Mav walked toward his water, and he didn’t hurry.
Six limped beside him. Behind them, Dorian was still talking.
"...and when she asks me why I... Silkborn?"
Mav kept walking. He didn’t look back, and he didn’t answer. He acted as if Dorian didn’t exist, in front of 50,000 people in the arena and a few hundred thousand more on Earth.
For a moment, the Great Arena was so quiet that he could hear his own steps in the sand. Then somebody in the high seats laughed. It was only one person, but in that silence, everybody heard it. A second person laughed, and then a hundred.
They weren’t laughing at Mav.
"Don’t you turn your back on me!" Dorian’s voice cracked. "I’m talking to you! SILKBORN!"
Mav took another step. He was four steps from the wall of the dome now, and his heart was beating so hard that it hurt.
’Come on. You’ve never been able to stand it. Come on.’
"Kill him!" Dorian screamed. "All of you! Burn him, now!"
"Not near the water, my lord!" a man shouted from the front row. It was Dorian’s trainer, and he was on his feet. "Call them back!"
But it was too late. For the first time in 15 duels, Dorian Ashgrove had forgotten his own rule.
Twelve hounds ran at Mav’s back. He heard them coming, and he turned around to face them.
[You have borrowed a skill: Stone Shell.]
His skin turned to stone, and Six pulled in his legs and did the same. At the last moment, 10 of the hounds became clouds of burning ash, and they passed through Mav and over Six like a storm. The last two ran around him on both sides.
Then they came out on the other side.
There was nothing behind Mav but four steps of sand and the wall of his dome. The 10 clouds only had three seconds, and after that, they had to become hounds again. So they did it there, between Mav and the water, and the whole pack stood in one tight crowd.
They were closer to his sea than any hound of House Ashgrove had ever been.
’Now, Sela!’
-----
The wall of the dome opened.
A rope of water as thick as an arm shot out of it, right over Mav’s head. It bent in the air like a whip, and it came down across the pack. Then it swept back the other way. Behind the wall, a small gray-blue figure stood with both hands raised, and her whole body was shaking with the effort.
Every hound was soaked in two seconds.
The water didn’t hurt them. It hissed on their hot skin and turned to steam, and for an instant, they only looked surprised. But Sela didn’t stop. She kept the rope moving over them, back and forth, and the sand under their feet turned to mud.
Then Seven struck.
She had been waiting at the wall, one meter away. Her flash lit the whole arena white. It went through the wet sand and the wet hounds as if they were one single thing, and all 12 of them locked where they stood.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
Mav let his own lightning go at the same moment, into the three hounds beside him.
’Moss, Fern, Reed, go! Twelve, take them in!’
Three flat shapes burst through the foot of the wall. The stalkers had waited for this through the whole duel, and they did what they did best. Each of them took a stiff, blind hound by the throat before it could move again.
The needlefish came next. Twelve led them straight up the rope of water, inside it, like sparks along a wire. Wherever the rope passed over a hound, silver shapes shot out of it and struck. Then Sela’s water caught them again and carried them on.
Six didn’t need an order. He couldn’t see the hounds, but he could hear them, and he brought his claw down.
The hounds weren’t locked for long. After four seconds, the ones that were still alive began to move, and they did what they had always done when something hurt them. They tried to turn into ash.
Most of them couldn’t. They had used their skill only seconds ago, and it wouldn’t come back for more than half a minute.
Two of them could, because they hadn’t used it yet. They burst into smoke.
But wet ash doesn’t fly.
The two clouds came out thick and dark, like mud thrown into the air. They rose as high as a man’s knee, and then they fell back onto the sand in two gray heaps. When they became hounds again, they were lying on their sides, and Fern and Reed were already on them.
It lasted about 40 seconds.
Mav fought through all of it with his harpoon, and he never remembered it clearly afterward. He remembered the hiss of the steam and the sound of Six’s claws. He remembered a hound that jumped through the wall to reach Sela, and the line of spined fish that was waiting for it on the other side. He remembered Twelve, the smallest of his old needlefish, coming out of the water like a thrown knife.
When he could see clearly again, 11 hounds lay dead in the mud.
The twelfth was gone. Mav found it at the other end of the sand. The big hound with the scarred nose was standing at Dorian’s feet, dry and unhurt. Dorian had called it back at the moment the water came out.
-----
Nobody in the Great Arena was laughing now.
Dorian stood alone in the middle of the sand with his mouth open, and his face had no color at all.
"That’s a builder," he said, and his voice was thin. "Builders don’t fight. She’s a builder!"
Mav didn’t answer. He walked toward him.
He was burned from the shoulder to the hip, and every step hurt. His stone skin was gone, and it wouldn’t come back in time. But Dorian only had one hound left, and Mav had kept two things that nobody in this arena had seen.
"Kill him!" Dorian screamed at the big hound.
It came across the sand very fast. It had been dry and safe at Dorian’s feet for almost a minute, so it could turn to ash again, and it did. A cloud of burning smoke flew straight at Mav’s chest.
Two of the four canteens at his belt held his free seaweeds. The other two only held water, and he had filled them for this moment. He pulled one of them off, and he threw the water into the cloud. Then he pushed at the water with his mind, the way he had practiced with Sela at the surface of his sea.
It was a weak push, because his Telekinesis was still clumsy. But a canteen of water weighed much less than that, and he didn’t need to lift it. He only needed to spread it.
The water broke into a thousand drops inside the cloud. The cloud turned dark and heavy, and it fell at his feet.
The big hound rose out of the mud, shaking its head. Mav was already reaching for Eighteen, at the bottom of his dome.
[You have borrowed a skill: Sting.]
He drove his harpoon into its neck. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it didn’t need to be. The hound’s legs went soft under it. It took two slow steps toward him, like a beast walking in deep water, and then Moss came up behind it and finished the work.
Dorian stared at the dead hound. He had studied four skills, and that had been a fifth one.
He raised both hands. Three steps in front of him, the sand rose and baked hard, and three seconds later, a wall of hot red brick stood between them. It was as high as a man and five steps wide.
Mav ran around the end of it.
Dorian was waiting for him with his sword out. When Mav came around the wall, Dorian’s whole body turned to smoke, because he had the skill of his own hounds. The cloud came at Mav’s face.
Mav emptied the second canteen into it, and he pushed.
Dorian Ashgrove fell out of the air as a heap of wet ash. When he became a boy again, he was on his hands and knees in the gray mud, coughing, and his fine coat was black to the collar. His sword lay two steps away.
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
Dorian never saw Mav move. The point of the harpoon was simply there, under his chin.
"Yield," Mav said.
Dorian looked up at him. His eyes were red, and they were full of hate.
"No," he whispered. "You can’t kill me here, because the Arbiter won’t let you. I’ll never yield to you, traitor."
"You’re right. I can’t kill you." Mav was so tired that he could hardly stand, but his voice was steady. "So I’ll wait. Look up, Dorian."
Dorian looked up. Twenty glass eyes were floating around them, close enough to touch.
"A few hundred thousand people are watching you kneel in the mud, and your father is one of them. I can keep you here all day, and they’ll watch every second of it. How long do you want it to last?"
Dorian’s eyes went to the box under the ash-colored banner. Mav didn’t turn around to see what he saw there. But all the hate went out of Dorian’s face, and only fear was left.
"I yield," Dorian said.
"Say it louder."
"I yield!"
[Dorian Ashgrove has yielded.]
[Maverick Silkborn wins the duel.]
For a moment, the Great Arena was as silent as the school hall on the day of the stone.
Then Wildroot roared.