(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Tress sets exactly two midnight spores on the captain's cabin table. The other officers shy back, though there is not much room in the cabin for shying. She has spent a little while preparing the demonstration, which has given Huck time to scamper off, not wanting to be around active midnight spores. Tress sets her silver knife beside the spores and takes out an eyedropper. Midnight spores, she explains, behave differently than the others — the others react almost chemically to water, but the midnight ones seem almost *alive,* as though they want something. *What do they want, Cap'n?* Ann asks. Water, Tress says, leaning down to eye level. *It's like a trade. I give them water, and they obey me for a time.* She raises the dropper — Salay gasps despite herself — and says she believes it should be safe, but in case it is not, the others are to use the silver knife to sever her bond. *Sever it how?* Fort writes, the only one in the room without visible fear; something about the conversation has overcome his usual aversion. *Black lines,* Tress answers, glancing at the board. *Cut them with the knife. But I'm hoping it won't be necessary this time.*

She releases a single drop. The midnight spores bubble and merge into an undulating mass — what the narrator cannot resist calling a *boiling boil.* Tress feels the tug on her mind immediately, the offer of bonding, and resists. Ann reports the same yanking sensation in her own brain. Tress explains: the spores are looking for a host — or really a buyer — and the monsters that roam the Midnight Sea are exactly this, creations of the Sorceress bound to her. She wonders, briefly, how she feeds so many. The mass lurches toward Fort and takes the shape of a metal tankard — the largest and heaviest of Tress's collection — sprouts legs, and shambles his way. He has inadvertently bonded it: his hand goes to his mouth as it begins to dry, and a small black line opens between them.

Tress seizes control. With Crow earlier she had been able to wrest the spore creature away and destroy it; this time it is far easier. She pushes her mind against the thing and offers it more water than Fort's mouth could yield — a bribe — and it abandons him at once and accepts her. She takes complete control, severs the bond before she can be drawn into the cup's perspective, and the creature pops and evaporates to nothing. Fort gasps and drinks gratefully from a red ceramic mug she offers him. Salay steps forward — *what happened?* Tress explains: she outbid the creature for Fort's bond by offering more water freely than it could take from an unwilling subject, took control once it accepted, and dismissed it. Ann asks whether she can do the same with the monsters guarding the Midnight Sea. *We are going to find out,* Tress says, standing.

A pounding at the door interrupts. Tress rests a hand on her flare gun and nods to Ann to open it. Laggart is on the other side. The narrator confesses he had forgotten to mention that Tress had let Laggart remain aboard the Crow's Song, rightly figuring that without Crow to impress he would not try anything funny. (Not that he could, mind you: Laggart is to *funny* what liquid nitrogen is to a healthy set of lungs.) He has spent the last several days pacing the deck, ornery and uncertain. He demands to speak with Tress in private. She nods the others out and closes the door.

Laggart draws himself up — looking, the narrator notes, like a buzzard that forgot to put its feathers back on after a morning shave — and demands that Tress shoot him. For what he has done to her. She tells him he is forgiven; he says he knows, and he cannot bear the lies. He is certain she is waiting until he is comfortable to toss him overboard, and that is cruel — he had figured her for someone better than that. Shoot him. Be forthright. Tress sighs, rubs her forehead, and says she is far too tired to pretend to understand what his mind is doing to him; she is not going to shoot him, but if he insists she can throw him in the brig instead. He perks up. *Really?* Really. *You'd do that for me? Imprison me instead of kill me?* Tress tells him, more pointedly, that she was never going to kill him. She did not even kill Crow.

He chews on that. And keeps chewing. The narrator aside: Laggart is not a smart man, though the things he lectures people on could fill a dictionary — what he actually *knows* would barely fill a postcard. He is perched at the bell-curve peak between smart and stupid, assuming that the top of the curve is the best place to be because *highest* must mean *best.* In that moment, though, he understands: Tress is willing to brig him. She is *not* going to shoot him, or toss him overboard. She has not been playing tricks. She has been kind to him. The narrator observes that Laggart has known very little kindness in his existence, and people often live what they know; in the land where everyone screams, everyone is also slightly deaf. There are people who escape such a cycle — they should be cherished when found — and many like Laggart who never realize how they are until a moment like this one. He is no longer confused; he is horrified. He has at long last realized that there are people who actually mean the things they say. To a determined hypocrite, that changes everything. He stumbles for the door, shoves it open, and flees.

Tress watches him go with her head cocked, blissfully unaware of the war happening in his heart. She does not call after him about the brig; if he is not going to press it, neither will she. Instead she carefully tucks her box of midnight spores away. And honestly, she feels a growing elation. She has a plan for dealing with the monsters. If she can defeat them she will have overcome the final obstacle between her and the Sorceress. She is close — truly close. She feels like celebrating.

It lasts about as long as it takes her to find out what the narrator has been up to the past few days.