Chapter 118: A Penguin Call Reached the Sealed Palace

The foil knocked a third time and buckled under Jiang’s beak.

He jerked his head clear before the thin bronze could slice the cracked tip. Beneath him, the low breast rest answered with a tremor that ran toward the feather-width rookery slit.

The unnamed male felt it too.

He turned sideways over the egg, putting his own body between the brood fold and the broken plate. One bleeding foot remained planted. The other shifted across the stable cup until the egg sat level again.

Pava moved the loose windbreak near his flank without touching him. "The floor is lifting beneath his outer foot."

"Not the floor," Valea said. "A line under it."

Three more knocks came through the foil.

Kedra raised her sound hand. Her fingers folded, opened, then tapped the board handle in the same pattern.

"Do you know who is knocking?" Aylin asked.

"No. My hand knows they are waiting for an answer. That is all I will lend it."

Valea crouched beside the split plate. "Three knocks ask whether the far tool is held by a living hand."

"And the answer?" Hest asked.

"Three knocks from a different edge."

He offered her one half of his broken bar. "My remaining weapons are eager for diplomacy."

Valea took the less jagged piece and struck beside Kedra’s first catch, then the second, then the third.

The foil stayed still.

Jiang pressed one foot against its rim. A faint vibration moved under his webbing, but it scattered through the whole breast rest before reaching the slit. The old road could carry sound. It no longer knew which way sound belonged.

Valea followed the tremor with two fingertips. "It needs separate ends. One here. One at the call slit."

Aylin looked from Jiang to the brooding male. "You need both birds."

"I need two bodies the low road already carries. What either bird does with that information is not mine to decide."

Jiang called toward the foil.

Pain buzzed through his cracked beak and turned his voice rough. The bronze took the low part of the call. The higher part escaped into Ninebell and returned from stone in a useless flutter.

The male watched him and gave no answer.

Jiang called again, changing the end the way the stranger had answered beside the sixth bell.

No answering call came.

Jiang swallowed a third call. Repeating himself louder would turn a request into pressure.

Instead, Jiang scratched from the curling foil toward the male’s foot cup with his beak. Valea laid Hest’s iron half against the first mark. A tremor crossed the scored path and lifted a grain of road dust beside the egg.

Now the male had evidence instead of noise.

Huddle membership sat somewhere behind Jiang’s unavailable System like a tool sealed in ice. It gave him no pull on the other bird, and he was glad of that even while the foil began curling at its edges.

The egg mattered more than his plan.

Jiang backed away from the foil.

He waddled toward the rear rest, failed flipper held inside its damaged cradle. Each step put cold grit between his webbed toes. When he reached pecking distance, he stopped and lowered his breast instead of crowding the egg.

The male struck the road beside Jiang’s good foot.

Not him. The cup.

The stone under it had begun to rise.

Jiang stepped out. The stranger tested the empty cup with his beak, shuffled the egg away from the lifting edge, then looked toward the foil.

At last, he called once.

The sound traveled from the rear rest through Jiang’s abandoned cup. The foil tightened flat beneath the broken plate.

The male had not answered Jiang. He had corrected a danger under his egg and chosen a position that happened to help.

Valea set the bar half against the first catch. "Jiang, take the near rest. Do not match him. Give me another line."

He returned to the foil and settled his breast over its near edge. Cold bronze touched the thinnest feathers below his throat. He called in his own frayed voice.

The foil drew tight between the two birds.

Valea knocked across the three catches.

An answer struck from below before the last note faded.

The second knock carried a scrape. The third was followed by a woman’s voice forced through a space too narrow for breath.

"Valea?" The name arrived in two torn pieces.

Valea’s hand closed around Hest’s iron. "Orra."

The foil wrinkled. Jiang felt the voice against his breast more than he heard it.

"You... choose... bad walls."

Valea laughed once, and the sound came out broken. "You kept this one waiting."

Pava put a hand between Valea’s shoulder blades without pulling her away. Valea leaned into it for one breath, then returned the bar to the catch.

"Who survived?" she asked.

The foil carried a deeper voice in pieces.

"Brann. Claimant... breathing. Ista here."

Dry grit rasped across bronze from the far side. A third voice pushed through. "All who held... the break. Roadwrights too."

Aylin lowered herself beside the plate but stayed outside Kedra’s moonline. "Orra, Aylin is here."

Bronze scratched beneath Jiang’s breast. Orra’s reply lost its middle.

"Both women?" Orra asked.

Kedra answered before Aylin could carry the question for her. "Two women. My name is Kedra."

The sound line worried her words into little more than vowels, but the far side gave three knocks. Orra forced the name back through whole, without a title or claim.

"Kedra," Orra repeated clearly.

Jiang called against the foil to keep its edge tight.

Someone in Eres laughed. Brann’s voice reached them through the scrape. "Bird... alive too."

Aylin touched two fingers to the bronze near Jiang’s foot. "Alive, injured, hungry, and still correcting everyone’s plans."

Jiang bit her glove.

Orra’s response broke apart, but enough crossed to sound indecently pleased.

Kedra’s eyes closed. Her good fingers found the board handle again, not Aylin’s hand.

"Ask whether they have a body opening," Pava said. "Before hope starts making decisions for us."

Valea nodded. "Can anyone cross?"

