Mav made himself stand still for three breaths, because people who ran without thinking were the ones who died.
He had let go of his Manifestation at the bottom of the cliff, since a dome stayed where it had been cast. Everything in it had gone home to his sea, Birch with the rest. Sela knew that land beasts might arrive, so she would look after her. Ronald and Tamsin had done the same with their own ground. So the three of them were standing on a breaking World without a single beast. The arch was on the far side of the lake.
’First the lake, and then the arch. One thing at a time.’
The plain was coming apart. Long black cracks ran across the snow, and whole pieces of the cliffs were sliding down behind them. The frozen lake was the only way back to the landing shelf. It was 300 steps wide. Its ice was breaking into plates that turned over in the black water.
On the far side, people were pouring through the arch. Six figures in ash-colored cloaks stood in front of it.
They weren’t running. They stood in a line on the shelf. They let every student pass between them. Above them, on a ridge of ice, sat a dozen red shapes with long arms.
Then a voice came across the lake. Someone was shouting through his hands, and the cliffs carried every word.
"Everyone goes home! Keep moving! Nobody has to die today!" There was a pause. "Nobody but the seaweed! Dorian Ashgrove sends his regards, Silkborn!"
Tamsin’s face had gone gray with fear.
"They broke it," she said. "There were more than 200 people on this World, and they broke it to get to you."
Mav felt two things at once. The first was a cold rage. The second was worse. It was guilt. Every person who was running across that plain was in danger because he had come here today.
"That’s where the six cloaks went this morning," Ronald said slowly. "They weren’t hunting."
Snow moved behind them, and all three of them turned around.
Isolde Frostmere walked out of the cliff with her nine wolves. She wasn’t running either. She looked up at the black cracks in the sky. She looked at the lake, and then at the six cloaks on the far shelf. She seemed to understand all of it faster than Mav had.
"The Heartstone of this World was in a tower on the north ridge," she said. "Only a skill that breaks stone could smash it. The one in front has red apes. Their first skill lets them throw a rock very far, and their second one breaks whatever that rock hits." Her pale eyes didn’t leave the shelf. "His name is Tobias Crane. He is a second-year, and his family is sworn to House Ashgrove."
"You know him?" Mav asked.
"I know everyone who may one day stand in front of my aunt’s court."
A second-year. Mav thought it through quickly. That meant a World of rank D, a body as strong as his own, and three species. He could only see the apes, but the other two had probably been of no use for breaking a stone.
Isolde raised one hand toward the lake.
The black water at the edge turned white. Ice grew out of it in a straight line, plate after plate, as thick as a wall and 10 steps wide. In less than a minute, a road of new ice lay across the whole breaking lake.
"My builders make ice," she said, when she saw his face. "It is their skill."
The voice came across the lake again. This time, it was polite.
"Lady Frostmere! Please cross first! This doesn’t concern your house!"
Isolde didn’t move. She looked at her bridge. She looked at the red apes on the ridge, who each had a rock in one hand. Then she looked at Mav.
"If I cross first, he will break it behind me," she said. She spoke slowly, like someone reading a line of law. "Then he will tell my house that he waited until I was safe. He is using my bridge to kill you."
She was silent for a moment.
"I do not like to be used. Walk beside me. He won’t throw at a Frostmere."
Mav stared at her.
"You don’t owe me anything," he said.
"No. But he broke a World with 200 people on it, and that is a crime on any ground. I am the only thing that my house has here." She stepped onto the ice. "Are you coming?"
-----
Mav cast his dome again at the edge of the lake, where the bridge began.
His army poured out of it and under the breaking ice. Seven, Two and 40 needlefish followed the bridge from below, with Eighteen’s spined fish and the two spitters. Log swam under them. Six climbed onto the white road, with Moss, Fern and Reed behind him. The three wolves ran ahead. Ronald’s boars came next. Tamsin walked in the middle with four moths pressed flat against her back, because they couldn’t fly in that wind.
They were halfway across when Isolde was proved wrong.
Crane didn’t throw at her. He was too careful for that. He shouted, "Lady Frostmere, stand back!" and a rock flew from the ridge. It hit the bridge 10 steps in front of them.
