Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(30)

“What did you want to tell me, Huck?” Tress asked. “What’s happening?”

“Right, I was getting to that. Laggart was down there looking through the storage. And Tress, he fetched a couple of cannonballs. I saw him sneak them into his pack.”

Interesting. It was time to test her theory.

She positioned herself to scrub near the forward cannon station. Not too close, but close enough to watch. Then she became a waitress again for a short while, watching for Laggart.

It didn’t take long.





THE CANNONMASTER





Laggart swooped over to the cannon and craned his long neck over the barrel, eyeing the bundles of spores. He eventually declared the work well done, praising the Dougs.

At that moment they discovered the wonders of outsourcing: the luxury of taking all the credit, doing none of the work, yet reserving someone to blame just in case. Tress didn’t mind. She’d rather not have Laggart paying attention to her.

The Dougs hopped off to other duties, and Laggart made quite the show of cleaning the cannon himself—something he never left to another’s care.

Tress scrubbed the deck nearby, invisible in plain sight. Whenever Laggart turned her way, her head was inconspicuously down in her work. Yet she watched closely, and spotted it as he stealthily took a fist-size cannonball from his pack and hid it in the false bottom of the barrel.

She had been right. He kept rigged cannonballs in the hidden compartment. Cannonballs designed to sink ships. But why? It was so much more dangerous to be deadrunners, and it denied them loot. Wasn’t that the one essential thing that defined pirates? Other than, you know, the boats and stuff?

He wanted the crew to become deadrunners. Against their wishes or knowledge.

Laggart finished his work, shouted at a few nearby Dougs for being lazy, then hauled his pack to his shoulder. He strutted off toward the captain’s cabin, where Crow let him in—and posted a sailor at the door before closing it. The heavyset Doug didn’t look much like a guard, but the way he lingered reminded Tress of how Brick’s cousin stood watch by the tavern door on nights when people were expected to get rowdy.

“I need to know what they’re talking about in there,” Tress said.

“Yeah, that would be great, wouldn’t it?” Huck said from her shoulder. “I’ll bet it’s very secretive.”

“I need someone to slip in,” Tress said.

“Maybe we could ask one of the Dougs?” Huck said.

“Someone,” Tress said, “who is small, quick, and who won’t be noticed listening.”

“Dang,” Huck said. “Don’t know if the Dougs will be sneaky enough. Have you heard the way they tromp around on the deck? I was trying to sleep last night, and I’d swear they have lead in their shoes. It…” He trailed off, noticing her glaring at him. “Oooooohhhhh. Rat. Right, right. Got it.”

He hopped off her shoulder and scuttled over to the gunwale, then scrambled along it in the shadows over to the captain’s cabin. The Doug watching didn’t notice as Huck slipped along a small ledge on the outside of the ship and went in the captain’s window.

Perhaps you’re wondering why Huck had so quickly fallen in with Tress. Well, there are a lot of things I could tell you here—but suffice it to say that in the short life of Huck the rat, every human he’d met had tried to kill, capture, or sell him. Every human but Tress. He didn’t know a lot about people, having spent most of his life isolated—but he did like Tress. He would rather she not die. So, spying it was.

Tress began scrubbing furiously to work out her anxiety. Minutes passed with the weight of hours, as she worried about sending Huck into danger to satisfy her curiosity. That wasn’t something she would normally have done. Life as a pirate was already affecting her.

Yet Charlie was out there somewhere, afraid, hurting. She had to find a way to escape, then continue her quest. So maybe learning to impose on people a little was all right.

“Hey,” Huck said, scampering across the railing next to her, “you got anything to eat? Spying is hungry work.”

Tress glared at him as her stomach growled.

“Just asking,” Huck said. “Moons, girl, no need to look at me like I ate the center of the loaf and left you the heels.”

“Did you hear anything?” she asked.

Huck twitched his nose in a way he seemed to think she would understand, then he hopped down and scurried over to a more sheltered section of the deck. She followed, her back to the Dougs. To anyone watching, she’d simply be doing her thing, scrubbing away. They wouldn’t be able to see Huck.

“All right,” the rat said from the deck in front of her. “I’ll tell you what they said. Let me get into character.”

“…Character?” Tress said.

Huck went up on his hind legs, holding his little ratty paws before himself with his nose up in the air. “I am Captain Crow,” he said in a surprisingly good approximation of her aristocratic accent. “Hip, hop, do as I say. My, this canteen water is tasty. Laggart, what news of the cannon? Is everything ready?”

Tress waited, her head cocked.

“You be Laggart,” Huck hissed.

“I wasn’t there! I don’t know what he said.”

“You’ll do fine.” Huck waved his paw at her. “Go ahead. Be Laggart.”