Orra answered with three hard knocks before the words arrived.

"No door. White glass... all the way through."

Another scrape traveled under Jiang. The voice that followed belonged to one of Valea’s Roadwrights, the man whose wrists had been burned by chalk line.

"Last dry wedge... still touches your source. Sound only."

The other Roadwright tapped the foil from the far side. His old habit had been testing swallowed iron with a bare thumb. Even through a ruined city and a sealed palace road, he used the same impatient double tap.

Valea answered it with her nail.

Aylin watched her. "Can their wedge pull these two passages apart?"

"It can carry tension," Valea said. "If the far crew breaks it sideways while we hold both catches here, the old groove may tear along two current loads."

"It may," Hest said.

"Your weapons have heard the word before."

Kedra shifted on the damaged board. One runner ground against the wider rest; the other ended where stone had torn away its strip. "What happens to Eres when they break it?"

Valea did not soften the answer. "The wedge is the last piece that still knows both ends. Once it goes, this voice ends. So does the nearest hope of finding their side from ours."

Chalk from her crew still clung inside the iron scratches. Valea had not heard either Roadwright since white glass took Eres.

"Whose hand is on the wedge?" she asked.

Two different taps answered, one hard and one followed by the bare-thumb scrape.

"Ours," the chalk-burned Roadwright said.

His companion fought a longer sentence through the foil. Only the end survived. "...not your order."

Relief hurt Valea more cleanly than grief had. "Good. I was going to give it anyway."

Orra struck the far bronze with her broken hook. The crack carried her refusal before her words. "I can object... and still hold the wall."

Aylin looked down at the foil. Orra was close enough for her words to bruise bronze, yet a wall of white glass remained between them.

"We can leave the wedge," she said. "Find another way through Ninebell."

Stone tightened around the edge of Kedra’s board.

The line beneath the male’s outer foot rose again. He widened his stance as far as the egg allowed. Pava laid the windbreak along the dangerous edge so a slip would meet cloth before broken bronze, but the male had no free step left.

Jiang felt both closing lines through his breast.

Leaving the wedge would preserve a chance nobody could use while the road in front of them crushed the bodies they actually had. He pecked the near catch and called.

The sound reached the far side.

Orra’s reply came thin but recognizable. "The bird... votes."

"He bites architecture when annoyed," Aylin said. "Do not build law from it."

Jiang pecked the catch again.

"That one may have been a vote," Valea said.

Kedra pressed her sound hand over the third catch. "Break it. We chose living bodies over the palm. We should not become sentimental about the next piece of metal."

Valea knocked the choice through.

For a while, only pressure answered. Then the chalk-burned Roadwright spoke.

"We stayed... to close your road. Let us... close it properly."

His companion added one clear word. "Ready."

Orra said something the foil could not carry. Brann’s voice crossed hers. Ista shouted from farther back. No sentence survived, but their living disagreement did.

Valea placed Hest’s two bar halves under separate plate edges. Varn wedged his bent hook beneath the foil where it curled toward Kedra. Aylin moved to the outer moonline and tightened the cloth linking her to the board.

Pava knelt between the two penguin rests. One hand guarded Kedra’s binding. The other held windbreak cloth beside the male’s unstable foot without closing over it.

"When it moves, I protect breath and egg," she said. "Everyone else may be offended in order of arrival."

The male lowered over the egg.

Jiang spread his feet across the near cups and kept his breast on the foil. He hated the exposed position. That did not make it wrong.

Valea struck three times.

Eres struck back through bronze.

The far wedge broke with a sound like a knife snapping inside thick ice.

The foil whipped upward. Jiang’s bad foot left its cup. Aylin caught his cradle before the bronze could throw him into Kedra’s board, then released as soon as his good foot found stone.

The high groove bucked beneath both women.

Varn’s bent hook tore free, spun against his boot, and nearly took his ankle with it. Hest drove both bar halves under the plate. Valea held them apart while Kedra rolled the third catch through the hand sequence she refused to name.

At the rear, the male’s foot cup split.

Pava threw the windbreak against the sharp edge. Jiang wedged his shoulder beneath the stranger’s hip. The male corrected with one hard shuffle, keeping the egg under the brood fold while the floor rose beneath them.

His beak struck Jiang’s neck in warning. Jiang shifted lower but kept enough pressure against the stranger’s hip to block the broken plate. Pava let the windbreak slide under the bleeding outer foot without closing her fingers around it.

Kedra’s board jumped. Its shortened runner slewed toward the male, and Aylin threw her weight backward on the cloth. Pava caught Kedra’s binding while Varn trapped the board with his boot and the ruined curve of his hook.

Valea heard her Roadwrights shout through the foil. One voice vanished first. The bare-thumb scrape crossed once more, then Orra’s broken hook struck a final blow from Eres.

Two pale lines tore away from the broken plate.

One followed Aylin’s shadow across the outer rest.

The other ran under the male and egg, too low for a human foot and too narrow for Kedra’s board. No moon shadow touched it.

The foil burned cold against Jiang, then went slack.

"Orra, answer me," Valea called.

Nothing crossed back. No knock, scrape, argument, or living voice survived the broken wedge.

Kedra’s damaged runner tilted toward the dark line.

It stopped before touching stone.

The moonless passage was carrying its weight.