In An Honest Service, There Is Thin Commons

[Plink]

Plink crouched in the shadows at one end of the harbor and watched a patrol of guards march the long stone bank. Her eyes burned from late nights and smokey torches, but she hardly blinked. She'd been waiting three days for this chance, and she wouldn't miss it now.

Tonight, she would find the treasure.

There had been an unusual amount of activity on the docks over the last few days. Ships were being loaded with crates and casks. One by one, hulls were scraped smooth, and sails and rigging were inspected and repaired. The work often kept beasts in the harbor long past the dinner hour, making it difficult for even a small rat to sneak around.

Yet Plink visited the harbor openly throughout the day. Blade had many messages to relay to his captains, and Plink quickly learned to recognize each beast and the ship they commanded. She learned other things, as well; things that were harder to explain. She learned that when Captain Wraithspit raked his claws through his red-splotched fur, he was pleased with what the captain had written. She learned that, though Captain Zorba never cracked a smile, he enjoyed making his crew laugh by forcing Plink to leap for a missive or trip on her way off his ship. She learned to listen past the false laughter and grumbles of weariness and frustration to gauge whether beasts were merely dissatisfied or mutinous.

And every snippet of conversation she overheard, every meaningful glance she didn't quite understand, Plink reported to Captain Blade. His appetite for gossip was voracious. A captain needs t' know what's on his crew's minds, Miss Plink. It's the best way t' keep the peace.

Plink did her part to keep the peace with a willing heart, but unease followed her through the day. In the night, it settled in her stomach like a sickness. She lay awake in her bunk in the crowded runners' quarters, and her thoughts turned toward glittering things.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, she wouldn't be satisfied with fantasies. Plink waited until the guards had turned away from the hidden tunnel entrance, then she scurried to the pocked stone wall and began to climb.

She moved quickly, knowing the patrol would be back around soon, and shortly scrambled over the high ledge and lay back to catch her breath. The mouth of the tunnel loomed above her and, faintly, she heard the scuffing feet of the patrollers. When their steps began to diminish again, Plink dared a glance down to the harbor floor far below, then jumped to grab the lip of the tunnel, and squirmed her way up the chute.

It seemed longer than she remembered it, but she soon emerged into the faint greenish light. Plink broke off one of the brightest mushrooms and began making her way toward the darker end of the chamber. The rock walls narrowed in as she progressed, and the floor sloped down, twisting and dropping off unexpectedly in places. Plink climbed down the tunnel carefully, but then her paw slipped on a knob of rock and she went tumbling. Her mushroom bounced away and she barely missed impaling herself on a cone of rock that jutted up from the cave floor. Plink pushed herself up slowly, staring at what her fallen light revealed.

"Daggers all around you..." Before her, stone protrusions stabbed down from the ceiling and up from the floor. Her heart pounded - not because of the jagged room, but because she was so close.

Daggers all around ye,
ye know ye've gone too far...

The treasure could be just a few steps ahead. Just on the other side of this room.

Plink licked her lips and picked her way through the stone knives. The chamber was small, perhaps ten paces wide at most, and on the other side, the tunnel smoothed out and continued.

She did not see the second tunnel until her paw, trailing along the wall to steady her, dipped into a shadowy recess. A side passage. Curious, Plink ventured through the narrow opening and followed the curved tunnel until it opened out onto the vast chamber beyond.

She could tell it was vast by the sound of her steps echoing faintly off the far walls and ceiling, but she couldn't see much. Mostly in the dark, she felt along the edges of wooden crates that smelled of parchment, leather, and ink - like Scully's book, in fact. There were dozens of them, stacked tidily against one wall, higher than Plink could reach and stretching on farther than she cared to follow.

There was a glint in the darkness as something toward the chamber's center caught the light of her mushroom. Plink approached carefully, feeling along the floor until she touched the shining object. She held it close to her light.

It was a diamond the size of her eye. Plink gaped, turning the stone so that its facets flickered, clear as a spring.

The chamber floor was littered with coins, and Plink's footpaws rattled them as she explored the sacks and chests from which they'd overflowed. There was no end in sight. In fact, the carpet of gold thickened as she went on, and soon Plink found herself on the edge of a mountain of treasure that glittered and disappeared into the darkness above her.

