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Sully glanced up from swabbing the deck to spot a very smug-looking Carl ambling past him, whistling cheerily.

That immediately raised his suspicions. In recent days Carl and Emmet always seemed to be at loggerheads over one thing or another. As a matter of fact he was sure he just overheard the two of them arguing. He tuned it out because he knew how the Boss got when he was quarreling with someone: the last thing he wanted was someone backing him up. "If you need backup for an argument then your argument is not correct." - he'd said that at least once.

But Carl wasn't just carrying a happy tune—he was holding a large bag of money.

That meant the Boss probably could have used backup.

He found Emmet moping over at the bow of the ship, gazing out at the open ocean. It was a welcome sight not to see a bottle in his paw... although if his dejected posture was anything to go by, that wouldn't last long.

"Uh, Boss?" Sully crept up slowly. "Is there anything I can help with?"

"We've been robbed, Sully."

He just kept staring.

The ferret swallowed hard. He was somewhat less efficient at cheering up the Boss than a bottle, but something told him he had to try. "Well... I don't see how. I mean, you are the captain of this ship. Nothing goes on or off without—"

"Did you know Carl can read?" He turned around. "Not only can he read but he's very good with numbers. He just demanded all the back pay I've been withholding from him. So either he's been scamming his own brother for years, pretending to be illiterate, or his brother's been scamming us from the beginning."

Sully briefly went to scratch his head, but as that was a somewhat more awkward tic to execute with a rag covering his noggin he scratched his cheek instead. "Boss, that's not 'scamming.' Kind of by definition that's just, you know, giving someone what you owe them."

"Indeed. Well, that money he took from me? That wasn't just his back payment. There was a purchase included in that. I just bought his silence. The names and locations of everybody we've ripped off. Presumably he'll keep them to himself now."

Sully put two and two together. "So he's blackmailing you."

"He's blackmailing us, Ferret!" He waved his arms angrily. "That is money we earned with our own blood and sweat! That's money we need to make it to Atlantis!"

Again, by definition stealing and fencing expensive items was not exactly "earning", but Sully kept that thought to himself.

Meanwhile Emmet went on ranting. "It would certainly be a shame if an 'accident' were to occur. The sea is a treacherous place. A man can easily trip and fall overboard!" Notably he was raising his voice, not lowering it. "We could drop someone off on a desert island and 'forget' to pick him up!"

"Boss..."

"You're impatient, Carl! That's your weakness! You should have waited until your contract with us ran out! How are you even gonna spend that? Look where we are! And this is still my ship!" Emmet spat in disgust. "That's the last time I trust a bear. No better than koalas, I say!"

He was close to hyperventilating. Sully went to take his paw, lead him somewhere he could sit down and catch his breath, but the wombat waved him away, leaving him at a loss to think of a way to diffuse this. Emmet's threats obviously weren't serious, but this was still a cramped boat out in the middle of nowhere. Very bad things could happen even from non-lethal tempers flaring.

"Boss, I'll admit, it's not a good situation. But we can't let anything happen to Carl. We promised Bob we'd get him home safely."

"And?" Emmet narrowed his eyes. "Why should I care what we promised Bob?"

Sully thought fast. "Bob's an innkeeper."

"And a crook. So?"

"So, he's an innkeeper who serves pirates. That's the whole reason we're in this mess, right? So imagine his brother doesn't come back in one piece. All he has to do is drop a hint to his customers that there's a sloop out there piloted by a ferret and a wombat—"

"No one out here knows what a wombat is, Sully," Emmet interrupted.

"—a ferret and a... very large groundhog, and their undefended ship is full of expensive stolen jewelry. I think you know what would happen next."

Emmet at least understood that calculus.

He sighed, straightened himself, and sort of lifted up his shirtless stomach to drop it ahead of where his trousers were bunching up against it. That was a new tic of his own. "I'm going back to my cabin. I need to think some things over."

And he started off to "think things over"—though that obviously meant "drink things over."

Sully watched as he headed down the deck. There was no doubt about it: Emmet had a noticeable limp, clearly favoring his right leg and dragging the left.

Even up to a few weeks ago he still thought it was just the Boss getting his sea legs, but it had only grown worse over time, and in retrospect he believed he first noticed an uncharacteristic wobble in his gait the morning after Emmet's little "buried treasure" excursion. He must have injured himself that night and, true to form, kept it to himself.

Although now it was obvious he needed some kind of medical attention. Even the doctors of this era might be able to do something about it. Or at least he needed time to rest and let it heal. But he knew what Emmet would say if he brought it up: doctors cost money and resting costs time and they had neither to spare.

So there he was again. Not for the first time the weight of Emmet's secrets fell squarely on his shoulders. His boss was right: the sea was a treacherous place. Losing a leg—God forbid—was far from the worst thing that could happen if they lingered here.

He needed to do something to speed this mission along.

What he needed was one big score. Find the house of an extremely rich person who happened to be away from home and rob him blind, just haul away everything he can carry and damn being subtle about it.

After all, subtlety was never his speciality.

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Artwork by  SkidarStudios