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For three days Tress sits in her cabin trying to talk herself into running for it the moment the Crow's Song reaches port. She has, by her own ledger, done what could fairly be expected of her — protected the crew of a merchant ship from being sunk, set the Song on a heading toward a sea where Crow gets her cure and the others get out from under her — and the only person not served by this resolution is the sprouter herself. Her conscience, she decides, should let her go. Except that on the worktable in front of her are the cups Charlie sent her across all those years he was abroad, refusing to take the easy path and marry one of the women his father chose. He went to the Sorceress for her. And on the practical side, Hoid is still her best lead on how to actually reach the Sorceress's island, and the Song is now a ship willing to sail the Crimson. The narrator notes, in passing, that worry has its own physics: it is the only thing she knows of which gets heavier by being thought about.

On the day the Song finally pulls into a small island at the edge of the Verdant Sea, Tress is on deck with the wind ruining her hair, still weighing the half-formed escape plan and missing Charlie in a way that surprises her. She has begun to notice that he has been a quiet steadying presence to her without ever appearing to *do* anything in particular — he was, the narrator says, the sort of person you make decisions easier around, even if you cannot quite say why. Lately she has caught herself unable to picture his face. She can perfectly recall the portrait above the mansion's hearth, but not the man under it. People are not pictures, the narrator notes; pictures hold still. Hoid himself comes wandering past wearing black slacks with white athletic socks, then breaks in narratorially to admit the shame of it — he is the narrator, this is the narrator's wardrobe, and his relationship with fashion in those years was an act of violence against bystanders. Before Tress can decide whether to act on her plan, Laggart taps her on the shoulder and points her toward the captain's cabin.

Inside, Crow is at her desk over a porcelain cup with a floral motif — *Got it from those merchants*, she remarks, *my first official piece of plunder* — and the same little notebook the not-rat had bitten open is sitting under her finger. The captain idly waves Tress into the chair across the desk. Tress mentions that she had been planning to go ashore. *No you aren't*, Crow answers. Tress will sit here for the entirety of the port stop, her company, she says airily, would be very welcome. Tress understands instantly: this is Crow making sure her chosen offering for the dragon does not wander off.

Crow makes a small ceremony of the tea — Zapriel tea, from the Dromatory Isles, worth more than gold by weight — and does not, Tress notes, offer her a cup. This, Crow explains pleasantly, is how a deadrunner lives: short, indulgent bursts of opulence, the best kind of life, since most people are too afraid of losing the years left to them to actually use them. Does Tress feel more alive now that she is involved in killing and risks being killed in return? Tress does not let herself answer the way the question keeps trying to drag her, and instead pushes back: plenty of ordinary people live full and meaningful lives without Crow needling them into it, and being callous about killing good people is not a virtue. Crow answers with her own moral cosmology — she is no more callous than the moons, which kill virtuous and vicious indiscriminately; to behave otherwise would presume she is greater than the gods. Tress points out that she could have got what she wanted without sinking ships. *Yes*, Crow says, *but why? I'm a pirate. So are you, though you're a terrible one.*

Then she puts the cup down. *I know about the cannonballs*, she says. Laggart has not figured it out — he has, in her assessment, the intelligence of a walnut — but only one person on the Song could have made the swap. Tress's mouth dries; sweat prickles her brow; Crow leans back and observes pleasantly that the move was enterprising, if misguided, and that Tress would be an *excellent servant — rather, sailor* — if she could be properly controlled. At any rate it is over now; they are sailing the Crimson as she wished. The slip in vocabulary lands. Tress insists she had not done it for Charlie alone — she had wanted to protect the crew — and Crow laughs. She had worried that killing Weev would deprive her of her favourite source of amusement; Tress has stepped neatly into the role.

Then Crow springs the actual reveal of the scene: does Tress even know what the Crimson is like, this sea she has just steered the Song onto? Tress knows the spores are worse than verdant — they grow into needle-sharp red spines — but as long as the silver in the deck is intact and they are careful with water, she does not see how a sea can be much more dangerous than that. *Oh, girl. It's not the spores. It's the rain.* The narrator inserts himself for a brief lecture on the planet's weather. Rain on this world does not fall as a diffuse storm but as narrow ribbons that wind through the air like serpents, beautiful at night when the moonlight breaks on them; behind each ribbon an aether wall springs up in the sea and is promptly devoured back into the spores. Across every other sea the ribbons follow fixed paths so reliable that century-old rainfall maps are still good. The exception is the Crimson. There the rain wanders. Squalls can come from any direction at any time; preparation will not save you, because the rain kills the clever the same as the fool — *just like I do*, Crow says.

Outside, Tress can hear the Dougs hauling fresh water aboard. Her throat dry, she asks after the Midnight Sea: does its rain wander the same way? Oh, no, Crow says, but it does not matter; the midnight spores birth monsters in the service of the Sorceress and a ship can be swarmed from twenty leagues off. No one sails the Midnight without being attacked. *No one.* She stands and dismisses Tress with a nod. The Dougs have already returned with the Song's long-haul stores, and Tress's last narrow window to slip ashore has closed without her ever stepping near it.