They went back to the marsh two days later, and this time, Mav had a plan and four canteens.
Each canteen held one free seaweed. Ronald knew what Mav wanted to do with them. But Tamsin still believed what everyone believed, which was that his talent tamed wild beasts.
Mav had thought about that all night. She was his vassal, and she had watched him kill a man to protect her. She had told him her own talent without being asked. If he hid this from her and she saw it anyway, she would know that he didn’t trust her.
So he told her on the landing island, while Ronald kept watch.
"Before we start, you need to know something," he said. "I don’t tame beasts. I’m going to show you what I really do, and you can never write it on that slate."
Tamsin looked at her slate, and then at him. She put it away in her bag.
"I’m listening," she said.
-----
The wolves came first, because Mav went looking for them.
He didn’t use anyone as bait except himself. A pack of three hunted the weakest thing that it could find. So he took off his jacket, and he sat down alone on a mud bank at the edge of a channel, with his head low, like a hurt animal.
He wasn’t really alone. Moss and Fern lay in the mud on both sides of him, and they had been the color of that mud for an hour. Seven was waiting in the channel, three steps behind his back.
The wolves took a long time to decide. He saw them twice between the reeds, and both times, his heart beat faster. Then they came all at once, the way the sheet had said. Two of them ran at him from the front, and the third one circled to take him from behind.
’Now, Seven.’
The flash turned the rain white. The two wolves in front of him were inside its reach, and they fell in the mud with their legs stiff. The third one was too far away. It jumped at his back, and its teeth closed on his shoulder.
[You have borrowed a skill: Stone Shell.]
Its teeth slid off his stone skin. Then Moss rose out of the mud beside it with her mouth open, and the wolf decided that it had made a mistake. It ran, and Mav let it go.
He already had the first two canteens open.
He laid a seaweed on the neck of each wolf, just behind the skull. The two green threads found their way in, and he felt the two locks. They were light, much lighter than the stalker’s had been. They turned almost at once.
[Seaweed. Rank F-. Essence: 0/100. Host: Marsh Wolf.]
[Seaweed. Rank F-. Essence: 0/100. Host: Marsh Wolf.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Scent.]
[Skill: Scent]
[The user can smell a trail that is up to one day old, and follow it. It lasts for one hour. Recharge: one hour.]
The two wolves got up slowly. They shook the mud off their gray-green fur. Then the bigger one walked up to Mav and pushed its wet nose into his hand.
It was a male, with a torn left ear. The other one was a female, smaller and quicker, with one white foot. They weren’t fish, so they would have names. He called the male Oak and the female Ivy.
’Welcome. You hunt in a pack, so I’ll never ask you to fight alone.’
Behind him, nobody had said a word.
He turned around. Ronald was grinning, because he had known. Tamsin had both hands over her mouth.
"It went into their heads," she whispered. "I saw it. That green thing went in through the neck, and then they stood up, and they..." She stopped. "The crab. The eel. Is it the same for all of them?"
"Yes. It’s the same for all of them."
She was very pale. Mav waited, and he was nervous. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him.
But when Tamsin spoke again, she didn’t sound afraid. She sounded the way she did when she had finished adding a long column of numbers.
"Then the great houses must never find out," she said. "They wouldn’t want to study you, Mav. They would want you dead."
"I know."
"All right." She took a deep breath, and she nodded. "I’m glad that you told me. What’s next?"
-----
The mire jaw was lying on the same mud bank as before.
Mav studied it from the reeds for a long time. It was rank D-, which was a full letter above anything that he owned. Seven’s flash would only stop it for a second or two. He had to use that second well.
His plan had four steps. Tamsin’s moths would blind it. Seven would strike it from the channel. Six would throw his whole weight on its head, and Ronald’s boars would keep it from turning. Then Mav would climb onto its back with a canteen.
The first two steps went perfectly.
Then the beast used a skill that wasn’t on the sheet.
