Every Subject in the sea knew when Mav was home.
Two had never found words for it. They were points in Mav’s head, but to them, he was more like the sun through deep water. You couldn’t see it, but you felt it above you all the time. You always knew which way was up.
When the door closed, the sun went out.
Two felt it in the same moment as every fish in the city. In the dens, the young went still. On the slope, the spined fish turned toward the dome all together, as if someone had called them, confused and afraid. Far below, at the bottom of the trench, Seven lifted her blind face.
Two stayed by the door, as he had been told.
He had no sun to measure an hour by, so he used Willow’s breathing. She breathed very slowly, like a tide. He waited through more of those breaths than he could keep in his head. When he decided that it had been an hour, probably more, he swam to the door.
Willow lifted one arm and put it between him and the stone.
She didn’t hit him. She only held it there, as wide as a wall, with its pale cups turned toward him. Two tried to go around it. A second arm came up and stopped him there too.
Her great golden eye was open. It looked at Two as if it had never seen him before.
"It’s me," Two said. "You know me. You’re ours."
She was. Two could feel it. The lock in her neck still held, and her point was still among theirs. But without Mav’s will on her, something older was speaking louder than he was. Two had felt it on the day that she was taken, as Mav had: an order from a dead master, worn smooth by the years.
Stay. Guard this.
Two looked at the arms, then at the door behind them. He could call Cedar down from the city to push. He could bring Seven with her light. Willow was rank C-, but there were enough of them to hurt her badly.
He thought about it for a while. Then he decided against it.
She was one of them. Hurting her wouldn’t open the door, because only her old thread could do that. Two was not going to make the first choice that he made alone a stupid one.
So he stayed where he was, to wait a little longer.
-----
The city didn’t take it well.
The young were the worst. They had been born into a sea where Mav was always there, above them, warm and sure. Now he was gone, and nobody could tell them why. They crowded into the deepest rooms of the dens, past Five’s stone by the door, too frightened to come out and eat. The old needlefish had to herd food in to them.
That night, Seven came up from the bottom of the trench to hang over the dome, pale and long.
"He’s inside the door," Two told her, before she could ask. "Willow won’t let anyone near it."
Seven was silent for a while. "Then we wait," she said. She went back down.
Six was harder.
"Who decides when we eat?" he asked the next morning. He was standing in the middle of the main street with his claws folded, blocking it.
"I do," Two said.
Six thought about it. "Then I’m hungry," he said.
Two sent him out with the hunters. It was the first order that he gave as the one in charge, and he felt foolish giving it. But after that, the others came to him one by one, with one question after another. Eighteen asked who should hold the gate. The builders asked about the wall. Twelve’s needlefish, the ones she had left behind, asked where Twelve was. Two had to tell them.
He answered every question. He was worried the whole time, more than he had been in the Churn, but he didn’t let any of them feel it.
A day passed, then several more. Twice a day, he swam down to the basin to look at the door. It never moved. Neither did Willow.
-----
Ronald and Tamsin came through the arch after more than a week.
Two didn’t see them arrive. A builder brought him the news: two humans at the surface over the city, shouting Mav’s name at the water. Six heard them from the main street. He had never spoken to anyone except Mav, and it didn’t come into his head to start now. In the end, the builder led them down to the second air hall, which had a pool.
Two went up to the pool to meet them.
They knew him. Ronald said his name, then Tamsin did. Ronald’s face was red with anger. Tamsin’s was white, and she was holding her slate so hard that her knuckles showed.
"Where is he?" Ronald said. "Two, tell me where he is."
Two had never spoken to anyone except Mav either. A Subject who could speak could reach anyone close to it, the same way that it reached its master, but he had never needed to. He wasn’t sure that it would work on a human.
"He went through a door," Two said.
Ronald jumped as if someone had hit him.
"In the new depths," Two went on. "At the bottom of the basin under the cliff. Sela, Moss and Twelve went with him, and some of the young. He said one hour." He paused. "When the door closed, the kraken lay down across it. She won’t let anyone near it now, not even me. It hasn’t opened since."
For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then Ronald turned toward the pool, as if he wanted to dive.
Tamsin caught his arm.
"The bottom of the new depths, Ronald," she said. "You can’t breathe that deep. Nobody can."
"Only him," Two said.
Ronald sat down on the stone. He put his face in his big hands without a word. Tamsin picked up her slate with shaking fingers and wrote something on it.
"Tell me that he’s alive," she said.
"His Heartstone is beating," Two said. "Every one of us can feel it. That’s all I know."
Tamsin let out a long breath. She looked down at Two in the pool for a moment, as if she were seeing him for the first time.
"Thank you," she said. "I’m going to tell Quill."
-----
Quill was in the roof room when Tamsin came up the stairs.
She listened to all of it without moving. When Tamsin finished, Quill was silent for a while. Tamsin had never seen her face look like that. Her burned skin had gone gray.
"I can’t go in," Quill said at last.
"I know. The law."
"Frostmere would hang me, and they would close Wildroot the next morning." Quill looked at her scarred hands. "I would still do it, if it would help. It wouldn’t. I can’t breathe at the bottom of his sea. I can’t open a door that a kraken is sitting on."
Tamsin didn’t say anything. She had known all of that on the way up the stairs. She had come because she was scared and didn’t know where else to go.
So she gave Quill the only good news that she had.
"His Heartstone is still beating," she said. "Two says that they would all feel it if it stopped. And my Status still says that I’m his vassal."
Quill let out a long breath. "Then he’s alive."
"He said one hour."
"I know what he said." Quill stood up and went to the window. "Tell his vassals. Tell Ronald to keep his mouth shut. Nobody else. If the houses learn that the Silkborn boy has vanished inside his own sea, they’ll be very interested to find out why."
"What if he doesn’t come out?"
Quill didn’t turn around.
"Then I’ll think of something," she said.
Tamsin had heard Quill say many things. She had never heard her sound afraid until then.
-----
Inside the ruin, Mav finally took his hand off the door.
They had waited beside it for most of a day, as far as he could tell. They had slept there in turns, Pip and Puddle together, Moss with one eye open. Nothing had happened on the other side.
He had believed in Two, and he still did. But something was wrong, and he couldn’t fix it from here.
He turned around and looked down the long gold hall.
"We go down," he told the others. "There’ll be another way out."
He thought that it had been one day.