POV: tress
Summary
Tress expects the officers to mirror her enthusiasm as she leaves the cabin — they have an answer to every problem standing between them and the Sorceress. Instead Salay is running up to her with a concerned expression. (Possibly, Tress hopes, this is only because Dr. Ulaam's treatment has finished and Salay has not grown any extra toes.) *What's wrong?* Salay leads her down into the hold.
The narrator is happily sitting in chains among the remains of the ship's food stores, contemplating excellent conversation starters like politics, religion, and your uncle's overtly racist views. *We caught him with three jugs of water,* Salay reports — he was about to toss them out the rear porthole of the middle deck, where it appears he has been dumping their food for days. They have plenty of water left; less than half the food. Roughly enough to reach the Verdant Sea, if they turn back now. And they have all seen at most a couple of birds over the Crimson — none at all over the Midnight. They cannot forage out here.
Hoid explains: he had to throw the jugs out as well, because the food was lonely on the bottom of the sea. He also has a question for Tress about how her uncle feels about seagulls taking his jobs. The officers turn to Ulaam for translation. *He is currently way too stupid to have done this on his own,* Ulaam notes; the jugs he was about to throw out are marked with chalk. (*Points to Ulaam,* the narrator concedes.) *The rat said my mission was absolutely vital,* Hoid confides. *It's also secret. So please don't tell Tress.*
A short time later Tress goes to Huck's quarters — her former cabin, which she has assigned to him as his own room. It does not have silver but it is more than most rats ever get. He has been there making a list of every hat she owns (one item so far, but he is an optimistic type of rat valet) — having needed something to occupy his nerves. He looks up. *Did the test with the midnight spores work? I would have come to watch. Should have. But — that's not something a valet has to do, right? They give me chills, Tress.* She does not know what to say. *Tress? I feel like you should be excited. Enthusiastic. Certainly relieved. And yet…* She tells him that, somehow, the ship's food stores have run dangerously low; they barely have enough to make it back to the Verdant. *Oh!* he says, *with everything that has been happening it's not too surprising something slipped through the cracks. We must make sail for the Verdant, restock, then —* he trails off. He meets her eyes. *Hoid talked, didn't he?*
*You're remarkably good at reading human emotions for a rat.* *Emotions are emotions,* he says quietly. *Doesn't matter the species. Fear, concern, anxiousness.* *Betrayal?* she asks. *Is that emotion the same for both human and rat?* So far as he can tell, yes. He is sorry. He cannot let her face the Sorceress. *For your own good, you see.* The narrator aside: ah, those words. He has heard them, said them — the words that proclaim *I don't trust you to make your own decisions* and pretend they soften the blow when in fact they layer condescension on top of pain like dirt on a corpse. He has said them, in fact, with sixteen other people.
*It hurts that you don't trust me, Huck,* she says. *But you know, it hurts more that I can't trust you now.* He says she deserves better. She finds a cage for him — it feels appropriate that she should put him back in one, and Crow had a couple of the right size for keeping messenger birds. It breaks her heart to leave him inside, huddled against the bars, refusing to face her. But she has a crew to protect, and she cannot risk him doing something even more drastic.
She barely contains her frustration as she walks back up. They were *so* close. Now they will have to sail the entire Crimson back to restock. Moons — can they afford to restock? How is she going to pay the crew? Will they continue as pirates? If she does find Charlie, what then? Disband the crew? Give the ship to Salay and go home? Her focus on reaching the Sorceress has so far let her procrastinate on all of those questions; payroll does not feel pressing when you expect to be turned into a marmoset the next week.
She opens the door and finds a small delegation of Dougs waiting. By now she knows them all personally. The one at the front, holding her captain's cap, is a good-natured woman who once explained that she thinks birds are the souls of the dead watching over sailors (it had been an awkward conversation, given that Tress had been serving pigeon pie at the time, but the Doug had laughed and said that was a way of helping). They all have quirks like that — personalities, dreams, lives — but today they act in concert. *Let's keep going, Captain. If you don't mind. Let's keep sailing, and go save that man of yours.* *But the food —* one of the Dougs cuts in: they can eat verdant for a little while. *You can eat verdant vines?* she asks, astonished. The Dougs are shocked she does not know this. Few people who grew up on islands had reason to — there was always better food to grow with less danger, assuming you had soil. Even Tress's poor family had always had normal food. But fully grown vines, soaked for a day, will provide some few calories and nutrients; do it too long without supplemental protein and you will have a rough time, but they can make it to the Sorceress's island and back. Behind her, Huck realizes that his betrayal hasn't even accomplished anything.
*Thank you,* Tress tells them. The lead Doug says they spent a month eating Fort's cooking, and then she started cooking dinners that did not taste scraped off the bottom of a shoe — they can survive a little verdant. *Besides,* another adds, *after this, we're going to be the only pirates who ever robbed the Sorceress herself.*