“I…gather this must be some kind of hazing,” Tress said, “from the way Ann keeps grinning. So I might as well get it over with. If any of you wanted me dead, I’m as good as tossed overboard anyway.”
“Ooo,” Ulaam said. “I like her. I’m going to have to keep an eye on you, girl. Here, hold this.”
He dropped something into her other hand.
It was a human eye.
She squealed and dropped it, though Ulaam caught it with a quick snatch. “Be careful! It’s one of my favorites. Observe the deep blue coloring. It would look wonderful exchanged for your left eye—you’d be heterochromatic blue and green. Quite striking.”
“I… No thank you?”
“Ah well,” Ulaam said, putting the eye away. “Perhaps another time. Use the salve; there is no prank involved. I’m probably the least dangerous thing on this ship.”
“You literally eat people, Ulaam,” Ann said.
“Dead ones. My! How dangerous! Like the mighty worm of the earth or the bacteria of decomposition. They are my colleagues.”
Hesitant, Tress touched the salve to her cheek. The pain vanished immediately. Startled by the efficacy, she rubbed it around her cheek. When Ulaam held up a hand mirror, her skin wasn’t even red, and there was no sign of a wound.
“There’s a reason we keep ’im around,” Ann said. “Even if he’s weird as a two-headed snake.”
“As the only true source of modern medicine in this backwater land,” he said, “I find your vivid simile inaccurate; incomplete axial bifurcation is far more likely in reptiles than other animals, so if you wish to call me odd, pick a two-headed bird or a mammal for full effect.”
Both women stared at him, trying to parse that sentence.
“I’ve eaten several two-headed snakes,” Ulaam noted. “And mimicked their forms. So rather than being as odd as one, I’ve literally been one. Alas, I couldn’t divide my consciousness and think twice as quickly. Wouldn’t that have been fun?” He took the salve back from Tress. “Anyway, try to avoid blowing yourself up in the future, hmmmm? It mangles the corpse and gives it a metallic taste.”
If you’re wondering, I have it on good authority that Ulaam was enjoying himself during my regrettable period of indisposition. He made no move to break my curse, and instead wrote some extremely embarrassing accounts of my actions and sent them to several good friends of ours.
Granted, the rules of the curse prevented me from giving any direct explanations of how to break it. But I really expected more from him. As it stands, after coming to find me and then discovering my…ailment, he’d just taken up residence on the ship. He’d always fancied becoming an explorer. “For the sense of adventure, hmmmm?” he’d said.
The crew hadn’t known what to make of him at first. Captain Crow shot him a few times, an experience he reports as being “invigorating.” Members of his species are virtually impossible to kill. Other than the eating corpses part, they can be handy to have around—as the crew soon discovered.
From then on, they simply dealt with him. Rather like a rash that occasionally rescues one from life-threatening wounds. He didn’t ask for payment aside from the occasional otherwise-useless corpse. It’s gruesome, yes, but you’ll find you’re able to put up with quite a bit of eccentricity in a person who can literally work miracles on your behalf.
Tress—understandably left numb by her first interaction with the ship’s surgeon—was deposited on the deck near her bucket and brush. Ann went off to do some other work, so Tress—prodding at her completely healed cheek—decided to go back to scrubbing.
She hadn’t made much progress before Huck came scampering up. “Something’s happening.”
“What?” Tress asked. “An attack?”
“No, no. See, you sent me away, so I figured I’d go sneak some food. I’d already eaten, but you never can have too much, right? I was down in the hold where—I’ll have you know—there’s nothing really accessible without nibbling through sacks. And people hate when we nibble through sacks. If they hate it so much, why not leave them untied for us? Then no sacks are harmed, you see, and—”
“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.