It came around the curve of the ring slowly, on six legs.
At first, Mav thought that it was a crab, like Six, only larger. Then the gold light fell on it, and he saw what it really was.
It was a shell with nothing inside it.
The shell was gray and dry, cracked in a dozen places. Where its eyes should have been, there were only two dark holes. Its legs were bone, thin and white, with no flesh left on them, and they clicked on the stone as it walked. When it turned toward them, Mav saw that its body was empty. He could see the gold light of the wall through the cracks in its back.
It should have been lying on the floor of this hall, as dead as everything else here. Instead, it was walking.
Then he saw the thread.
It came out of the back of the shell, just where a neck would have been, thin and gray. Instead of hanging loose, it was pulled tight, as if someone were holding the other end. When the thread moved, the dead crab moved with it, the way that a puppet moves on its string.
’Hosts,’ Mav thought, and something cold went through him. ’Dead hosts. But who is holding the other end?’
Behind the first one, a second came around the curve. Then a third came, with more behind them.
"What are they?" Sela whispered from the shaft.
Mav didn’t answer. He thought that he knew, but he didn’t want to say it in front of her. The small builders on the walls had worn collars like hers, and the beasts on the walls had worn threads like these.
-----
There were too many of them to fight in a dry ring.
’Back to the water,’ Mav said. ’Everyone, into the shaft.’
The fish were already in the rope of water that Sela and her movers held above the floor. They poured down into the shaft at the middle of the ring. Mav felt their relief as the deep water closed around them. Sela went in after them, then the water movers. Moss stayed on the floor beside Mav, very still, with her skin turning gold.
The dead crabs came on. There were seven of them now. They were slow, but they were heavy. When the first one reached the edge of the shaft, it didn’t stop. It walked straight into the water and sank, then kept walking along the wall of the shaft, down toward the fish.
So did the others.
Mav dived in after them.
-----
Under the water, the fight went badly from the start.
Twelve’s needlefish went for the first crab the way that they had gone for everything all their lives, fast and straight at the soft parts. But it had no soft parts. Their jaws hit dry shell and slid off. A bone leg swept through them, and two of them spun away, stunned.
’Drill!’ Mav said. ’Twelve, use it!’
Twelve was the first. She turned her new body like a screw and went into the dead crab’s shell, through it as if it were bread, then out of the other side in a cloud of gray dust. Five more of her needlefish did the same, one after another. The crab’s shell broke apart.
It didn’t stop. What was left of it kept walking, on four legs, then on three, down the wall of the shaft.
’They don’t die,’ Mav thought. ’They’re already dead.’
[You have borrowed a skill: Water Jet.]
He hit the next crab with Water Jet as it came over the edge. The water broke one of its legs clean off. It didn’t even slow down. It turned toward him, with its empty eye holes, and it came for him on the legs that it had left.
Pip and Puddle shot at it from the side, together, with all of their young. Their jets didn’t break anything. But they pushed it off the wall. It fell down the shaft, turning slowly, into the gold light below.
Then it landed on the floor of the next ring, stood up and started to climb back.
-----
Mav reached for Discharge again, out of habit, and felt nothing. In his own sea, he would have called Seven. He would have called Six to stand in front of the young, with Birch and Log behind him. He would have sent the hurt ones home.
Here, he had nothing to call and nowhere to send anyone.
For the first time in months, every fish that he had was the only fish that he had.
The thought made him angry, more than afraid. Mav held on to the anger and used it.
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
He went at the nearest crab with Dart and his harpoon. Driving the point into the joint of its leg, where bone met shell, he tore the leg off with Telekinesis. Then he did the next one, then the next. When it had no legs left, it lay on the stone, still moving its shell from side to side, like something trying to get up from a bad dream.
That worked, but it was slow. There were seven of them, but only one of him.
Above him, on the dry floor of the ring, Moss had gone hunting.
He felt her through her point in his head, more than he saw her. She had gone flat against the wall, gold on gold, with Lurk. When a dead crab walked past her to reach the shaft, she came out of the stone behind it and closed her jaws on its back legs. She pulled it over. Then she was gone again, back against the wall, before it could turn. How many times had she done that in the Tangle, to things that were alive? Two of them lay on their backs on the dry floor, kicking slowly at the air, unable to right themselves.
Mav felt a hard, fierce pride. Moss had never once needed telling.
Below him, Twelve had understood it too. She stopped sending her fish at the shells. She sent them at the legs instead, two at a time, with Drill, at the joints. The bone snapped like dry sticks. One crab after another sank to the bottom of the shaft on whatever legs it had left, then lay there, turning in slow circles. Pip and Puddle kept the young high in the water, out of reach, shooting at anything that tried to climb. Not one of the young had been hurt. Mav checked every few seconds, through their small, quick points.
-----
He thought for a moment that they would hold.
Then the second group came.
They came from the other side of the ring, from a hall that Mav hadn’t even seen. These weren’t crabs. They were long and low, like eels made of bone, with jaws full of dry gray teeth. They moved fast. There were four of them, and every one had a thread pulled tight at the back of its skull.
They didn’t go for the fish. They went for the water movers.
Sela had put her two movers at the edge of the shaft, to hold the water still while the fish fought. They were standing on the dry floor with their hands raised over the water. The eels came at them from behind.
’Sela!’ Mav shouted. ’Behind you!’
Sela turned. She lifted a wall of water out of the shaft and threw it at the first eel. It knocked the bone body flat against the floor. The second eel went around it.
The youngest of the water movers was still holding the shaft. Mav saw her turn her head, too slowly. She had been shaking since the first dry ring, carrying the rope of water through the long halls. She was tired, and she was slower than the others.
Mav used Dart, but it wasn’t enough. He came out of the water onto the edge of the shaft just as the bone eel reached her.
The eel didn’t bite her. It hit her with its whole length, hard, like a falling beam, square in the chest. Mav heard the sound that it made.
One of the water movers fell.