She looked again at the diamond in her paw. With so much here, surely the captain wouldn't miss one gem. Plink tipped the diamond into her pocket. It tugged at her coat, unexpectedly heavy.

The smells in this chamber were strange - old and stale and dominated by the musk of a ferret. Captain Blade probably visited this place often. Plink felt suddenly like her own scent was pressing itself on the air, giving her away. She dug the fox perfume from its hidden pocket and sprinkled a few potent drops on the floor, then replaced the cork and scurried from the chamber.

By the last dull glow of her mushroom, Plink wove back through the dagger room and climbed the final stretch of tunnel, and only when she had emerged from the mole's chimney to find the dawn light stealing onto the harbor did she pause to catch her breath.

She withdrew the gem to admire it in daylight and it flashed like a signal before Plink could cover it again with her claws.


*


The diamond weighed her down all day. Climbing the many flights of stairs was far more taxing than usual, and whenever Plink held still, she felt as if her jacket was askew. And here, in Captain Blade's dining room, she felt the diamond's pull hardest of all.

"Er- sorry, Cap'n?" She snapped upright from her weary slump when she realized Captain Blade had stopped writing and was now watching her over his empty dessert dish.

"I asked if you've been sleeping. You look dead on your feet, Miss Plink."

Plink licked her lips and settled on a half-truth. "There're fleas in the runners' bunkroom, sir. Splitear's plannin' on saltin' again today, but that itches, too."

Blade shut his eyes and nodded sagely. Plink loved it when he accepted her word this way. There was no doubt in her mind that he knew the torments of fleas and sleeplessness. He understood her.

"You won't have t' worry about that much longer," Blade said with a sly smile. "When we embark, I want you aboard The Zephyr with me. There won't be as much running for you there, but a ship always needs a cabin boy. Or?" He regarded her thoughtfully. "Cabin lass, as it were."

Plink beamed, even more desperately grateful with the diamond in her pocket. "Thank you, Cap'n! You'll never regret choosin' me, sir!"

"I will if you drop dead of exhaustion before you ever get the chance t' board." Blade finished his note with a flourish and waved it dry. "After you run this t' Captain Burnet, I want you t' take the rest of the afternoon off. Get some fresh air on the harbor. Find a quiet spot an' take a nap."

Plink let her wrist bump the hard lump in her pocket and barely kept from hanging her head. "Aye, Cap'n."

She took the note and was on her way out the door when she nearly ran into another beast on their way in. Plink stopped and stared up at Captain Ancora, startled. She hadn't seen her in days. The ferret looked as sharp-eyed as ever, and she took in Plink's appearance in a glance. The corner of her mouth tipped downward.

"Commandeering my crew, are you?" Captain Ancora snapped her attention to Blade.

Blade shrugged, smiling faintly. "We're all servin' the same cause, aren't we? Run along, Miss Plink. Enjoy your afternoon."

"Aye, Cap'n." Plink glanced self-consciously at Ancora, then back toward Blade. He was smirking more deeply now, and it made her feel like she had betrayed one captain for the other. "Thank you, Cap'n," she mumbled, then hurried from the dining room.

"Actually," Blade said as she was leaving, "it's one of your crew I invited you here t' discuss?"

The door closed behind her and Plink didn't catch the words that followed, but she heard the loaded tones with which they spoke.

Plink didn't think on that for long, though. In the corridor that ran the length of Blade's suite, a dozen beasts in shackles were hauling sacks out of the office and through the main door into the tunnels beyond. A few guards with short flails oversaw them, and as Plink watched, a shaking vole staggered and stopped. The nearest stoat striped him three times before he managed to resume his slow march.

Plink shrank back against the wall and watched them pass.

She knew there were slaves in the Dead Rock, and she knew Vera had been troubled by the sight of them. In her mind, though, the slaves had all been like Minstrel and Scrufftail - roughed up and not exactly happy, but not actively suffering either.

That delusion quaked and crumbled as she watched this line of beasts with their backs hunched under the weight of their burdens, their oozing wounds and their fur chafed off in places. Plink didn't want to look at them. Vera had been right. She didn't want to see this.

