Darktan's abandoned arson plan

Darktan's abandoned arson plan begins as a contingency for a night of violence and captivity, then becomes a test of what he will do with the power to turn that violence back on its human perpetrators. He prepares Nourishing to carry the plan forward if he cannot, but when the match is finally in his hand above the stable, he lets it go out and helps Hamnpork instead.

A contingency in the stable

After a terrier is thrown into the pit among the rats, the Changelings look down at the killing and the humans' cheering. Nourishing turns away from the spectacle and sees Darktan looking along the stable toward its barred doors. His attention moves to the hay and straw stored in the loft and in the cribs and mangers below. He draws a length of wood from one of his belts; the red, sulphur-smelling blob at its end is a match. The scene makes the plan legible through its materials: a match, abundant dry bedding, and doors barred shut.

Darktan does not present the fire as certain. He tells Nourishing that his own plan might fail and that, if it does, she will be in charge of the other plan. When she asks whether he means her, he confirms it and hands over the match, indicating the nearest rack of hay. He says she will know when the time comes. Nourishing answers uncertainly but accepts the responsibility. His instruction therefore makes the arson plan more than an angry thought: it is a prepared alternative, entrusted to someone else in case he is no longer there to act.

Darktan says he wants the humans to remember the night, both what they did and what the rats did. The statement frames the plan as retaliation and as a warning, but leaves its exact intended outcome open. His reference to the humans remembering for as long as they live carries the threat of severe consequences; the match and the hay give that threat a practical means. At this point, Nourishing has been told to be ready, not to ignite the stable immediately.

The match above the crowd

Nourishing recounts the decisive moment much later, when she dictates the story of the climb. By then, she says, the Darktan she had pulled out of the trap seemed different: his thoughts had slowed down but grown bigger. Her account links the abandoned fire to a change in how he responds to danger, without claiming to know exactly what has altered his thinking.

At the beam, Darktan first makes sure Hamnpork is all right. Then he picks up the match he had shown Nourishing and strikes it on an old piece of iron. He walks along the beam with it burning. Below him are the crowd, the hay racks, the scattered straw, and people milling around. Nourishing imagines the immediate consequences of dropping the flame: smoke filling the place within seconds, the locked doors keeping the humans inside, and the rats escaping along the gutters. In her image, the people would be trapped like rats in a barrel—the same helplessness imposed on the animals turned back on their captors.

The possibility is concrete, not abstract. The barred doors and combustible bedding that Nourishing had seen earlier now form a route from flame to smoke, entrapment, and escape. But the account presents the danger as Nourishing's realization while watching Darktan; it does not establish that he explains his intentions or shares her precise calculation. What she can see is that he has the lit match and the opportunity to drop it.

Refusal and its aftermath

Darktan stands looking down until the match goes out. He puts it down, then helps the others with Hamnpork, saying nothing about the fire. The sequence gives the abandonment its force: he does not merely fail to find an opportunity, or hand the danger back to Nourishing; he lets the flame die while the means to set the stable alight is in his grasp. The immediate practical consequence is that he turns from the fire to helping Hamnpork, and the threatened mass retaliation does not occur.

Nourishing asks him about the choice later, after the events with the piper. His only answer is, "Yes. Rats in a barrel." The words recall the trap he could have made for the crowd, but they do not explain why he chose not to make it. That silence is important: the story records the temptation, the available means, and the refusal without supplying a tidy declaration of motive. Darktan's plan would have answered captivity with a reversal of captivity; his final action instead leaves the match extinguished and puts his attention back on a fellow rat. The episode thus distinguishes having the power to inflict the same terror from choosing to use it.