Chapter 131: The Penguin Bit the Woman Who Saved Him

The hook came down before Jiang managed his third breath.

It swung from the balcony on a wet rope, its point wrapped in pale hide. Whoever held it had tried to make a weapon look polite.

The tide ray saw the shape, not the wrapping.

Its back dropped beneath Jiang. Water swallowed his belly, rushed under his damaged feathers, and found every patch where the molt had left skin bare. His claws scraped across the animal’s scar and missed the old bronze loop.

"Tir, pull it up!" the silver-braided woman shouted.

The rope went taut. The hook kept falling.

"I need the carrier," a man answered from the higher balcony. Two fingers on his hauling hand bent sideways around the rope. "Elen has one mask left."

The ray struck the chamber with its fin.

Green water climbed the balconies. People threw themselves against the walls. Jiang slid down the ray’s wounded side and saw the hook turn toward the breathing slit he had just freed.

The silver-braided woman drew her broad knife.

One cut sent the hook into the water without its rope.

"Brinn!" Tir’s shout cracked across the chamber.

The ray rolled away from the loose iron. Its fin passed under Jiang, lifted him almost into air, then left him behind as the animal drove through the lower arch.

For one foolish instant, Jiang expected his body to follow.

His working flipper pulled. The failed one opened halfway and folded against his side. His good foot kicked while the other dragged through the water, useless except for the broken claw catching on his own feathers.

The surface stayed above him.

His lungs had spent themselves during the climb from the drowned bell. Cold made his breast tighten without moving useful air. He turned sideways, the chamber rolled with him, and the green shine became a ceiling he could no longer reach.

A dark figure struck the water feet first.

Brinn’s silver braid streamed above a green-glass mask. She caught Jiang behind the breast, pressed his failed flipper safely to his side, and kicked for the nearest stone shelf.

Her body moved like someone who had learned the shape of this chamber through bruises. She avoided the hook at the bottom without looking down.

Jiang broke the surface under her arm.

He coughed water across her mask.

"Charming," Brinn said behind the glass.

Tir hauled them onto the low balcony. He grabbed Brinn first and Jiang only after she drove an elbow into his wrist.

"Under the breast," she said. "His shoulder is open."

"Elen’s throat will be open if that mask empties."

"Then stop arguing with the person holding the knife."

Tir shifted his hands. His damaged fingers could not close around Jiang’s wet body, so he used both forearms and made a cradle of them. Anger had reddened his face above the seal-hide collar. It had not made him careless.

That complicated Jiang’s wish to dislike him.

They carried him through a low doorway cut behind the balcony. Warmth touched his beak first, a soft breath leaking from a seam in the black stone. It was hardly a heated room. After Ninebell’s water, it felt indecent.

Three flat stones surrounded the warm seam. Nets of small silver cavefish hung from the ceiling. A green lamp burned behind thick glass, and folded seal hides waited on a shelf above the wet floor.

Jiang stared at the fish.

His stomach cramped so hard that his good foot curled. The backward claw on the other foot dragged over stone and sent a cleaner pain through him.

Brinn saw the movement. "Food after the blood stops."

Jiang gave her his best emperor warning call.

It came out as a wet rasp.

"Terrifying," Tir said. "The fish are reconsidering their lives."

Brinn pointed her knife at him without turning. "Boil cloth."

"We have cloth," Tir said.

"Now we will have clean cloth."

Tir went to a copper pot sunk beside the warm seam. He obeyed with the furious speed of a man saving his argument for later.

Brinn knelt over Jiang. Up close, her lower lip carried an old white split that pulled one side of her mouth downward. Fresh water dripped from her braid onto his breast.

She reached for the strip around his shoulder.

Jiang struck at her hand.

His beak closed on the thick skin between her thumb and first finger. The crack in his upper beak flared. He tasted blood, hers and his together, and clamped harder because every useful part of his body had failed except the part hurting the person trying to help.

Brinn stayed still. Her bitten hand stayed open.

"There you are," she murmured. "I was beginning to think the bell had killed all of you."

