Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(99)

“He is currently way too stupid to have done this on his own,” Ulaam said. “See how the ones he was going to toss out are marked with chalk?”

Well, all right then. Points to Ulaam, I suppose.

“The rat said my mission was absolutely vital,” I told them. “It’s also secret. So please don’t tell Tress.”

A short time later, Tress approached Huck in his quarters—her former ones, which she’d assigned to him. His very own room. Yes, it didn’t have silver, but it was more than most rats ever got. He’d been sitting there making a list of all the hats she owned. It only had one item so far, but he was an optimistic type of rat valet. What’s more, he’d been so nervous that he’d needed something to pass the time.

He looked at her. “Did the test with the midnight spores work?” he said, dropping the pencil and scurrying over. “I would have come back to watch. Should have. But…that’s not something a valet has to do, right? Be around midnight spores? They give me chills, Tress.”

“I…” She didn’t know what to say. It is an affliction that I’ve never known, but I hear it can be quite debilitating.

“Tress?” Huck asked. “I feel like you should be excited. Maybe enthusiastic. Certainly relieved. Yet…”

“I’ve discovered,” she said, “that our food stores are frighteningly low. Somehow, we lost count of how much we had. It seems…we have barely enough to make it to the Verdant Sea, should we turn back now.”

“Oh!” Huck said. “Well, that’s dreadful news, but I suppose with everything that has been happening, it’s not too surprising that something slipped through the cracks! We must make sail for the Verdant Sea, restock, then…” He trailed off, meeting her eyes. He wilted. “Hoid talked, didn’t he?”

“You’re remarkably good at reading human emotions,” she said. “For a rat.”

“Well, emotions are emotions,” he said. “Doesn’t matter the species. Fear, concern, anxiousness.”

“Betrayal?” she asked. “Is that emotion the same for both human and rat?”

“So far as I can tell,” he said, his voice growing very soft. “I’m sorry, Tress. I can’t let you face the Sorceress. I can’t. For your own good, you see.”

Ah, those words.

I’ve heard those words. I’ve said those words. The words that proclaim, in bald-faced arrogance, “I don’t trust you to make your own decisions.” The words we pretend will soften the blow, yet instead layer condescension on top of already existent pain. Like dirt on a corpse.

Oh yes. I’ve said those words. I said them with sixteen other people, in fact.

“It hurts that you don’t trust me, Huck,” she said. “But you know, it hurts more that I can’t trust you now.”

“I get that,” he said. “You deserve better.”

She found a cage for him. It felt appropriate that she should put him back in one, and Crow had a couple of the appropriate size for keeping messenger birds.

It broke Tress’s heart to leave Huck inside, huddled against the bars, refusing to face her. But she had a crew to protect, and she couldn’t risk Huck doing something even more drastic to stop them. As it was, she barely contained her frustration. They were so close. Now they’d have to sail across the entire Crimson and restock.

Moons…could they afford to restock? How was she going to pay the crew? Would they continue as pirates? And if she did find Charlie, what then? Disband the crew? Give the ship to Salay and go home? Her focus on reaching the Sorceress had let her, so far, procrastinate addressing these questions. Payroll didn’t seem so pressing when you expected to get captured and turned into a marmoset the next week.

These thoughts weighed on her as she opened the door and found a collection of Dougs waiting outside.

By now, Tress knew them all personally. The one at the front, holding her cap, was a good-natured woman who had once explained that she thought birds were the souls of the dead, watching over sailors as they traveled. It had been awkward, considering Tress had been serving pigeon pie that night; the Doug had just laughed and said that was a way of helping.

They all had quirks like that. Personalities, dreams, lives. Human beings are like the shorelines of continents. The closer you look, the more detail you see, basically into infinity. If I didn’t practice narrative triage, you’d be here all week listening to how a Doug once got so drunk, she ended up as queen.

Today, fortunately for us, they acted in concert—and in service of the story. Because they had something to tell Tress.

“Let’s keep going, Captain,” the lead Doug said. “If you don’t mind. Let’s keep sailing, and go save that man of yours.”

“But, the food…” Tress said.

“Pardon, Captain,” another Doug said, “but we can eat verdant for a little while.”

“Agreed,” said another. “If it helps you, we can eat weeds for a few weeks.”

“Wait. You can eat verdant vines?” Tress asked.

The Dougs were shocked to hear she didn’t know this. You might be too, as it was mentioned earlier in the story as clever foreshadowing. But Tress had been distracted during that conversation, and had missed the point. Besides, few people who had grown up on islands had to know that the vines were technically edible. Because on islands, there was so much better food you could grow with far less danger, assuming you had access to soil or compost vats.