had a bath. -I- didn't want to look at you." He gives an explosive sigh. "Alright, might as well get this over with." He starts to pull off his shirt.

Catalana glowers at Ian, amusement behind it, "So. Not only did you insult my eyesight, you called my beloved ugly?!"

There's an unladylike snort at the dig at Graysons, and Evonleigh laughs at the description of the sunfish. "I'm sorry," she tells Aethan. "I don't want to strain your imagination and make it dream up aught else but naval strategies," she says, grinning at him. "Oh, look, no one has to throw Ian into the pool. A win-win situation for all," she says. "On that note, I am not prepared to swim, and do not fancy being thrown in the pool in a silk dress, so I think I shall head home." She leans to kiss Aethan's cheek lightly. "I'll accept an escort, unless you are planning to swim, too."

"Hah!" Wash exclaims his success. "Tactical supremacy is mine!" He hefts himself out of the pool. "Anyway, when the line snapped out of Ian's hands, it hove the ship around and she caught a rogue wave abeam. We flipped right over. I got a cut on my foot and using the stars we reckoned our position to be south of the island. Right in what Porter told us the natives called 'the Sea of Knives'. I mean they do call it that, but mostly because they lost a lot of knives there diving for mussels. So many in fact that they often don't carry them down with them, just pick up one on the rock floor. But that wasn't what cut me, was it? Nooo. That's the most embarrassing part. He's getting in the water so I won't tell that part."

"Called it like I saw it." Ian levers himself to his feet, too distracted by Wash to notice all of the wonderful Aethan teasing moments he's missing. Aethan can thank Wash later.