Tova left before dawn, the way that she had come.
She didn’t ask him for anything. She only looked at him once more from the window, with the wind pulling at her short hair. Then she dropped out of sight. Mav thought that it would have been easier if she had asked.
He didn’t sleep after that. He sat at the window and thought until the sky turned from black to gray.
He could fight. He could call his army into the hall of the stone, break the cage and take the girl. But then what? He would have a city full of strong people against him, in a World where he couldn’t even reach the next island without being carried. He might lose Ronald and Tamsin. He might lose everything.
He could do nothing. He could watch a girl of 10 go onto the stone, and then ask the Speaker politely for a way home.
He knew that he couldn’t live with either of those. The guilt would follow him home and sit on his chest every night. He had stood in a burned house once, and he had spent eight years unable to forget it.
But there was a third thing. He kept coming back to it, because it was the only answer that he was good at.
Ronald woke at sunrise and found him still at the window.
"You’ve thought of something," Ronald said.
"Maybe. You won’t like it."
"I don’t like anything here." Ronald rubbed his face. "Tell me in front of him. I’d rather only hear it once."
-----
The Speaker received them in the long room at the top of the hall. He was standing by the window with his staff, exactly as he had been the day before.
"The ceremony is at noon," he said. "You may watch it, if you wish. Most strangers don’t."
"I want to offer you something instead," Mav said.
The Speaker turned his black eyes on him and waited.
"You feed your stone with your own people, because you can’t catch enough beasts. Your people are builders, and the far islands are too dangerous." Mav kept his voice level. "I’m a hunter. My Subjects hunt for me every day. Let me bring you beasts from the far islands, alive, for your stone. As many as you need this month."
"Why would you do this?"
"Because I need something from you too. Your hawks can find the way out of this World. I want them to show us the way home."
The Speaker was silent. Mav could see him thinking, slowly and carefully, like an old man weighing coins.
"How would you bring a beast here alive?" he asked. "A strong beast fights. It does not let itself be carried."
"I have Subjects that can hold it, and Subjects that can freeze it. I have a friend whose silk is stronger than chain." Mav shrugged. "I’ve done it before."
He was a little proud of that, and he let it show. The Speaker watched him closely while he spoke, with a look that Mav took for interest.
"The beasts of the far islands are rank C," the Speaker said at last. "A rank D beast is nothing to our stone. It needs something much stronger."
"Then I’ll bring you something much stronger."
For the first time, something moved on the Speaker’s thin face. Mav thought that it might have been surprise.
"Very well," the Speaker said. "Bring me a living beast of rank C, and the girl will not go to the stone this month. Bring me enough of them, and my roost-keepers will fly with the hawks and show you a door. That is a fair price."
"Then we have a deal," Mav said.
-----
Ronald didn’t speak until they were back in their room. Then he closed the door and turned around.
"You’re feeding their stone," he said.
"I’m keeping a girl off it."
"This month. What about next month? What about the month after that?" Ronald’s face was red. "You’re making it work, Mav. You’re helping that old man keep doing exactly what he’s doing, and he’s paying you with a way home."
"Do you have something better?"
"No!" Ronald shouted. Then he lowered his voice, because there were guards outside. "No, I don’t. But I don’t like it, and I won’t pretend that I do."
Mav looked at him. He wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t, because Ronald was right.
"I don’t like it either," he said. "But I can’t save this whole World, Ronald. I don’t even know how. I can save one girl this month, and I can get the three of us home. That’s what I can do."
Ronald stared at him a moment longer. Then he let out a long breath, and some of the red went out of his face.
"All right," he said. "But when we leave, I want to take the girl with us."
"If she wants to come."
"She’s 10. She’ll want to come."
Tamsin hadn’t said anything during all of it. She was sitting on her bed, writing something on her slate. When they both looked at her, she turned it around.
She had drawn a map of the sky, with the islands that she had seen and the circle of the wind. At the edge of it, she had marked one island with a small cross.
"Hessan told me about the far islands on the way here," she said. "That one is the closest. He said that his people stopped going there 50 years ago."
"Why?" Ronald asked.
"He didn’t say. He only said that it wasn’t a place for builders." She looked at Mav, and he saw that she was afraid. "I’m coming with you. I just want you to know that I’m scared."
"So am I," Ronald said. "So is he. He just doesn’t say it."
-----
Hessan came for them at noon, with six of his guards.
There was no ceremony that day. The cage in the hall of the stone stayed closed, and the girl inside it stayed alive. Mav didn’t see her. He only heard from Hessan that her family had been told.
Before they left, Mav cast his Manifestation on the terrace for a moment and called Sela. She came out of the dome with two of his canteens in her arms, the ones that hung inside the door of his cabin. He had sent her a picture of them the night before, and she had found them at once.
Two free seaweeds were inside them, both rank E-. They were the strongest of the five that he had left.
He was thinking about the hawks of the high roost. They were old and big. He didn’t know their rank, but if they were anything like the ones on the cliffs, they were rank D at least. An E- seaweed on a rank D hawk was four steps. It would hold, but loosely, and Mav didn’t want loosely. He wanted to raise these two before doing anything else.
He hung the canteens at his belt.
They flew for most of the afternoon. The island with the cross on Tamsin’s map came into view as the sun went down. It was large and rocky, with a forest on one side and a wide plain of gray grass on the other. Hessan’s guards set them down at the edge of the forest and immediately rose back into the air.
"We will wait above," Hessan said. "We do not go down there anymore."
"Why not?" Ronald asked, for the second time that day.
Hessan pointed at the plain.
Something was grazing there, in the last light. It was huge, as big as a house, with a gray hide like rough stone and long curved horns. It had six legs. Around it, four smaller ones were grazing too, and they were only as big as Birch.
The first island held a rank C beast and its pack.