Captain Crow
The stout, sour-faced captain of the Crow's Song, recognisable by the long black plume in her hat and the feather-tooled canteen she drinks from. She orders Tress thrown overboard the moment she is hauled aboard, and is overruled only because her own crew refuses to obey — after which she stalks off without pressing the point. STD:Tress:Ch 11
Known facts
- killed-weevMurdered her own sprouter, Weev, by putting him overboard when he objected to the Crow's Song's turn to piracy. The rest of the crew were thinking the same questions, but he was the only one who said them aloud.STD:Tress:Ch 15
- forcing-crew-into-deadrunner-statusVia Huck's eavesdropping, Tress confirms what she had inferred from the hidden cannonballs: Captain Crow and Laggart are sinking ships on purpose, in secret, to turn the Crow's Song into a deadrunner vessel against the crew's wishes — because she wants to sail into seas the crew would never follow her into voluntarily, and as deadrunners they will have no other choice. The lone survivor of the Oot's Dream was meant to spread the word; that he died first means another ship will have to be sunk.STD:Tress:Ch 18
- reads-people-by-instinctCrow belongs to that category of people who can read the moods of others not by magic but by reflex — the same skill some doctors and clergy turn to gentler ends. In her, the narrator notes, it serves a different purpose: she dislikes finding out she has made someone happy, and dislikes it more when she has done it by accident.STD:Tress:Ch 19
- crew-is-genuinely-afraid-of-herPressed by Tress to explain why the Crow's Song's crew will not simply throw Crow over the side, Fort writes — terrified, glancing at the door — that the captain could kill every one of them, easy as that. He won't say how, and shakes the words off his board the moment they appear.STD:Tress:Ch 20
- lets-tress-walk-the-gangplankRather than confine Tress when the Crow's Song puts in at Shimmerbay, Crow sets only a token watch and leaves a gangplank down — by design, in Tress's reading, because the captain wants her to walk off and spread the story of the Oot's Dream sinking and so push the rest of the crew further into deadrunner status.STD:Tress:Ch 20
- bought-hoid-deliberatelySpecifically sent Fort to trade for Hoid when she heard about his curse and his trip to the Sorceress — and overpaid for the privilege. Hoid's previous shipmates had been delighted to be rid of him, but Crow insisted, to the lasting damage of Fort's reputation as a trader. Why she wanted him so badly she has never said.STD:Tress:Ch 22
- extraordinary-marksmanCarries a sleeker, modern long-arm with an unfamiliar sight, distinct from the older muskets the Dougs use. At range she calmly drops the enemy ship's firing crew one man at a time — first the cannoneer with the firing stick, then the sailor lifting the next ball — with the kind of cold competence the narrator rates among the best shooting he has ever seen, and primitive muskets are not forgiving instruments.STD:Tress:Ch 25
- revealed-spore-eaterCrow is a spore eater. When a grieving merchant sailor draws on her across the gap between ships, she meets his pistol with one of her own, turns the muzzle on her own head, and pulls the trigger — and vines of green erupt from her cheek and eyes, twist out of her skin to seize the bullet, then withdraw back into her body, leaving only a thread of blood at her eye and a rip in her cheek. She drinks long from her canteen and gestures the man forward to try again.STD:Tress:Ch 26
- gestator-of-verdant-aetherUlaam explains what the folk term spore eater actually means in Crow's case: she is host to an aggressive strain of the verdant aether growing inside her body, channelling water out of her — and out of every other spore-eater host in the world — to feed the monstrous prime aether on the moon above. The aether protects Crow because it protects itself; it is also drying her out and is always fatal.STD:Tress:Ch 27
- weeks-or-days-left-to-liveBy Ulaam's estimate, the aether usually finishes its host inside a year; Crow has carried hers longer than that and is past months of life remaining. Weeks, perhaps days. The reason she is never without her canteen is that she has to drink near-constantly to keep from withering on her feet — which is also why she terrifies a crew that knows none of this.STD:Tress:Ch 27
- plan-to-reach-xisis-via-crimson-seaThe whole of Crow's plan, as Tress pieces it together from the marginalia in her private notebook, is this: she has convinced herself the dragon Xisis is real, that he lives in a palace under the Crimson Sea, and that he can cure the aether in her blood — having done so for Queen Bek the Fifteenth in 1123, the only spore-gestation survival on record. She intends to sail the Crimson Sea to find him, and she means to use her crew to do it.STD:Tress:Ch 30
- weev-meetings-were-for-dragons-locationA line in Crow's marginalia rewrites the earlier gossip about her secret meetings with Weev: they were not about Salay and the cabal but about how to find the dragon. Weev had pointed her at the method and then turned to blackmail, she notes drily; at least he showed some spine before she killed him.STD:Tress:Ch 30
