Lem threw, and nearby men winced. “Nice,” one noted.
As the night progressed, quiet, invisible ledgers were tallied. Decisions were reached, but not spoken. They didn’t need to be, for the next morning—too early for any of them—Tress found the barkeep, the dockmaster, and the dockworker on her doorstep. They demanded to help her in whatever she was doing.
So it was that a little over a week later, a large keg was deposited on the dock for inspection. Gremmy pushed it up alongside five others.
The perfect ship had arrived for executing Tress’s plan, a vessel known as the Oot’s Dream. It needed to be a ship with a crew that didn’t often visit Diggen’s Point, and it needed a king’s writ authorizing the purchase of Brick’s ale.
The sailors of the Oot’s Dream nearly took the kegs on board without inspection, but the captain had read the terms of his writ. “There is supposed to be an inspection, is there not?” he demanded. “We cannot leave port until it has been done.”
So, the inspector was summoned. She arrived with a scowl that could have killed spores, her rod held at the ready to deal out justice. She examined the first keg, then used her listening device on it.
Nearby, Sor peered at his pocket watch, counting the seconds, his heart thumping. Gremmy mopped his head as the inspector moved down the line of kegs. Brick nudged him, trying to urge him to not look so suspicious.
Finally, the inspector listened to the last large keg. Just big enough for a girl to curl up inside, it was. The inspector listened closely, and found…nothing.
She waved for the cargo to be loaded. The three conspirators exchanged glances. Until the inspector paused and turned back. Then in a sudden motion, she kicked over the last keg.
It went thump.
Then it went ouch.
“I thought so!” the inspector said, grabbing a crowbar from the dock, then prying the keg’s top free to reveal the truth—a raven-haired young woman hiding inside, trying to sneak off the island. “Feathers as insulation!” the inspector cried. “You thought that would muffle the sounds enough to fool my ear?”
Well, after that, things went downhill at speed. “This couldn’t have been managed without help!” the inspector snapped at the dockmaster. “This couldn’t have been managed without a conspiracy!”
Poor Gremmy couldn’t take it, and started bawling right there. Brick tried to quiet him, while Sor wondered out loud if maybe he could order Gremmy to take his punishment for him.
“The king has worried about your disloyalty,” the inspector said with a sneer. “He warned me about the people of this town. He will be told of this, that you all worked together to circumvent his laws. Pay for only five kegs, Captain.”
The other five kegs were loaded onto the ship, and the ship took off toward the Emerald Sea’s Core Archipelago to deliver the ale. The inspector went with them—leaving her assistant to watch the docks—declaring she would tell the king personally of the betrayal at Diggen’s Point.
Now, you might have noticed that the young woman in the barrel was not Tress, and you might think she was actually in one of the other kegs. She was not.
Tress was not hiding in some other piece of cargo.
Tress was not hiding at all.
Tress was the inspector.
THE STOWAWAY
Tress thought she could see the real inspector arriving on the docks in the distance. A tiny irate figure who gestured in anger at the fleeing ship. She would be told that the captain had insisted on leaving without inspection. By now, Gret—the dockmaster’s daughter—would have climbed out of the hollow keg and left. There would be no other witnesses left on the Rock except for Brick, Gremmy, and Sor—whose debts had now been paid.
Just like that, Tress was free. This time, Diggen’s Point was the thing that grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Practically everything and everyone that Tress had ever known lived on that island. And soon she wouldn’t even be able to see it.
Leaving didn’t feel exciting. It felt heavy. Every child looked forward to the day when they could choose a different path from the one their parents were on. Tress sincerely hoped she hadn’t decided on one that led straight off a cliff.
But she was free. She’d escaped without a hitch. She wondered if maybe her other tasks would be accomplished with similar ease. She could wonder this because—lacking formal training in the arts—Tress had no concept of dramatic irony.
She turned her gaze to the sky. It was so blue out here, away from the mining smog. That felt immoral somehow, as if she were seeing the sky without its clothing. The air smelled…not of salt anymore, but pure and clean. And dangerous. No salt meant free spores.