POV: tress
Summary
The following evening Tress takes stock of the Crow's Song's pantry and concludes it is hopeless: stale flour, almost no seasonings, rancid cooking oil, and an oven heated by sunlight spores that runs as unevenly as a kiln — wet flour on a pan demonstrates the pattern of scorched and raw patches without ambiguity. No wonder Fort burns everything. She wonders aloud whether he has been doing it on purpose to mask the underlying ingredients; he shrugs. Words are not required for that exchange.
She tells him to toss the rancid oil overboard. He eyes the bottle — small in his enormous, gnarled hands — and writes that they would be amazed at what people will trade for. He tucks it away. The two of them set up in the Song's small galley, Tress pushing a pile of kulunuts across the counter for him to mash — fat enough to substitute for the dead oil — and assembling a steamer out of pans so the oven will at least cook evenly. *Steam is a good conductor*, she tells him. *We need to avoid plain breads — old flour tastes bad. Something where the taste won't be too noticeable. Nut bread will work.* She sifts the flour for mold; finds it dry and clean. Over the next hour she falls back into kitchen routines from the Rock, where she cooked for her parents from whatever they had or could scavenge — same job, larger scale.
She is briefly homesick. She had meant to write to her parents and has not. She thinks of Charlie and the letters he managed to send her from his travels, and feels guilty for ever having wanted more of them: if his time abroad has been at all like hers, the wonder is that any reached her. Fort watches her work in silence, which the narrator notes is no symptom of his deafness — he has known many quite chatty Deaf signers — but more like wary inspection. Is he learning from her? Suspicious of her? She cannot tell.
She slices a corner off the first test cake and offers it. Fort picks it up between the sides of his hands, inspects, sniffs, tries it. Then he cries. For a moment the cake's fate is a quantum object — sublime or catastrophic — and the narrator notes this is why so many artists drink. Then he reaches for another bite. Tress's sigh of relief could have filled the Song's sails. She goes back to chopping gull for the meat pies. Fort taps her on the shoulder: how did she do that? He had been watching for sleight of hand. *What would I use sleight of hand for?* *Secret ingredients. Swapping one cake for another, pre-prepared.* *Are you always this suspicious?* He gestures at his board: *I'm a quartermaster on a pirate ship.* No swapped cakes, she says, and no secret ingredients other than practice and resourcefulness. He takes a third bite.
So begins the negotiation. Tress asks what a meal like this might be worth per day; Fort tries to call the debate open but the third bite has, she notes, already settled it. He insists he had said the cake was real and nothing more; she points out she promised the bread was genuine, not that she wasn't trying to trick him. She has been watching how he trades. With strangers and shipmates in need, Fort gives generously and takes very little; with the crew he bargains ferociously for trivial items they could draw from stores. She first guesses, as her Fort-watching aunt did, that he is afraid of looking taken advantage of. The guess is wrong, but the narrator notes it works anyway, because it convinces Tress to bargain when she'd rather not.
Fort proposes one of her meals per day of his food owed — they're square then. Tress retorts that on that scale he would be using a brain Ulaam keeps in his bottom drawer; the food he provided her was practically worthless, so a single good meal should cancel out dozens of bad ones. He counters with his pricing philosophy: food has a minimum threshold of usefulness short of poisonous; it kept her alive, and a life is invaluable, therefore his food was priceless. She counters back: the captain has repeatedly told her she is worthless, so by transitivity so is his food. He counters again: then her labour must be cheap too, and he should be able to employ her for next to nothing. *Well*, she says, eating the last test slice herself, *then I'll find some other way to repay you. Shame.*
He grins and bumps his offer: one day of her cooking pays off two of his meals. She holds at five. They settle on three, provided he tells no one the meals are hers — she has other work and cannot be roped into breakfast and lunch too. He can put off the Dougs by claiming he is practising new recipes and only has time for one a day. As an addendum he wants dessert as well: the Dougs have been asking for one that does not melt the plate before it can be eaten. He laughs out loud at her response — unrestrained without being uncontrolled — the laugh of a man who does not care how he looks or sounds. The narrator notes she had been wrong about him; he is not afraid of looking taken advantage of at all.
Then she names her price for dessert: a flare gun with flares, no questions asked. He hesitates. *Mask business?* *Maybe.* *Will it help us with our predicament?* He points up toward the captain's cabin. *I hope so.* He grants it, in trade for desserts for the rest of the journey. *Until we reach our destination in the Crimson*, she amends. *I wasn't aware we had one. Curious.* He wipes his hand, holds it out; they shake. *Thank you*, he says, and means it. For the food? she asks. *For the trade.*
He explains why: among his people he is, by profession, a hunter. The great hunt is a family mark of pride. His mother was a hunter too. But a whole society of hunters does not scale — somebody must make the shoes, plan the weddings — so each person on coming of age chooses their hunt. His is bargaining. He records his great victories and sends them home in letters that hang in the family hall. He winks at her: he intends to brag about her catch — first bite of her bread was worth every meal he ever gave her, and she is letting him take credit with the crew besides — for three pages. Now hurry up. He wants a meat pie.