Tress of the Emerald Sea

“You know my name?” Tress said.

“Things get around on a ship,” Ann replied. “I’m Ann. Ship’s carpenter. Assistant cannonmaster.”

Assistant to Laggart? Tress licked her lips, nervous—then stopped. Licking anything was not a good idea when handling spores. She made another pouch.

Had Ann seen her find the hidden chamber?

“What do you think?” Ann said, settling on a box nearby, a hand on one of her pistols as if taking comfort in it. “You’re a pirate now, Tress. An unexpected sideways turn in life.”

“Better than an unexpected turn downward,” Tress said.

“Aye,” Ann said. “That it is.”

Tress wanted to ask more questions, but it felt like too much of an imposition. These people had spared her. Who was she to be making demands of them? So instead she said, “You all seem to be adjusting well to being pirates.”

“Adjusting well? What kinda talk is that?” Ann leaned forward. “You want to know why, don’t you? How we ended up this way?”

“I…yes, Miss Ann. I do.”

“Why not ask?”

“I didn’t want to be impolite.”

“Impolite? To pirates?”

Tress blushed.

“I don’t mind talkin’ about it,” Ann said, staring out over the sea. Before them the ship’s prow cut a path through the spores. “The cap’n spun it well. We could either end up fighting in the king’s coming war, or we could strike out on our own, throwing away all the laws about writs and tariffs. Plus, the cap’n said we’d be doing a noble and important duty.”

“…Important?” Tress asked.

“A vital part of the economy.”

“…Um, I see.”

“Do you?”

“Actually, no,” Tress admitted.

“Then why not say so, girl?” Ann said, shaking her head. “Anyway, our job is important. You know how rich folk are—they make all this money off people sailing around, selling and buying for them. Then what’re they gonna do with the money? Lock it away. What good is locked away money? Ain’t nobody going to enjoy it if it’s trapped in a vault with Granna’s wedding ring.

“So we’ve gotta take some. Inject it back into the economy, as a stimulus. To help local merchants, the small folk who are just tryin’ to live. We do an important service.”

“By…stealing.”

“Damn right.” Ann sat back, shifting her hand on her pistol. “Least, that’s what it was supposed to be like. We weren’t supposed to be deadrunners. I guess we all knew the risk. Didn’t expect to fail so hard on our first act of piracy though.”

Tress cocked her head, barely resisting the urge to scratch at the place where the goggles met her face. Despite the silver on the deck, spores on her fingers could live long enough to do damage.

“I’m…confused,” Tress said. “Deadrunner?”

“You don’t know?” Ann said. “What kind of sailor are you?”

“The kind that…doesn’t know what a deadrunner is?” She felt profoundly annoyed at being berated for withholding questions, then being mocked when she didn’t.

“There are two varieties of pirates, Tress,” Ann explained. “There’s the ordinary kind, then there’s the deadrunners. Regular pirates rob, but don’t kill unless they’re fired upon. You sail well enough to catch the ship you’re chasing, and they surrender their ransom price. Then they sail away with their lives, while you sail away richer.

“That’s how it’s supposed to work. It becomes a contest, see? A race, with a little extortion to keep it interestin’. The king’s marshals, they keep records. So long as you let folks go, so long as you don’t murder crews…well, if you get caught, they lock you up. But they don’t hang you.”

“That sounds remarkably civilized,” Tress said.

Ann shrugged. “Civilization exists because everyone wants to keep their innards in’r innards. You don’t punch a fellow when you first meet him, ’cuz you don’t wanna get punched each time you meet someone. The king knows this. So long as he gives pirates a reason not to go all the way, they’ll hedge.

“Besides, who wouldn’t rather have a chase than a battle? The poor sods on merchant ships don’t want to lose their lives over their master’s money. The masters don’t want their ships being scuttled or stolen. And you don’t last long as a pirate if’n you’ve gotta wipe the deck with your blood every haul. Except, you know, if you kill someone by accident.”

“Or an entire ship’s worth of people,” Tress said.

Ann nodded. “Then you become a deadrunner. No mercy for you if caught. Even other pirates will hate you. Nobody will take crew from a deadrunner ship. You’re left to make your way, lonely as the single bean in a poor man’s soup.”

By the moons, it made sense. Tress revised her opinion of Ann. That forlorn expression, that regret…it meant whatever conspiracy there had been to sink the smuggler ship, Ann hadn’t been part of it.

Laggart had been though. And likely the captain. They’d wanted to become deadrunners. Hence the hidden cannonballs, the sinking of the Oot’s Dream. Why else would the captain leave one of the sailors alive to spread the word?

Tress was so absorbed by these thoughts that she forgot herself and absently scratched at the itch by her goggles. She froze as she was doing it. Moonshadows.

Well, at least—

That was when Tress’s face exploded.





THE OTHER CORPSE





Tress found herself lying on the deck, the goggles blown free of her face. What was that sound? Screams of pain?

No. Laughter.

Ann was laughing uproariously. Tress immediately put her hand up to her cheek. It was sore, but fortuitously still attached to her face. She’d gotten a mote or two of zephyr spores under the rim of her goggles, where they had touched a bead of sweat. Mercifully, that tiny amount of spores didn’t pack enough of a punch to kill her.

“It isn’t funny,” Tress said, sitting up.

(She was right. It was hilarious.)

“Come on, spore girl,” Ann said, helping Tress up by the arm. “Let’s have the surgeon look you over.” She shouted toward the Doug who had made Tress do this work, and told him to clean up. Then Ann helped the disoriented Tress down to the middle deck.

“You really work with that stuff?” Tress asked Ann. “As assistant cannonmaster?”

“Well, when they let me,” Ann said.

“Why don’t the cannons explode?”

“They do. That’s what makes the cannonballs shoot out.”

Tress determined to give that some thought later, as it didn’t make sense yet. Washing windows, it should be noted, is not an occupation that offers a thorough education in ballistics.