Fern had three permanent crew members. In addition, she had brought over two new hires for the purpose of this voyage. But after interrogating Mardellian and Lyne, she decided that those two Calla boys were at least as good as the sailors she had brought with her, and sent the latter back to Toravithranax with a bit of money for their trouble.

Her three permanent crew were Rett, who could run the whole keelsloop by himself; Swab, who cooked, cleaned, mended, organized, and slept with Fern; and a relatively new hire named Scale, who seemed to end up doing things that were chancy or arduous.

As they loaded their stuff onto Silverfin, Prim still harbored some hope that the wind would be every bit as impossible as it was cracked up to be; for during the three days they had cooled their heels in the little port, she had spent hours gazing across the Shiver at the high ateliers of Toravithranax, which (consistent with much lyric poetry she had read during her long girlhood) glowed gold, then copper, then coal red in the light of the evening. All it would take was a spell of really terrible weather and Silverfin would be driven back to its refuge there, and she would be able to see the place and explore certain gardens and markets that Querc had been telling her about as they had taken turns lugging That Fucking Box across the Burning Bit. But as it turned out, the winds were absolutely perfect, to the degree that the crew of Silverfin (according to Querc, who spoke their language) couldn’t stop exclaiming about it. So just as soon as they rounded the sharp southern cape of the Burning Bit, they unfurled those special sails to catch a steady wind coming at them from a little ahead of starboard, and the keelsloop took off like an arrow launched from a bow, and Toravithranax sank into their wake as Prim sat in the stern pining for it. Off into the southwest they sailed, traveling as fast as it was possible to travel in the wrong direction.