Mav slept for three hours that night. Then he got up and looked at what he had.
He had told himself that he wouldn’t do this anymore, because he had done it too often in the past. But this time, it wasn’t a habit. A battle was coming to his home, and he needed to know exactly what he was going to fight with.
He opened his Status.
[Maverick Silkborn. World: Submerged. Rank: E.]
[Subjects: 566]
[Subjects at rank D-: 4/100]
[Development: 76%]
[Heartstone: 63%]
Five hundred and sixty-six was more than he had expected. In the two months since the marsh, his World had grown without asking him. The Reefkin laid eggs every few weeks now, so there were 141 of them. The needlefish had spawned twice more, the spined fish once. He had 386 young fish who carried no seaweed, who had been born his.
He had 39 seaweeds. Four new sprouts had grown from the roots around the dome since the marsh, so five of them were free. Two of those had been raised to rank E-. Thirty-four seaweeds wore a host.
He went through the hosts one by one. Two and 11 other needlefish with seaweeds led 318 young ones. Eighteen and four other spined fish led 68 more. Then came the two spitters, Seven, Six, the three stalkers, the three wolves, Log, Birch and the four Reefkin with collars.
Only four of them were rank D-. The rest were rank E+ or below. Birch was rank D, but her seaweed was still far behind her.
It was a lot, but he was afraid that it wasn’t enough.
He closed the Status, and he didn’t open it again until the fight.
-----
Ronald and Tamsin came to see him the next evening, in the roof room of Wildroot. They had clearly agreed on something before they came, because Tamsin spoke first, and she didn’t stop to breathe.
"We’re coming," she said. "Don’t say no. I’ve already thought about every reason that you could give, and none of them are good. You can’t watch every gate at once. You can’t be everywhere when they attack. My moths can blind a whole raid. Ronald’s boars can hold a wall. You need both of those things."
"We can’t swim," Ronald added. "So we’ll stay in our own ground. We’ll bring our hills and her forest, then put them wherever you tell us."
Mav looked at the two of them.
They were the only friends he had. They were both rank E, but whoever was coming wouldn’t be. If he said yes, they might die at the bottom of his sea, in a fight that wasn’t theirs. The thought frightened him more than the raid itself.
But if he said no, he would be lying to himself about what he needed.
"To come, you’d need my coordinates," he said.
Tamsin went pale. She hadn’t thought of that, or she had thought of it and hoped that he wouldn’t say it aloud.
Revealing your coordinates was the greatest taboo in the Nexus. A man who knew where your World was could come back whenever he wanted. Nobody gave them to anyone, not to a friend, not to a brother, and not to a liege.
Mav took Tamsin’s slate out of her hands. He wrote the line of numbers on it, slowly, without stopping. Then he gave it back to her.
Tamsin stared at it. Her hands were trembling.
"You shouldn’t have done that," she whispered.
"You already know what my seaweeds do. My coordinates are a smaller secret than that." He shrugged, although his heart was beating fast. "And I want the two of you there."
Ronald took the slate from Tamsin. He read the numbers once, gave it back, then hugged Mav so hard that something cracked in his back.
"I’ll forget them as soon as this is over," Ronald said. "I’m very good at forgetting numbers. Ask my teachers."
-----
He spent the next two days choosing his ground.
The raiders’ arch would open close to his Heartstone, so the fight would come to the city. He couldn’t change that. But everything around the city was his. He knew every crack in the slope, every channel in the Tangle, every cave in the trench. The raiders would arrive inside their own Manifestations, in bubbles of their own land and air. Their beasts would be strong on that ground. Outside it, they would be in his sea.
So he decided that the whole sea would fight. He wasn’t going to defend one wall. He would use all of it.
He moved the young Reefkin and the eggs into the deepest halls behind the dome, where the stone was thickest. He gave the young needlefish to Twelve, with orders to keep them in the dens unless he called. Two would hold the main army in the dark water above the slope. Seven would wait at the foot of the cliff, where nothing could see her.
He went to the Tangle with Moss, Fern and Reed. He left them there with an order that made Moss very happy. Log went with them.
Six would hold the main gate. Birch would hold the gate of the halls.
As for the Heartstone, Mav stood inside the dome and looked at it. The block of dark crystal was beating slowly, as it always did. It was warm under his hand.
A creature that died while touching a Heartstone gave its Essence to the stone, not to its killer. He had learned that rule alone, in his first month, and he had used it every day since.
The raiders wanted this stone, so they would try to reach it.
’Then I’ll let some of them.’
He told Sela exactly what he wanted. She listened without sending a single complaint. When he had finished, she looked around the dome, then sent him one small picture. It showed the dome full of water, and four small Reefkin with their hands raised.
’Yes,’ he said. ’That’s exactly it.’
-----
Ronald and Tamsin came that night, and every night after that.
They came through their own arches into his World, inside their Manifestations. Ronald’s gray hills rose out of the black water on the north side of the city, a bubble of wind, rock and air on the seabed, with his 14 boars standing on it. Tamsin’s night forest appeared beside the Reefkin houses, a dark dome of huge trees under the sea. Her moths hung from the branches with their pale wings folded.
It was the strangest thing that Mav had ever seen in his World. His friends were living in pieces of their own Worlds, at the bottom of his.
"It’s very wet out there," Ronald said from the edge of his hills. He was eating bread. "Is it always this dark?"
"Always."
"I don’t know how you stand it."
They waited like that for two nights. Ronald slept on his hills. Tamsin didn’t sleep at all. Mav sat on the roof of his cabin with his harpoon across his knees. He was too anxious to sleep, so he felt every point in his head, one by one, until he knew where each of them was without thinking.
The next night, the water above the city began to shake.
Far above the dome, something opened in the dark. It was a ring of pale light, as wide as a house, hanging in the black water where nothing should have been. Then a second one opened beside it. Then a third.