She was interrupted by a knock on her door. Tress glanced at Huck, who—with an abundance of caution—grabbed his bread crust in his mouth and hid under the bed. When Tress answered the door, she found Salay standing outside.
“Tress,” the helmswoman said, “we need to talk about who you really are.”
THE KING’S MASK
Salay wanted to know who she really was.
Unfortunately, that was a topic of some confusion to Tress herself. In her youth, she’d thought she understood who she was. Now she was sailing with pirates and learning to use spores. She found herself demanding answers of Ulaam, and not caring if it was polite.
She wasn’t even certain she was Tress anymore, or if she’d become someone else. You could say, in other words, that her state at the moment was distress.
“Well?” Salay asked.
Tress didn’t have a lot of experience with lying, but paradoxically, the ones who are most successful at it are those who don’t do it very often. So when Tress remained quiet but stepped back and gestured for Salay to come in, it was exactly the right thing to do.
Salay hesitated. Despite her no-nonsense attitude, she was nervous about entering a sprouter’s room. You got used to the idea of silver being around. It let you ignore, to some extent, the spores—like how you can usually ignore your nose always being in view. Or like how people ignore the existential horror that comes from knowing their body is slowly deteriorating every day, time itself marching them toward oblivion to the cadence of their beating hearts.
However, although Salay might have been short of both stature and temper, she wasn’t short on grit. She stepped into the room and shut the door, heroically enduring the chill that ran up her spine and the goosebumps that rose on her arms.
“Would you like some tea?” Tress said, getting out two cups. A charming matched pair of a light pale porcelain with silver on the rims. “It’s delightfully lukewarm.”
“Er, no,” Salay said. “Look, I know you aren’t who you’re pretending to be.”
“I’m just a girl trying not to get tossed overboard.”
“Yeah, no,” Salay said, folding her arms. “I’m not buying the act any longer, Tress.”
This made Tress a little annoyed. “What do you want me to say?” Tress asked, in a rare bout of pique. “I’ve already admitted that I stole this coat. Other than that I’m an insignificant girl from an insignificant island. There’s nothing remarkable about me.”
“Oh? An ‘unremarkable’ girl who just happens to be unafraid of spores? Who just happens to be made our sprouter after only a couple of days on the crew?”
“I’m terrified of spores!” Tress said, for once not caring if she was being discourteous. “I needed a job on the ship, and this was the only one available!”
Salay leaned forward, studying Tress. “Moon of veils, you’re so good at this. I don’t see a hint of a tell that you’re lying.”
“Because I’m not lying! Look, if you don’t believe me, then what do you think I am?”
“A royal inspector,” Salay said, “in disguise.”
“This,” Tress said, gesturing to her inspector’s coat, “is a disguise?”
“It’s a clever plan, I’ll admit,” Salay said. “You knew we’d instantly suspect a newcomer. But of course, an inspector would be the last person to wear one of those! Except when they’re being an inspector. So you knew by wearing it, we’d naturally assume you weren’t one.”
“That is,” Tress said, “an interesting thought process…”
“Yes,” Salay said. “I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have pieced it together if I hadn’t discovered that Crow gave you a chance to flee the ship, and you didn’t take it.”
Oh. “About that,” Tress said, “I simply didn’t want to abandon you all. Look, I’m not lying. I’m not an inspector.”
Salay narrowed her eyes. “Yeah? And what about what you did to the cannonballs?”
Tress froze.
“Aha!” Salay said. “You didn’t expect me to know about that, did you? I watched Laggart’s reaction when that ship didn’t sink today. He wanted to kill those people, though I haven’t figured out why. I do know you’re the only one who had access to his munitions to sabotage his attempt.”
Moon of mercy, Tress thought. If she figured it out…maybe Laggart and Captain Crow have as well. She should have known she couldn’t fool such an experienced crew.