Tamsin took the sheet out of her coat with fingers that shook, but it wasn’t only because of the cold.
[White bear. Rank D. Sleeps on ice. Do not wake.]
"That’s all it says," she whispered. "It doesn’t give her skills. Nobody who sold this list ever saw them and came back."
Mav looked at the great white shape.
She was a step above even his best Subjects. That was why Isolde had left her alone. A girl who was hunting by herself, with nine wolves, had looked at a rank D bear and decided that it wasn’t worth the risk. It was a sensible decision.
But Mav wasn’t alone. And the bear was sleeping on a lake.
’There’s water under that ice. I’ve been walking over it for an hour, and I didn’t think about it once.’
He felt a slow smile come to his face. Ronald saw it, and he sighed.
"You want her," Ronald said. "You want to take her home."
"She’s exactly what I’m missing. Will you help me?"
"I always do," Ronald said. "What do my boars have to do this time?"
-----
It took them an hour to get ready, but the bear didn’t wake.
Mav cast his dome at the very edge of the lake, so that his water touched the water under the ice. Then his army finally had somewhere to go. Seven slid out of the dome and under the ice like a long white shadow. Two followed her with 40 needlefish. Log went last. Mav could feel how pleased he was to be in deep water again. Eighteen took 10 spined fish to the place that Mav had marked, where the bear would fall, and the two spitters went with them.
He explained the plan to each of them, and to Ronald and Tamsin, one step at a time.
Ronald’s boars would wake the bear and make her angry. Then they would run, and she would follow them across the lake. Tamsin’s moths would blind her at the right moment. Under a place that Mav had marked with his harpoon, Six and Log would be waiting, to break the ice from below.
"A bear can swim," Tamsin said.
"Yes. But a bear in the water can’t use her weight, and she’ll have Seven on one side and Log on the other." He touched the first of his canteens. "I only need her to be still for a few seconds."
"And if she isn’t?"
"Then I’ll be on the back of an angry bear in a frozen lake," Mav said. "I would like you to pull me out."
Ronald gave his order. Six stone boars walked out onto the ice.
The bear woke up badly.
She rose on her back legs. Standing, she was as tall as a house. Her fur was white, with tips of pale blue. Each of her claws was as long as his harpoon. She looked at the six boars who had come to shout at her. Then she opened her mouth and breathed out.
Instead of a roar, a white cloud came out. It rolled across the ice toward the boars. The last boar was too slow. The cloud touched its back legs, and they froze to the lake where they stood.
"That’s a skill!" Ronald shouted. "Come back! All of you, come back!"
Five boars ran. The sixth pulled itself free, but it left some of its skin behind. The bear dropped onto four legs and came after them. The whole cavern shook.
She was much faster than Mav had hoped.
"Tamsin, now!"
The moths opened their wings at the mouth of the passage, and the blue cavern turned white. The bear screamed and shook her head. But she didn’t stop running. She couldn’t see the boars anymore, so she simply ran straight ahead, as fast as before.
She was running straight at the mark.
’Six, Log, now!’
The ice broke under her front legs with a deep crack. A gray claw came up through it, and then a great pair of jaws. The bear went into the black water up to her shoulders. Seven’s flash lit the lake from below, and the huge white body went stiff.
Mav was already running.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Sting.]
Dart carried him across the last 10 steps. He landed on her back, between her shoulders. He let his own lightning go to add a second to Seven’s. Then he drove his harpoon into the thick fur behind her ear.
Something was wrong. The point didn’t go in.
Ice had grown over her fur. It had happened in the time that it took him to breathe. It covered her whole back like a coat of glass, and his harpoon slid off it.
’Of course she has two skills.’
The bear’s stiffness ended. She threw her head back, and Mav was almost thrown into the water. Below him, Log had closed his jaws on her back leg and locked them. It was the only thing that kept her in the hole.
Mav held on to her frozen fur with one hand. He didn’t panic. He thought.
The coat of ice covered her back and her sides. But she was up to her chest in the lake, and there was no ice on the part of her that was under the water. He could see it. The coat stopped exactly where the water began.
He let himself slide off her shoulder, into the black lake.
It was so cold that it hurt. One pulled tight around his chest. Then he could breathe water, as he always could. The bear’s front leg was right in front of him, as thick as a tree, but its fur was soft. He put the point of his harpoon against it and pushed with both hands.
The great leg slowed down. Above him, the bear’s head sank toward the water.
He had 30 seconds, and he was already opening the canteen.
He swam up under her jaw, between her front legs, where the ice hadn’t reached. He laid the seaweed on the back of her neck, just below the skull. It was one of his two strongest free ones, and it was as long as his arm.
The lock was still heavy, even for a seaweed of rank E-. It was the heaviest door he had felt since Log. The seaweed pushed against it with everything it had. Mav pushed too. He felt One push with him, and it hurt.
This time, he knew that it could be done. He didn’t say please. He simply didn’t stop.
The door turned.
The bear went still in the water. A new point opened in Mav’s head, heavy, slow and very tired, like something that had slept for a long time and hadn’t finished.
[Seaweed. Rank E-. Essence: 37/800. Host: White Bear.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Frost Breath.]
[Skill: Frost Breath]
[The user breathes out a cold that freezes whatever it touches, up to five meters away. Recharge: one minute.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Winter Coat.]
[Skill: Winter Coat]
[Ice covers the user’s body for 20 seconds and stops most blows. Recharge: three minutes.]
Ronald pulled him out of the hole by his collar. Mav lay on the ice and laughed with relief, his teeth knocking together.
The bear climbed out by herself. She shook the water from her fur, and it froze before it reached the ground. She was an old female, with gray scars across her nose. When she lay down beside him, her back was higher than his head.
She wasn’t a fish, so she would have a name. Her white fur made him think of a tree with white bark that grew behind the school in the foundry district.
’Your name is Birch. I’m sorry that I woke you.’
Birch looked at him with one small dark eye. Then she closed it, and she went back to sleep.
"You have a bear," Ronald said. He sounded as if he might cry. "Mav, you have a bear."
Tamsin opened her mouth to say something, but she never said it.
A crack ran across the roof of the cavern.
It was as loud as thunder. Pieces of ice as big as houses began to fall into the lake. The blue light under their feet went out, came back, and went out again.
"That isn’t us," Tamsin said. Her voice was very thin. "We didn’t do that."
They ran for the passage. It took them a long time to climb back to the open air. The ground shook under them the whole way.
When they came out of the cliff, Mav looked up, and fear went through him.
The sky had cracked from one side to the other, like the ice of a lake. Through the cracks, there was nothing at all, only black.
All over the plain, people were running toward the arch in a panic.
"It had three weeks," Tamsin said. "The board said three weeks!"
A World didn’t break by itself before its time. Mav knew that, because Quill had told them. There was only one way to make it happen.
Someone had smashed its Heartstone.