It took Mav more than an hour to get home, and he worried the whole way.
His new hosts had gone to his sea at the moment he let go of his Manifestation. But he couldn’t follow them that fast. He had to go back through the arch of the marsh, cross the whole Nexus from the Orphan Gate to the plaza of arches, and open his own World. During all that time, two wolves and a mire jaw were at the bottom of a sea that they had never seen, and he wasn’t with them.
He hadn’t left it to chance. Before the trip, he had told Sela that beasts from the land might arrive, and he had asked her to look after them. He had also told Six to stay beside the mire jaw until he came. Still, he ran the last steps to the arch.
He found the two wolves in front of the gate, with Sela and four of her builders standing around them.
Ivy and Oak weren’t drowning. Their seaweeds breathed for them under water, as One did for Mav, and they had clearly understood it by now. But they looked miserable. They had lived their whole lives in mud and rain. Now they were standing on black rock in the dark, with their fur floating around them. A wolf couldn’t run under water, and it couldn’t smell anything there. Their two points in his head were small and frightened.
’Ivy, Oak, I’m here now, and you’re safe. Follow me, and I’ll take you to a dry place.’
He led them through the gate, past a street of staring Reefkin, and into the air hall. The heavy door closed behind them. The wolves shook the water out of their fur, and most of it landed on him. Then they walked around the round room three times, smelling everything, and they lay down together on his bed of dry weed.
Mav looked at them for a while. He had slept in that bed exactly once.
’Fine. It’s yours.’
Sela had followed them in. She walked around the wolves at a safe distance. Ivy lifted her head and smelled Sela’s webbed hand, and Sela allowed it. Then she looked at the door, at the air pipe, and at the size of the room, and Mav could feel her measuring.
A picture arrived in his head. It showed a second hall, three times as large as this one. It had a pool in its floor that opened onto the sea, so that a beast could come and go without anyone opening a door.
’Yes. That’s much better than what I had in mind. Build it, please.’
She was already walking out to give the order to her builders.
-----
Log had no trouble with the water. His seaweed breathed for him too, and by the time Mav arrived, he had already settled on the mud at the foot of the slope, as if he had been born there. Six was sitting next to him, as he had been told. He was the only one of the three who seemed pleased with his new home.
The trouble with Log was different, and it came on the first night.
Mav was woken by a feeling like a rope breaking. One of the points in his head had gone dark, and it was the heaviest one.
It lasted three seconds. In those three seconds, Log was a wild beast again, and he turned on the nearest thing that moved. It was a young Reefkin who was carrying a stone. The great jaws opened one arm’s length from the child.
Then Six hit Log from the side with his whole weight. The jaws snapped shut on nothing, and the point in Mav’s head came back.
Log lay still on the mud, and he seemed confused. The young Reefkin ran to Sela. Mav was already swimming toward them as fast as he could, and he was sick with fear.
’I almost lost one of them, and it was my fault. I knew that the lock was weak, and I went to sleep.’
He understood what had happened. A seaweed of rank F- was holding a beast of rank D-, and that was like a child holding a bull by a string. With Moss, it had worked, because the gap was smaller. Here, the gap was two full letters.
So a seaweed could take a beast far above its own rank. But the wider the gap was, the weaker the lock was, until the seaweed caught up.
There was only one answer. Log’s seaweed had to grow, and it had to grow fast.
Mav didn’t sleep for the next four nights. He stayed beside Log, and he found that he could put his own will on the lock, like a second hand on a rope. Each time it began to slip, he held it. During the day, Log hunted in the trench, with Seven on one side of him and Six on the other. Every lobster that he killed fed his seaweed.
Two days later, it reached rank F. Two days after that, it reached rank F+, and the lock stopped slipping.
Mav slept for 14 hours after that. He didn’t use the air hall, because the wolves were in his bed.
-----
They went to the marsh twice more that week, and those trips were easier than the first two.
The three of them knew their work now, and Mav had Ivy and Oak. The wolves could cross mud that stopped a boar, and they drove the herons toward the water like dogs driving sheep. Mav didn’t take Log. He wasn’t going to bring him near other people until his seaweed was stronger.
They sold 31 heron beaks and a sack of leech skins at the Great Market. After the tax of House Goldmantle, each of them had 3,520 Essence. That paid for four days of passage, with a little left over. Ronald paid Mav back on the same day, and he looked very proud of it.
That evening, Mav sat on the roof of his cabin and opened his Status.
[Maverick Silkborn. World: Submerged. Rank: E.]
[Subjects: 258]
[Subjects at rank D-: 0/100]
[Development: 27%]
[Heartstone: 59%]
He had gained 52 Subjects since the last time, and they were all young ones. His needlefish and his spined fish had both made babies again. He now had 29 seaweeds, 44 Reefkin and 185 young fish. There were also 30 new eggs in the Reefkin hole.
Two’s army had grown to 204 fish. It had 152 needlefish, 50 spined fish, and the two spitters, who could now hit a fly from seven meters away.
The line for rank D- was still at zero. But for the first time, it didn’t frighten him. He looked at Seven’s own line.
[Seaweed. Rank E+. Essence: 1,310/3,200. Host: Pale Eel.]
She had gained more in one week of herons than in the whole month before. The marsh was working.
A small hand pulled at his sleeve.
Sela was standing beside him on the roof. She pointed up, toward the surface, and she sent him a picture.
It showed a place that he had never seen. Half a day’s swim to the east, the seabed rose in a long ridge of rock, until it was only 10 meters below the waves. She must have found it while she was looking for stone.
Then the picture changed. Reefkin were standing on that ridge, with stones floating around them. The stones were going up, one on top of another. They broke the surface. They kept going, and they spread, until a flat shape of black rock stood in the sunlight, with the waves breaking around it.
Wolves were running on it.
Mav looked at that picture, and his throat was tight.
His World had no land. But Sela had decided to build some.