POV: tress
Summary
Dorp hauls Tress up from the hold of the Oot's Dream and onto the deck. The enemy ship is far closer than she had expected, near enough that she can pick out figures on its deck. It has two cannons, one fore and one aft, mounted on swivelling platforms — and the narrator pauses to note that ships on this world have not yet acquired the broadsides of dozens of guns you may have read about elsewhere; most carry a single small cannon and a sailor trained as a cannonmaster to aim it. The Oot's Dream has only one such gun on her foredeck, and at this moment is heeling hard through a weave rather than firing.
The enemy cannon lobs another round into the spores alongside the ship. It shatters on impact and dumps water; a knot of vines — the narrator describes it as more tangled than a librarian's love life, and as resembling Tress's hair before brushing — erupts inches from her and grabs the Oot's Dream's gunwale. The vines that touch silver turn grey and die, but the rest keep their hold; this method of attack, Tress grasps, can either tear a ship apart or simply pin it in place until it is shot to pieces. Sailors with axes shove past her to cut the snarl free.
The captain shouts to his helmsman, *Keep weaving, Gustal*, then rounds on Dorp for hauling the "inspector" topside. Dorp explains his thinking — that if the attackers saw a royal inspector aboard, perhaps they would hold their fire — and the captain decides this is the first good idea Dorp has ever had. Tress is propped on the rim of the quarterdeck and made to wave for her life, hoping the red coat will do its work. The next cannonball answers by smashing through the quarterdeck bulkhead and into the captain's cabin.
Cursing, Dorp drags Tress back below by the collar to recheck the hull and stash her in her cage. They have only just reached the hold when the ship lurches so hard Tress is thrown face-first into the dead spores on the floor and scrambles up frantically wiping them off. Dorp lets go of her, staring up the steps, *No, no, no*. The Oot's Dream grinds to a halt around them, and even the boots above go quiet. The seethe has stopped. The ship has, in the words the narrator chooses, run aground on the ocean itself.
The enemy gun is already pointed at them, and they are no longer moving. Another round tears through the aft hull, flies clear across the hold without shattering as designed, and punches out through the front of the ship. Tress cowers under the falling wood, and then her sense for the practical takes over. She turns and looks out through the gaping new hole at the enemy vessel, also stuck several hundred feet across the sea. The sea has, for the moment, gone solid — as solid as a sand dune. Solid enough to walk on. And while the people on the other ship would happily kill her, the people on the Oot's Dream most certainly will.
She makes for the hole. The rat shouts a warning from his cage as the sprouter drops on her from the broken steps above — he has had the same idea about the red coat, and means to take it from her so he can be the one to plead for mercy. He tears at her clothing. Tress gropes for a weapon, fingers metal, and swings it up into the side of his head. He drops. She blinks down at what she is holding: her pewter cup. The third of Charlie's cups, the heavy one she had once joked was solid enough to use as a club. *Didn't expect to be right about that.*
She gathers her sack from the wreckage, then crosses to the rat's little cage. She apologises for almost leaving him, hefts the cup again, and breaks the lock off with one downward swing. He shoves out, scuttles up her arm to her shoulder, and gives her his name: *Huck*. Not, he admits, his real one — a name in his own tongue would do her no good — but one she can pronounce. Tress gives hers in return. *Well then, Tress*, Huck asks, *are you ready to do something absolutely insane?* It is, she observes, becoming a theme of her life. She steps out through the breach onto the stranded spores.