Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(39)

For her part, Tress was carefully counting the pouches of zephyr spores in the gunnery barrel. She’d asked Laggart, and he’d said they should maintain forty on hand. She figured that counting them gave her a good excuse to move them out of the barrel into an aluminum box, where they’d be safe from the ship’s silver.

“Twelve seas,” Tress said. “How many have you seen, Ann?”

“Three,” she said proudly. “The Emerald Sea, the Sapphire Sea, and the Rose Sea.”

Impressive, Fort wrote.

“I know, isn’t it?”

I’ve been to ten.

“What?” Ann sat up straight. “Liar.”

Why would I lie?

“You’re literally a pirate,” Ann said. “Everyone knows you can’t trust those types.”

Fort rolled his eyes expressively, then turned back to his work on his socks. Tress hesitated, looking at her box of pouches. Had that been the twenty-second or twenty-third she’d just counted? With a soft groan, she piled them all back into the barrel and started again.

“Which two?” Ann asked, tapping Fort to make him look up. “Which ones haven’t you been to?”

Not hard to guess, Fort wrote.

“Midnight and Crimson Seas?”

He nodded.

“The Midnight Sea,” Tress said as she counted. “That’s where the Sorceress lives.”

“Yeah,” Ann said. “And the Crimson Sea is the domain of the dragon. But that’s not why people don’t sail them. It’s the spores, Tress. You need to know this stuff, if you’re gonna sprout. Most types of spores are deadly, but two are downright catastrophic. Stay away from crimson spores and midnight spores, all right?”

“All right,” Tress said. “You have to go through the Crimson though to get to the Midnight, right? So I’m unlikely to ever do that.” She frowned. “Why do you have to go through one to get to the other? Can’t you just sail around the Crimson to get to the Midnight?”

“Not unless you can sail through several mountain ranges,” Ann said. “I suppose you could sail all around the world, then come upon the Midnight from behind.”

It’s one of the reasons the Sorceress set up there, Fort explained. She controls trade through the region—the passage that connects the planet. Only her ships can sail the Midnight.

“Been years,” Ann noted, “since there was any trade though. The king doesn’t want to pay tariffs, and so it’s war instead.”

As if he thinks he can beat her, Fort said, shaking his head. He can’t even get a proper fleet through the Crimson. Too dangerous.

Tress nodded. These seemed like things she probably should have known already. She was playing catch-up, but for a second time she was glad she hadn’t left these people. She realized that only one member of the crew likely had experience with the Sorceress personally—but all of them had information that could help her.

“There are twenty-five pouches here,” she said, finishing. “So I need to make fifteen more.”

“Without blowing off your face this time,” Ann said.

“I didn’t blow it off.”

“Technically, I’m sure some pieces of it were removed,” Ann said. “Too bad you got that salve. You’d look badass with a scar or two on your face.”

Tress gave a noncommittal shrug to that. Then, as Ann returned to pestering Fort, Tress quietly undid the latch that opened the false bottom of the barrel and counted. Five hidden cannonballs, each a little larger than her fist.

With Huck acting as lookout, she’d retrieved some ordinary ones from the ship’s hold. No one guarded them. Who would steal them? But now, trying to keep herself from sweating at the subterfuge, she began slipping them from her sack and swapping them for the ones in the barrel’s false bottom.

She was certain she’d be noticed at any moment. But people rarely watch you as much as you think; they’re too busy worrying whether you are watching them. So Tress was able to, one at a time, replace Laggart’s secret cannonballs with ordinary ones. Then she latched the hidden bottom and replaced the twenty-five zephyr spore pouches.

The swap performed, she pointedly dried her hands and did not poke at her mask. Anyone can blow their face off by accident—I mean, who hasn’t—but if you do it twice in a row, you look really silly.

Tress cinched closed her sack. She still didn’t know what she’d do with those sabotaged cannonballs. Hide them in her cabin? Drop them off the boat in secret?

“Hey Tress,” Ann said. “When you’re making charges, you think you could maybe whip me up a few extra? So I can practice?”

“Don’t see why not,” Tress said. “Assuming the captain says it’s all right.”

“Yeah,” Ann said. “Of course.” Though there was something in her tone, reminiscent of how you might talk about that project you’ve been planning to finish “tomorrow.” She wandered off, but only after trailing her fingers along the length of the cannon.

Fort had been focused on his work, and had therefore missed the conversation. While his condition leads to plenty of difficulties, I will say I’ve always envied his ability to—by looking away—completely excise from his life most of the stupid things people say.