Chapter 101: The Broken Seal Crawled Toward the Western Wall

The pieces of Aylin’s seal crawled out from under Jiang.

Blue splinters scraped across Flood Hall, slipping between black water and dry sand as they traveled west. None rolled. Each turned at the same floor joint and kept going against the slope.

The western bell rang before any visible hand touched it.

One of the fallen Crown bars jumped.

Orra shoved the Edric claimant clear as iron teeth struck the wheel platform. Brann lost his grip on the man’s coat, and both of them went down beside Jiang.

Aylin lunged after the blue fragments.

The bar jumped again. Beyond it, Pell shouted from Wake Court while Nemi and the burned workers answered from the outer side.

Orra caught Aylin’s good wrist. "You chase no bell while my people are divided by your bars."

"They are not my bars."

"They tried to kill me. I am taking responsibility anyway."

That landed. Aylin looked from the western seam to Jiang lying in Pell’s shirt, then toward the voices beyond the iron.

"Open the court first," she said.

The next blue splinter vanished under the western wall.

Jiang wanted to follow it. His feet offered no support for the idea. When he tried to rise, his unreliable foot folded and his empty belly cramped hard enough to put his breast back on the cloth.

Aylin crouched beside him. "You are not proving anything by falling toward the correct wall."

He struck the shirt once with his beak and stopped trying to stand.

Orra’s hunters wedged cedar shutters beneath the Crown bar. Dagna laid both broken halves of her spear across them, turning the ruined shaft into a brace. Ossin rammed the blunt remains of his hook under the nearest tooth.

"The bar has a heel release," the claimant said from the floor.

Orra did not look at him. "Show Brann. Keep your hands where I can see them."

He crawled beneath the wheel platform. The royal coat dragged behind him like something borrowed from a healthier man. Brann followed, ready to pull him out if the stone shifted.

"Second bell cup," the claimant said. "Press inward before they lift."

"That cup drowned years ago," Brann answered.

"Then it drowned with the release still inside it."

Ista stripped a dry rag from Pell’s shirt hem and wrapped Brann’s damaged fingers. Rian slid his stiff packet edge into the flooded cup and worked it around the buried catch.

Tovin looped the guide cord around Dagna’s brace using his useful hand. His injured fingers remained curled beneath the bloody bandage.

"Outer side ready?" Dagna shouted.

Pell answered through the bar. "Three workers on the chain. Nemi is under something she has been told not to crawl under."

"The low pin is here," Nemi called. "Tell him complaining adds weight."

"It does not," Pell said.

"Then complain somewhere useful."

The western bell rang again.

Blue seal dust lifted from Jiang’s feathers and streamed through the air. A fragment struck the Crown bar, searched along its edge, and slipped through the same low gap Nemi was using.

Black-green water followed beneath it.

Ista saw the shine. "Dry the gap before you move the pin."

Her own furnace pouch was empty. A palace hunter kicked loose salt from an unbroken floor block, and Pell shoved a dry worker’s apron under the bar. Nemi packed the salt against it from the other side.

The hostile shine stopped where cloth and powder broke contact. The blue fragment kept crawling over the dry surface toward the west.

"Now lift," Brann ordered.

Rian drove the packet edge into the heel cup. The claimant pressed beside him with his scarred hand. Orra and her hunters hauled the guide line while Dagna held the brace and Ossin levered from below.

The outer workers pulled.

Nemi freed the low pin.

When the Crown bar lifted, water poured beneath it. Pell shoved a dry bench through the gap before the iron could fall. Two palace hunters crawled under and took the weight from the other side.

The claimant’s arm buckled. Brann caught his shoulder, but the man’s scarred hand stayed inside the heel cup until the second catch released.

Iron climbed another span.

Orra sent the wounded through first. Pell and the Glasswash workers passed the burned survivors into Wake Court. Dagna made Tovin follow them when his bandage began dripping. Ossin went only after Rian kicked his hook stump from under the tooth.

Aylin remained with Jiang until the lane cleared.

One palace hunter returned carrying a black cooking pot and a roll of oilcloth. "The watch room stove survived."

Inside the cloth lay smoked river fish. The smell reached Jiang before the hunter finished kneeling.

His body stopped caring about bells, duplicate princesses, and royal guilt.

Aylin broke the first strip small enough to swallow without working his cracked beak. He took it whole. She waited through the greedy second peck and gave him another only after he swallowed.

