62 pages • 2 hours read
Brandon SandersonTress of the Emerald Sea
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 6-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
Tress tells her parents of her decision to go after Charlie and save him. After thinking about it, her father, Lem, agrees. Her mother, Ulba, says it’s a foolish idea, but Lem argues that since Tress is the most thoughtful person they know, and since she never asks for anything for herself, she must have thought through every other option and found that nothing else would work.
Her parents help her work on a plan to get her past the ship and cargo inspector and onto a boat. Tress takes her time, hoping to balance the plan’s risk with thoughtful timing. One night, her father looks over her newest plan and says it might work. She points out that some of the men on the island would see through it, but Lem suggests they might be willing to help. When Tress goes to bed, Lem grabs his coat and cane and leaves.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
Lem goes to the tavern that night and plays darts with some of the men inside who are his long-time friends. As they play, Lem asks questions and makes comments that subtly remind each of the men of how many times Lem has helped them in the past without asking for anything in return. Lem’s character, the men know, is one where he would not ask for anything in return unless it was important and urgent. So, by the next morning, three men are at Lem’s front door demanding that they be allowed to help with Tress’s plan.
About a week later, the men help sneak a barrel into those being taken as cargo on the next ship out. The dock inspector finds a girl hiding inside one of the barrels and declares she will tell the king. The girl, however, is not Tress. Tress, rather than hiding in the barrel, is dressed as the inspector and boards the ship under the excuse of speaking with the king.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
Tress watches the Rock as her ship sails away, but she does not feel excited—instead, she feels heavy, and she hopes that she has not made a bad decision.
Watching the spore sea, Tress cannot hide her amazement and, at times, fear. The captain reassures Tress that the ship is lined with silver to kill any spores that come too close. Tress also observes the way the sea works, and the narrator explains that a process called fluidization allows ships to sail through the spores. Vents on the sea floor send up air, and the resulting agitation makes the spores turn to liquid. Sometimes the vents pause, the spores solidify, and ships must sit and wait where they are until the vents start up again.
Tress plans to go to the king’s island in the Core Archipelago and get the ransom note for Charlie, hoping to either get the money herself or convince the king to pay the ransom.
After an uncomfortable compliment from an unpleasant-looking crew member, Tress goes to the quarters reserved for the inspector and drinks water from one of the cups she brought from her collection. Her thoughts become odd, and she falls unconscious, having unknowingly drunk poison the captain had ordered put into her drink.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Tress wakes in the brig. She hears the voice of a fellow prisoner, who reveals that the ship is actually that of smugglers, who probably thought Tress, dressed as the inspector, had boarded the ship to catch them.
The speaker pulls a cork out of the side of the ship to let light in and reveal that he is not a man but a rat—one who does not want to answer Tress’s question about why he can talk. He’d been caught taking food from the crew and decided he should speak instead of risk being thrown overboard. The crew decided he, Huck the rat, might be worth selling somewhere and kept him in a cage.
The rat also reveals to Tress that the king is at war with the Sorceress, who has been sending more ships to raid the kingdom. The king has been commandeering merchant vessels, and the high likelihood of being conscripted has led to many sailors to turn to smuggling or piracy. Tress considers aloud whether the smugglers would release her if they knew she was not actually an inspector, to which the rat replies that “no man is worth getting killed over” (61). They are interrupted by a loud popping noise and the explosion of a cannonball through the hull.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
The cannonballs are not simple metal cannonballs; they carry live spores to the opposing ship, which sprout and cause damage in addition to the wreckage from the cannonball itself. Tress witnesses this sprouting, covering her mouth and nose to avoid inhaling any spores herself. The ship’s sprouter—the person always on board the ship for the sole purpose of dealing with spores—comes down to the brig. The sprouter uses a material called roseite to repair the damage done by the enemy’s spores.
As the sprouter moves to go, Tress calls to him. Assuming the enemy is a royal ship attacking because it knows the ship is full of smugglers, she suggests the smugglers reveal her presence, to avoid further shooting. The sprouter runs for the keys to her cell.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
The sprouter drags Tress to the deck, where the captain agrees to the plan. Tress waves her arms from a visible spot, but, the enemy ship continues to attack. The sprouter takes Tress back below; as they arrive in the brig, the ship shudders to a halt. The seethe, which turns the spores into liquid, has stopped, trapping both ships and turning the sea into firm ground.
The sprouter tries to steal Tress’s coat so he can wear it and run across to the other ship, claiming he is the inspector. Tress grabs her pewter cup and knocks him out. She frees Huck and moves to the opening in the hull of the ship.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
Tress, with Huck on her shoulder, begins a slow trek across the now-firm spore sea to the other ship, the Crow’s Song. She moves slowly to avoid the buildup of sweat that would activate spores. Another sailor sees her and runs to the Crow’s Song, but spores erupt, and he dies. Tress reaches the ship and climbs. The crew looks down on her and laughs, watching her progress.
Eventually, a rope is dropped for her to climb. When she reaches the deck, she is told that the captain had told the crew they could only send down a rope if she lasted 15 minutes climbing the ship. They reveal that they are also pirates. The captain takes one look at her and orders her to be thrown overboard, but Tress rushes to a bucket of water and begins cleaning the deck to prove her usefulness. The captain walks away and allows Tress to stay on board.
Part 2, Chapters 6-12 Analysis
Part 2 encompasses the first leg of Tress’s journey, which takes a much different form than Tress anticipates. Rather than seizing an opportunity to appeal to the king for Charlie’s ransom, she discovers herself captive. In particular, Tress confronts one of her greatest fears early on in the novel—spores. She takes advantage of their solid state, but carefully manages her energy so as to not sweat. She keeps moving toward the Crow’s Song even when she witnesses another man who flees die in front of her. In this way, Sanderson again is Flipping the Gendered Script as he shows Tress as not only brave, but stoic in her determination.
Some of her bravery stems from her developing knowledge of the spores, pointing toward the theme of Fear and Knowledge. When the ship is threatened with cannonballs carrying spores, she witnesses the sprouter mitigate the danger with roseite, and in something of a parallel move, Tress offers herself up to what she imagines is a king’s ship in order to quell the fighting. In this way, the powerful potential of the roseite inspires Tress’s own powerful potential to take on leadership.
Tress’s newfound bravery and determination indicate the beginning of her journey toward understanding the process of Identity and Change. After spending years making others happy and avoiding asking for anything, Tress has not had to exercise her courage. Yet in the face of an attack on her ship, Tress climbs out of the hole made by a cannonball and trudges across the hardened spore sea, despite knowing that it could become fluid again at any time. Tress’s determination impresses the crew of the pirate ship to which she flees, the Crow’s Song.
Tress’s values also reveal themselves more fully in Part 2. When fleeing her first ship, Tress agrees to take Huck with her, despite just meeting him and being unfamiliar with the concept of talking animals. In this way, Tress’s identity as a highly moral person does not seem to change from before her adventure. Rather her willingness to confront fear enables her to change in ways that strengthen her identity as a highly moral person. Tress always seeks to do what is right, and this belief informs her behavior throughout the rest of her journey.
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By Brandon Sanderson
