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.