Chapter 117: Neither Woman Let the Road Bury the Other

The bronze palm clenched around Aylin’s boot.

There were no fingers in the road, only stone swelling over leather. It reached her ankle before Hest drove one broken half of his gate bar into the seam.

Across the moonlit rest, Kedra’s board lurched the other way.

Pava caught Kedra under the ribs before the binding could drag across her throat. "Breathe for me. Your own breath. Do not follow hers."

Kedra forced air out through her nose.

The palm on the plate changed. Aylin’s broken smallest finger smoothed away. Kedra’s raw wrist seal spread through the bronze instead.

Stone released Aylin and closed over Kedra’s nearest runner.

"That is an unpleasant trick," Hest said.

"It is not a trick," Valea answered. She dusted chalk along the plate without putting her hand inside the impression. "The old road has room for one hand. Every breath gives it a different one."

"I liked trick better. Tricks can be insulted."

Varn crouched beside Kedra’s trapped runner and slipped his short hook under the board. He pulled until the muscles stood out along his neck. The iron found an edge, lost it, then found the same edge somewhere his eyes insisted was solid.

"Aylin, breathe," he said.

Aylin drew a measured breath.

Kedra’s runner struck free. Stone climbed Aylin’s other boot.

Pava swore under her breath. "Separate breaths, separate injuries, and the road makes me hurt whichever patient is not exhaling. I object."

"Noted," Valea said. "Keep objecting."

"I was speaking to the road."

Below the human groove, Jiang put his beak against the seam.

The closing stone hummed through his cracked tip and into his skull. His first thought was that pecking it would hurt. His second was that being buried beneath two women and a carrying board would hurt more.

He chose the cheaper pain.

His beak struck the low joint. Once, then again at a different angle. A thin crust broke loose, exposing a hollow no human hand could reach from above.

Jiang shoved his breast into it.

His failed flipper snagged in its cradle. The open shoulder pulled hot beneath the cold-stiff feathers, and his unreliable foot slid out of its cup. He caught himself with the other webbed foot and leaned harder.

The seam above Aylin stopped at mid-calf.

"He has it," Valea said. "Not the weight. The closing lip."

Aylin looked down through the two moonlines. Only the black cap of Jiang’s head showed beneath the bronze plate.

"That lip is larger than he is."

Jiang drove his breast forward another miserable fraction.

"He appears aware," Pava said.

At the rear rest, the unnamed male answered Jiang with a low call. He did not leave the egg. He settled his brood fold more closely around it, watched the shifting board, and refused to spend balance on anything that did not threaten his footing.

Good, Jiang thought. At least one penguin here had sense.

Valea threaded chalk dust beneath the rim of the plate. Most of it dropped through. Three narrow places held white.

She asked Pava to give each woman a turn breathing while Varn rested the hook against the first white patch. Aylin’s breath pulled the iron toward her boot. Kedra’s pulled it toward the board. When both held still, the hook trembled between them and the bronze palm kept the damage of whichever woman had breathed last.

"No blood test, then," Hest said.

"No test of any kind," Valea answered. "It is an old fitting trying to seat two present loads in one worn shape."

Jiang preferred that answer because old fittings could be broken. Mystical arguments about which wounded woman deserved to exist were beyond the useful reach of his beak.

Kedra turned her sound hand palm-down above the first mark. Her fingers hovered, shifted, then curled against empty air beside it.

"There should be a catch under this edge," she said.

Valea glanced at her. "You see one?"

"No. My hand expected one before I knew what I was reaching for."

"You remember them?" Valea asked.

Kedra’s mouth tightened. "A bad hand on a worse day. Use it or do not. I will not name whose day it was."

She moved along the rim. Her fingertips stopped twice more, once near Aylin’s side and once beneath the carrying board.

Varn tested each place with the hook. Iron caught under all three.

At the last catch, the hook shivered hard enough to ring against the plate. Kedra flinched before the sound reached Aylin. Her fingers closed in the same protective shape, guarding a wrist that had already been marked raw.

Aylin saw it. She did not ask whether Kedra had learned the motion in her body, a copied road, or another person’s death. She moved the cloth line away from Kedra’s wrist so it would not scrape the seal again.

Kedra noticed that too. "Thank you," she said, sounding annoyed by the necessity.

"You are welcome," Aylin answered with equal irritation.

"Release catches," he said. "Or the remains of them."

"Can they free both lanes?" Aylin asked.

Valea brushed chalk from the changing palm. "The catches free the plate. The plate is what keeps asking for one traveler. Break its face, and we may stop the question."

"May," Hest said. "A fine word. We should carve it on my remaining weapons."

He held up the two jagged halves of his bar.

"You would need smaller letters," Kedra said.

Pain had thinned her voice, but Hest grinned at her anyway.

The palm changed again.

Aylin’s trapped leg sank deeper. The cloth around her waist pulled against Kedra’s board handles. Directly between them, their shadows crept toward the same center seam.

Aylin drew her knife.

The blade came free too quickly. Jiang knew that speed. Fear had turned Aylin’s guilt into another plan for spending herself.

"Pull Kedra while she has weight," she said. "Once her board clears, cut this line."