Tir looked over from the pot. "Bite him next."

Jiang released her. Shame would have been easier with a human face. An emperor penguin could only flatten his beak against stone and look like he was considering another attack.

Brinn wiped her hand on her coat. She offered it again, slower, then held her fingers clear of the wrap.

"I need that off," she said. "You can bite me, or you can keep the shoulder. Pick one."

Jiang understood every word. She had no reason to know that.

He lifted his head from the cloth.

Brinn cut Hest’s soaked wrist strip away in pieces. The last fold had stuck to Jiang’s open skin. When she pulled it free, his beak struck the floor and a broken claw scored the stone.

Tir put a rolled hide against his breast before the next shiver could throw him sideways. Brinn pressed hot cloth around the wound rather than into it.

Pain traveled down the failed flipper. The limb moved once against her wrist and quit.

"Old wound there," Tir said.

"Several," Brinn answered. "This one was reopened in our water."

"Our water did not ask him to dive."

Jiang raised his beak from the floor.

Tir met his eye. "Fine. The bird disagrees."

Brinn bound the shoulder close to his body, leaving the failed flipper where it naturally rested. She packed the split at the beak with a narrow twist of clean cloth and checked the bad foot without trying to straighten the claw.

Her hands knew pressure wounds and broken divers. They did not know penguins. Twice Jiang pulled away before she bent a joint in the wrong direction. Twice she adjusted instead of insisting.

When the fresh cloth stayed pale, Brinn covered his back with a warmed seal hide.

Jiang hated the weight until the first full shiver finally crossed his breast. Then he pushed his head beneath the edge and discovered he could hate something while crawling deeper into it.

Brinn brought a wooden spoon filled with gray fish mash.

He turned his beak away.

"It is fish," she said.

It was an accusation against fish.

Tir took one of the cavefish from the hanging net and tossed it onto the hide. The little body struck Jiang’s foot, still whole, shining, and blessedly recognizable.

Jiang swallowed it headfirst.

Brinn looked from the empty spoon to Tir. "You could have mentioned that."

"I assumed the woman treating a bell-riding sea bird had a plan."

The second fish hurt going down. The third stayed in his stomach and put a small pocket of warmth under the cold.

Nothing healed. His shoulder throbbed beneath the binding. The bad foot still refused his weight, and each breath tugged at the beak packing. Hunger stopped chewing through him long enough for other pains to become individuals.

A knock sounded beyond the doorway.

Brinn left the spoon where it was.

Three strikes came through the drowned wall. The first two were close together. The third arrived after a pause long enough to feel deliberate.

Tir crossed the room and put his damaged hand against a green-glass pane. "Elen."

Another wall answered with three perfect strikes.

Brinn’s face changed. Her mouth became flat around the old split.

From beyond the first pane came two quick blows and a dragging third.

The second wall repeated the earlier pattern. Three clean strikes, unchanged.

"It still has our return knock," Tir said.

"It has the dead version." Brinn set her bleeding hand against the first pane. "Elen knows we only answer a change."

She knocked twice with her knife hilt, scraped once, then struck low.

The living wall replied with a clumsy variation. The dead wall repeated Brinn’s exact rhythm.

Gredudande had lost its local arm. Its stolen sounds still lived in Tideglass bronze.

Jiang pushed the seal hide off his head.

Behind the fixed knocks, another vibration crossed the warm stone. It was too soft for a hammer and too high for a human hand. The sound broke midway, gathered itself, and changed on the next call.

Jiang knew who made it. The chick.

Jiang planted his good foot. The warm room tipped as he tried to stand. His damaged foot touched stone, folded, and dropped him onto his bound shoulder.

Brinn caught the hide instead of his body. She kept him from rolling while leaving him somewhere to retreat.

The chick called again through the drowned upper throat.

Jiang answered with the contact note he had used beside the male. His cracked beak ruined the ending.

Something above scratched frantically against bronze.

Brinn looked at Tir.

"That was not Elen," she said.

The black water under the green-glass pane rose over the first stair.