To her dismay, the slaves took the same tunnel she had intended on taking, so Plink forged off on a more roundabout route toward the harbor. When her path rejoined with the main corridor, she thought at first that the slaves had somehow beaten her here. They trudged with the same exhausted resignation, their bodies were equally ruined and difficult to look at directly. Yet the guards wore different colors. It was a different group.

Plink followed them the last of the way to the harbor, crossing paths with another two teams of slaves, and found a crowd of pirates gathered to watch the procession. The Zephyr was docked in the nearest spot, and as Plink watched, the slaves climbed the gangplank and took their burdens into the massive ship's belly.

"?always knew 'e 'ad it 'ere someplace," a weasel was muttering nearby. "Wif all 'ese tunnels, weren't no way ter sniff it out."

His companion, a skinny searat, scratched at his chafed forearms and glanced around. "Well, it's out now, ain't it? An' all loaded up nice on that Waverunner ship. Beast could go anywheres in that ship, Surg."

The weasel shot him an ugly look. "It'd take a full crew ter sail 'er, yew dolt." His eyes flicked past the searat and caught Plink watching. For an instant, she was afraid, but the weasel abruptly cuffed his companion. "An' don't yew dare speak o' such fings! I won' stand fer no schemin', Rotfang, I won'!"

The searat squeaked half a protest, but Surg just cuffed him again and cast Plink an oily smile. She took in their colors - black, Blade's own crew - and warily moved on.

She spotted Captain Burnet off from the rest, watching the slaves work while her tail twitched intermittently behind her. At her side stood another weasel, this one fatter than most. As Plink approached them from the side, she spied his pale chin and throat and realized it was Captain Greyjaw.

It seemed strange - Plink had never seen these two captains share words before.

"?solid enough reputation, but there ain't much else to 'er," he was saying. "She's no faster than The Deadwake, and nothin' t' marvel at without 'er cannon."

Captain Burnet peered down her flat nose at him. "Some would say our great leader honored you by deeming you worthy to sail his own vessel - but you'd spit on the gift because it's too fine?"

Greyjaw laughed. "Legend be well an' good, but if a catapult be launchin', ye know which ship they be aimin' t' hit."

"Perhaps he trusts you to safely maneuver his ship through even the deadliest waters."

"An' perhaps he be favorin' his new acquisitions o'er the old."

Plink watched the way they watched each other - like combatants squaring off - then cleared her throat. "Er - Cap'n Burnet. Message fer you, ma'am."

The wildcat plucked the note from her paw without looking away from Greyjaw, then began reading with a sigh. The weasel folded his arms and smirked.

"Is it me imagination, or do the leash be growin' shorter?"

Captain Burnet eyed him sideways. "Why Greyjaw, I didn't know you were the creative type."

"Don't it get tiresome?" Greyjaw persisted, tilting his head to one side and baring his yellow teeth in a careless smile. "Passin' from one paw t' the next? Always playin' lackey t' some other beast? Ye don't actually think ye'll get the best o' Blade like ye did with your last captain, do ye?"

Captain Burnet folded the note and tucked it away in a pocket of her fine longcoat, then turned a smile on the weasel. It was a velvety smile, but Plink couldn't look at it without remembering the fangs beneath. "Unlike some, I know when to put down the dice and enjoy my winnings."

Apparently displeased by this answer, Greyjaw narrowed his eyes and abruptly turned his glare on Plink, who was watching all this with rapt attention. "Off with ye, whelp."

He raised a paw to cuff her and Plink darted off at once. She would have headed toward the kitchen, but a smack of flesh against stone and a ring of scattering coins made her pause in the mouth of the tunnel to look back.

One of the slaves - the same vole she had seen stagger before - had fallen and was struggling feebly to rise. The stoat raised his flail. The watching pirates fell silent in anticipation.

Plink ran from the harbor, but the screams and sudden jeers followed her for a long way. Even later, when she began dozing in the runner's dormitory, she heard the crack of leather straps and jerked awake. The dinner hour was not so far off, so she resigned herself to wandering the corridors of the Dead Rock instead.

Near the kitchen, Plink rounded a corner to find Captain Ancora pacing the empty hallway ahead. The ferret did a double take and a slew of shuttered emotions passed over her face. Remembering her guilt from before, Plink considered turning around, but it was already too late.

"Miss Plink," Captain Ancora said, tipping her head toward a doorway, "I'd like a word."

