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The narrator jumps back a day to explain how the Crow's Song reached an island the Midnight Sea is supposed to make unreachable. A Doug in the lookout had seen Tress taken from the launch and brought the word down. In emergency meeting the crew weighed sailing on against Tress's standing order to flee; the safer choice was to turn back through the Crimson and run for friendlier spores. Instead, they voted unanimously, Laggart alone dissenting, to go after her — on a plan Fort had built around a flaw in the Sorceress's autonomous midnight monsters. They are insatiable, trade water for service through the Luhel bond, and their distant handler cannot spare them much attention once they are loose. The narrator notes this is a general weakness of leaning on self-aware magical guards: efficient at scale, but exploitable by anyone willing to make a better trade.

Within a quarter-hour of crossing into the sea, three of them climbed up onto the deck and found Fort waiting at its centre amid water barrels and suspended kegs of midnight spores rigged to dump if they pressed him. Ann read his signs aloud, in case reading words on a board was beyond the creatures. He warned them in the bond's own gestures that he would feed every drop of water on board to the rival spores rather than to them unless they took his deal, and that the crew at the stern was poised to throw themselves overboard for the same reason. The monsters parleyed; he offered every barrel he had in exchange for safe escort through to the island. They took the trade. The bond strengthened, he sent his new escorts swimming off to fight any others that came near, and they won those fights every time on the strength of their unmatched water supply.

Roughly thirty minutes after Tress's own arrival, the ship reached the island — exactly the distraction she needed. The Sorceress turned to wake her defences. Tress and the rat seized her viewing board, the twin of Fort's, and asked it aloud whether it could speak to the people it was watching. It could. On the deck Fort looked down to see the two of them huddled at the lens; Salay and Ann crowded in. Tress warned them about the stones hidden beneath the spores and tried to order them away, and when Salay made her say it as a request, she finally asked for help instead. They agreed at once. Ann told her that the spectacles she had once handed her had shown her a world where they were not condemned people any longer.

Mid-celebration, something caught in Tress's mind: the narrator, picking his nose with his tongue beside Fort, jogged a memory she had been carrying without seeing. Hoid had never been able to point her toward the Sorceress's island, never been able to name it; she had taken that as the curse's mute spot. But if the cure for Charlie's curse was to bring the person he loved back to the woman who had cast it, then perhaps Hoid's cure was the same shape: bring himself back to her. The rule he could not speak was the cure. She told the crew to bring him to her, in this room. Salay hesitated. Tress asked her to do it not because she was ordering it but because she trusted her. The crew nodded.

The Sorceress noticed at last what was being said, snarled an order, and cut the call with a flick of a glowing rune. Then she traced another rune into the air and pinned Tress to the wall with bands of light. Two cups tumbled from their perches: the butterfly one shattered; the pewter one bounced and gained a fresh dent. The rat picked himself up off the floor where he had been dropped, climbed Tress's clothing, and tried to nibble through the bands; the light was unimpressed. He apologised for being useless again, for failing her again. She told him there was something she had been meaning to say, and that the moment was probably terrible for it but she was going to say it anyway.

She told him she loved him — terrible timing, she knew, but better said than not. He told her he felt the same. Then, eyes on the ship on the wall-screen, she asked him whether, if it were not too much trouble, he could make his way down to the entry door so the crew would not be locked out below. He realised he could. He nuzzled her cheek and thanked her for coming after him. Below, on the stairs, the cat was prowling — and Charlie told her that *Huck the rat* might be too frightened for that run, but *Charlie the gardener* was built of stronger stuff. He leapt down to begin the quest.