The needlefish came at noon.
They always did.
Every day, when the light from the surface was at its strongest, the swarm swept over his little makeshift base from the same direction, hundreds of them, thin and silver and as long as his forearm.
Each one had a jaw like a pair of sewing needles.
Mav had named them on the second day.
He had been trying to eat one ever since.
He had not come close.
On the fifth day, he was waiting for them anyway, crouched behind his wall with the knife in his hand and very little hope.
He had a quarter of a ration bar in his stomach.
His plan was to lunge at the swarm and trust in luck.
It was not a good plan.
It was simply the only one he had.
‘Any moment now.’
The swarm came.
And at once, he saw that something was wrong with it.
It was ragged.
The tight silver line he had watched for three days had been torn into scattered clumps, and the fish were moving too fast, darting and doubling back, the way people run when they do not know where the danger is.
Some of them were missing pieces.
Something had been at them.
Something out in the dark.
Mav thought of a long pale shape, and gripped the knife a little harder.
Then he saw the straggler.
A lone needlefish was falling behind the rest, sinking as it swam.
A piece had been bitten out of its side, just above the tail, and a thin thread of red trailed after it through the water.
It fought to keep up, and could not.
With every beat of its tail, it dropped a little lower, straight toward the ring of seaweed.
His heart jumped.
‘That one.
I can actually catch that one.’
He gathered his legs under him to push off.
He never did.
Because in that same instant, something moved at the back of his skull, and it was not his.
It was hunger.
Not the dull ache in his stomach.
This was sharp and narrow, like a needle, and it came from one of the nine.
The strongest one.
The stubborn one.
All of its attention had fixed on the falling fish, and it was leaning toward it so hard that he could feel its root straining in the rock.
Mav had not ordered that.
Or perhaps he had.
He had wanted the fish.
He had wanted it badly.
And the wanting in the seaweed had exactly the same shape as his own.
The needlefish sank into reach.
The seaweed struck.
It whipped around the silver body once, twice, faster than Mav had ever seen it move.
The fish thrashed.
The glowing tip slid along its side, searching, found the soft place behind the gills, and went in.
Mav felt it.
It was like a key sliding into a lock that had been cut for it.
For one dizzying second, there were two hearts beating inside him.
His own, and another, tiny and frantic and terrified.
Then the second one slowed.
The fish went rigid.
It hung in the grip of the seaweed, perfectly still.
And the seaweed let go of the rock.
He felt that, too.
A tearing, down at the root, as something that had been anchored its whole life pulled itself free.
The thick base came out of its crack and left nothing behind but a stump.
Then the whole length of it wrapped itself around the fish, coil after coil, until there was only a silver body with the green seaweed wrapped around it, its tip trailing behind like a streamer.
Mav did not move.
He was too stunned.
He had expected the fish to die.
He had, in all honesty, been planning to eat it.
Instead, its gills opened and closed.
Its tail twitched, and it rolled upright.
It swam, unsteadily at first, then smoothly, in a slow circle around the Heartstone.
The wound in its side had stopped bleeding.
A thin green thread ran across it now, like a stitch.
Then it turned and swam straight toward him.
It stopped a hand’s width from his face.
It hung there in the water, working its fins, and looked at him with one flat black eye.
It was waiting.
Mav forgot to be hungry.
One of the points in his head was moving.
That was the only way he could describe it.
For four days, the nine had been fixed, as steady as the fingers on his hands.
Now one of his fingers had left his hand and was swimming around the room.
He could feel the water sliding over its sides, and its small, quick heart.
It was not afraid anymore.
It was not anything.
It was simply his.
Behind it, the eight that were still rooted in the rock had all turned toward the fish at once, like a crowd watching one of its own walk out through a door.
‘…Left.’
The fish flicked left.
There was no pause.
There was no reluctance, no moment of thinking it over.
It moved the instant he meant it, faster and cleaner than any of the rooted ones ever had.
‘Up.’
It shot upward.
‘Circle.’
It circled him, close enough to touch.
‘Come back.’
It came back, and stopped in front of his face, and waited.
Slowly, he reached out and laid a finger on its side.
It was cold and smooth.
It did not flinch.
He felt his own touch arrive from the other direction, a faint pressure on a flank he did not have.
Mav let out a breath he was not actually using.
So that was it.
That was what Host meant, all of it.
His seaweed did not hunt, or run, or fight.
It did not need to.
It took possession of something that could do all of that.
For the first time since the Bestowal, he felt the thing he had been refusing to feel.
It was small, and bright, and extremely dangerous.
It was hope.
Then another thought arrived, and the hope went cold.
He looked at the green seaweed wrapped around the fish.
He looked at the thread across its wound, and at the flat, calm eye.
Slowly, he raised his hand and touched the back of his own neck.
Was that what he looked like, from the outside?
Something green, wrapped around something that used to make its own decisions?
The thought made him feel sick.
He flexed his fingers.
They obeyed him.
He thought about Juno, about the foundry, about a list of names.
Everything was where he had left it.
‘I’m still the one deciding things.
I think.’
That was exactly what it would let him think, of course.
There was no way to settle the question at the bottom of the sea, and he had 25 days.
He filed it away with the other things he could not afford to look at.
The fish was still there.
Mav looked at the fish.
The fish looked at Mav.
His lunch was waiting for orders.