On Earth, the screen over the foundry gate had shown the whole duel.
This time, the street had been full before it began. Juno had come an hour early to get a place by the gate. She watched every minute of it with her hands pressed over her mouth, and she didn’t sit down once. When Mav went out of his dome alone, into the salt, a woman behind her said that he had lost his mind. Juno wanted to turn around and answer her, but she was too afraid to look away from the screen.
Then the turtle walked out of the dome with the white bear on its back. The children on the wall started shouting, and soon the whole street was shouting with them. When the champion touched two fingers to her forehead, the old man from the furnace line threw his cap into the air, and a whole street of foundry workers cheered for a boy who had grown up among them.
Juno tried to cheer too, but her legs had stopped holding her. She sat down on the edge of the street and laughed until she was crying.
Garrett sat down beside her. He was still in his gray coat. For a while, he only watched the screen, where Mav stood on a stone step, dripping, with one of his small strange builders beside him.
"There’s a girl on the bench," Juno said suddenly. "In white. She sat down with his school."
Garrett looked. "Sunspire," he said. "That’s their coat."
Juno wiped her eyes and studied the girl in white very carefully.
"oh," she said.
-----
The judge read her ruling the next morning, in the same cold room where it had started.
"The duel of champions was fought under the old law," she said. "Maverick Silkborn won it. The claim of House Tidecaller on the World called Submerged is void for one year from today." She looked up from her book at Marek. "By the same law, House Tidecaller owes him one thing from its treasury, chosen by him. The court will witness the choice."
Someone in the gallery started to clap, then stopped when the judge looked up. Mav stood very still. For a whole year, no house could take his sea from him by law. He was still getting used to the idea.
Marek bowed. He was smiling, as always. If he minded any of it, Mav couldn’t see it.
"Of course," he said. "This afternoon, if that suits everyone. I’ll open the doors myself."
-----
The treasury of House Tidecaller was under its house, deep under the Nexus, behind three doors of green bronze.
Marek led them down himself. The judge came, because the court had to witness the choice. Isolde came with her, silent, in her gray-blue coat. Quill came because Mav had asked her to, and Tamsin came because nobody could have stopped her. Two of Marek’s old men came last, carrying lamps.
When the last door opened, Tamsin made a small sound of pure joy.
The treasury was a long, low hall of white stone, and it was full. There were weapons from Worlds that no longer existed: spears of black coral, a sword with a blade like green glass, a net as bright as silver in the light of the lamps. Pearls lay on stone shelves, dozens of them, some as big as Mav’s fist. There was a crown made of red coral, so old that it had turned the color of dried blood. Along one wall stood jars of sealed glass with things floating in them that Mav didn’t want to look at too closely.
"Our house has gathered it for 500 years," Marek said. He spread his hands. "Everything that the sea has ever given us. Take your time, Silkborn."
Mav walked down the hall slowly.
-----
He knew what he should take. Tamsin had told him three times on the way down.
"The pearls," she had whispered. "One of those big ones is worth thousands of Essence. You could fill your Heartstone. You could buy a whole Orphan World for a month."
She was right. One of those pearls could feed his army for a season. But a pearl, once it was spent, was gone.
He stopped in front of the sword of green glass. One of the old men told him, without being asked, that it cut water as easily as it cut flesh. Mav thought about it, but then he walked on.
He stopped at the net too. It could hold anything that lived in the sea, the old man said, and nothing could cut it. That was useful. It would have been very useful in the Flooded Arena. Still, Mav walked on.
At the end of the hall, on a low shelf by itself, there was a shell.
It was gray and plain, as big as two of his hands put together, shaped like a spiral. It didn’t shine. Next to the pearls and the crown, it looked like something that a child had picked up on a beach and forgotten, and Mav almost walked past it.
But then he heard it.
It was very faint. When he leaned closer, he could hear the sound of the sea inside it. Every shell makes a soft rushing sound when you hold it to your ear, but this was different. This was real water, moving, with small waves breaking somewhere far inside. A sudden excitement went through him.
"What is this?" he asked.
The old man with the lamp came closer. He looked at the shell, then at Mav, with a little frown, as if he hadn’t expected the question.
"It’s very old," he said. "From a World of salt that broke before this house was founded. There’s a small sea living inside it. If you open it, the sea comes out." He shrugged. "It pours salt water like a river for a few minutes. Then it’s empty, and it needs a day to fill again. Nobody has found a use for it in 300 years. Salt water isn’t hard to find."
Mav picked it up. It was heavy, much heavier than a shell that size should have been, and cold. Inside it, the water moved against his hands.
He thought of Isolde’s ice closing over his dome in the final, and of the frozen rope of water hanging in the air, with 40 of his fish frozen inside it. The old anger and shame of that day came back to him. Next time, bring more water, she had said.
Then he remembered winter on his street on Earth, when the men from the foundry came out every morning and threw salt on the ice in the yard, so that nobody would fall.
’Salt water doesn’t freeze as easily,’ he thought.
"This one," he said.
-----
There was a short silence.
Then Marek laughed. He was truly amused, and he didn’t try to hide it. Mav didn’t mind. He was almost happy.
"The shell?" Marek said. "Out of all of this?"
"The shell."
"You know that it’s salt water, Silkborn. You’ve spent weeks fighting to keep salt water out of your sea."
"I know," Mav said.
Marek waited for him to explain, but Mav didn’t. After a moment, Marek shook his head, still smiling, and turned to the judge.
"The court has seen his choice," he said. "House Tidecaller pays it gladly."
The judge wrote something in her book. Tamsin stared at Mav as if he had lost his mind. Quill only raised one eyebrow and said nothing, which was how Mav knew that she had guessed at least part of it.
Isolde didn’t say anything either.
She was standing beside her aunt, near the door, where she had stood the whole time without looking at any of the treasures. She was looking at the shell now. Her pale eyes went from the shell to Mav’s face, then back to the shell. They stayed on it a little too long.
Then she looked at Mav again, and for a moment, he saw something in her face that he had never seen there before.
She was thinking. It made him a little uneasy.
-----
Marek walked them back up to the street himself, as politely as a host after a dinner. On the stairs, Tamsin dropped back to walk beside Mav.
"You picked a shell," she whispered. "Over a pearl as big as your fist."
"I know."
"Tell me why."
"Later," Mav said. "When nobody’s listening."
Tamsin looked at him for a moment, then at the shell under his arm. She didn’t ask again. But she was already writing something on her slate as she climbed, and Mav had a feeling that she would work it out before he told her.
At the top of the stairs, while the others went out into the light, Marek stopped Mav with a hand on his arm.
"Your hawks are very clever," he said quietly.
Mav didn’t answer. Marek smiled at his silence as if it had told him everything.
"My grandmother used to tell me about birds like that," he went on. "I thought that they were a story. Now I know better." He let go of Mav’s arm. "You know, I still want your sea. More than ever. You’ve shown me what it can do."
"The claim is void," Mav said.
"For one year." Marek’s smile didn’t change at all.
"Then I’ll ask again next year. I’m very patient."