"With me? Cap'n?"

The ferret let out a carefully controlled breath. "Seeing as you are the only one to be pried away from your duties, yes. With you. Now."

She gestured again toward the doorway and Plink moved to obey the unspoken command. The room turned out to be a storage pantry, many of the crates and barrels of which bore the Waverunner emblem. Plink crossed her arms and turned to face Captain Ancora, who had stopped in the doorway where she could look out and see if anybeast was coming.

"What did Blade tell you about where Mister Craws has gone?"

Plink shrugged her stiff shoulders and said the words she'd been repeating to herself for days. "Scully's on a secret mission."

Captain Ancora eyed her skeptically. "A secret mission. Okay. And what ship sailed him to that secret mission?"

"I- I don't know? Cap'n Blade didn't say."

"Forget what he said. What do you remember?"

Plink remembered standing out in the sun, looking across the water at the fleet in the distance. She remembered counting the ships, and telling Scully the names of all she had already learned. She remembered when she had still been searching the Dead Rock for him, when she had happened to count the ships in the harbor...

There was a terrible feeling building in her chest. "This is stupid," Plink spat. "I wasn't payin' that much attention to the ships. I wouldn't've known if one of 'em left."

Captain Ancora watched her, irritation pulling her mouth askew. "You know that's not true. You can count. You aren't a complete idiot. You even have a head for remembering stupid trivia like the names of all the ships in that harbor. If one of those vessels had taken Mister Craws anywhere, you would be able to tell me which one was gone - but you can't, and you won't admit it, because that would mean admitting that Blade lied to you to hide the truth about what happened to your friend."

"He didn't lie! A ship could've come that night fer Scully! You don't know everything!"

"No," Captain Ancora said quietly, straightening her spine. "But I know Blade, and I know what his lies look like, and I know when he's telling the truth. I can tell you for a fact that he killed Mister Craws and had his body incinerated so none of us would know until he was ready to rub it in our faces."

Plink's paw had slipped into her pocket unnoticed and was gripping the book hard, jabbing the corner of the spine into the soft pad of her thumb. She shut her eyes and gripped that edge so tight her knuckles throbbed, as if that alone would prevent her tumbling into some cruel chasm.

Captain Ancora still watched her from the doorway, and when her voice came again, it was gentler than before. "This isn't a home. Blade isn't any kind of father you want. He'll cut you down the second you lose your value to him, do you understand?"

But however gentle the captain's voice was, her words cut Plink deep as any blade.

"I unnerstand," she sneered, "that yer mad you were wrong. You said pirates were stupid an' they couldn't work together, and then we found Blade an' he was doin' exactly what you said was impossible. You hate him fer bein' a better captain than you'll ever be."

Ancora's eyes rolled up toward the ceiling, then slashed back down to Plink. "You're a waste, just like all the rest of them. You'll pretend to work when it gets you what you want, but you won't put the energy in to think things through. It is a fact that no ships left the harbor the night Scully disappeared, but because Blade told you some comforting lie that makes everything alright again, you refuse to believe it. He's poisoned your mind."

Plink glowered. "He ain't poisoned anything! He's a good captain!"

Ancora took a step back and frowned distastefully. "I don't have time to molly-coddle you with the truth. If you want to end up like Mister Craws, that's your business. I'm not dying here."

Plink listened to her steps diminish, but she didn't move to the corridor to watch her go. Instead, she glared at the stone floor and shored up the truth in her mind. She had been dreaming of a place like this all her life. Finally, she had beasts to back her up. Finally, she had beasts who valued her - Blade himself! It was more than she had ever dared hope to find.

And maybe there was a darker side to it all. Maybe Tooley and Vera had been distant and a bit unfriendly. Maybe Chak was still unnerving despite his obvious effort to be civil. Maybe the pencil and the button still waited at the bottom of her pocket, giving her heart a tiny, nasty leap each time her claws brushed them.

None of that mattered. When Scully came back from his mission, they would pick up where they'd left off. He would read her one of his poems about ships and captains and the wild sea, and Plink would marvel that those words could come to him from little symbols scratched on paper. Maybe, one day, he'd even teach her to understand them, too.

Scully wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. Ciera was just trying to turn her against Captain Blade for some scheming reason of her own.

