“Who,” Crow said, “did you think would take you on this impossible mission?”
“Well,” Tress said, “I only really know the crew of one ship right now. I was kind of hoping—”
She was interrupted by another bout of laughter. She had expected this one. She’d provoked it on purpose. Because she was growing less and less embarrassed about lying, at least to Crow.
And she had just thought of quite the majestic one.
“What if I found a way to pay you?” Tress said.
Crow laughed so hard she started coughing. Ulaam even came up and peeked about the deck at the sound, as the sole previous time he’d heard Crow laugh like that was when one of the sailors had managed to spear himself in the crotch with his own boarding hook.
“Even if I wanted to go to the Midnight Sea,” Crow said, wiping her eyes, “and even if you could pay me, the crew would never agree to it.”
“You’re probably right,” Tress said, pretending to think. “I’d have to ease them into it. Send them someplace menacing, but less dangerous at first. What about…the Crimson Sea? I’d need to cross the Crimson to get to the Midnight Sea anyway. So we could go there first.”
“They’d never agree to it, girl,” Crow said. “This crew is as cowardly as the king himself.”
“But say I could get them to agree,” Tress said. “Would you allow it? Very few ships sail the Crimson, so the ones that do must be the richest and most valuable to loot!”
That, it should be noted, made about as much sense as assuming people who live in distant kingdoms must be the most fit, since it takes so long to walk to those places.
Crow shrugged. “If you can persuade them, fine. But they won’t agree. Not yet. They’re not…desperate enough.”
Tress thanked the captain and excused herself. She didn’t want to say anything more, and didn’t need to. Because the captain had effectively just been played by a straggly-haired washer girl from nowhere.
Again.
THE TOSHER
There’s a story from Tress’s land that I’m quite fond of telling. You see, in the palace of the king, the lowliest servant is the tosher—the man who goes through the castle’s sewage to make certain nothing useful has been lost or discarded.
No one wanted to be the tosher, for obvious odoriferous reasons. Worse, no one listened to the tosher, because wherever he went, people were either too busy moving upwind from him, or they were preoccupied by trying to remember how to get vomit out of carpet. （Soap, vinegar, and warm water.）
The tosher in our story had a great many items to complain about, some related to the lack of fiber in the royal diet. One thing he didn’t complain about was his dinner. Each day he got the same thing. A baked potato with lard.
The tosher loved baked potatoes. So much so that he decided to begin asking for a second one at dinner. He was given it, mostly to get him to go away, and then it became a habit. Two potatoes. Each day.
This continued until the lesser servants were instead served something different for dinner: cornbread with lard. And the tosher hated cornbread. He waited for the potatoes to return, but they never did.
One day, while doing his daily work—after remarking that someone must have dyed the punch green again at the latest ball—a thought occurred to him. His life in the palace was miserable, but surely he could do something to better his station. He determined to speak to the cook and get potatoes for dinner again.
So the tosher set out on a quest. He found the cook, apologized for making the milk curdle, and made his plea. Potatoes, please. Less cornbread.
The cook was sympathetic, judging by the tears in her eyes. But unfortunately, she couldn’t change the menu. She explained that the palace butler set the meal plan; the cook simply made the food.
The tosher went to talk to the butler. He found the man in the middle of a strange activity: trying to see how much handkerchief his nostrils could hold. The tosher presented his problem. The butler seemed sympathetic, judging by the way he was biting his lip. Sadly, he couldn’t change the meal plan—because he was allocated supplies by the minister of trade, who no longer provided potatoes.
Well, the minister of trade—it turns out—had dropped her ring into the tosher’s domain. The tosher recovered it after some diligent searching, though he did wonder why someone as fancy as the minister of trade ate so much corn. He went to return the ring, and the minister honored the tosher by seeing him in person. Outside. In high winds. While it was raining. During allergy season.