There was no time to think about it. Seven’s last flash was already fading. The kraken would not stay stunned for long.
Mav opened the canteen and pressed his seaweed against the soft skin of the neck, a hand’s width from the dead thread.
It took hold at once. Then the lock closed, and the force of it nearly crushed him.
He had thought that Cedar’s lock was heavy, but next to this one, it had been nothing. It felt as if he had taken hold of the whole basin, the rock, the water and the dark, and someone had asked him to lift it. Mav couldn’t breathe. For a moment, he couldn’t see anything at all, not even One’s green glow.
[Seaweed. Rank E. Essence: 0/1,600. Host: Kraken.]
The lock slipped. He caught it. It slipped again. Again, he caught it, with everything that he had.
Then, very slowly, he felt the mind at the other end.
The mind was old, much older than Cedar, older than Seven, older than anything that he had ever touched. Slow, cold and patient, it was like the deep water itself. And in the middle of it, worn smooth by the years, there was something that didn’t belong to the kraken at all.
It was an order.
Mav felt it as clearly as if someone had said it aloud. Someone had given this beast an order a very long time ago, and it had never stopped obeying. It had stayed here in the dark, curled across that door, because someone had told it to. How long had it waited? Mav couldn’t even imagine.
Stay. Guard this.
Mav’s eyes stung. He understood then whose order it was. It belonged to the same person who had put the dead green thread into its neck. Someone like him had held this beast once and left it here to guard the door. Then that person had gone away, or died, and never come back to say that it could stop.
’You can rest now,’ Mav told it. He didn’t know whether it could understand him. He had to say it all the same. ’I’m here.’
-----
[Kraken. Rank C-.]
[Skill: Ink]
[The user fills the water around it with ink for 20 meters. Everything inside the ink is blind for one minute. Recharge: five minutes.]
[Skill: Crush]
[For 10 seconds, the user’s grip can break shell and stone. Recharge: two minutes.]
Mav read the letters through a haze of pain. His head was pounding.
Around him, the ink was slowly clearing. His army was gathering at the edges of the basin, hurt and tired. He felt every point of them in his head. He had lost 14 spined fish and a handful of needlefish. Six had come out from under his rock in a new shell, already hard but still pale. Log was lying in the mud with a piece of kraken arm still in his jaws, very pleased with himself.
The kraken moved.
It was only a small movement. It shifted its great body in the mud, the way that a sleeper turns over, and one of its arms slid away from the foot of the door. As it moved, its neck brushed against the stone of the frame. The dead thread under its skin touched the rock.
The door made a sound.
It was low and deep, like a great stone being dragged across another stone. Mav felt it in his teeth. A line appeared down the middle of the door, as thin as a hair. Then the line grew wider.
Light came through it.
It was pale gold, warm and steady, the first real light that had ever shone in the new depths. It fell across the mud of the basin and across Mav’s hands. The ink shrank away from it. Every fish in the basin turned to look at it. Nobody moved.
The door had opened a hand’s width. Then it stopped.
Mav stared at it. His heart was beating so hard that it hurt, and he was so excited that his hands shook. He wanted to go in. He wanted it more than he had wanted anything in a long time.
But he could barely hold the lock. His army was hurt, half of it sick from the fight. Six had used Molt, and it wouldn’t come back for an hour.
’Not now,’ he said aloud. It was very hard to say.
He asked the kraken to lie down again, across the door, the way that it had before, and slowly, it did. Its great arms curled around the frame. The line of light narrowed until it was gone.
’Guard it a little longer,’ Mav told it. ’For me, this time.’
-----
He held the lock all that night, on the roof of his cabin, with the light of the city dimmed around him. It slipped, again and again, but it held by morning. When the sun came up over his sea, it closed like a door, and he slept for the first time in two days.
He named the kraken Willow, because of the way that its arms hung in the water like the long branches of a willow tree.
Seven went down to the bottom of the trench that day.
Mav felt her go. She went all the way down, past the place where the salt had been, to a crack in the rock at the very bottom, and she lay down there. Then she didn’t move or speak for a whole day.
He wanted to go down to her, but he didn’t disturb her. He thought that he understood.
But on the evening of the next day, she came up. She hung in the water above the roof of his cabin, long and white, with her blind face turned toward him, just as she had when she asked.
"Thank you," Seven said.
That was all. She didn’t say anything else. Then she went back down to the bottom of the trench, where she had slept before anyone else was there.
Afterward, Mav sat there with his arms around his knees, happier than he could explain.
-----
The trial of tides was over.
House Sunspire’s show had said so on the evening of the ruling, without much joy. It gave the result of the duel and the terms of the claim, but it didn’t mention the shell. Thalia wasn’t mentioned either, though the whole Row had been talking about her for days.
His Status showed where it had left him.
[Class Ladder: Maverick Silkborn, rank 9.]
He was ninth in his year, with a rank D World, a siege turtle, a kraken and a door at the bottom of his sea that someone had left for him to find.
Or for someone like him. He wasn’t sure that there was a difference.
That night, for the first time in weeks, he opened the rest of his Status.
[Maverick Silkborn. World: Submerged. Rank: D.]
[Subjects: 1,146]
[Subjects at rank C-: 0/1,000]
[Development: 41%]
[Heartstone: 12%]
He looked at the third line for a while. There wasn’t a single one. Even Willow wasn’t on that line, because the Status looked at the rank of her seaweed, and her seaweed was only rank E. One wasn’t there yet either. The Status wanted 1,000 Subjects at rank C-, and a Heartstone that would swallow about 10 times the Essence that rank D had cost him.
It would take a year or more, and he knew it. But it didn’t scare him. If anything, he was eager to begin.
Three days later, when the lock was steady and Six’s new shell had turned dark, Mav went down to the basin again.
He didn’t take the army. Instead, he took Two, because Two would never have let him go alone. The others waited at the top of the cliff. Willow lay across the door in the dark, as she always had, with her golden eye half open. When Mav came down into the basin, the eye turned to follow him.
"You’re going in," Two said.
’For an hour,’ Mav said. ’Just to look.’
"And if it’s more than an hour?" Two asked.
’Then come and get me.’
Mav felt Two’s fear, cold and clear, but Two didn’t argue.
Mav put his hand on Willow’s great arm. ’Move,’ he told her.
She moved. Her neck brushed the frame of the door, and the dead thread touched the stone. The deep sound came again, stone against stone. The line appeared, then widened, and this time, it didn’t stop at a hand’s width. It went on opening until the door stood wide.
Behind the door, there was light.