The water of the Flooded Arena was green and very clear.
From the stone step where Mav stood, he could see all the way to the bottom. It was a long basin of salt water, more than a kilometer long and 500 meters wide, held in by walls of thick green glass, with white sand on its floor. It had been built for the heads of the house, whose Manifestations were far bigger than his. For a duel of rank D, the two champions faced each other across its width. The seats rose in rows above the glass, full of people. Down here, at the edge of the water, their noise sounded far away.
On the other side of the basin, the champion came out onto her own step.
She was taller than he had expected. She took off her sea-green coat, folded it and laid it on the stone. Under it, she wore a plain dark suit that fitted her like skin. Her black hair was tied back tightly. At her belt, there was a long knife with a white handle. She looked across the water at Mav. Even from 500 meters away, she seemed completely calm.
Then she stepped off the edge and went down into the water as if she were going home.
The champion didn’t come up again. She settled at the bottom of her side of the basin, sitting on the sand with her legs crossed. She breathed the salt water as easily as Mav breathed air.
Letters appeared above the arena.
[Duel of champions. House Tidecaller, against Maverick Silkborn, Submerged.]
[If Maverick Silkborn wins: the claim of House Tidecaller falls for one year, and House Tidecaller pays one thing from its treasury.]
[If House Tidecaller wins: the allegiance of Maverick Silkborn.]
[The duel ends when one champion yields or can no longer fight.]
[Begin.]
-----
Mav cast his dome first, then stepped down into it.
It rose out of the green salt water on his side of the basin, 150 meters across, fresh and clear. Only its bottom stood in the salt water of the arena. The rest rose high above the surface like a great bubble of glass. Through it, the crowd could see everything that he had brought. They made the sound that they always made.
He had chosen carefully. Thalia’s beads had shown him that the eels could feel a heartbeat through the water, so Lurk would be useless here. The stalkers stayed at home. So did Log, who had never liked salt. Pip and Puddle stayed too. Their Water Jet worked under water. But they were small and slow, and the eels would have caught them before they could aim. The hawks had nothing to do in an arena of glass.
Everyone else was here.
Two hung at the center of the dome, with Twelve’s needlefish around him in a silver storm. Eighteen’s spined fish waited near the bottom, in their white shell plates. Seven floated at the top, pale and still. Six stood on the sand beside Mav. Sela and her three water movers waited at the back of the dome, with their hands behind their backs.
And at the very back, Cedar stood on the floor of the dome like a small green hill.
Birch lay on his shell, with Oak, Ivy and Elm beside her. In the dome, they were under water, breathing through their seaweeds. They didn’t like it at all. But Cedar was tall enough that, if he walked out of the dome into the shallow salt of the arena, his back would stand above the surface. That was part of Mav’s plan.
High in the cheap seats, where the commoners sat, people stood up to see better. In the boxes below them, a few nobles laughed at the bear on the turtle, but Mav saw a man in the colors of House Ashgrove lean over and say something to them. They stopped laughing.
-----
The champion cast her Manifestation from where she sat.
A reef of white coral rose out of the sand on her side of the basin, low and wide, full of holes and caves. Then her beasts came out of it.
The eels came first. There were 12 of them, long and silver, as thick as Mav’s arm and twice as long as he was tall. Their fins ran along their backs and bellies like the edges of knives, catching the light as they moved. They circled the champion once, slowly, then lay still in the water around her.
Then the octopuses came out of the caves, four of them, each one as big as a man. They were pale at first. Then, as Mav watched, they turned the color of the sand, then of the coral, then of the water. One by one, they vanished.
’Where are you?’ Mav thought. He couldn’t find even one of them.
Last came the shrimp.
At first, Mav thought that the reef was bleeding. A red cloud poured out of its holes and spread across the sand, hundreds of tiny shapes, each one as small as a finger. They crawled along the bottom toward him in a wide, red carpet, very fast.
’Eighteen,’ Mav said. ’Hold the bottom.’
He felt Eighteen answer at once, calm and proud, the way that he always was before a fight.
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Anchor.]
-----
He had expected her to attack the front of the dome, where the spined fish waited. She didn’t.
The red carpet of shrimp reached the edge of the dome and stopped there, right against its skin. For a moment, nothing happened. Then all of them snapped their claws at once.
Mav heard it. Everyone in the arena heard it. It was a sound like 100 small stones breaking at the same time, hard and loud. The water shook. The shock went straight through the skin of the dome, as if it wasn’t there. It hit the first line of spined fish.
Eighteen’s whole line went stiff.
They didn’t die, because their shell plates had taken most of it, but for a few seconds, they hung in the water without moving, frozen where they were. In those few seconds, the eels came.
Low along the sand, they came as fast as thrown spears. They didn’t attack the fish. They went for the skin of the dome itself, at the very bottom, where it met the sand. Mav felt them cut it. It felt like a knife drawn across his own skin, long and cold, once, twice, 12 times.
Then the salt came in.
It came in through the cuts at the bottom of the dome, the way that it had come over the edge of the trench, low and heavy along the sand. It poured in around the stiff spined fish in thin gray streams. In a few seconds, they were lying in salt.
’Eighteen! Up! Get them up off the floor!’
Eighteen came back first. Shaking himself, he dragged his line upward, out of the salt, into the fresh water above it, but some of his fish were too slow. The eels came in through the cuts behind the salt, and they took the ones who were still stiff. Mav felt three points go out, then five, then more. Each one hurt, and his fear for the others grew.
[A Subject has died. Killed by: Blade Eel, Rank D.]
Twelve’s needlefish came down from above to cover them, but the eels didn’t stay to fight. They slid back out through the cuts as fast as they had come in, and they were gone before the needlefish arrived.
On the floor of the dome, the salt lay in a thin gray layer over the sand. It wasn’t deep yet. But the cuts were still open, and it was still coming in.
"What now?" Two asked. His voice was hard with anger.
Mav looked across the arena at the champion. She was still sitting on the sand in front of her reef, with her legs crossed. She hadn’t moved at all. He felt a flash of anger too, but he kept it out of his voice.
’We close the cuts,’ he said. ’Then we make her move.’
Behind him, the crowd was roaring. He barely heard it.
His first line had broken in a minute.