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Tress arrives at Fort's quartermaster's office for Salay's second-mess council and is greeted, before she has finished closing the door, by Salay presenting her to the room as the cabal's liberator. Salay cannot get her to confirm it, of course, but she is now confident that the sprouter is a King's Mask. Fort holds up his board to politely disagree; Ann dismisses the theory on the grounds that Tress is plainly a backwater island girl. Salay counters that the entire point of the Masks is to look innocent, then runs through her evidence — a girl who can walk on spores, who clung to the outside of a moving ship, who happened to end up ship's sprouter within days, who refused Crow's offer to flee at Shimmerbay in order to keep watching her. Tress, blushing, protests that she is in fact terrified of spores and was simply trying to survive, and then realises that Salay is taking her every protest as further proof.

Ann interrupts to point out the obvious: if Tress really is a Mask, they should all be afraid, because they are outlaws now. Salay has an answer for that too — a Mask would know they had not chosen their crimes. Fort writes that, technically, they had: turning pirate makes them culpable for the deaths the cannon caused, whether they pulled the lanyard or not. The room goes quiet. Fort sits hunched at his counter in his suspenders, broad enough that he nearly touches both walls of the cramped office at once; Ann swings her legs on the countertop, suddenly very interested in a knot in the floorboards. The narrator notes, in passing, the judicial mandate keeping Fort at a thirty-foot remove from any other belt. The point, Salay presses, is that they need a royal agent to vouch for them. They need their liberator. She turns to Tress with naked hope in her eyes, and the other two follow.

Tress sees in their faces that Huck was right: they are not fools for wanting this. They simply want a chance. The single sentence that would prove her not a Mask — *I am one* — sits in her mouth and she cannot make herself speak it, because doing so would stamp out the last spark of hope these three have. So instead she changes the subject. She pulls a cannonball out of her satchel and explains that she lifted it from a hidden compartment in one of Laggart's gunnery barrels. Salay folds her arms at the other two with an *I told you so* and lets Fort take it.

Fort balances the ball on his curled hand and works it over the way he works any tool — knuckles steadying, fingers braced — then sets it down, fetches a chisel and a small hammer, taps a few points on the casing and twists the two halves apart. Inside, where there should be a charge of zephyr spores and a fuse to burst the ball after impact, there is wadded cloth packed in around a hollow filled with lead shot suspended in water. The ball is rigged not to capture a ship but to sink it. Ann swears: the captain made them deadrunners on purpose. Fort writes that he had felt something off about the engagement; Ann admits the same. They want to know how Tress got it. *Nobody likes going near the charges*, she says, true enough. *And how did you even find them*, Ann asks. Mumbled: *experience with barrels and hidden compartments*. Salay smiles knowingly.

Fort's board asks the question that has been bothering him: *why?* Killing instead of looting makes no business sense. Tress hesitates, then tells them the part she dares — she had overheard Crow and Laggart discussing it: Crow wanted the crew branded as wanted criminals so that they would have nowhere to flee to and would therefore stay loyal. Ann cheerfully confirms the diagnosis — until that merchant ship went down, she had been thinking about jumping off the Song at the next port. Then Fort catches the slip. *Overheard them where?* In the captain's cabin, Tress says, and immediately regrets it. The room re-stares. Ann observes, dryly, that a backwater island girl seems awfully accomplished at espionage. Tress mutters something about luck and pushes onward: she believes Crow will try to sink at least one more ship to lock the crew in, and that they have to do something now.

Salay agrees they need to deal with Crow permanently; Fort argues for a temporary measure first, a way to quench her bloodthirst; Ann notes Crow is not the quenchable type. Fort then offers what will become the meeting's working plan: persuade the captain onto a sea with fewer ships on it. Salay points out the awkwardness — that would mean the Crimson or the Midnight, and Crow would never agree. At which point Tress, quietly, says she is fairly sure Crow will agree to sail the Crimson. Three sets of eyes narrow. *No normal crewmember could persuade her*, Ann notes. *I'll do it*, Tress says — and crucially does *not* tell them what she has actually learned about Crow's reasons. They would not be able to read that as anything but more Mask evidence.

Instead she nods past the questions, takes the burden, and asks the cabal to plan in parallel for taking the ship back from Crow — adding, evasively, that they should *assume* the captain's spore invulnerability will somehow be neutralised in the near future. By something unrelated to her. Three more stares. Salay herds her toward the door with a *we'll do that*, and on the threshold drops her voice to one last whisper: even if Tress cannot admit anything, will she at least promise that *if* she ever has a chance to put in a good word with the King on their behalf, she will take it. Tress supposes she will. Salay decides that is good enough, wishes her luck, and shuts the door behind her.