“Coffee.”
“What?” Simna and Stanager blurted simultaneously.
“It says it wants coffee. Not too hot, if you please. Tepid will do fine. With sugar. Lots of sugar.”
It was the Captain who replied. “You’re joking, landsman. I know it must be you because nothing that looks like that is capable of making jokes.”
“On the contrary, though this is the first Kraken to come to my personal acquaintance, I know from experience in the shallow waters below my village that squid have a very highly developed sense of humor. But it is not joking. It wants coffee. I admit that it is a request that puzzles me as well.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway, if you’re as bemused as I am.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “What exactly is ‘coffee’? I gather from the description that it is some kind of food.”
While Simna slowly and carefully elucidated to his tall friend the nature of coffee, explaining that it was a warm beverage not unlike tea, Stanager conferred with the ship’s cook. They had tea and coffee both. Not being an addict, the Captain had no difficulty with agreeing to sacrifice their store of the darker beverage. Parting with an entire sack of sugar, more than half the ship’s supply, was another matter. The alternative, however, was surely more dispiriting still.
“Have you a cauldron?” Ehomba asked her. “Perhaps for rendering out seal blubber?”
“This is not a fishing boat. Cook will use her largest kettle to prepare the brew.” Stanager peered past him, to where the Kraken continued to hover like a mariner’s worst nightmare hard by the port bow of the Grömsketter. “It will have to be big enough.”