Pava’s head came up. "No."

"If I stop breathing, the plate holds her shape long enough--"

Kedra lunged across the moonline and caught Aylin’s knife wrist.

Their shadows joined above Jiang.

The road opened beneath both women.

Jiang’s breast rest folded upward. The force threw him onto his injured side, and the stone he had been holding snapped toward his throat.

Hest jammed one bar half under Aylin’s heel and the other across Kedra’s runner. Varn hooked the board frame, planted both boots, and hauled. Pava wrapped herself around Kedra’s bound shoulder to keep it from taking the full drop.

Kedra kept hold of Aylin.

"You do not get to make me the reason you disappear," she said.

"Let go before it takes you too."

"Then stop trying to hand it only one of us."

Jiang twisted onto his breast. The damaged cradle scraped stone, but his beak found the closing lip before it reached his neck. He bit the edge.

Stone was not food. This was another flaw in the day.

He pulled anyway, claws scraping for purchase.

The lip shifted just enough for his feet to return to their cups. Jiang drove upward with his legs and called through a beak full of road grit.

The unnamed male answered from the egg rest.

Their calls entered from separate low hollows. The moon slit brightened along both outer chalk lines, and Valea saw the opening.

"Apart now," she said. "Same breath. Opposite edges."

Kedra released Aylin’s wrist. Aylin sheathed the knife instead of cutting the cloth.

They drew breath together.

For the first time, the palm blurred between them.

Pava set the rhythm with her open hand, raising it when both women could breathe and closing it whenever Kedra’s mouth tightened or Aylin’s trapped leg shook. Valea moved chalk to match their outer heels. Varn kept the hook against the board without pulling, ready for the instant either lane took weight.

Neither boot nor board regained full weight, but the stone stopped closing.

Aylin used that pause to save Kedra first. She threw herself outward, letting the cloth bite into her waist, and dragged the carrying board away from the center seam. Varn pulled with her. Kedra’s trapped runner tore free, leaving a strip of wood buried behind.

The change shifted the plate toward Aylin.

Stone snapped around her shin.

Kedra braced her good foot against the board frame and hauled on the cloth with her sound hand. Her injured shoulder tried to follow. Pava pinned it in place with both forearms while Kedra pulled from her back and legs.

"I said stop if the binding catches," Pava warned.

"It has not caught."

"Your face is lying."

"My face has no medical authority."

The cloth drew Aylin’s leg toward the outer line. Hest levered beneath her heel with a broken bar half. Jiang struck the seam from below at the same instant.

Aylin came free hard enough to land on one knee.

She kept the cloth taut until Kedra’s board settled.

Valea put her knife point into the first hidden catch.

"Once we break this, the palm is gone," she said. "If it remembers who used this road before the Fivefold attack, we lose that with it."

Aylin looked at the old break shaping one bronze finger. Kedra watched her present wrist wound replace it on the next breath.

"It has had enough chances to tell us," Kedra said.

Aylin’s hand rested over her sheathed knife. "Break it."

Varn set his hook beneath the first catch. Hest wedged one bar half under the second. Valea guided Kedra’s good hand toward the third without placing it inside the palm.

Aylin shifted her good foot to the far chalk mark. The cloth between them sagged, then tightened when Kedra braced the board. Neither woman could touch the other during the break. Their only promise was a strip Pava could cut if one body began dragging the other into stone.

At the rear rest, the male lowered until his breast nearly covered his feet. He gave Jiang no answering call this time. A loose bronze plate did not threaten the egg yet, and membership in a huddle had not made Jiang’s terrible plan worth joining.

Jiang stared back at him, offended by such excellent judgment, then crawled under the center.

Jiang crawled beneath the center again.

He hated that part of the plan. Everyone had contributed ideas. Somehow his contribution kept being the part where a stone tried to flatten him.

Valea waited until both women held the outer lines.

"Pull together on my mark."

Varn pulled. Hest drove down with his shoulder. Kedra found the catch her hand remembered and rolled it toward the plate’s rim.

The bronze bowed but did not break.

Road stone pinched Jiang’s bad foot. He pecked the underside and heard a thin answer beneath the plate, more brittle than bronze.

He struck there again.

A crack ran across the palm.

Varn’s hook bent nearly shut. He snarled, changed his grip, and used the ruined curve as a lever instead of pretending it was still a hook.

Aylin and Kedra pulled the cloth in opposite directions. Their separated weight tore at the two edges while the old palm tried to hold one shape between them.

The plate split through its center.

Both halves dropped flat. Aylin’s broken finger vanished from one. Kedra’s wrist seal vanished from the other. Underneath lay a foil of dark bronze, thin enough to wrinkle when Jiang breathed against it.

Varn stared at his closed hook. "That was my last straight piece of iron."

Hest tapped one broken bar half against the other. "You will enjoy the freedom."

The foil moved under Jiang’s beak.

Not from his breath.

Three knocks rose through it from somewhere beyond the sealed road.

The pause that followed was long enough for every injured body to remain exactly where it was.

Then the same three knocks came again.

Someone in Eres was knocking from the other side.