The eel came back that night.
It did not attack.
It circled.
All night long, a pale shape slid around his base, just outside the green light, and each time it passed, his eight seaweeds went stiff in his head.
In the morning, it was still there.
On the eleventh day, Mav sent Two out to hunt shrimp, 30 meters from the wall.
The eel came up from the slope at once.
He called Two back, and Two reached the light with the blind head a few lengths behind his tail.
He did not try a second time.
‘It has learned where the food is.
It is not going to leave.’
That changed everything.
His Subjects could not hunt.
If they could not hunt, no Essence came in.
He looked at the entries, and the numbers that had been climbing so fast the day before did not move at all.
He had 19 days left, eight Subjects, and a monster sitting on his doorstep.
Mav thought about it for most of the morning.
He thought about it the way he thought about everything, coldly, as a problem with a price.
The eel was the problem.
But the eel was also the answer.
It was rank E-.
If one of his seaweeds took it, he would have a hunter that nothing in this sea could threaten.
It would kill the flat gray fish by the dozen.
It would open the deep water for all the others.
A host like that was worth more than all his needlefish together.
And he knew how to take a creature that was too strong to wound.
He had done it two days ago.
He needed a heavy rock, a narrow place, and something to bring the prey under the rock at the right moment.
He found the place before noon, without going more than 15 meters from his base.
There, two walls of rock leaned toward each other and left a gap between them, about as wide as his shoulders.
Above the gap, a flat slab rested on the edge of one wall.
Six could push it over.
That left the bait.
Before, the crab had come out of its hollow because four fish annoyed it.
The eel would not come for something that was only annoying.
The eel came for food.
To bring it into the gap, something would have to swim in front of its mouth, slowly enough to be followed, all the way under the slab.
Whatever did that would almost certainly die.
The eel’s electric flash reached further than its teeth.
Mav looked at his two remaining fish.
Two was rank F.
He was Mav’s best hunter, and he had cost Mav a week of work.
Five was rank F-, the slowest of the four fish he had made, and her Essence was the lowest.
‘One Subject, for a rank E- host.
Eight becomes seven.
But seven with the eel are worth more than eight without it.’
It was good arithmetic.
He checked it twice and found no mistake.
He did not let himself think about Three.
That was the point of numbers.
A number could be subtracted.
In the afternoon, everything was ready.
Six crouched on top of the rock wall with his good claw braced against the slab.
Two waited behind the wall of the base.
One of the four rooted seaweeds was coiled around his arm, ready to take the eel the moment it was hurt.
Mav swam up into the open water above the gap, where he could see the whole trap at once.
The eel was a pale line in the gray distance, turning slowly.
He looked at Five.
The small fish hung in front of him, waiting for orders, as she always did.
‘Go to the eel.
Let it sense you.
Then lead it into the gap.’
Five did not move.
Mav felt the order reach her.
He felt her understand.
Her small heart sped up, and her fins trembled.
She stayed where she was.
That had never happened before.
A seaweed with a host obeyed at once.
It was the first thing he had learned about them.
‘Go.’
Nothing.
Mav clenched his jaw, and impatience rose in him.
He had 19 days, and he did not have time for this.
He reached for the fish with his mind, the way he had reached for the first seaweed that would not leave its rock.
But that day, he had waited, and he had asked.
This time, he did not ask.
He pushed.
‘GO.’
Something moved at the back of his neck.
It was cold.
It was like a wire being pulled tight around the top of his spine.
He tried to raise a hand to touch it, and his hand did not rise.
He tried again.
Nothing happened.
He told his legs to kick, and they hung under him like wood.
He could not turn his head.
He could not even close his eyes.
‘What is…’
Then he understood, and a fear went through him that was worse than anything the eel had made him feel.
It was One.
It was the seaweed in his own neck.
It had held his life in its grip since the first day, and he had let himself forget that.
Now it had closed its grip.
He was not alone in his head.
All eight of them were there.
They were not afraid, and they were not hungry.
They were all saying the same thing, without a single word.
No.
They would not do it.
They had felt Three and Four die.
They would not swim into the eel’s mouth because he had done some arithmetic.
They would hunt for him, dig for him and fight for him.
They would not die for nothing, for a master who spent them like coins.
Other Awakened could force their Subjects to obey, even if that was not always a good idea.
Mav could not, because one of his Subjects was attached to him.
One could harm him if it did not like his orders.
The harpoon slipped out of his fingers and sank.
Mav hung in the open water, 20 meters above the seabed, as stiff as a dead fish.
He could see his base below him.
He could see the green light, and the wall, and the Heartstone.
They had never looked so far away.
And he could see the pale line in the distance.
It had stopped turning.
The blind head swung toward him.
The eel could not see him.
It did not need to.
Something large was hanging in the water, alone and perfectly still, far from the light.
It began to swim toward him.
Mav screamed at his arms to move.
They did not move.