The mud bank moved. In one breath, the firm ground for five steps around the mire jaw turned into something as soft as soup. Six sank to the top of his legs. Four of Ronald’s boars went down to their bellies, squealing. But the mire jaw didn’t sink at all. It moved through that mud as easily as a fish through water, and it was no longer blind.
It turned on Six, and its jaws closed on his right claw.
Six turned the claw to stone just in time. But the jaws didn’t open again. They stayed shut like a door with a bar across it, and Mav understood that this was a second skill. A beast this old and this strong had had time to learn more than one.
’It has him, and Six’s stone only lasts 10 seconds!’
He felt fear for Six go through him like cold water, and he ran.
The mud should have stopped him. But he was rank E+ now, and he was lighter and faster than he had ever been. He crossed it in four long jumps, and he landed on the beast’s back.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
He let his lightning go first, with both hands flat on its plates. Since One had reached rank E+, his Discharge had grown with him. It now reached seven steps, and it could hold a beast of rank E for three full seconds. But this beast was rank D-. It only shook once, as if a fly had bitten it.
So he reached for Eighteen as well.
[You have borrowed a skill: Sting.]
Its back was covered in thick plates, and his harpoon would never go through them. So he drove the point into the soft skin behind its front leg.
The great body under him slowed down. It didn’t stop, but its tail fell back into the mud, and its jaws finally came open. Six pulled his claw free.
Mav had 30 seconds. He threw himself flat on the wide gray head, opened the third canteen, and laid the seaweed behind the skull.
The lock was like nothing he had ever felt.
This lock was as big as the door of a house, and the little seaweed was pushing against it with all its strength. Nothing moved. Mav pushed with it. He felt One push too, from its place in his neck, and the green coil around his chest pulled so tight that he couldn’t breathe.
The door didn’t move, and the 30 seconds were running out.
’Please,’ Mav thought. He didn’t know whom he was asking.
Then, very slowly, it turned.
The mire jaw went still. A new point opened in Mav’s head. It was the heaviest one he had ever carried, as old and slow as the mud itself.
[Seaweed. Rank F-. Essence: 0/100. Host: Mire Jaw.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Mire.]
[Skill: Mire]
[The ground within five meters of the user turns into deep mud for 20 seconds. The user doesn’t sink in it. Recharge: two minutes.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Clamp.]
[Skill: Clamp]
[The user’s grip locks shut for 10 seconds, and nothing can open it. Recharge: two minutes.]
The mire jaw had two skills, and both of them were his now. It didn’t matter that he was only rank E+ himself. Log was his Subject, and he could borrow anything that one of his Subjects could do.
Mav slid down from the beast’s back, and his legs were shaking. Now that it was his, he could look at all of it.
It was a male, as long as two rowing boats, and half of that length was tail. Gray plates covered his back like the bark of an old tree. He had four short, thick legs, a flat head as long as Mav was tall, and teeth as long as fingers. His two yellow eyes sat on top of his head, like the eyes of the stalkers. He looked a little like the stalkers, but he wasn’t made for the same work. A stalker was light and thin-skinned. She hid on land, struck once from behind, and she was in trouble if the fight lasted. Log was the opposite. He lived in the water, he was covered in armor, and he didn’t need to hide from anything. He took hold of his prey, he pulled it under, and he never let go.
"He looks like a log," Ronald said. He was pulling a boar out of the mud by its back legs. "You should call him Log."
Mav thought about it. He had never let anyone else name one of his beasts. But Ronald had just risked 16 boars for him.
"Log," he agreed.
Log opened one yellow eye and looked at him without any interest. Then he closed it again.
-----
They went back to the arch early, because nobody had the strength for anything else.
On the landing island, Mav let go of his Manifestation. The dome of water faded, and everything in it went home to his sea. The two wolves faded with it, and so did Log, because the Genesis now saw them as his Subjects, like all the others.
Tamsin watched them disappear, and she shook her head slowly.
Mav had one free seaweed left, and he had three new hosts. He should have been happy, and he mostly was. But one thing worried him all the way through the arch.
Log was rank D-. The seaweed that was holding him was rank F-.
Mav had no idea how long a lock like that would hold.