Instructor Quill was waiting for him at the door of the arena.
"Come to my office," she said. "Now."
Her office was a small room behind the south yard, with one window and too many books. She closed the door, and she didn’t sit down.
"I’m not going to ask how you do it," she said. "I didn’t ask when you made lightning in my yard, and I won’t ask today. But you need to know what happens next, because you clearly didn’t think about it."
Mav said nothing, because she was right.
"At rank E, an Awakened has two species. One of them fights, and the other one builds. Today, you showed a crab, an eel, needlefish and a beast that hides in the sand, and each of them carried a piece of your seaweed. Then you used their skills, one after another." Her burned face was hard. "By tonight, every house that had a spy in that arena will have a theory about you. Most of them will say that your talent lets your seaweeds tame the wild beasts of your World. Some of them will say worse things."
"What should I do?"
"Do nothing. Never say that they’re right, and never say that they’re wrong. Let them guess." She looked out of the window. "And be glad that the stone said E on your first day. A boy with a strange talent is interesting. But a boy with a strange talent and a high potential is a danger, and the great houses get rid of dangers. Your World will stop at rank E. So they’ll watch you, they’ll laugh a little less, and that will be all."
Mav thought of the potential in his Status. A letter D had been written there since the night his World reached rank E.
He kept his face still, and he said nothing.
-----
The results of the first round were written on the wall that evening.
Isolde Frostmere had won her duel in 11 seconds. Cassian Pyrecrest hadn’t fought at all, because his opponent had yielded before the first blow. Dorian Ashgrove had won in less than two minutes, and his hounds had killed nine Subjects.
Much lower on the wall, one line surprised a lot of people.
[10,950. Maverick Silkborn. Wildroot.]
Quill had been right about the theories. In the days that followed, Mav heard at least four of them in the halls. Some people said that his seaweeds tamed wild beasts. Others said that his seaweeds were a rare kind that made a deal with other creatures. A few said that he had found a nest of monsters and raised them from eggs. The last group said that he had cheated, and that the Arbiter had been tricked. That one made people laugh, because nobody had ever tricked the Arbiter.
Mav let them talk. When someone asked him, he always gave the same answer, which was that it wasn’t their problem.
A letter from Juno arrived two days later. Sending a letter through the Homegate cost 20 credits, which was a lot of money for the Lowes.
"Father didn’t go to work the day after your duel, because he was too scared," she had written. "But when he went back, the men on the furnace line made room for him at their table. One of them said that the boy had done well. Father didn’t say a word all evening, but I think that he was proud. Everyone in the district asks me about your crab. I tell them that it’s not their problem. Mother cried all six times that I watched your duel. Don’t die."
He felt lighter for the rest of the day.
-----
After that, he started to climb.
Dorian was ranked 214th. Mav wanted that place, and he meant to take it. But first, he wanted to see how other people fought, so he chose challenges that would each teach him something.
First, he beat a girl who was ranked 7,402nd. Her Subjects were large gray birds that attacked from the air, and they couldn’t land without meeting Six or Moss. Next, he beat a boy who was ranked 5,118th and who had 30 giant ants. Then he beat the son of a noble, who was ranked 2,961st and whose goats had horns of iron. None of the three refused his challenge, because refusing a boy from Wildroot would have been too shameful.
Each duel was harder than the one before, because his opponents had watched him. They kept their beasts far from his water, and they swept the sand to find anything that was hiding. But Moss never hid in the same place twice. She lay in the sand, then in the shadow of Six’s shell, then at the edge of the enemy’s own ground. They never found her before she struck, and she killed the first beast in all three duels.
[Class Ladder: Maverick Silkborn, rank 2,961.]
He had climbed more than 18,000 places in about a week, and it made some noise. It wasn’t a lot of noise. The heirs of the Imperial Houses hardly heard about it, because a boy at rank 2,961 was still a nobody to them. But the first-years talked about it. "Did you hear? The last of our year is beating people." Some of them looked at him with respect, and others with jealousy. On Earth, the show of House Sunspire stopped calling him "the seaweed boy". It started calling him "the beast tamer of Wildroot".
