The week that followed was the busiest of Mav’s life, and for once, most of the work wasn’t his.
He went to Wildroot three days in seven. There, he sat at the back of Quill’s class and learned things that every noble child had known at the age of 10. The rest of the time, he was at the bottom of his sea, and each time he came home, his base had changed.
Sela had not wasted a single hour.
First, she finished the wall. Then she walked the rock below the base with Six behind her like an enormous, obedient dog, and wherever her small hand pointed, his claws cut. Within a week, there were 11 houses in the rock face. They were low and square, with doors that faced away from the slope. Each roof was a bundle of green stalks, which the Reefkin cut at the edge of the wild forest while Seven guarded them. Mav had started calling that forest the Tangle.
It wasn’t much to look at. But it was the first thing in his World that had been built by someone who knew how.
’I piled stones for a month, and she made a whole street in a week.’
He felt no envy at all, which surprised him. What he felt was closer to greed, because he wanted to see what she would do with a year.
His Status had noticed, too. The second bar had gone back to zero when his World rose, and it had stayed there, because a ring of boulders no longer counted for anything. Now it was moving again.
Behind the last house, there was a shallow hole lined with soft plants. One morning, Sela led him to it by the sleeve and showed him 14 pale eggs, each the size of his fist.
’Already?’
She looked at him as if the question were stupid, and he supposed that it was. The second species was the one that built, and they needed hands, a lot of them. The Reefkin were not going to stay 10 for long.
-----
The roots had sprouted a few days after his return.
He was at home when it happened. He felt it before he saw it, as five small sparks lit up one after another in the back of his head.
[A new Subject has been born.]
He crouched over the cracks and watched five green threads no longer than his finger open in the water. They were the roots he had spoken to on the first night. He had 20 seaweeds now.
His first thought was to put all five on some needlefish that same hour. But then he remembered a black shape backing into a crack at the bottom of a trench, and the taste of wanting something when he had no seaweed left to take.
’Three of these sprouts will go to Two’s army. But I’ll ask him to start using another kind of fish, because that will let his army do more things. The other two will stay free. From now on, I’ll always keep a few seaweeds free.’
He already knew which fish he wanted. The long spined fish of the deep water were as big as he was, and each one carried a row of sharp spines along its back. A needlefish could only attack, but a spined fish could also stand its ground.
So Seven brought him three stunned spined fish. Eighteen, Nineteen and Twenty swam out of his hands a minute later, slow and heavy, and Two came to look them over like a tired officer who has just been given more new soldiers.
That left the problem of how to carry the other two sprouts.
A seaweed couldn’t move by itself, and it didn’t like to be far from water it knew. Mav turned the question over for an hour before the answer came to him. When it did, he laughed until the bubbles blinded him.
He had four canteens.
For a month, he had carried them for no good reason, on a World made of fresh water. Now he opened the first one, guided a sprout into it with one finger, and closed the lid. The sprout curled up at the bottom, perfectly content.
’I knew you’d be useful one day.’
He felt far too pleased with himself.
-----
A week after his return, they went back into the Tangle.
This time, Mav took everyone who could fight. Seven swam ahead of him, and Two led 10 needlefish on his left. On his right, Six walked along the seabed and flattened small stalks as he came. Eighteen, Nineteen and Twenty followed the crab, slow and heavy, with their spines raised, because Two had already decided that the new fish would guard the rear. Two canteens hung from Mav’s belt.
Seven found the spark where she had left it. The stalker hadn’t gone far on five legs. It had pushed itself between the roots of three great stalks and turned itself the color of their bark. Mav stared at the place for a full minute without seeing anything but plants.
’Is it really there? All right, I believe you. Do it.’
There was no hostage this time.
The flash lit the whole forest white. When Mav’s eyes cleared, a long flat body had rolled out from between the roots, with its five legs curled against its belly. It was stunned. However, it was rank E+, so it was already beginning to move.
’Six, hold it!’
The crab was on it before the thought was finished. He planted himself across its back and closed one claw around the root of each front leg. The beast could have thrown off a dozen needlefish, but it didn’t move at all. Six had held up a boulder in the Churn, so he could easily hold this.
Mav’s hands weren’t quite steady as he opened the canteen. He told himself that it was because of the cold.
He laid the little seaweed against the flat, pointed head, just behind the place where the skull met the neck.
