Three skills at once changed everything in the arena.
Mav had been ranked 214th since his duel with Dorian. In two weeks, he challenged three people above him. He beat the first one, who was ranked 171st, in four minutes. He beat the second one, who was ranked 139th, in three. Both of them were nobles with a trainer and two skills. Both of them had also studied every duel that he had ever fought.
It didn’t help them, because they had studied a boy who no longer existed.
The rule for the body of an Awakened was simple. An Awakened was as strong as his World. Every first-year had a World of rank E, so every first-year had a body of rank E. But Mav’s body didn’t follow his World. It followed One, and One was rank D-.
Nobody knew that. They only saw a boy from Wildroot who moved like a second-year, and who used three skills at the same time when the rule said two.
House Sunspire’s show found a new name for him that week. Ronald heard it from his mother, who wrote to him whenever she could afford a letter.
"They’ve stopped saying beast tamer," he told Mav. "The man in white said it on the screen. A plant for a species, a potential of E, more kinds of beasts than anyone can explain, and now three skills at once. He said that their scholars have five answers and that none of them fits." Ronald grinned. "They call you the Silkborn enigma."
"What’s an enigma?" Mav asked.
"I asked Tamsin. It’s a question that nobody can answer."
Mav thought about that. He decided that he liked it far better than the salad.
A letter from Juno came the same week.
"People say good morning to us now," she had written. "The baker gave Mother a loaf and wouldn’t take her money. Father hates it. He says that people who greet you when you win are the same people who wrote on his locker. I think that he’s right, but I think that he likes the bread anyway. The man in the red coat is still across the street some mornings. Father says not to look at him, so I look at him every time. Don’t die."
He was proud of her, and he was worried, but he couldn’t do anything about either of those feelings from here.
-----
His third challenge was for a place in the first 100.
His opponent was Lior Dawnmere, who was ranked 96th. The Dawnmeres were sworn to House Sunspire, so about 2,000 people had come to watch. Three glass eyes floated over the sand.
Mav noticed the girl in the third row because everyone around her was whispering.
It was Thalia Sunspire. She had come without her friends. She was sitting alone in her white and gold coat, with her long pale braid over one shoulder. She wasn’t laughing, and she wasn’t talking to anyone. She was simply watching the sand.
He remembered her voice at the wall of names, reading his number aloud for the whole plaza. He looked at her for one second, as he had done that day. Then he turned back to his work.
Lior was a tall, smiling boy with gold rings in his ears. He was sure that he was going to win. He had good reasons to be.
His Manifestation was a field of yellow dunes under a white sun. Sixteen sand cats came down from them, thin and quick, the color of the sand itself. Then each cat seemed to split in three, and there were 48.
"Good luck, Silkborn," Lior called pleasantly.
He raised his hand. Then he did a second thing. The sand around Mav’s dome shone and turned hard. In a few seconds, a sheet of clear glass covered the ground for 30 steps in every direction.
That was the skill of his builders. Mav understood why he had used it. Lior had watched Moss work. A beast couldn’t lie down in sand that was under glass.
’He’s good. Only 16 cats came down from those dunes, so two of every three must be fakes. They’ll never come near my water, and his glass is there for my stalkers.’
Mav felt his heart beat faster, with the same feeling that he used to have in the foundry district, when a seller thought that he had already won the bargain.
He reached for three points at once.
[You have borrowed a skill: Scent.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
The arena changed in his nose. The glass smelled of heat. Lior smelled of soap and of something sweet. But out of the 48 cats that were running at him, only 16 smelled of anything at all.
Light had no smell.
Mav didn’t wait for them. Dart threw him into the middle of the pack, between two false cats, and he let his lightning go. It reached 10 steps now. Seven real cats were inside it, and all seven went down.
"How did you..." Lior’s smile had slipped. "You couldn’t know which ones!"
He shouted an order. The nine cats that were left turned away from Mav and ran for the place where Six was standing. It was the right decision. A crab was slow, and nine cats could reach his joints.
They ran across the glass, but three of them never arrived.
Moss, Fern and Reed had been lying on that glass since the first moment of the duel. A stalker took the color and the pattern of whatever was behind her. What was behind them was sand under glass. So they looked exactly like sand under glass.
He had stopped them from hiding in the sand, but he had given them something better to lie on.
After that, it was over quickly. Lior was brave. He fought with his last cats until Six had two of them in his claws. Then he looked at the three flat beasts on his own glass, and at the boy who could smell light, and he raised his hand.
"I yield," he said. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded as if someone had changed the rules of a game while he was playing it.
[Lior Dawnmere has yielded.]
[Class Ladder: Maverick Silkborn, rank 96.]
Mav looked up at the third row, although he hadn’t meant to.
The seat was empty. A tall figure in white was already climbing the steps toward the door, with her back to the sand. She hadn’t waited for the end.
’She knew how it would finish before he did. So she didn’t come to see who would win. She came to see how.’
He didn’t know what to think of that. It made him uneasy, so he put it away for later.
Ronald and Tamsin were waiting for him at the rail. Tamsin was holding her slate against her chest with both arms, which she could do again.
"The first 100," she said. "There are 21,307 of us, and you’re in the first 100. Do you understand what that..."
"Silkborn."
Instructor Quill had come down the steps behind them. She wasn’t smiling, and she wasn’t looking at the letters above the sand. She was looking at the three glass eyes, and at the empty seat in the third row.
"Come to class early tomorrow," she said. "And stay when the others leave."