Ann sat on the counter by the wall, swinging her legs. She seemed intensely interested in a knot in the floorboards, but in reality she was haunted by Fort’s words. They were all culpable. Everyone except Tress.
Salay stepped toward the others, away from the door. “See, that’s why it’s important that she is a Mask. The only way for us to survive after being named deadrunners is to have an agent of the king vouch for us.” She looked to Tress, pleading in her eyes. “That’s why she could be our liberator. She could tell the king we meant well. That we tried to stop Crow. It’s a way out. Isn’t it?”
Tress had seen Salay as stern, straightforward. Like a firm handshake in human form. But right now, there was fear in her dark eyes. And pain. Moon of mercy, it was difficult to hear her plea and deny it.
Fort and Ann both looked to Tress, a spark of hope in their eyes as well.
Huck was right. These people weren’t fools. They weren’t idiots for hoping Tress was something more than the girl she appeared to be. They simply wanted there to be a chance.
Tress’s mouth went dry again, though not from abusing aethers this time. There was a way for her to prove she wasn’t a Mask. She merely had to say she was one. Incongruently, this would prove she wasn’t one, assuming Salay was right and Masks weren’t allowed to admit to their station.
But saying that would stomp out their last light of hope. Doing so felt…cruel. Like kicking a kitten.
No. Like strapping dynamite to a kitten, then seeing how high you could get the head to fly.
Tress couldn’t say it. They wanted it so much. She in turn was desperate for them to get what they wanted. So instead she changed the subject. She reached into her satchel and took out a cannonball.
“I took this,” she said, “from a secret compartment in one of Laggart’s gunnery barrels.”
Salay looked to the other two and pointedly folded her arms, as if to say, See?
Fort took the cannonball and balanced it in his palm, his curled fingers against it and the other knuckles holding it steady. He rolled it from one palm to the other, then set it on the counter. He got out a chisel and a hammer, holding them each in his unique way, and gingerly tapped the cannonball in a few specific places. He was then able to hold it down with one palm and twist so the two halves came apart.
Inside, normally one would have found an explosive charge of zephyr spores and the fuse system to burst the cannonball. （We’ll get to the specifics later.） Each ball had a number printed on the outside, the seconds until the secondary detonation—which would launch out a spray of water.
In this case, the charge had been replaced by a wadded cloth, the water in the hollow center filled with lead shot.
“Rigged,” Ann said, “to sink a ship, not capture it. Moon of justice, Salay. You’re right. The cap’n made us deadrunners on purpose!”
I knew something was off about all this, Fort said, holding up his sign. You knew it too, Ann.
“Yeah, but to see it…” Ann said. “How’d you get this without getting caught, Tress?”
“It wasn’t hard,” she said. “Nobody wants to go near the charges.”
“But how did you even find them?” Ann asked, poking at the dissected cannonball.
“I, um, have experience with barrels and hidden compartments.”
Salay gave her a sly glance and a knowing smile.
My question is WHY? Fort wrote. What does the captain gain by this? We were already pirates. Killing people instead of looting them makes no sense.
“Yeah,” Salay said. “That’s the conundrum.”
Tress hesitated, then sighed. She had to tell them. “I overheard the captain speaking to Laggart. She was afraid that unless you were wanted criminals—facing death on any island where you tried to flee—you wouldn’t be loyal enough.”
“Well, she’s right about that,” Ann said. “Until that ship sank, I was thinkin’ about findin’ a way off.”
You “overheard” the captain speaking to Laggart? Fort wrote. How? They never speak their secrets out in the open.
“They weren’t out in the open,” Tress said. “They were in her cabin.” All three looked at her, and she realized her mistake. Moon of mercy. She shouldn’t have come to this meeting with a splitting headache.
“You were able to spy on the cap’n,” Ann said, “in her cabin while she was speaking conspiratorially to her first officer about her secret plans to betray her crew?”