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Tress, goggled and masked and only a little terrified, opens the keg of zephyr spores at Laggart's cannon. They are the first non-green spores she has ever seen up close — bright as cut sapphire, crystalline, beautiful in the way an expertly forged sword is beautiful. She whispers Huck off her shoulder for his own safety, says a small prayer to the moons, and reminds herself why she is doing the worst job on the ship: doing what nobody else will do is how a deck-hand becomes useful, and useful is how she gets to Charlie.

She lowers the small keg into the larger lined barrel, hooks it into place, holds her funnel beneath its spigot, and starts filling pouches one careful blue handful at a time, tying each one off and setting it at the bottom of the barrel beside the rest. It is tense work — far worse than scrubbing for letting her mind run — but her mind runs anyway. She wonders what the spores actually *do* to make a cannon fire. She wonders what other kinds of spores live in the ship's armoury, and who keeps them now that Weev is gone.

She also wonders why the lined barrel has a false bottom.

She knows the shape of one instantly, because she spent the weeks before leaving the Rock becoming an expert on hidden compartments in barrels. She finds the latch near the banding, wiggles it, and a fist-sized hole opens beneath the pouches. A few of them drop through — and when she reaches in to fish them back out, her fingers brush something hard. A cannonball. There is room for three or four of them in the hollow under the false floor. She pulls the pouches free, resets the latch, and goes back to her funnel with shaking hands.

She can see the whole shape of it now. The cannonmaster loads his own gun, sights it, fires it. Nobody watches over his shoulder to check which ball he has just rammed home. The hidden cannonballs would not pass Fort's inspection — they would not be the vine-rigged kind built to entangle a target. Laggart had sunk the Oot's Dream on purpose. The only thing she cannot quite see yet is *why* — the act gave the crew no plunder, and went out of its way to disguise what it was. It only makes sense if—

A voice cuts into the thought from behind. *So, zephyr spore duty. Wondered who the Dougs would pin it on now that Weev's dead.* It is Ann — the carpenter, the sharp-nosed woman who had been at Fort's counter the night before. She drifts up to the cannon, trails her fingers along the barrel, settles on a crate with a hand resting comfortably on one of her pistols. The narrator pauses to defend her wage: every ship needs a good carpenter, because spore-grown patches eventually erode through the silver of the hull, and at night staring at the dark beyond the rail you start to realise how thin a plank is between you and the sea.

Tress keeps her hands moving and her face still. *I don't mind the duty*, she says — and *I'd do it again if asked*. Ann tells her, kindly, never to say a thing like that on a ship; sailors don't volunteer. She introduces herself properly: carpenter, and assistant cannonmaster under Laggart. Tress makes another pouch and tries not to think about whether Ann has seen her under the false bottom.

Ann is in a talking mood. She turns the conversation, gently, into the question Tress has been too polite to ask: how did the Crow's Song become a pirate ship? The pitch from the captain, Ann says, was twofold — sail off the king's writs and tariffs before his coming war pressed them into service, and do *important work* while they were at it: stimulate the small-town economy by separating rich men from money they were only going to lock in a vault. *Important*, Tress echoes, dubiously. *By stealing.* Ann grins. *Damn right.*

Then Ann's grin fades. They were never supposed to be deadrunners — and at the word Tress has to admit she doesn't know what one is. Ann takes her through it. There are two kinds of pirate on these seas. Ordinary pirates rob but don't kill; the chase becomes a contest, the ransom a tariff, and if the king's marshals catch you they lock you up rather than hang you. Civilization, Ann says, exists because everyone would rather keep their innards inside their skin. The king knows that, so he gives pirates a reason not to go all the way. Merchant crews don't want to die for their masters' coin; the masters don't want their ships burnt and stolen; nobody on either side wants the deck wiped in blood every haul.

Become the second kind, though — kill a crew, or sink one — and everything changes. No mercy from the law, no welcome in any port, no crew willing to sign on, no other pirates who will sit with you. You become as lonely, Ann says, as the last bean in a poor man's bowl. By the moons, it makes sense to Tress. And it tells her something else, too: from the regret in Ann's voice, Ann is not in on whatever was done with the Oot's Dream. Laggart is. The captain is. They *wanted* the Crow's Song to become a deadrunner ship — which is why one sailor on the Oot's Dream was left alive to spread the word.

She is so absorbed in the chain of inference that she does what every spore-handler is told never to do. She absently lifts a gloved finger and scratches at the itch where the goggle rim meets her face. She freezes the moment she realises.

Then her face explodes.