POV: tress
Summary
Tress is marched down the spore tunnel by Crow, the captain's impatient cuffs and shoves keeping the pace. The narrator notes that the spore seas are not deep as oceans go — compared to the Lilting Abyss on Threnody they are practically ponds — but a few hundred yards walked downhill at the end of a pirate's hand can feel much longer; still better, mind you, than the traditional method of reaching an ocean's floor. Crow's lantern slides over the crimson walls and makes the descent feel like a climb down the dragon's own throat. Tress wonders, briefly, what would happen if water touched the stiff tunnel walls — spikes? — and the narrator thinks it says everything about how she has changed that she briefly considers licking the wall to find out.
The tunnel levels out and opens into a vast chamber, also made entirely of solidified spores: enormous columns wrapped in black ribbons, braziers at the corners whose light only the shadow seems to permit, a wide corridor leading off to the right. Tress had been expecting to discover, at the bottom of the Crimson, what was actually *under* a spore sea — stone, soil, ancient layered spines — and supposes she will now have a lifetime down here to find out. That is the moment the day's full weight arrives. She will live the rest of her life here. She has failed Charlie. She will never see the moons again — not the sky, not the sun, not the glow of the Verdant — and her knees give. Crow shoves her forward, she stumbles into the chamber and falls; she curls trembling on the cold floor while Crow curses and kicks her with no particular gentleness. The day had been too full. Hours and minutes had been the same size as ever, but each moment inside them had bulged like a stretched wineskin, and there was not enough Tress to hold it all in.
*You still have everything you need.* Did he mean the flare gun? Crow is carrying that. Tress has empirical proof that she cannot best Crow in a physical contest. *On your feet, girl,* Crow growls, hauling her up.
The narrator takes a moment to explain something about dragons. Their word has spread through nearly every culture he has visited, and not by linguistic accident — they have made certain to be known and feared, interacting with societies during their formative years the way a grandmother teaches a child her name. Most people in the cosmere will never meet one. The dragons still like to keep a handful of pliable cultures around for the proverbial rainy day. So when Crow calls *Dragon? I have come, as stipulated, with the proper sacrifice — show yourself!* and a shadow moves down the right-hand corridor, Tress and Crow both more or less know what to expect: sinuous neck, reptilian body, wings broad enough to block out the sky.
The unexpected details are the silver mane that runs from his head down under his chin as a beard, and the ridges of burnished metal that outline his otherwise onyx hide — running down all six limbs, up the neck, forming two horns and a back-line of spikes. The narrator muses that the legend of dragons hoarding wealth probably grew from this otherworldly metal left behind on dragon corpses; he has never known a dragon to be fond of riches. *Ideas* are what they hoard, and there they are misers fit for legend. Xisis does not make the ground shake; he glides around his columns, the firelight off the dragonsteel making him seem to flow like liquid metal as he looms. Tress gasps; even Crow cringes.
Crow finds her courage and gives her speech. *Dragon Xisis, I have come to initiate your ancient pact of promise. To this end, I have brought you this slave to work in your domain.* The dragon leans down, breath like burned hickory, and the mother-of-pearl eyes that meet Tress's seem to open onto infinity. Then, in them, reflected, she sees herself — and Crow.
*You have everything you need.* Tress's courage has not, in fact, run off; only been flattened by the rest of the day. It begins to shine through, and with it a small whimsy. Crow has nothing left to lose; Tress has everything to lose — and bets it. She forces her voice, ragged, into the same formula word-for-word: *Dragon Xisis, I have come to initiate your ancient pact of promise. To this end, I have brought you this slave to work in your domain.* Then she gestures at Crow.