It was the smallest thing he owned, and it was touching the strongest beast he had ever tried to take. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the sprout found a gap between two plates, and went in.
The lock was heavy. It was the heaviest he had felt since the eel. He felt the key push, stop, and push again, and his heart was beating so hard that he could hear it.
Then it turned.
The legs opened. The beast lay still under Six’s weight, and a new point opened in Mav’s head. It wasn’t quick like a fish, or heavy like the crab. Instead, it was calm. It felt like something that could stand in one place for three days and never grow bored.
’She’s ours now. You can let her up, Six.’
It was a female. He knew it the way he had known it with Seven.
[Seaweed. Rank F-. Essence: 0/100. Host: Tangle Stalker.]
More letters followed, and he read them with his pulse still racing.
[You have borrowed a skill: Lurk.]
[Skill: Lurk]
[The user’s body takes the color and pattern of whatever is behind it. It lasts for as long as the user stays still. Recharge: 60 seconds.]
[A borrowed skill grows as its borrower grows.]
He tried it at once. He stood against a stalk and pushed, and then he watched his own hand fade into green and brown until he could no longer find his fingers.
’So I have four borrowed skills now. I can use Discharge, Dart, Stone Shell and Lurk.’
The stalker rose onto her five good legs, dripping mud, and for the first time, Mav could look at her properly.
She was as long as a rowing boat, and her body was wide and flat, like a table. Six thick legs came out of her sides, three on each side, and each one bent in two places like the leg of a crab. One of them was still wrapped in a thin green thread, where his harpoon had torn it. Her skin was hard and covered in green and brown spots, the same colors as the plants of the Tangle. Her head was flat and pointed, with two small black eyes on top and a wide mouth full of hooked teeth that opened sideways. Standing, she was as high as his chest, and when she walked, she picked up each foot and set it down as carefully as a long-legged bird. She looked a little like Six. But it was clear that she was made for hiding, not for strength.
She wasn’t a fish, so she wouldn’t get a number. He had settled that rule on the day he named Sela. Her spotted skin made him think of an old wall in the foundry district, that had been wet for 50 years.
’I’ll call you Moss.’
Moss turned her flat head toward him and waited for an order.
-----
One evening, Mav sat on the roof of his crude cabin, which the Reefkin hadn’t improved yet, and opened his Status. He did it slowly, the way a man opens his pay.
One line had changed that very morning, and he still hadn’t gotten used to it. He had woken to the same message, repeated so many times that it filled his sight.
[A new Subject has been born.]
It had taken him a while to find them. They were in the dens, a silver cloud of baby fish no longer than his thumb. Two’s needlefish had made babies.
None of the young carried a seaweed. They were ordinary fish, and they were far weaker than their parents. But each of them was a point in his head, small and bright, and when he told them to gather, the whole cloud turned as one.
[Needlefish. Rank F-. Hostborn.]
’So the young of two hosts are mine too, and they didn’t cost me a single seaweed.’
He had read that line five times. Then he had checked his Status.
[Subjects: 92]
[Subjects at rank D-: 0/100]
[Development: 6%]
[Heartstone: 0%]
He now had 92 Subjects, and a week ago, he had only had 25. So he checked where they had all come from. There were 20 seaweeds now, because five new sprouts had joined the first 15. There were still 10 Reefkin, since their 14 eggs hadn’t opened yet. The other 62 were the baby needlefish, and they were almost the whole jump. It seemed that the needlefish bred very fast, now that their lives weren’t in constant danger.
Ronald had told him, proudly, that he was up to 26 with the newborn ones, and Ronald was doing well. A normal Awakened had one species that fought and one that built, and both of them bred at their own pace. Mav had seaweeds, builders, needlefish, spined fish, a crab, an eel, a stalker and a den full of baby fish, and all of it was growing at once.
He let himself enjoy that for exactly as long as it took to read the next three lines.
The line for rank D- asked for 100 Subjects, and he had none. His best were rank E, and each step from here cost more than the whole road behind it.
The line for the Heartstone was worse. The Heartstone had been full eight days ago. Now it was empty, and it was a far larger stone.
So he needed Essence, and a great deal of it. He also needed to go to Earth and see his family. He had promised them that he would come back, and he had been gone for more than a month.
Mav turned out his pockets on the roof of the cabin.
He had one credit.