POV: tress
Summary
Tress finds Huck on her bed reading Weev's notebook on verdant spores and nibbling the corner of it between bites of crust. She shuts the door behind her and tells him he has been lying to her. Huck crouches, eyes darting for a hiding place, and tries to bluff — only to be hit with the actual question. Why did he never tell her he was a familiar? She had it from Hoid, by way of Ulaam — enough clues forced past Hoid's curse to put the rest together.
Huck confesses he kept it from her because the Sorceress is horrible and getting to her island is a way to die. Tress kneels by the bed so they are at eye level, and tells him he is going to tell her everything he knows, or else. *Or else what?* he asks. Tress takes the deep breath of a woman about to attempt the most terrifying threat of her life — and tells him that, in that case, she will stop talking to him. *…You won't throw me overboard or something?* he asks, and the narrator notes, by way of Huck, that Tress really makes an awful pirate.
Pressed, Huck revises his story. He is *kind of* a familiar, but not in the way she means. His whole family talks. He grew up on a lonely island a long way from the Sorceress's realm, and he cannot lead her there — that part, he promises, is the truth. He is a descendant of familiars, perhaps; he is not her servant. What he can offer is what his family has told him about her curses. They are not alive; they are static — like the clauses of a contract — and so every one of them, no matter how carefully written, leaves holes.
The trick, Huck explains, is to talk *around* the curse. A friend who has been cursed cannot directly answer that they have been cursed — but the way they fail to answer is itself a confirmation, so one has already tricked the curse into giving up information. And, worse and better, every cursed person hears the spell as it is laid and therefore knows the path to their own freedom; the Sorceress is sadistic enough to insist on it. The challenge is sneaking the answer out: tell the cursed person a story about somebody else's cure, ask their opinion of it, see what slips loose. It will involve a great deal of guesswork. And frustration, and pain. He has nothing better to offer.
Tress tries another angle: distraction. Huck notes that Crow has it in for her. Tress starts to disagree — Crow has been pleased with her since she sealed the breach — and Huck points out that that should worry her more, not less. The captain who eats bullets, hates everyone, and is busily marching her own crew into hanging waters has now decided, casually, that she would like the new girl to stay. For reasons. Tress shivers and agrees they need to spy on her again. Huck is willing, but the porthole he used last time has been sealed since, and there is a cat now, and even Hoid, an obvious idiot, worked out what he was. The captain is wilier than Hoid, and a girl who keeps company with a too-clever rat will likewise have been noticed.
Something Ulaam said about midnight spores comes back to her — that they are useful for spying — and she is just beginning to follow the thought when a knock comes at the door. Huck, with the caution of his kind, grabs his crust in his teeth and dives under the bed. Tress opens up and finds Salay standing in the corridor, telling her that they need to talk about who she really is.