- agrees-to-divert-to-crimson-seaGoaded at the bow by Tress's claim that she intends to sail to the Sorceress's island via the Midnight Sea, Crow is manoeuvred into agreeing that — if Tress can talk the crew into it — she will set the Crow's Song on a course for the Crimson Sea. The captain treats it as an easy concession, certain the crew will refuse. It is in fact the destination she has already chosen, for reasons of her own, and is now openly committed to.STD:Tress:Ch 32
- intends-to-trade-tress-to-xisisThe reason Crow hired an inexperienced washer-girl as ship's sprouter resolves, this chapter, into a much darker plan: she means to deliver Tress to the dragon as payment for her own cure. The captain needs a supplicant who can be led through a spore tunnel without panicking, and at Shimmerbay Tress had publicly demonstrated the one trait the dragon always asks for.STD:Tress:Ch 33
- knew-tress-swapped-the-cannonballsOver tea at port, Crow reveals to Tress that she has known all along about the swapped cannonballs in Laggart's gunnery barrels. Laggart has not figured it out — Crow rates his intelligence at *walnut* — but only one person on the Song had the access and the inclination, and she judges the sabotage *enterprising but misguided* and not worth punishing, since the Song is now sailing the Crimson anyway.STD:Tress:Ch 34
- bound-for-xisis-to-cure-spore-eater-diseaseTress tells Salay outright what Captain Crow's destination is in the Crimson: Xisis the dragon. Crow has outlived everyone else who has been a spore eater and is now seeking a trade with the dragon to escape the disease that is eating her from within — and the offering she intends to make is Tress herself.STD:Tress:Ch 44
- spies-on-crew-with-midnight-essenceCaptain Crow uses her own Midnight Essence as a hidden listening device, planting a small puddle of black matter in the shadow under Fort's counter to overhear the mutineers' plans — until Tress feels it, seizes control, and severs the connection.STD:Tress:Ch 48
- crushes-mutiny-by-humiliation-rather-than-executionHaving learned from her execution of Weev that killing mutineers makes martyrs, Crow crushes the Fort–Salay–Ann–Tress mutiny by humiliation instead: she beats the four of them senseless in front of the assembled Dougs using only her body — no spores — under the pretext of a three-pistol duel she has no intention of letting them win.STD:Tress:Ch 49
- routinely-tells-crew-arrival-is-later-than-it-isCrow tells Laggart aloud, as the anchor goes down at the dragon's lair, that anyone who suspects mutiny should always pad the timetable: human nature makes cowards wait until the last possible moment, so a captain who claims the destination is a couple of days off after it actually is forces mutineers to show their hand early.STD:Tress:Ch 49
- keeps-her-spores-suppressed-during-fightCrow's spore vines never manifest during the duel — a deliberate suppression that surprises even Ulaam. She holds them in so that no one on the ship can later wonder whether she might be less dangerous without them.STD:Tress:Ch 49
Events
- STD:Tress:Ch 11 Picks off a charging smuggler from the Crow's Song's prow with a long musket, lets Tress make her own way up the hull, then orders her thrown overboard once she is on deck — and walks off when the crew refuses to obey.
- STD:Tress:Ch 12 Watches Tress from the side of the deck through the morning, drinking from her plumed canteen.
- STD:Tress:Ch 13 Stands on the quarterdeck through the morning watching the work, drinking from her plumed canteen, the wind catching the feather on her hat.
- STD:Tress:Ch 15 Stands on the quarterdeck sipping from her plumed canteen as the Doug tells Tress in passing that Weev is at the bottom of the ocean because Crow put him there.
- STD:Tress:Ch 18 Receives Laggart in her cabin and posts a heavyset Doug outside as discreet guard while the two of them confer about sinking another ship to drive the crew further into deadrunner status.
- STD:Tress:Ch 19 Climbs to the quarterdeck and orders Salay north for the Seven Straits in search of a target — then reverses to the eastward port of Shimmerbay after Tress's muttered tale of "lost family", and kicks Tress in the stomach on the way past for the offence of being pleased about it.
- STD:Tress:Ch 20 Lights a pipe in the dark at the foot of the quarterdeck steps and waves Tress off the ship — and, when Tress won't go, agrees to take her on as the Crow's Song's new sprouter in Weev's place.
- STD:Tress:Ch 21 Unlocks the door herself, hands Tress a key (keeping a duplicate on her ring), warns her that the cabin's walls are reinforced with aluminum over a silver-lined hull but its floor is not, and tests her resolve one more time before leaving her to it.
- STD:Tress:Ch 24 Calls the pursuit, orders the forward cannon to bear, and — when the warning shot from Laggart turns into an unaccountably clean capture — visibly bites back her displeasure in front of the cheering crew and orders the pirate's flag run up instead.
- STD:Tress:Ch 25 Shoves past the Dougs, raises her sleek modern long-arm, and from across the still-considerable distance picks off the enemy ship's cannoneer with the firing stick — then, while reloading with a pouch of zephyr charge tipped down the muzzle, drops the next man hefting a ball. Turns the ice of her voice on Ann until she stops trying to fire her own pistol.
