POV: tress
Summary
Tress sits in the quartermaster's office a few hours after the rescue with Fort, Salay and Ann, holding her butterfly cup of Fort's personal tea. He had handed it to her without even mentioning a trade — a debt, the narrator notes, he is now certain he will never properly pay off. She has not stopped trembling since the lift, and the warmth of the tea is welcome against the chill in her soul. Outside, the spores are whispering against the hull again. The Dougs have efficiently cut the aether tree free now that the seethe has returned; the trunk has sunk into the depths, dragged down by the crimson aether. Tress feels obscurely guilty about using the tree and then leaving it. She probably ought to be thinking about the dragon instead. She is too worn out to manage the fear.
Fort writes that they have to act quickly. Ann agrees: Crow said this morning the dragon was two days away and they have probably eaten a good chunk of that distance even with the rainfall. Salay proposes tomorrow morning. Ann is in. Fort is in — *with a King's Mask on our side, we cannot fail.* Then they all look at Tress.
*Maybe we shouldn't,* she says softly. The others stare. She tries to make her case: the crew is alive by a miracle, and she does not want to find out what Crow will do if they try to take her. She knows the captain is dangerous. *So you'd let her trade you?* Fort's board asks. *Willingly?* It is not death to serve a dragon, she argues, not really; perhaps she can find a way to escape, or buy her freedom. She knows she is not making much sense. She has spent the last several days designing a weapon to use *against* this very captain. But lies, the narrator observes, dilute a person; live in them long enough and you end up the colour of mixed paint, slowly veering toward generic brown.
Pushed harder, she tells Salay outright: *I'm not, Salay. I'm not a King's Mask. I didn't even know what one was until you mentioned them. Please believe me.* They do not, of course. A boring truth, the narrator notes, will always have trouble competing with an exciting lie. Ann points out the harder question: even if Crow gets her bargain with the dragon, the Crow's Song is still under her. Tress counters that without the spores in her blood Crow would be far easier to fight; letting her make the trade gives them a much better chance.
Fort rests his hand on hers and tips his sign her way. *We'd have to live with it.* Crow forced them into this life and they did not know she meant to kill; if they do not stand up to her now they no longer get to use that excuse, because they know what she is. Tress reads it twice. Something in her she would have called arrogance — but the narrator notes is the other side of the same coin as self-worth — begins to lift. She meets Fort's eyes and nods. *All right.*
Salay sets the plan: mutiny, tomorrow morning. She will see to the Dougs. Ann will distract Laggart by mishandling the cannon so he comes to scold her. Fort reveals that he has, in fact, a key to Crow's quarters that she does not know about — they will enter while she sleeps and take her captive, then sail for the Verdant Sea and trade her to the king's officials for their freedom. Tress takes a breath. Capturing her will not be quite that simple, she warns — the spores in her blood will react to anyone trying to restrain her. But she has built a weapon for exactly that —
She trails off. A familiar itch, distinct as the smell of her mother's bread. She reaches without thinking into the shadows under Fort's counter, and her fingers find a patch of darkness that resists, the texture of a filled waterskin. Midnight Essence. She feels another mind on the other end of it — distant, but with her much closer — and on instinct seizes control. Her tongue goes dry. She coughs, panics, severs the link entirely, and the Essence puffs into dark smoke.
She knows whose mind that was. *Oh — oh moons,* she rasps. *Crow knows.*