Well, she had failed. Plink reached in her pocket and closed her paw around the diamond. It didn't belong to her, and it had been wrong and short-sighted to steal it. It was exactly the sort of thing Ciera would expect a pirate to do. But Ciera wasn't right about everything.

Plink straightened up and marched out of the pantry. She'd just take it back, and nobeast would be the wiser.

Blade was her captain. Not Ciera Ancora.


*


It took hours for daylight to diminish in the harbor and be replaced with the short, warm light of torches. The crowd of pirates thinned, but the slaves kept coming long after dinner had ended. Plink grew impatient and finally crept into the shadows to climb the wall despite the guards and smattering of lingering pirates, figuring they would be blinded by the light of their gathered torches.

She climbed up the mole's chimney and poked her head out with carefully flattened ears. The mushroom chamber was brighter than she was used to, lit by a couple of half-expired firefly lanterns left on the floor. All seemed quiet. Plink climbed out of the hole and picked her way toward the dagger room.

She was all the way across the chamber when she spied torchlight leaping up from the tunnel ahead. Plink spun back, thinking to hide in the chimney again, but a scraping near the mushrooms announced the arrival of another beast from that direction. She couldn't close the distance to her hiding place in time.

Panicking, Plink whirled around, searching for some immediate escape. By the lantern light, she spied a hole in the wall at the level of her knees and, without a second thought, dove inside.

For a moment, Plink held perfectly still, listening to the clank of chains and the weary groans of slaves.

"Ayyew! Quit slackin'!"

The crack of the flail sounded just outside the hole, and the beast who took the blow grunted deep in his chest. Plink crept farther into the hole, not noticing the steep slope of the tunnel until her paws skidded out from under her and she went sliding down, down into the dark.

She came to a stop and uncovered her head only to be assailed by a vile stench. Ahead, she saw the yellow light of torches, and she could hear the huffing sounds of a beast weeping quietly.

?or wriggle through the wormhole
t'where screams be th' only words.

Plink wanted to turn around at once and climb back up to the mushroom chamber. She would wait right there at the opening, where the air smelled only of musty, wet stone, and the slaves would go away, and she would return the diamond and climb back down to the harbor.

She certainly didn't want to know what waited there ahead of her in that hot light. She sat back and made to turn around.

"Miss Rosie," said a familiar voice. "Are you alright in here?"

Plink froze, and didn't really hear whatever it was Miss Rosie was saying in her gracious, anxious voice. The charcoal pencil jabbed Plink's side from inside her pocket as she crawled toward the light and looked over the ledge and down at the beasts in the small room below.

And there he was. Robert Rosequill, peering toward the embarrassed-looking mouse beside him. He smiled the same kind smile Plink remembered, but by the torchlight she could see how wasted and weary he was, how ragged his jacket had become since she woke under it not two weeks ago.

"?never thought it'd hurt just to have some hope again, Rob." The mouse hugged him briefly, tightly, and Plink could see the fresh tears squeeze out of her swollen eyes. "Bless you," she whispered, then scurried out the door to whatever chamber was beyond.

The hedgehog heaved a breath when she was gone and dug his claws between the prickles on his neck. He looked worried. Plink watched him, wanting to speak but afraid of what she might say. Afraid of what he might say to her, now. When he took a step toward the door, though, she forced out a mumble.

"M-Mister Robert."

His eyes snapped up to her, wide with alarm and sudden hope. He blinked hard and looked at her again. "Plink! You're alright!"

It was obvious - of course she was alright, she was with her people - but the words, spoken with such naked relief, hit her like a blow. Plink found herself climbing out of the tunnel and over the ledge, in such a hurry that she lost her grip and fell a bit farther than she had anticipated. She teetered on the edge of the shallow pit that ran the length of the room.

"Careful!" Robert scooped her into a hug and guided her back to safety. "Wouldn't want to fall in there?"

He didn't let her go, and Plink stiffened in the warm cage of his arms. This wasn't a thing she should allow. Pirates didn't hug fat old hedgehogs.

But Robert was warm and solid, and he cradled the back of her head in a way that reminded her of her ma. Plink hadn't realized how achingly cold her ears were until his palm pressed against them.

