“Oh!” Tress said. “Right. Well, that’s what I found out when I was spying on the captain. She plans to visit a dragon and make him heal her.”
“Xisis,” Ulaam said. “She plans to bargain with Xisis?”
“Yes, and so I persuaded her to sail the Crimson.”
“Something she already wanted to do?”
“Well, yes, technically. It’s more that I persuaded her without her knowing I was persuading her.”
“To, again, do something she wanted to do.”
“It’s complicated. But I worry maybe I’m not as clever as I might have thought I was.”
“That seems self-evident, child,” Ulaam said.
“Well,” she said, sitting down on her bed, “wasn’t it at least a little clever? The captain was going to sink at least one more ship. So getting everyone to go now instead… Everyone wins, right? Assuming we can find the dragon, the captain will get healed. No more ships need be sunk. Maybe once she’s no longer dying, Crow will let everyone go. And I…”
Well, she would be on the Crimson Sea—remarkably, halfway to the Midnight Sea. That would put her closer to rescuing Charlie than she had realistically thought she would get.
“Child,” Ulaam said, going to one knee beside the bed, “Xisis is a dragon. He doesn’t offer boons. He offers trades.”
“For what? Treasure? You mean we have to rob some more ships first?”
“Xisis has no need for lucre, Tress. He wants for only one thing in order to continue his experiments: servants to do his chores. But seeing as he lives underneath the spores, he requires a very particular kind of servant.”
“Particular…in what way?” Tress asked.
“They can’t be afraid of spores,” Ulaam said. “That is always the trade. One reasonable boon—a healing would count, I suppose—in exchange for one slave to work for him all their days. The trick is finding him an offering who doesn’t panic at being led through a tunnel of spores.”
In that awful moment, Tress remembered the captain’s eyes when Tress had decided to remain on the ship. When she’d volunteered to become ship’s sprouter.
You really aren’t afraid of spores, girl? Crow had asked.
Oh, moons… Tress thought.
Outside, the seethe started again. The ship lurched into motion a short time later, and she heard the captain calling new orders. They would head to a port and take on extra stores, since they would very soon be going on a long journey…without ports…
Crow was planning to trade Tress to the dragon. And Tress, in her ignorance, had greatly accelerated the ship toward the event. She might have tricked Crow, but she’d managed to trick herself as well.
She would have no proverbial potatoes. But she certainly was standing in a big pile of the tosher’s soil.
THE LOVER OF TEA
Tress spent the next three days trying to devise a way to escape. Surely she’d done all that could be expected of her. She’d protected the crew of an entire merchant ship. She’d managed to set the Crow’s Song on a course toward a safe reconciliation for everyone except herself. Surely her conscience would let her flee now.
The ship would stop at port to take on water before sailing the Crimson, and she had to find a way off the ship there. Then she could get on with her real quest, and let the Song go without her.
Except…
She sat in her room, leaning on her worktable and looking at the cups Charlie had sent her while traveling. He’d stayed true to her all that time, going so far as to sail to the Midnight Sea because he refused to take the easy path and marry one of the women his father wanted him to. He’d gone to his doom because of…because of love. For her.
Could she really run? Hoid was her best lead in figuring out how to reach the Sorceress. Plus, here on this ship she had a crew that would sail the Crimson. And could she really abandon her friends? Particularly when they were showing so much faith in her? If she left, who would the captain give to the dragon? Would Crow be left with no recourse but to return to the Verdant Sea and continue her pillaging, murderous ways?
Questions like these burdened her. Worry has weight, and is an infinitely renewable resource. One might say worries are the only things you can make heavier simply by thinking about them.
The day the Crow’s Song finally pulled into port, Tress was on the deck, wind making a mess of her mane of hair. Again thinking about Charlie. She missed him a frightening amount. She hadn’t realized, in their years together, how much she’d come to rely on his presence.