LAGGART SWOOPED OVER to the cannon and craned his long neck over the barrel, eyeing the bundles of spores. He eventually declared the work well done, praising the Dougs.
At that moment they discovered the wonders of outsourcing: the luxury of taking all the credit, doing none of the work, yet reserving someone to blame just in case. Tress didn’t mind. She’d rather not have Laggart paying attention to her.
The Dougs hopped off to other duties, and Laggart made quite the show of cleaning the cannon himself—something he never left to another’s care.
Tress scrubbed the deck nearby, invisible in plain sight. Whenever Laggart turned her way, her head was inconspicuously down in her work. Yet she watched closely, and spotted it as he stealthily took a fist-size cannonball from his pack and hid it in the false bottom of the barrel.
She had been right. He kept rigged cannonballs in the hidden compartment. Cannonballs designed to sink ships. But why? It was so much more dangerous to be deadrunners, and it denied them loot. Wasn’t that the one essential thing that defined pirates? Other than, you know, the boats and stuff?
He wanted the crew to become deadrunners. Against their wishes or knowledge.
Laggart finished his work, shouted at a few nearby Dougs for being lazy, then hauled his pack to his shoulder. He strutted off toward the captain’s cabin, where Crow let him in—and posted a sailor at the door before closing it. The heavyset Doug didn’t look much like a guard, but the way he lingered reminded Tress of how Brick’s cousin stood watch by the tavern door on nights when people were expected to get rowdy.
“I need to know what they’re talking about in there,” Tress said.
“Yeah, that would be great, wouldn’t it?” Huck said from her shoulder. “I’ll bet it’s very secretive.”
“I need someone to slip in,” Tress said.
“Maybe we could ask one of the Dougs?” Huck said.
“Someone,” Tress said, “who is small, quick, and who won’t be noticed listening.”
“Dang,” Huck said. “Don’t know if the Dougs will be sneaky enough. Have you heard the way they tromp around on the deck? I was trying to sleep last night, and I’d swear they have lead in their shoes. It…” He trailed off, noticing her glaring at him. “Oooooohhhhh. Rat. Right, right. Got it.”
He hopped off her shoulder and scuttled over to the gunwale, then scrambled along it in the shadows over to the captain’s cabin. The Doug watching didn’t notice as Huck slipped along a small ledge on the outside of the ship and went in the captain’s window.
Perhaps you’re wondering why Huck had so quickly fallen in with Tress. Well, there are a lot of things I could tell you here—but suffice it to say that in the short life of Huck the rat, every human he’d met had tried to kill, capture, or sell him. Every human but Tress. He didn’t know a lot about people, having spent most of his life isolated—but he did like Tress. He would rather she not die. So, spying it was.
Tress began scrubbing furiously to work out her anxiety. Minutes passed with the weight of hours, as she worried about sending Huck into danger to satisfy her curiosity. That wasn’t something she would normally have done. Life as a pirate was already affecting her.
Yet Charlie was out there somewhere, afraid, hurting. She had to find a way to escape, then continue her quest. So maybe learning to impose on people a little was all right.
“Hey,” Huck said, scampering across the railing next to her, “you got anything to eat? Spying is hungry work.”
Tress glared at him as her stomach growled.
“Just asking,” Huck said. “Moons, girl, no need to look at me like I ate the center of the loaf and left you the heels.”
“Did you hear anything?” she asked.
Huck twitched his nose in a way he seemed to think she would understand, then he hopped down and scurried over to a more sheltered section of the deck. She followed, her back to the Dougs. To anyone watching, she’d simply be doing her thing, scrubbing away. They wouldn’t be able to see Huck.
“All right,” the rat said from the deck in front of her. “I’ll tell you what they said. Let me get into character.”
“…Character?” Tress said.
Huck went up on his hind legs, holding his little ratty paws before himself with his nose up in the air. “I am Captain Crow,” he said in a surprisingly good approximation of her aristocratic accent. “Hip, hop, do as I say. My, this canteen water is tasty. Laggart, what news of the cannon? Is everything ready?”
Tress waited, her head cocked.
“You be Laggart,” Huck hissed.
“I wasn’t there! I don’t know what he said.”
“You’ll do fine.” Huck waved his paw at her. “Go ahead. Be Laggart.”
“Uh…the cannons are…ready?”
“Voice needs more crust to it,” Huck whispered. “And stretch out your neck like his. It will help you get in character.”
“But—”
“Excellent, Laggart,” Huck said in his captain voice. “But I have unfortunate news via a raven from my contact in Kingsport. The remnants of the ship we sank have been found, but there were no survivors, just a single corpse. That man we left alive appears to have rejected my bountiful generosity and done me the insult of dying from wounds we didn’t realize he had.”
“She said that?” Tress whispered. “Those exact words?”
“It’s a dramatic recreation,” Huck hissed. “What, you think I wrote it down? With these?” He waved his paws at her. “That’s as close as I can remember. Now do Laggart’s part.”
“Um…that’s sad?” Tress said.
“Tress, that’s not what he said. He said, ‘All that work for nothing? We’ll have to sink another then!’” He waved a paw for her to continue.
Tress sighed. “All that work for nothing. We’ll have to sink another then.”
“Moonshadows, could you put less emotion into it?” Huck said. “I feel like you’re not taking your role seriously.”
“I don’t—”
“This is a problem, Laggart,” Huck said in his captain voice, falling to all fours and stalking back and forth with his nose in the air. “The crew is upset. I’m worried about some of them running off.”
“But why?” Tress said.
“We’re getting there,” Huck said. “Look, why don’t I just do Laggart’s part too? You take a break. Memorize your lines next time, all right?”
“But—”
Huck stretched out his neck and spoke with a creepy, scratchy voice. “As well you should, Captain,” he said. “Fort is brewing trouble, and maybe Salay too. We need blood binding them to this ship if we’re going to do what you want.”
Huck moved over to be the captain again, standing up on his hind legs with his front paws on the gunwale, as if mimicking the captain gazing out the window. “The crew will never follow us to dangerous seas unless they have no other choice. Unless they’re desperate. We will sink another ship, Laggart, and leave a couple sailors alive this time.”
Huck turned to her and settled into a more ratlike posture. “And that’s it.”
“Dangerous seas,” Tress whispered. The Verdant Sea was one of the safer ones, but apparently Captain Crow wanted to leave such spores and head toward a place the crew wouldn’t go unless they had no other choice.
“So, what do you think?” Huck asked. “She’s got some kind of special curse for the crew, eh? Blood binding them to the ship?”
“No curse,” Tress whispered, continuing to scrub so she wouldn’t appear suspicious.
“But Laggart said—”
“It was a metaphor, Huck,” Tress said. “Don’t you see? The captain isn’t certain of her crew’s loyalty. She wants to sail dangerous seas, but is worried they’ll desert her if she tries to make them do that. So…”
“So she turns them to piracy, then ‘accidentally’ sinks a few ships,” Huck said. “Making them into deadrunners. Chased by the law, ostracized by other pirates, they’ll have no choice but to follow her orders.” Huck twitched his nose, which seemed to be his version of nodding in agreement. “I can see that. Yeah, you’re probably right. You…look morose though.”
“Not morose,” Tress said. “Merely distracted.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, “I’ve just figured out a way for us to escape this ship.”
