“Huck?” she asked, getting down on her hands and knees, peering beneath the bed. She made him out in the corner, squeezed into the space between the wood of the bed’s leg and the wall. As he saw her, he came timidly toward her, and she scooped him up, feeling him tremble in her hands.
“It’s gone,” she said. “I’m sorry, Huck.”
He didn’t speak—a rare occasion where he seemed completely without breath or words. He just cringed there in her hands, looking more…well, like a rat than he ever had before.
Finally he spoke, his voice trembling. “Perhaps you can leave the door locked from now on. There’s a crack in the floor, and I can squeeze in that way, after climbing the post in the hallway below.”
“All right,” Tress said. “Are you…going to be okay?”
Huck glanced at the door. “Yeah, sure,” he whispered. “Give me a little time. I…still can’t believe they got a cat.”
“You’re intelligent, Huck,” Tress said. “You can handle a common cat.”
“Sure. Yeah. No problem. But Tress…I don’t know. It’s always watching. Prowling. Cats are supposed to sleep twenty-six hours a day. How can I use my intelligence, how can I plan, knowing it’s watching?”
After a few minutes, he seemed to relax. He nodded to her, so she set him on the footboard, then lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling—which was the upper deck of the ship. She could hear sailors crossing it, feet thumping. Wood creaking as the ship rocked. Spores made a constant low, hushed sound as they scraped past. Like a whisper. Someone had carved parts of the ceiling with a knife. Crude little patterns of crossing lines.
“I hope your day has been better than mine,” Huck said, perched on the footboard of the bed. The entire thing had a nice railing to keep her from rolling out as the ship swayed.
“It’s been somewhat frustrating,” Tress said. “But not life-threatening.” What she wanted wasn’t nearly so important as what he needed, and she felt guilty for focusing on herself. “Your problem with the cat is more pressing. Maybe we could keep it extra well fed, so it doesn’t want to hunt you?”
“Cats don’t stop hunting because they’re full, Tress. They’re like people in that regard.”
“Sorry,” she said. “We don’t have cats on the Rock.”
“Sounds like a wonderful place.”
“It was sweet and tranquil,” she said. “And though the smog above town is pretty terrible, people tend to treat one another well. It’s a good place. An honest place.”
“I’d like to go there someday. I know you’re thirsty for adventure, but I’ve had plenty.”
“You could go,” Tress said. “You don’t need to stay with me, Huck.”
“Tired of me already?”
“What!” she said, sitting up. “That’s not what I meant!”
“You’re too polite, girl,” he said, twitching his nose. “I’ll assume that you know less about rats than you do about cats. Try to imagine what it’s like to be roughly the size of a sandwich, and to have most of the world consider you as tasty as one. Trust me, you’d do what I have.”
“Which is?”
“Find a sympathetic human and stick close to them,” Huck said. “Besides, I have a good feeling about you, remember?”
“But you’ve got to have family somewhere.”
“Yeah, but they don’t much care for me,” he said.
“Are they…like you?”
“You mean, can they talk?” Huck said. “Yes.” He paused, his head cocked, as if searching for the right way to explain. “I come from a place a lot like the one you came from. My kind has lived there for generations. But my kin, they thought it was time to go. See the world. They dragged me off for my own good. That didn’t go well.
“They wouldn’t much like me hanging around with you. I’m not supposed to talk to your kind, you see. Still, like I said, I’ve got a good feeling about you. And so, I’m staying close. But I certainly wouldn’t mind if you decided—of your own free will—to head someplace less exciting…”
Tress tried to imagine it. A land full of talking rats? It sounded exotic and interesting. The twelve seas were a strange and incredible place, full of wonders. Huck kept talking, telling her about life as a rat. And there was a calming sense to his voice. It soothed her, and she found herself relaxing, her eyes tracking the carvings on the ceiling. Someone—perhaps her predecessor—had taken a lot of time to carve them. In fact…did those bursts of crossing lines look like…stars?
Tress sat up, cutting off Huck. He scampered along the bed railing over beside her. “What?”
Stars. Carved in little bursts. A single star there, then two stars close together next to it. Then three…all across the wood of the ceiling, as if someone had stood on the bed with a knife and used the point to scrape them.
No groupings of six stars, she thought.
“What?” Huck said. “What are you staring at?”
“Nothing,” Tress said, flopping back down. “I thought, for a moment, that Hoid had said something important.”
“You’ve been listening to him? Tress, I thought you were smart, for a human. Hoid is…you know.”
“He said something about six stars,” Tress said. “But there are no bunches of six.”
“I can see that,” Huck said. “I told you he’s a lunatic, Tress. No use in trying to figure out what he means.”
“I suppose,” she said.
“Besides,” Huck noted, “those look more like explosions. The stars are under the bed.”
Tress froze, then leaped off the bed and pulled herself underneath. The bottom of the bed frame was carved as well—and with patterns that were indeed more starlike. There was one patch of six stars. Feeling like she might be submitting to lunacy herself, Tress pushed it.
Something clicked, and a small latch opened on the side of the frame. Inside, Tress found a small aluminum container the size of a matchbox. Huck climbed onto her shoulder as she pushed it open.
In it she found midnight-black spores.
THE PREY
So how did I know?
Well, I believe you’ve been told. I’m an expert at being places I’m not supposed to be. I have an innate sixth sense for mystery. In my current state, I might have thought vests with no shirt underneath to be the absolute height of fashion, but I was still fully capable of a little constructive snooping.
Tress’s breath caught. Huck hissed softly.
Midnight spores. Somehow, Weev had gotten ahold of midnight spores. She was reminded of what the captain had said, that all sprouters were—to one extent or another—crazy.
Weev, she thought, might have been a little extra so. （Tress was being generous. I’d have called him crazier than a nitroglycerin smoothie.）
“Put those away,” Huck said. “No, better, spread them over the silver. Kill them, Tress. Midnight spores are dangerous.”
“In what way?” she asked. “What do they do?”
“Terrible things.”