Third watch was never called. Tress suspected she was the only one “assigned” to it. So she did her best to ignore her stomach, instead observing the pirates at work. Maybe if she learned their tasks, she’d be able to anticipate how to keep out of their way.
She spent the morning so occupied, and fortunately most of them didn’t seem bothered by her. They weren’t a jovial crew, but they were apparently a dedicated one. A few times, Tress caught Captain Crow watching her from the side while drinking from her canteen. Her glare made Tress feel like a stubborn spot on a window.
Best to put herself to work. She rummaged in her sack, checking on her cups, then took out her hairbrush. After beating her hair into submission and locking it away in a braid, she picked up her bucket and floor brush—then realized she didn’t have any more water or soap.
She stood there looking foolish before someone approached with a fresh bucket for her. She thanked him, then—with a start—realized she recognized him. It was Hoid, cabin boy of the Whistlebow. There was no mistaking his gangly figure and his pure white head of hair. Though everyone called him “boy,” he appeared to be in his thirties and evidently of sound mind—until he opened his mouth.
“My gums sure do like a lickin’！” he said to her, then walked away with a bowlegged gait that made him wobble like a drunk penguin.
Yes, that’s me.
No, I don’t want to talk about it.
As I wandered off to go stuff shoelaces up my nose, Tress moved up to the quarterdeck, as it had less traffic. Here she set to work again. Turned out, Tress was quite good at scrubbing decks. It was like scrubbing windows, except you didn’t need to be able to see through them at the end. In fact it was too easy, perhaps demeaning of her washing talents. Like hiring a world-class surgeon to cut the crust off your sandwich.
During her breaks, she watched the crew. She was able to pick out other faces that—like Hoid—she knew, if only vaguely. Often ships passing the Rock would unload a few crewmembers. These would get a pass from the inspector and would be hired on by another visiting vessel.
This didn’t seem to be a notably rough lot—it was a mixed crew, with a variety of ethnicities and nearly as many women as men. That wasn’t uncommon in the spore seas. You took whoever was willing. Sexism interfered with profits.
How had such a normal crew ended up as pirates? And not merely ordinary pirates, bloodthirsty ones who would sink a ship without asking for plunder?
They didn’t even cover up the name of their vessel, Tress thought. And they left one sailor alive. Something was strange about this ship.
“I’ve been wanting to gargle my shirts!” I said, walking past. I pointed at her with both hands and winked. “But I ate them last week.”
Tress cocked her head, watching me wander away. As she did, Huck scampered across the deck and up onto her shoulder.
“What is wrong with that guy?” the rat asked softly.
“I’m not entirely certain,” Tress whispered. “I’ve met him before though. He’s nice. If…weird.”
“People who collect stamps are weird, Tress. That man is a few eggs short of a dozen—and he doesn’t realize the other ten he collected are actually rocks.”
Sigh.
All right, so here’s the thing. I’d had an encounter—well, more a collision—with the Sorceress a few years before. Let’s just say she had something I needed, but liberating it from her proved more difficult than I’d assumed. The end result? The Sorceress gave me one of her famous curses. Look, even the most graceful dancer trips once in a while.
My curse took away my sense of taste and, well, my other four senses as well.
“What did you find out?” Tress asked the rat.
“I snatched some food,” Huck said, “but could only get rat-sized portions. Sorry. Also, they really are sewing a pirate flag. I’d guess they’re new to this. Maybe that’s why they accidentally sank the other ship.”
“No,” Tress whispered, returning to her scrubbing. “They left one sailor alive on purpose, and didn’t cover their ship’s name. They didn’t sink that ship because of inexperience…”
“…they did it to declare themselves,” Huck agreed. “The pirate version of sending out a crier to announce a sale at the cobbler’s shop. Moonshadows. They killed almost thirty people.”
Tress looked up across the crew working at their posts. Earlier, she’d read intent and focus in their movements. Now she saw something else. A kind of acute desire to lose themselves in work. Perhaps to avoid having to think about what had happened the day before.
Something is very wrong on this ship, she thought again.
Unfortunately, before she could think more on that, other matters—of a more scatological nature—demanded her attention.
THE DOUGS
The Crow’s Song was a much larger ship than Tress’s previous one. Oot’s Dream had been a two-masted vessel, similar to what you might call a brigantine. The Crow’s Song was instead a full four-masted vessel, built for speed but with a spacious cargo hold and multiple decks. It was the equivalent of what you’d call a small galleon—and it had a rather large crew for Tress’s world, consisting of sixty people.
I’m not going to ask you to remember them all. Mostly because I don’t remember them all.
Therefore, for ease of both narrative and our collective sanity, I’m going to name only the more important members of the Crow’s Song. The rest, regardless of gender, I’ll call “Doug.”
You’d be surprised how common the name is across worlds. Oh, some spell it “Dug” or “Duhg,” but it’s always around. Regardless of local linguistics, parents eventually start naming their kids Doug. I once spent ten years on a planet where the only sapient life was a group of pancakelike beings that expressed themselves through flatulence. And I kid you not—one was named Doug. Though admittedly it had a very distinctive smell attached when the word was “spoken.”
“Doug” is the naming equivalent to convergent evolution. And once it arrives, it stays. A linguistic Great Filter; a wakeup call. Once a society reaches peak Doug, it’s time for it to go sit in the corner and think about what it has done.
Anyway, there was at least one woman actually named Doug on the Crow’s Song, but I can’t remember which one she was—so for the purposes of this story, they’re all Dougs.
Tress approached one and asked—hesitantly—where the toilet was. The Doug pointed her toward the stairs down, explaining that the “middle deck head” was for low-ranking crew.
With Huck on her shoulder, she began to explore. The ship had four levels. The Dougs called the top one—which was exposed to the sky—the “upper deck.” The “middle deck” contained places like the mess and the armory, and small rooms for officers. The “lower deck” was a cramped place where most of the sailors made their bunks.
Beneath that was the hold, a cavernous space for the copious loot the pirates would surely acquire once they figured out how to stop sinking it all to the bottom of the ocean.
There were several toilet rooms, with working plumbing, thank the moons. She peeked into an unoccupied one and saw a toilet, but no bath. How did the crew bathe? She desperately wished she could, as she kept finding dead spores in the folds of her clothing. It made her skin writhe to think how much of it must have gotten on her.