On the nineteenth day, Mav went back down into the deep water.
This time, he did not go as prey.
Seven swam in front.
Behind her came Two and Five, then Mav with his harpoon, then Six walking along the seabed.
The water turned from blue to gray, and from gray to black.
Nobody went rigid.
Nothing rose out of the dark to meet them.
The thing that used to rise out of the dark was leading the way.
They reached the flat gray fish before noon.
There were hundreds of them, lying on the mud as far as the green light could reach.
‘Seven.
Now.’
The flash turned the water white.
Mav was 30 meters behind her, and he only felt a prickle on his skin.
In front of her, a dozen fish went stiff and rolled onto their sides.
They were not dead, only stunned.
That was the part Mav had been thinking about all night.
Essence went to the one that killed.
If Seven killed everything herself, only Seven would grow.
But Seven could not bite anyway, with her jaw still broken.
She could only stun.
So every fish she dropped was a gift for somebody else.
‘Two, Five, Six.
Take them.
One each, and then you bring the rest home.’
They struck.
He felt the Essence come in, three warm trickles at the same time.
A flat gray fish was worth 12 points.
He speared one himself, and One grew warm in his neck.
Then he and Six gathered the fish that were still twitching and carried them up the slope, all the way to the base.
He held the first one against Eight.
‘Yours.’
Eight wrapped itself around the fish and squeezed.
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Essence: 23/100.
Host: none.]
He did the same for Nine, then for Ten, then for the two sprouts, Eleven and Twelve, which were still no longer than his hand.
Then he went back down for more.
It was slow, heavy work.
He made the trip six times that day.
But when the light failed, every one of his 10 Subjects had made multiple kills.
Mav was tired, and deeply satisfied.
‘This works.
Seven stuns, and everybody eats.’
The first surprise came that same evening.
[A Subject has reached Rank F.]
It was Six.
Mav had wondered for 10 days what would happen when the seaweed in the crab gained a rank.
He swam over to watch.
Nothing happened.
The seaweed in the crack of the shell grew thicker, and its glow grew brighter.
The crab himself did not change at all.
He had the same size, the same shell and the same broken claw.
Mav frowned.
When Two’s seaweed had reached rank F, the needlefish had grown at once.
So why not the crab?
He found the answer by comparing the ranks.
The needlefish had been rank F-, the same as his seaweed.
When the seaweed climbed to rank F, it had surpassed the fish in rank, so it had pulled the fish up with it.
The crab was rank F+.
His seaweed was only rank F now.
It was still below him.
‘So that’s the rule.
A seaweed can’t lift a host that is already above it.
The host only grows when its seaweed outgrows it.
Until then, only the seaweed grows.’
He thought it through for the others.
‘Six will change when his seaweed reaches rank E-, and not before.
Seven is rank E- herself.
She won’t change at all until her seaweed goes beyond that.’
It was good to know.
It meant that a strong host was a gift at the start, and nothing more.
In the end, every host would be exactly as strong as the seaweed that held it.
On the twentieth day, Mav found out how to feed the Heartstone.
He found out by accident.
He had known since the first day that the third bar had to be filled with Essence.
School had taught him that much.
It had never taught him how.
That kind of knowledge was passed down inside the great houses, from parent to child.
Commoners were left to work it out alone.
He had been trying to work it out for 20 days.
He had pressed his hands against the crystal.
He had laid dead fish in front of it.
Nothing had moved the number.
That afternoon, he was carrying a stunned fish to Ten, which grew in a crack right beside the Heartstone.
The fish woke up in his hands.
It thrashed, slipped out of his grip, and fell against the warm crystal.
Ten struck anyway.
It wrapped itself around the fish and squeezed, with the fish still pressed against the stone.
The fish went still.
No Essence came in.
Mav felt nothing at all from Ten.
Instead, the pale light inside the Heartstone grew a little brighter, and he could have sworn that its beat sped up.
[Heartstone: 1%]
He stared at the number, and his pulse quickened.
It was the first time it had moved in 20 days.
‘The Essence didn’t go to Ten.
It went into the stone.
Why?’
He tested it at once, the way his uncle would have tested a machine.
He killed a second fish a hand’s width away from the crystal.
The Essence went to One, as usual, and the bar did not move.
Then he killed a third fish while it was touching the crystal.