His World was changing even faster.
He went back into the Tangle twice with Seven and Six. The first time, he used his free seaweed to take a second stalker, a female whom he named Fern. A few days later, five new sprouts opened around the dome, from the roots that Thirteen to Seventeen had left behind. One of them took a third stalker, whom he named Reed. Two others went to spined fish, who became Twenty-one and Twenty-two. He kept the last two free.
Then, one evening, Sela killed a trench lobster.
Mav had been helping her for weeks. Every evening, Seven stunned a few fish, and Sela finished them with her stone knife. A Reefkin gained Essence the same way a seaweed did. So she had already reached rank F, and then rank F+.
[A Subject has reached Rank E-.]
[Skill developed: Telekinesis.]
[Skill: Telekinesis]
[The user moves things without touching them. At rank E, the user can lift about its own weight, up to five meters away. It needs the user’s full attention.]
Sela looked at her hands. Then she looked at a stone the size of her head, which lay two meters away. The stone lifted off the seabed, shook for a moment, and floated into the gap in the wall where she wanted it.
She made the sound that Mav knew was a laugh.
’It makes sense. They’re builders, so the Genesis gave them a skill for building.’
Then he thought of something else, and his heart beat faster. The Reefkin were his own species, like the seaweeds. Regeneration had become his on the day Seven developed it, so this skill should be his too.
He pushed at a small stone with his mind. It jumped up, turned over twice, and fell on his boot.
Sela laughed again, and this time, she was laughing at him.
’It works. I’m bad at it, but it’s truly mine. So it isn’t part of the two skills that I can borrow at a time.’
He thought about what that meant. Every species developed its first skill when its first member reached rank E-. After that, new skills only came when a species grew, changed or learned something new. Most first-years had only one skill, which came from their fighters, because builders didn’t hunt and grew very slowly. The students from rich houses fed their builders by hand, as Mav had done with Sela, so their builders had reached rank E- too, and they already had two. Mav now had two skills of his own and four borrowed ones.
-----
Dorian Ashgrove came to watch his third duel, because people had started to talk.
He sat in the best seat of Arena 9, in his ash-colored coat, with his gray hair tied back by its silver ring. Six boys sat around him, and all of them wore the burning tree of House Ashgrove. When Mav won, they stopped talking.
Dorian came down to the sand afterward. He was smiling, but his eyes were cold.
"Rank 2,961," he said. "So the weed boy tames crabs. Enjoy it, traitor. You’re still 2,700 places below me, and your World stops at rank E. Mine doesn’t."
One of his boys laughed, but he laughed a little too late.
That boy was older than the others, perhaps 19. He was thin, with tired eyes and a coat that had been repaired at the elbows. He looked like someone who worked for a noble.
Dorian turned around and slapped him across the face.
The thin boy didn’t cry out. He only lowered his head, like someone who was used to it.
"When I make a joke, Pell, you laugh at the right time," Dorian said pleasantly. "You’re my vassal. I own your World and everything on it. Don’t make me remind you again."
Mav felt a cold anger. A vassal was an Awakened who had sworn his World to someone stronger. After that, his master could walk into that World whenever he wanted, and the vassal’s own Subjects obeyed the master first.
He looked at Pell. Then he picked up his harpoon, and he walked toward the door.
He didn’t look at Dorian, and he didn’t answer him. He behaved exactly as if Dorian weren’t there.
"Silkborn," Dorian said behind him, and his voice was no longer pleasant. "Silkborn, I’m speaking to you!"
Mav kept walking. Ronald told him later that Dorian’s face had gone white.
That evening, Mav found Tamsin Bell sitting on the floor in front of his door at Wildroot. The dark circles under her eyes were worse than ever.
"I need help," she said. "Please."