The gray beasts came out of the trees a few minutes later, and Mav finally saw what had been killing Tamsin’s moths.
They were jackals. At least, that was the closest word he had for them. They were as tall as his chest, with long thin legs, narrow heads and yellow eyes that shone in the blue light. Their gray fur was dirty, and he could see their ribs under it.
They never stopped laughing. It was a high, broken sound, and it did exactly what Tamsin had said. Mav felt afraid for no reason at all. Behind him, Six’s point began to tremble.
’It’s only a sound, Six. Stay where you are. I’m here.’
The trembling slowed down. The three stalkers on the roots hadn’t moved at all, and Seven and the needlefish could hardly hear anything through the water.
There were 22 jackals.
’They’re thinner than Vane’s lizards, and they look much faster. They’re made for running and biting, not for taking hits. I would guess that most of them are rank E, and that the three big ones in front are rank E+.’
A boy with a lamp walked behind the pack.
Mav knew him at once, even in the dark. It was the thin boy with the tired eyes and the repaired coat. It was Pell, the vassal whom Dorian had slapped in Arena 9.
So Dorian was behind this too. Mav wasn’t even surprised, but his anger became harder.
Pell stopped when he saw the dome of water across his path, and he lifted his lamp. Then he saw Mav, who was standing in front of the water with his harpoon, and his tired face went stiff.
"Silkborn," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"This World belongs to my vassal," Mav said. "So I should be the one asking you that."
"Your vassal." Pell looked at Tamsin, who was standing near her Heartstone behind Six. For a moment, he looked sorry for her. Then he looked at the crab, and at the eel in the water, and he swallowed. "I watched your duels, so I know what your beasts can do. But I have 22 of mine, and on dry land, you only have a crab and one beast that hides."
"Then go home, and nobody will get hurt."
"I can’t." Pell sounded more tired than angry. "I have orders. If I don’t bring back her allegiance this week, my own World will pay for it. I have nothing against you, and I liked what you did in the arena. But I can’t go home with nothing."
"Whose orders are they?"
Pell didn’t answer, and he didn’t have to.
He let out a long breath. Then he whistled, and the 22 jackals ran.
-----
They were even faster than Mav had guessed. The first ones reached him before he had finished raising his harpoon. But he had planned for their speed, and his plan didn’t need him to be fast.
"Now, Tamsin!"
He shut his eyes.
Even through his eyelids, the light was as bright as the sun. All 13 moths had opened their wings at once. Every jackal had been looking straight at them, and the laughter turned into screams.
Mav opened his eyes. The whole pack was blind. The jackals were running into the roots, into each other, and into the wall of water.
’Moss, Fern, Reed, go!’
Three flat shapes dropped from the roots onto the path. A blind jackal had no chance against a stalker that it hadn’t even known was there. Moss took one in her sideways mouth and shook it, and Fern and Reed each pulled another one down. On the other side, Six closed a claw around a fourth jackal.
"No!" Pell shouted. "Get back! All of you, get back to me!"
He whistled again and again, but blind beasts couldn’t find him.
Mav was already moving.
[You have borrowed a skill: Stone Shell.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
He went straight through the middle of the pack. He didn’t use Discharge, because Tamsin’s moths were too close to the path, and he didn’t try to kill the jackals. He only pushed, hit and threw them, and each blind jackal that he touched ended up in the water.
Seven was waiting there. She didn’t even need to flash. In her own water, against beasts that could neither swim nor see, she simply killed them. Two and the other needlefish finished the ones that she left, and the spined fish caught every jackal that tried to climb back out.
"Stop it!" Pell screamed. He wasn’t giving orders anymore. He was begging. "Stop! They’re all I have!"
It took about 40 seconds. When the jackals could see again, there were only nine of them left. They did what any beast would have done. They ran back to their master, and they didn’t laugh anymore.
Pell stood on the path with his nine jackals pressed against his legs. He was crying, and he didn’t try to hide it. He looked at the three stalkers, at the crab, at the eel behind the water, and at the boy with the stone skin.
Then he did something that Mav hadn’t expected. He dropped to the ground, and the earth opened under his hands as if it were water. Two seconds later, he was gone.
’That’s a second skill. He’s a second-year, so his builders have had time to grow one too. They must be diggers.’
