“I’m optimistic!” I said, looking in again. “I once ate an entire rock. Had to fight off its family first though.” I growled and wandered away.
Tress mostly missed what I said, focused as she was on my ailments. “Do you know what his…issue is, Doctor?” she asked.
“Hoid has too many issues to count,” Ulaam said, poking through the drawers above her table. “I wouldn’t trouble yourself with his situation. He’s nearly as deft at untying knots as he is at creating them.”
She nodded and eyed her bunk. When Ulaam left, could she take another nap? Or would she be reprimanded for loafing?
“Yes…” Ulaam said absently, “Hoid should have known better than to tangle with the Sorceress. In fact, he probably did know better. Frightening, how infrequently he lets that influence what he actually decides to do.”
Tress felt a start that drove away thoughts of sleep. “The Sorceress?”
“Hmmmm? Yes, what did you think happened to him? He puts on a brave front, pretending to be just an ordinary idiot, but I assure you that he’s instead the extraordinary kind. Remarkable really. I always say, when trouble troubles you, keep a stiff’s upper lip! Or several.”
“There’s someone on this ship,” Tress said, choosing her words carefully, “who knows the way to the Sorceress? Who has been there before, and escaped alive?”
“Technically, yes,” Ulaam said. “But I haven’t the faintest idea how Hoid did it—I found him like this after I arrived on the planet in response to his letter.”
“On the…planet?” she asked. “Like, you’re from the stars?” She’d heard stories of visitors from the stars, but had thought them fancies. Even if there did seem to be more and more of them these days, talked of among sailors.
“Hmm?” Ulaam said. “Oh, yes. Not from a star really, but a planet that orbits one. Regardless, I doubt you’ll be able to get anything useful out of Hoid with that curse in place.”
She put thoughts of such distant locations—and the cups they must have—out of her mind for now. There…there was someone here who could help her find Charlie! Hoid could be her solution! She felt an enormous sense of relief, then a sudden strike of panic. If she had left the ship, she would never have known.
She sat down with a dazed expression, realizing that I was in fact the key she needed. She formed a real plan at last; one she could maybe accomplish. Find out from me how to reach the Sorceress, and perhaps learn how to deal with her.
Still a daunting prospect. But it was better than what she’d had before. And as she sat there, she considered that perhaps this crew—and the kindly people on it, trapped in their own kind of prison—were exactly what she needed in order to save Charlie.
THE ASSISTANT CANNONMASTER
“There are twelve seas,” Ann explained as she sat on the railing of the ship, knocking her heels rhythmically on the wood. “And therefore, twelve kinds of spores. How could you not know that?”
“I lived all my life in a little mining town,” Tress explained. “Yes, we always talked about there being twelve seas and twelve moons. But I’ve learned so much in the last few days, I figured I should confirm things like that.”
She’s right to ask, Ann, Fort said, holding up his sign. There are, after all, thirteen kinds of spores.
“No there ain’t,” Ann said. “Don’t you be spreading that lie.”
It’s not a lie, he wrote. It’s a legend. Different thing entirely.
“Nonsense is the proper term,” Ann said. “People can’t even make up their minds on what color ‘bone spores’ are supposed to be. White or black? Or both? Listen, Tress. There are twelve kinds of spores.”
Tress nodded. They were at the prow of the ship, on the upper deck, near the forward cannon. Tress hadn’t been surprised to find Ann here—the lanky carpenter often hung around the cannon, shooting it glances like a teenager with a crush. However, Tress had been surprised to see Fort sitting on deck this morning, darning socks. A part of her had believed him a permanent fixture of his office.
For her part, Tress was carefully counting the pouches of zephyr spores in the gunnery barrel. She’d asked Laggart, and he’d said they should maintain forty on hand. She figured that counting them gave her a good excuse to move them out of the barrel into an aluminum box, where they’d be safe from the ship’s silver.
“Twelve seas,” Tress said. “How many have you seen, Ann?”