She flung her arms around his waist and mashed her cheek against his soft belly, digging her claws into the fabric of his jacket. For a long moment, she stayed there, listening to Robert murmur comforting sounds with one ear pressed against him so his words both echoed in the stone room and hummed through his chest and into her head.

"You can't be here," she finally choked, then remembered herself and drew back, scrubbing her damp cheeks. "You smell like rotten eggs."

"That'd be the brimstone," Robert said, releasing her easily. "Smellin' nice ain't quite a priority lately." He was still smiling, resting a paw on her shoulder as if to reassure himself she was really there. "I'm so glad to see you, lass."

Plink nearly smiled up at him, but the crack of the flail was fresh in her memory. She cringed and couldn't quite meet his eye. Robert had been up in the crater all this time. There were marks on him where some brute had probably struck him.

Maybe Chak.

"You cain't be thinkin' any o' this was your fault, now, lass," Robert said gently.

Plink scowled. "That ain't what I was thinkin'." She looked back up at the hedgehog and let the scowl slip away. "You've gotta get outta here. An'? an' all these others, too. That tunnel up there can take you straight to the harbor. There're plenty of ships there. You could take one an' be gone before anybeast saw it comin'."

Robert frowned faintly in astonishment and peered up at the entrance to the tunnel - from this angle, it just looked like one more dip in the irregular ceiling. "Well, wouldn't you know it?"

Plink tugged on his coat until he looked at her again. "Is Crue in here with you?"

Robert shook his head. "They took her back to that village - you saw."

"Aye? just? I was just hopin'."

"She's alright though. Been busy! She has a plan we're supposed to be waitin' for."

"A plan?" Plink asked, heart racing alternately with anticipation and fear. "What's her plan?"

"Cain't say as I know, but knowin' Miss Crue, it'll be somethin' thorough."

Plink frowned down at the floor, struggling to hide her alarm. She wanted Robert and the other slaves to go free, but she couldn't shake the fear that Crue's plan would do more than just free the woodlanders. Plink had a life here in the Dead Rock, a place. What if Crue meant to somehow destroy that?

"Is Scully doin' alright?"

Plink chewed at her thumbclaw, barely looking at the hedgehog. "Cap'n Blade sent him on a secret mission. He's comin' back, just? not fer a while."

"A secret mission, huh?" Robert asked softly, his brows knit. "Sounds mighty important for one leveret."

"It was important. He didn't have time to say g'bye or anythin'. He dropped his book an' couldn't even come back to get it." Plink dug the slim book from her pocket and held it up like proof. "See?"

Robert eyed the frayed cover. The furrow in his brow did not ease. "Aye. That's his book, alright."

Plink jammed it back in her pocket, glaring. "I know what yer thinkin', an' yer wrong."

He just blinked, bewildered.

"Yer wrong, an' Cap- an' Ciera Ancora's wrong, too! Cap'n Blade wouldn't kill Scully. He just wouldn't. A ship came an' got him an' left the same night, that's all."

Robert did not look convinced. He looked like he'd just received terrible news. Plink swallowed back frustrated tears and balled up her fists.

"He ain't dead," she insisted.

Robert dug his claws through his quills. "I reckon you'd know better'n me about it," he said.

Plink didn't believe he really meant this, and she drew breath to argue, but there was a clank from the adjoined room and a screech of hinges. Robert's eyes bulged.

"You'd best not be seen down here, lass," he said, boosting her back up to the tunnel opening.

Plink climbed in and peered back down at him, eyes flicking toward the doorway. "Come with me."

Robert shook his head. "I cain't leave all these beasts behind. It'll take some doin' to get us all ready - an' a mighty big distraction to keep anybeast from noticin' we're gone before we're safe." He glanced over his shoulder, listening to the harsh tones of a guard and the yelp that followed.

"When'll you be ready? I can help," Plink whispered, leaning as far down as she could.

Robert smiled at her, but he looked frightened. "You just let us worry about all that, alright lass? Keep yourself safe in the meantime."

Plink shook her head and started to argue, but the hedgehog had already turned to hurry out of the room. She listened for a moment to the building situation, but then a whip cracked and Plink scrambled to climb back to the mushroom chamber. Fresh secrets burned at the back of her mind and, in her pocket, Blade's diamond prodded her like an accusing finger.