“I’m sorry,” Tress said softly, “that you never got the chance.”
“Never got the chance?” Ann said. “I enlisted in the militia the day I came of age! Went right into the cannonade crews. Lasted twenty-four days! Right up until…” Ann looked at her. “Did you know cannonballs can bounce? It was the most lunatic thing. Still think I’m the only cadet in the militia who ever managed to shoot her own sergeant…when he was behind her…inside the barracks.”
“Wow,” Tress said.
Ann sighed, heaving herself up onto her feet. “Anyway, you should try shooting like Laggart told you. Try to fire them so they pass over the buoy, using long fuses for now. Then adjust for the next shot down. Even the best cannoneers use an exploratory shot—helps them judge the wind, get perspective, that sort of thing.”
Tress stood, and found herself pricked by a certain lunatic sense of guilt. “You want to take a shot now?”
That is probably the craziest, most reckless thing I’ve ever heard someone say—and I was literally part of a secret plot to kill God.
“Ha ha,” Ann said. “You… Wait, you’re serious?”
Tress nodded. “You seem to miss it so much.”
Ann leaned in close, inspecting Tress. “You don’t even look afraid. You really are one of them.”
Transitive property of ineptitude. Trust me.
Ann stepped over and put her hand on the cannon, then glanced at Tress. “Laggart will be mad.”
“He told me to figure this out on my own,” Tress said. “And not to bother him. That’s what I’m doing. Asking an expert for advice.”
Ann looked back at the cannon. Then at Tress yet again. “Really?”
“I’ve lost things,” Tress said softly. “And it’s…not going to be easy to get them—him—back. But the thing you want is right here. So, let’s make it happen.”
Ann smiled again, then glanced at the buoy. She cranked the cannon to the side. Then cranked it some more. Then some more.
“Um, Ann?” Tress said, pointing. “The buoy is that way.”
Ann followed her pointing, then looked at the cannon—which was at least thirty degrees off. “Looks good to me.”
“Trust me,” Tress said. “Crank it back.”
Ann did so reluctantly. She grabbed the firing rod from its bucket. Then—grinning like an undertaker in a war zone—she fired.
Both of them waited, anticipating the worst. And Tress did smell a distinctive metallic scent. The cannonball hit the Verdant Sea behind, then vanished. Without harming anyone.
I’ll be honest, I was a little surprised myself.
“Thank you,” Ann said softly. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t really anything,” Tress said.
“It was everything,” Ann said. “I was beginning to believe, Tress. What they said. About me being cursed. I’m not. I just…well, I have bad aim.” She looked out over the ocean, then wiped her eyes. “Not cursed. You don’t understand how much I needed to know that.”
“Join me each day,” Tress said. “Take a shot with me. We can get better together.”
“Deal.”
“Oh,” Tress said. “One other thing. Do you know if the ship has a flare gun?”
“Of course,” Ann said. “You need them if you get stranded, or to surrender to pirates. Oh! Guess we don’t need to worry about that anymore. Surrender means death to us. Anyway, you should be able to get one from Fort.”
Ann excused herself after that—tears of joy aren’t exactly a good match with an unprotected part of the ship. Tress settled down, thinking about people and how the holes in them could be filled by such simple things, like time, or a few words at the right moment. Or, apparently, a cannonball. What, other than a person, could you build up merely by caring?
Eventually Tress fired a few shots of her own. （They all missed too.） As she was cleaning up afterward, the ship finally turned upon the captain’s order. This time no rains chased them off as they entered the Crimson Sea.
THE CHEF
The following evening, Tress took stock of the ship’s cooking ingredients. What she found was not inspiring. Stale flour, very few useful seasonings, rancid oil. And the ship’s oven? Fueled by sunlight spores in a way that made the kilnlike device heat in an impossibly uneven way. A quick test of wet flour on a baking pan proved that.
No wonder Fort had difficulty cooking anything without burning it. Indeed, it was possible he did it on purpose in order to cover up the awful flavor of the ingredients. She gave him a look with folded arms, and he shrugged. They didn’t need his writing board for that exchange.