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.”
“Uh…the cannons are…ready?”
“Voice needs more crust to it,” Huck whispered. “And stretch out your neck like his. It will help you get in character.”
“But—”
“Excellent, Laggart,” Huck said in his captain voice. “But I have unfortunate news via a raven from my contact in Kingsport. The remnants of the ship we sank have been found, but there were no survivors, just a single corpse. That man we left alive appears to have rejected my bountiful generosity and done me the insult of dying from wounds we didn’t realize he had.”
“She said that?” Tress whispered. “Those exact words?”
“It’s a dramatic recreation,” Huck hissed. “What, you think I wrote it down? With these?” He waved his paws at her. “That’s as close as I can remember. Now do Laggart’s part.”
“Um…that’s sad?” Tress said.
“Tress, that’s not what he said. He said, ‘All that work for nothing? We’ll have to sink another then!’” He waved a paw for her to continue.
Tress sighed. “All that work for nothing. We’ll have to sink another then.”
“Moonshadows, could you put less emotion into it?” Huck said. “I feel like you’re not taking your role seriously.”
“I don’t—”
“This is a problem, Laggart,” Huck said in his captain voice, falling to all fours and stalking back and forth with his nose in the air. “The crew is upset. I’m worried about some of them running off.”
“But why?” Tress said.
“We’re getting there,” Huck said. “Look, why don’t I just do Laggart’s part too? You take a break. Memorize your lines next time, all right?”
“But—”
Huck stretched out his neck and spoke with a creepy, scratchy voice. “As well you should, Captain,” he said. “Fort is brewing trouble, and maybe Salay too. We need blood binding them to this ship if we’re going to do what you want.”
Huck moved over to be the captain again, standing up on his hind legs with his front paws on the gunwale, as if mimicking the captain gazing out the window. “The crew will never follow us to dangerous seas unless they have no other choice. Unless they’re desperate. We will sink another ship, Laggart, and leave a couple sailors alive this time.”
Huck turned to her and settled into a more ratlike posture. “And that’s it.”
“Dangerous seas,” Tress whispered. The Verdant Sea was one of the safer ones, but apparently Captain Crow wanted to leave such spores and head toward a place the crew wouldn’t go unless they had no other choice.
“So, what do you think?” Huck asked. “She’s got some kind of special curse for the crew, eh? Blood binding them to the ship?”
“No curse,” Tress whispered, continuing to scrub so she wouldn’t appear suspicious.
“But Laggart said—”
“It was a metaphor, Huck,” Tress said. “Don’t you see? The captain isn’t certain of her crew’s loyalty. She wants to sail dangerous seas, but is worried they’ll desert her if she tries to make them do that. So…”
“So she turns them to piracy, then ‘accidentally’ sinks a few ships,” Huck said. “Making them into deadrunners. Chased by the law, ostracized by other pirates, they’ll have no choice but to follow her orders.” Huck twitched his nose, which seemed to be his version of nodding in agreement. “I can see that. Yeah, you’re probably right. You…look morose though.”
“Not morose,” Tress said. “Merely distracted.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, “I’ve just figured out a way for us to escape this ship.”
THE HELMSWOMAN
Captain Crow soon emerged from her cabin, leaving Laggart to strut across to the bow while she climbed up to the quarterdeck. Tress went down to refill her bucket and left Huck to forage for some more food. Returning to the upper deck gave her an excuse to reset her location, so she moved to the quarterdeck, near where the captain stood next to Salay—the helmswoman who had traded Fort those earrings earlier.
Tress didn’t want to act suspicious, so she didn’t execute her plan at first. She scrubbed, feeling the boat rock upon the spores. Listening to the Dougs calling to each other and the planks creaking. There’s a certain freedom to the sounds of a ship at sea. The feeling of motion, of going somewhere. On an ocean—even a spore ocean, so long as the seethe holds up—it’s hard to sit still. You’re either bending the waves and wind to your will, or you’re being bent to theirs. Usually it’s a careful grapple between the two.
As Tress stood up to stretch, she gazed across the vibrant green sea. It was odd because the moon was in the wrong place—always before it had been almost overhead, but they’d sailed far enough that it was several degrees lower.