Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(101)

“Ulaam,” she said, “I can’t defeat the Sorceress.”

“No, of course you can’t,” he said.

“All of the others are expecting me to. And…I’m increasingly terrified I’ll let them down.”

“Ah, well then,” he said, “can I help you with this anxiety, hmmm? I don’t even have to give you a sedative. You needn’t worry.”

“I needn’t?” she said. “Really?”

“Yes. You see, no one expects you to defeat the Sorceress. I believe they’re all expecting to die. And so, you won’t disappoint them, child, when the Sorceress inevitably murders the entire crew!”

She groaned.

“That was a joke,” he noted. “I doubt she’s capable of killing me—though she thinks she can. Even if she is right, she certainly can’t kill Hoid, even in his current state. So it will only be most of the crew she murders.”

Tress felt dizzy.

Ulaam, it should be noted, is not known for his bedside manner—as I’ve pointed out, his people lost something when they stopped being forced to imitate actual humans. I can genuinely say that without that burden, they’ve all become increasingly themselves over the decades.

That said, Ulaam is legitimately the best doctor I’ve ever met. If you are easily stressed, but need his help, I suggest you ask him to sew his mouth shut before he visits. He’ll probably find the idea novel enough that he’ll try it.

That day, however, he realized he’d said too much. Even Ulaam, a creature with the empathic talents of an angry emu, could occasionally realize when someone was in emotional distress.

“Child,” he said, “I—”

“How could you?” Tress snapped at him. “How can you sit there and not care? What is wrong with you?”

“Oh!” he said. “Hm. Ha ha. Well, no need to bite my head off. I have several saws for the purpose right over—”

“Jokes don’t help, Ulaam!” she said, standing up.

It hadn’t been a joke, mind you. He actually had three. He let her pace for a little bit, and when the teakettle began to whistle, he didn’t move to get it.

As she paced, one point stuck in her brain. He’d mentioned Hoid again. The drooling cabin boy. Ulaam was a creature of strange powers, but he saw me as someone even greater.

It wasn’t the first time Ulaam had said something like that. But this time it actually struck her.

Finally she took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” she said. “You’ve been helpful in the past, Ulaam, telling me things you didn’t have to. I shouldn’t get angry at you for not doing more. I…I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I never would have acted that way in the past.”

“I think,” Ulaam said, “that perhaps nothing is wrong. Maybe you should snap at me more often. I forget sometimes what I’ve been told about the stresses mortals live under.”

“You’re right though,” she said, pacing the other direction in the small room. “We are going to die. This quest is foolishness! When it was only me who was risking my life for Charlie, that was bad enough. I can’t force the rest to join me.”

“You aren’t forcing them, Tress,” Ulaam said. He finally rose and began to make the tea. “Have you seen how they walk these days? How they hold their heads? They know they’re partially to blame for the people Crow killed.

“You’re not bullying them. You’re offering them a chance at reclaiming their humanity. They want to try to rescue your friend. They want to prove to themselves that even though they might not be first-rate men and women of valor, they at least possess a secondhand variety.”

He turned, handing her a cup and gesturing toward the seat. It was a nice cup. Tin, but dinged up with the respectable scars of favorite use, and shined along the handle from the caress of fingers. She sighed, taking the seat and the tea, though she put the latter aside to let it cool.

“Look,” she said, “Huck was willing to move against me. Perhaps I should see his point. Even if I don’t, I can’t use him to get into the tower now. So the mission is a bust.”

“You still have Midnight Essence,” Ulaam said. “Maybe you can make a creature that can sneak in and unlock the door.”

“The tower is coated with silver,” Tress said. “So I wouldn’t be able to touch it as a midnight creature. At least that’s what Huck said. I don’t know if that’s true, or what to trust from him, but either way we have a bigger problem. Ulaam, I can’t beat the Sorceress. She’s going to know I’m coming.”

“She knows already, I suspect,” Ulaam said. “From what I know of her, she is probably looking forward to seeing how you deal with her defenses.”

“Is it…possible to impress her so much with what we do that she lets Charlie go?”

“Unlikely,” he said. “Best you can hope for is that she finds you amusing and sends you away with a particularly creative curse.”

“So there’s no hope.”

“Well…”

Tress looked up.

“I am supposed to remain neutral, you see,” he said, “in the actions of certain individuals such as the Sorceress. But there is someone who never follows those rules. He’s on this ship. And he has a pair of bright red sequined briefs.”