[Heartstone: 2%]
‘So that’s the rule.
If a creature dies while it’s touching the Heartstone, its Essence goes into the stone, and not to the one that killed it.’
It was simple.
It was also a problem.
Every fish he gave to the stone was a fish he did not give to a Subject.
The first bar and the third bar ate from the same plate.
‘I can’t fill one and forget the other.
I need all three by day 30.
So I’ll split the catch.’
From then on, he followed one rule.
Out of every three fish that came up the slope, two went to his Subjects and one went to the stone.
They hunted deeper every day, and the prey grew with the depth.
Below the flat gray fish, there were long spined ones, as big as Mav himself.
Seven dropped them just as easily.
When Two finished the first one, Mav opened the entry and counted.
25 points.
They were rank F+.
On the evening of the twenty-first day, the line he had been waiting for appeared.
[A Subject has reached Rank E-.]
His heart jumped.
He searched the column.
[Seaweed.
Rank E-.
Essence: 14/800.
Host: Pale Eel.]
It was Seven.
Three days ago, she had been a rooted seaweed with no host.
She had reached rank F on the nineteenth day, and rank F+ on the twentieth.
Mav had seen both messages, but he had been too busy to stop for them.
Now, she lived in the deep water, among the richest prey in his sea, and whatever was too large to carry up the slope had been hers to finish.
The eel herself did not grow.
Her seaweed had only caught up with her.
A second line followed the first.
[Skill developed: Regeneration.]
[Skill: Regeneration]
[The seaweed heals the body of its host.
Wounds close, broken bones set, and lost limbs grow back.
What would take weeks takes hours.
The higher the rank, the faster it works.]
Mav read it, and understood at once what he was looking at.
It was the rule he had remembered three nights ago.
A species gained its first skill at rank E.
The seaweed was a species like any other.
And its first skill was the thing his seaweeds had been doing, slowly and weakly, since the first day.
They healed their hosts.
Until now, it had only been an instinct.
A green thread across a cut.
A wound that would normally take days, closed in a night.
He had told himself not to count on it for anything worse.
Now it was a skill.
He swam out through the gate to look.
Seven was lying along the wall, as she did every night.
The green thread on her jaw was glowing, far brighter than before.
As he watched, the broken bone moved.
It was a very small movement.
But the two halves of her jaw were closer together than they had been that morning.
He stayed beside her and watched for a long time.
It did not happen in a moment.
It was slow, like a tide coming in.
But by the middle of the night, the bone had closed, and the torn skin had grown back over it.
She opened her mouth, as wide as it would go, and shut it again.
Her teeth met perfectly, and Mav felt a shiver of awe.
‘A broken jaw, healed in a few hours.
That would have taken weeks.’
He thought about what that meant for the others.
He thought about Six, with his useless claw.
A host could only use the skill when its own seaweed reached rank E-.
The crab would have to wait for Six.
An Awakened did not have to wait.
That was the other half of the rule.
He could use the skill of his species from the moment that the first of his Subjects developed it.
It did not have to be One.
He looked down at his left calf.
The long tear from the eel’s tooth had been closing slowly for three days.
Now a bright green thread ran along it, from his knee to his ankle, and the skin under it itched.
‘So I have it too.
Already.
My leg will be whole by morning.’
‘A host that heals is a host that doesn’t die.
I promised I wouldn’t lose anyone.
This will help me keep that promise.’
He looked at the bars before he slept.
[Day 21]
[Rank E- Subjects: 1/10]
[Development: 24%]
[Heartstone: 6%]
One out of 10.
It was the first time the first bar had ever shown anything but a zero.
He went down the column, to see where the others stood.
Seven was rank E-.
Two and Six were rank F+, and close to the next step.
Five, Eight, Nine and Ten were rank F, and so was One, the seaweed in his own neck.
Eleven and Twelve, the two sprouts, were still rank F-.
Then he did the count, the way he did every night, and the good feeling faded.
He had nine days left.
Seven had needed three days, with the best prey in the sea.
Two and Six were close behind her.
The others were slower, because every fish had to be carried up to them by hand.
And Eleven and Twelve were far behind everyone.
They were sprouts.
They had started with nothing, 15 days after the rest.
‘At this pace, eight of them make it.
Not 10.’
But he needed 10.