- STD:Tress:Ch 26 Stands at the rail with her musket and orders the boarding party to draw swords for a massacre; when Salay interposes herself, climbs down and accepts a heavier ransom instead. Stares down a grieving merchant sailor's pistol without flinching, then takes Ann's confiscated pistol, turns it on her own temple, and pulls the trigger — the vines in her body catching the bullet and withdrawing again into her skin.
- STD:Tress:Ch 30 Sits at her desk in the failing light, writing in her notebook with her canteen open at her elbow and her jacket unbuttoned; smells, to a small black creature crouched under the bench, of rotten weeds and burning flesh and something the midnight aether cannot name. Closes the book at the mess call, takes a long drink, takes her hat from its peg, and locks the door behind her — long enough, just, for the not-rat to reach the desk.
- STD:Tress:Ch 32 Leans on the bow rail at sunset with her tin cup, refuses to be interrupted while drinking, demands to know what Tress *wants*, and then — drawn in by the mention of the Sorceress and the Midnight Sea — laughs herself into agreeing that the Song can sail the Crimson if the crew can be talked into it.
- STD:Tress:Ch 34 Holds Tress in her cabin over Zapriel tea (poured for herself, not for the guest), denies her shore leave, calmly reveals she has known all along about the swapped cannonballs, and finishes by explaining what makes the Crimson actually lethal — the rain, not the spores.
- STD:Tress:Ch 37 On the quarterdeck near the helm station, drinks from her canteen, observes the rainline, and — uncharacteristically — orders Salay south along the border rather than press on into the Crimson; slams herself into her cabin.
- STD:Tress:Ch 42 On deck through the rainline attack, hauling on a dropped rope alongside the Dougs and — for once — taking orders from Salay at the wheel rather than giving them. Powerless to do anything for the ship once the stilling arrives.
- STD:Tress:Ch 47 Comes out of her cabin onto the quarterdeck during the sporelock, drinks from her canteen with the fatalism of someone already terminal, and watches the rain and the tree in silence. Says nothing in the face of Tress's remarkable salvation; recognises a different threat to her command than the one she had been watching for.
- STD:Tress:Ch 49 Stages the public duel on the deck under the Crimson Moon — three pistols on a small table, the four mutineers against her. Then knocks the table from under them and beats all three present opponents personally without ever letting her spore vines manifest. Snaps Fort's board, tosses two pistols overboard, fires Tress's flare gun into Ann, and then hauls Tress to her feet for the trip down to Xisis.
- STD:Tress:Ch 50 Walks Tress down through the spore tunnel into the dragon's chamber with cuffs and shoves, lantern in hand, and presents her standard formula to Xisis — that she has come to initiate his ancient pact of promise and offer the slave at her side — only to be cut off by Tress repeating the same formula and gesturing at her instead.
- STD:Tress:Ch 51 Argues her own case in the dragon's chamber against Tress's reversal — that she is the captain, the meant payment; that Tress is younger, more moldable, more talented, well-liked, an excellent cook, a spore prodigy whose verdant bomb lifted the ship out of the rains. After losing the negotiation, she is gagged and bound to a pillar by the chamber's animated ribbon-cloth at Xisis's gesture; the dragon then accepts her as his new servant.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 11
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 12
- factWatch
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 13
- factAnn
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 14
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 15
- factWeev
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 16
- factThe Crow's Song
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 17
- factUlaam
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 18
- factThe Crow's Song
- factCaptain Crow
- factKingsport
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 19
- factCaptain Crow
- factSalay
- factShimmerbay
- factThe Seven Straits
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 20
- factTress
- factTress
- factCaptain Crow
- factCaptain Crow
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 21
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 22
- factTress
- factCaptain Crow
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 23
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 24
- factTress
- factThe Crow's Song
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 25
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 26
- factTress
- factCaptain Crow
- factSalay
- factSmocke
- factCrew of the Oot's Dream
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 27
- factCaptain Crow
- factCaptain Crow
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 28
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 29
- factTress
- factSalay
- factSalay
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 30
- factCaptain Crow
- factCaptain Crow
- factXisisrefliel
- factQueen Bek the Fifteenth
- factDelph of the Zephyr Islands
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 31
- factTress
- factLaggart
- factSalay
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 32
- factTress
- factTress
- factCaptain Crow
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 33
- factCaptain Crow
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 34
- factMidnight Sea
- factCrimson Sea
- factCaptain Crow
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 35
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 37
- factTress
- factCrimson Sea
- factLaggart
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 38
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 39
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 40
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 42
- factSalay
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 43
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 44
- factCaptain Crow
- factSalay
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 45
- factMidnight Monsters
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 46
- factTress
- factUlaam
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 47
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 48
- factTress
- factCaptain Crow
- factFort
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 49
- factTress
- factCaptain Crow
- factCaptain Crow
- factCaptain Crow
- factLaggart
- factFort's Board
- factXisisrefliel
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 50
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 51
- factSpore Eater
- factXisisrefliel
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 52
- factTress
- factFort
- factAnn
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 53
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 54
- factTress
- factLaggart
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 55
- factTress
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 56
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 57