(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Ann joins Tress on the Crow's Song's aft cannon platform and — with the unguarded enthusiasm of someone finally invited to talk shop — walks her through the basics: the cannon has two winches at its base, one for traverse and one for elevation, and a round in flight drops as it goes, so the gunner has to lob it in an arc. The tricky part is judging the distance well enough that the fuse pops the ball just before it strikes, so it sprays water onto the target. Tress, perched on the gunnery barrel, says aloud that surely there ought to be a round that simply explodes on impact — then you would only need to aim at the ship, not gauge the distance. Ann has never heard of such a thing. *I have*, Tress thinks — the impact detonation charge from Weev's schematic. Someone, somewhere, is already building these. The shape problem is the obvious obstacle: it would have to be pointed, fired tip-forward like an arrow, the tip driven back into itself on impact. A cannonball that is not actually a ball. It is in the name, after all.

When Ann cranks the cannon back into level Tress takes the chance to ask the question everyone aboard has clearly been wondering — what makes Ann so peculiar about firearms. Ann turns it back on her: any guesses? Tress reports the theories she has collected from the rest of the crew. Fort suspects Ann was enslaved as a child and that for her guns mean control of her surroundings. Salay suspects she sees firearms as the seat of authority on the Song — carpenters get no respect, gunners do, and she wants in. Ann grants both diagnoses the polite obituary they deserve: Fort is usually so good at reading people; Salay is, by her estimation, *really, really* bad at it. Then she demands to hear what Ulaam said. Tress blushes; she did not entirely understand it, something about the shape of the barrels and, for some reason, cigars. Ann laughs so hard the deck pitches with her, and admits the actual answer is far less interesting than any of those.

She just thinks they are nifty. *That's it?* Tress asks. Ann argues, with surprising heat, that this is in fact what culture is — not government, not language, not any of that hokum, but the things people like. The cups Tress collects, marbles, plays, songs. People are defined by what they are drawn to, and no one cup is interesting on its own; what is interesting is how it is different from every other cup. She is a cup who likes firearms. The smell of zephyr going off; the challenge of putting a shot through somebody's tea cup from one ship to the next. Growing up at her port, she listened to the militia and the rare raider exchange echo off the hills on every Twelveday festival, and decided each time that someday it would be her.

Tress says she is sorry she never got the chance. Ann corrects her — she did get the chance; she enlisted the day she came of age, into the cannonade crews of the militia, and lasted twenty-four days. Then, while firing in a yard exercise, she demonstrated that a cannonball can bounce. She is, she suspects, the only cadet in her militia's history who managed to shoot her own sergeant — when he was behind her — inside the barracks. *Wow*, Tress says.

Ann heaves herself up, suggests Tress take her actual practice shots — long fuses to start, fire over the buoy as an exploratory shot, judge the wind, then walk the next one down. Tress, moved by a perverse lunatic guilt, asks if she would like to take a shot herself first. The narrator, breaking in, identifies this as possibly the most reckless thing he has ever heard a person say — and he was part of a conspiracy to kill a god. Ann half-laughs, sees Tress is serious, and — leaning in to inspect her — declares that she really must be one of the Masks for not even looking afraid. She cranks the cannon almost thirty degrees off the buoy. Tress points out the buoy is in the other direction. Ann looks doubtfully at the cannon, then reluctantly cranks it back. Then she takes up the firing rod, grins like an undertaker in a war zone, and fires.

The round hits the Verdant Sea well behind the Song and harms no one. The narrator concedes he had not been entirely certain it would. *Thank you*, Ann says, softly, twice. It was, she tells Tress in tears, everything — she had been beginning to believe what the rest of the crew said, that she was cursed, and she is not. She has bad aim. Tress proposes they fire together every day from now on, and Ann takes the deal. As an afterthought, Tress asks whether the Song carries a flare gun. Of course, Ann says — every ship does, for stranding and for surrender to pirates. Although, she adds, given current circumstances they no longer have any use for the surrender flare. Fort should be able to supply her with one. Ann excuses herself before her tears of joy can become a spore hazard on an unprotected part of the ship, and Tress is left thinking about the way people can be repaired by such small currencies: a few words at the right moment, a little time, or, apparently, an unfired cannon. She fires a handful of her own practice shots — all of them, the narrator notes, also misses — and as she packs up, the Song turns again on the captain's order and stands into the Crimson proper. This time no rains are waiting.