Pell crawled back under the raised bar with a stoppered bottle. "Nemi saved the last warm broth from Glasswash. She claims it tastes better after surviving a palace."

The broth tasted of smoke, fish skin, and a pot that had once held something stronger. Jiang drank anyway.

Orra wrapped a dry hunter’s cloak over Pell’s shirt. Aylin kept the failed flipper in its cradle and left room around his breast. Warmth returned slowly enough to hurt.

The numb claws hurt first. Then his belly feathers began prickling against the shirt, and the shoulder wound found enough feeling to throb with every swallow. Recovery had terrible manners. It entered through all the doors pain had left open.

Jiang lunged for a third fish strip before his breathing settled.

Aylin lifted it beyond his beak. "You will receive the rest after your throat remembers the arrangement."

He glared at her from inside two layers of borrowed cloth. She had another version of herself trapped somewhere west, a possible father confessing beside her, and a palace breaking under her feet. She still waited until he swallowed cleanly before lowering the fish.

Jiang took the next piece without pretending he had won.

Nobody called it healing.

While Jiang ate, the others lifted the bar high enough to reunite both sides. Survivors moved into the dry court lane. Palace hunters checked the outer hook release Nemi and Pell had broken and braced it open rather than pretending the gate still worked.

Aylin watched the seal fragments escape west one by one. Waiting scraped at her worse than the cold.

"What did you do to the woman who came through Westbell?" she asked.

The claimant sat against Brann’s shoulder. "The roadglass could hold a traveler between endpoint bells. I locked both."

"You said she came home."

"She crossed the western threshold. I did not let her pass the chamber."

"You buried a living woman in a palace wall."

His gaze dropped to the scar across his hand. "I had seen both of you alive. I no longer knew which daughter I was afraid of."

"You did not ask either one."

"No. I chose silence instead."

"Did she agree to enter the roadglass?"

"She fought the bell rope until the glass took her arm. I closed the palace endpoint while she was still knocking."

The western bell answered him from inside the wall.

The claimant looked toward the sound. His face had gone grayer beneath the torchlight.

"How long were you going to leave her there?" Aylin asked.

"Until I knew which return was stolen."

"You built a test with no answer and put her body inside it."

"Yes. I made her pay for it."

"Fear keeps explaining you," Aylin said. "It has not made you right once." ℴ

Aylin turned away before his agreement could resemble remorse earned in time.

The final Crown catch released. Iron settled onto the braces instead of the floor, leaving one narrow path from Flood Hall to Wake Court.

The western bell rang a third time.

This strike shook dust from a sealed arch behind the throne. Blue fragments gathered at its base and began climbing the mortar.

Brann stared at the arch. "There is no door on the palace plan."

"There was before Westbell was buried," the claimant said.

Orra chose two hunters to remain with the wounded and the Glasswash survivors. Pell refused to stay behind Nemi, so Orra stopped wasting breath on the argument. Ista, Brann, Dagna, Tovin, Ossin, and Rian gathered what remained of their tools.

Aylin lifted Jiang inside the doubled cloth.

His shivering had steadied. Fish and broth sat warm in his belly, not enough to erase hunger but enough for the System to recognize that he possessed something worth spending again.

[Broodguard I available]

Deep Lung remained silent. Frostwake remained silent. His shoulder and beak still hurt, and the failed flipper had not moved.

Orra’s hunters broke the mortar around the sealed arch. The claimant showed Brann where old hinge stones had been faced over, then had to stop when coughing bent him across his knees.

The arch opened into a passage no wider than two people.

Blue fragments crawled through first.

The passage had no torch cups. Copper bell wire ran naked along one wall, green with age wherever the western frost had touched it. Each unstruck note made the wire bow toward the saltglass ahead.

Aylin carried Jiang behind Orra’s first hunter. From his lower place inside the cloth, he saw frost retreat from their boots and gather at the far wall. It was not spreading cold through the corridor. It was pulling every loose trace of winter toward one waiting point.

The western corridor ended at a wall of cloudy saltglass. Frost filled its center despite the warm palace stone around it. Each seal piece climbed the glass until the fragments formed the broken curve of Aylin’s winter mark.

Something waited behind them.

A human palm pressed against the other side. Meltwater ran from the warm skin while the rest of the arm vanished into white roadglass.

One blue splinter crossed the barrier.

The fingers closed around it.