Mav couldn’t follow him under the ground, but Reed could. A stalker hunted by feeling the smallest movement around her, and Reed was standing three steps from the place where Pell had disappeared.
’Reed, he’s under you. Bring him back, please, and don’t kill him.’
Reed pushed her flat head into the loose earth. A moment later, she pulled Pell out by the leg, and she dropped him on the path. He was covered in dirt, and his ankle was bleeding.
He didn’t try again. He pulled a long knife from his belt, but his hand was shaking too much to hold it. He let it fall, and he went down on his knees.
"I yield," he said. "I yield, Silkborn. Please don’t kill the others."
-----
Mav walked up to him slowly.
His stone skin had ended, and his heart was still beating fast. Behind him, he could hear Tamsin laughing and crying at the same time, with her arms around the neck of a moth.
"Who gave you the order?" he asked.
"It was Dorian Ashgrove." Pell spoke quickly now. "I’m his vassal. I signed a contract with his house last year. My potential is E, so my World stopped growing a long time ago, and I had nothing to eat. He buys the coordinates of weak first-years from a woman who works for his father, and he sends me to make them swear. I’ve brought him two this year. If I refuse, he walks into my World and kills my jackals one by one in front of me. He already did it once."
Mav believed him. He had seen the slap, and he had seen Pell lower his head.
He also understood something that made him feel sick. This boy wasn’t very different from Tamsin, or from Mav himself. He was a commoner who had signed the paper that Mav had refused on the Row.
"I can tell you things," Pell went on. He had seen something in Mav’s face, so he was speaking even faster. "The woman’s name is Rhea Calder. She has been following you since the market, and she knows that you didn’t bow to Lucan Pyrecrest. Dorian talks about you every day. Let me go, and I’ll tell you everything he does."
Mav said nothing, because he was thinking.
Pell had yielded. In an arena, that would have been the end of it. But they were on a World, where the Arbiter had no power, and nobody would ever know what happened here.
He went through the facts one at a time, because he wanted to be sure.
Pell had just watched the moths obey Mav’s order. He had seen three stalkers at once, and he had seen how Mav used his water on dry land. He also knew Tamsin’s coordinates by heart.
And Pell belonged to Dorian. Whatever he promised tonight, Dorian could walk into his World tomorrow and force him to talk. Pell had said it himself: he couldn’t refuse.
So if Pell left this forest, Dorian would know everything by morning. Then he would send someone stronger, who would know exactly what to expect.
Mav looked for another way, and he looked hard, because he didn’t like the answer that he had found. He couldn’t take Pell as his own vassal, because Pell already had a liege. He couldn’t keep a prisoner for the rest of his life either.
Then he thought of the two free seaweeds in the canteens at his belt.
He didn’t know if a seaweed could take a person’s mind, the way it took a beast’s. Nobody had ever told him that it couldn’t. For one second, he looked at the back of Pell’s neck, and he felt cold all over. Then he pushed the thought away, as far as he could. He didn’t want to know the answer.
So there was no other way.
His hands were steady, and that frightened him more than if they had been shaking.
"I’m sorry," he said. "You’re not the one who should pay for this. But I can’t let you go back to him."
Pell understood. His eyes went to the knife on the ground, and he threw himself toward it.
Mav was faster.
He drove his harpoon into Pell’s chest before the boy’s hand reached the knife. He had killed fish, crabs and monsters with that harpoon, and he had never thought about it afterward. This was different. Even as he did it, he knew that he would remember it for the rest of his life.
Pell fell forward onto the path, and he didn’t move again.
Far behind him, a patch of dusty brown plain faded from the forest, because a Manifestation couldn’t stand without its master. The nine jackals faded with it. They were going home to a World that now belonged to Dorian.
The forest was very quiet. Tamsin had seen everything, and she was standing by her Heartstone with both hands over her mouth.
Mav expected her to scream, or to run away from him. She did neither. She walked over to him on shaking legs, and she looked down at the body.
"He would have told Dorian," she said. Her voice was very small. "I thought about it too, and I got the same answer."
Mav nodded, because he couldn’t speak yet.
Her builders came down from the trees at last. They dug a grave under the roots, because Tamsin asked them to, and Mav helped them carry Pell to it.
He had done what had to be done, and he was sure of that.
His hands only started to shake afterward.