The ice didn’t crack. It burst, as if something had exploded inside it. A hole as wide as a house opened in the road, and black water rushed up through it.
Isolde looked at the hole. Her face didn’t change much. But Mav was standing next to her, and he saw her eyes.
"He threw a stone at me," she said quietly.
After that, she didn’t say anything at all, and neither did he.
She raised her hand, and new ice began to grow across the hole, but it was too slow. More rocks were coming. Mav had owned his newest skill for less than an hour. He had never used it, but he used it now.
[You have borrowed a skill: Frost Breath.]
He breathed out, and a white cloud rolled over the black water. It froze in one piece, from edge to edge. Isolde glanced at him. Then she stepped onto his ice and went on building.
"Tamsin, the ridge!"
The four moths on Tamsin’s back opened their wings. It was only a small flash, but the apes were looking straight at it. The next five rocks fell into the lake.
They crossed the second half of the lake like that. Isolde built the road. Mav froze every hole that the rocks made, and when his breath wasn’t ready, Six stood over the gap and the others ran across his shell. Tamsin blinded the ridge each time her moths could. Ronald’s boars pushed the broken ice out of the way. Twice, a spitter shot up through a hole in the ice and knocked a rock off course before it landed. Under their feet, the needlefish caught two apes that had come down to the water’s edge. Those two didn’t throw again.
It lasted about 10 minutes. Mav would remember it afterward as the strangest fight of his life. He was fighting beside the heir of one of the houses that had signed his father’s death, but neither of them had needed to explain anything to the other.
Then his boots touched the shelf.
-----
Five of the six cloaks were first-years, with hunting dogs and thin gray lizards. They were already afraid. They had come to watch a boy drown. They hadn’t come to fight a crab, a mire jaw, three stalkers, three wolves and nine wolves of ice.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
Mav’s lightning reached 10 steps. Every dog on the shelf went down at once. The five first-years looked at their beasts and at the black sky. Then they ran through the arch without looking back.
Mav let them go. They were his own age, and they had followed someone else’s order.
Tobias Crane didn’t run.
He was a big young man with a red beard. He had the calm of someone who had already decided to finish what he had started. He had a rock in his hand. He threw it at Mav’s chest from six steps away, as hard as a rank D body could throw.
[You have borrowed a skill: Winter Coat.]
Ice covered Mav from his neck to his knees. The rock hit it, and the whole coat burst into white dust. The blow threw him back three steps, and it emptied his lungs. But the ice had broken in his place.
Crane was already reaching for a second rock.
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Clamp.]
Mav crossed the six steps before Crane’s hand had closed. He caught the man’s wrist in both of his own hands. Then he used Log’s second skill for the first time. His fingers locked shut. Crane pulled with all his strength, but nothing in the world could have opened them.
For one moment, they looked at each other.
Crane had smashed a Heartstone while more than 200 people were hunting on its World. He had done it for a few thousand Essence, and he would do it again as soon as someone paid him. There was no Arbiter here, and there was no court. Isolde had said so herself.
Ronald’s words on the roof came back to Mav. It was still hard, and he was glad of it.
But he didn’t let go.
It was quick. He kept one hand locked on Crane’s wrist, pulled his harpoon free with the other, and drove it into Crane’s face with all his strength. When he opened his hand, Crane didn’t get up, and the last red apes faded from the ridge.
Nobody spoke. Ronald looked away. Tamsin was holding her slate very tightly, as if she were afraid to drop it. Isolde had watched all of it, with her hands behind her back.
"If there were a court for this place, it would have done the same thing," she said. "It would only have done it more slowly."
Behind them, the far cliffs fell into the dark, and the lake began to follow them.
Mav let go of his Manifestation. His dome faded, and everything that he owned went home. Ronald and Tamsin went through the arch first, and Mav turned to follow them.
Isolde hadn’t moved yet. She was looking at him the way she had looked at the dead beetles in her cave, as if she were measuring something exactly.
"Maverick Silkborn," she said.
She was only saying the name once, aloud, so that she wouldn’t forget it.