Chapter 137: It Followed the Air They Gave It

Brinn tore the mask from her neck before the Bellmaw could reach it.

She set the green glass facedown on bronze and knelt over it. The chamber’s air remained trapped beneath the cup. At once, the pale mouth plates below the drain stopped opening.

"It felt that," Aylin said.

"It feels every pocket that moves against water." Brinn kept one palm on the mask. "Bells. Cups. A diver swallowing panic."

The Bellmaw circled beneath Ninebell.

Its body blotted one pane, then another. Water drew through the drain whenever it passed. The forked brace ground inside the feeding-notch crack but remained seated.

Valea held the exposed end with her forearm. "How long before it chooses the room instead?"

"It already chose us."

Kedra looked at the loose drain stone. "We close the throat."

Brinn’s head came up. "Tir and Elen are under it."

"So is the thing trying to eat our air."

"Close that stone and the crushed bell falls across their only climb."

Kedra did not retreat from the answer. "Leave it open and the young one gets the same mouth."

The unnamed male heard the argument as threat, not language. He tightened around the chick. The returning female hammered the outer notch once and waited with her fish.

The chick answered the smell of silver flesh with a thin, hungry rasp. One small beak appeared beneath the male’s breast, then vanished when the Bellmaw pulled another mouthful of water through the drain. The female did not drop her catch. She kept it crosswise and called again, asking for a door that Ninebell could not safely give her.

Jiang stared at Brinn’s mask.

The Bellmaw had released the carrier bell when its air emptied. It had turned toward the next intact pocket before Brinn trapped that air against the floor.

They did not need to choose whose air the predator found.

They could give it another.

Jiang crawled to Pava’s open satchel and pecked the stopper of a flattened leather water skin.

Pava moved it away from him. "That is for clean water."

He pecked Brinn’s mask, then the skin, then pointed his beak toward the drain.

Brinn understood first. "Fill it with air. Pull it into the dead east arch."

Varn looked down the chain. "The east shutter still moves?"

"It moved when I left it. Tideglass has survived on worse assurances."

Aylin watched Jiang place his good foot on the drain rim. "The skin cannot steer itself."

He met her gaze and tapped the leather with his beak. Then he touched the line around his body. He could not explain that one wounded penguin in the water was a smaller risk than the entire rookery waiting for that mouth to climb. He could only make the choice visible.

Her hands closed around the bell rib she was using to protect the silver line. "Of course not."

Pava lifted the packing at Jiang’s beak. Fresh red had reached one edge. She replaced the wet twist, pressed clean cloth at his shoulder, and checked the failed flipper where the wrap crossed it.

Her fingers stayed at the knot longer than the repair required. Jiang felt the tremor once. By the time she drew back, her hand was steady again.

"A short immersion," she said. "If he loses the line, Brinn brings him back before the lure. If Brinn loses him, I will learn whether Tideglass masks survive being hammered flat."

Brinn considered her green glass. "They do not."

"Good. We understand each other."

Hest warmed the empty skin between two stones before trapping chamber air inside it. The leather swelled to the size of Jiang’s breast. Varn tied it to the torn edge of his missing sleeve, then knotted the cloth to a spare line around the floor ring.

The lure looked insulting.

Jiang hoped the Bellmaw had poor self-respect.

Brinn lifted her mask from the floor, spilled its trapped air, and fitted the glass over her face. The Bellmaw turned at the burst of bubbles beneath the drain.

"Take it now," she said.

Hest opened the throat with the broken bell rib.

Brinn entered feet first. Jiang followed before the draw could turn him sideways. The leather skin came behind them on Varn’s cloth, pressed flat against the upper arch to keep its air from escaping.

Cold found Jiang through every damaged feather. Water carried his bad foot without forgiving the claw. He managed the bend on one flipper; the bound one opened late and dragged him toward Brinn’s hip.

Nothing inside him answered the water. No borrowed sense reached beyond the green murk, and no sudden strength entered his useless shoulder. Brinn’s hand, the pull of his line, and the pressure against his beak were all he had. For once, that had to be enough.

She corrected him with one hand and kept the mask cup sealed with the other.

Below, the crushed carrier bell hung crooked against the throat. Its green ribs had folded around empty space. Brinn kicked it aside, and the metal rolled far enough to expose the drowned hall.

Two figures waited behind the nearest pane.

Tir had a fresh strip around his knuckle. Elen wore a repaired mask made from mismatched green pieces. Both struck the glass when Brinn appeared.

Jiang saw relief change their bodies before any knock reached him.

Elen pressed two fingers to her mask, then pointed up toward the feeding notch. She had not forgotten why Brinn had come down. Tir answered by showing the line already looped at his waist. They had spent their wait preparing to help people they could not reach.

The Bellmaw arrived behind the carrier frame.

Its mouth opened wider than the lower arch. Blunt plates flexed apart. Water rushed toward the circle, taking broken bronze and silt with it.

Jiang flattened his body and let the first draw pull him beneath the carrier rim. Brinn seized a diver hold. The leather skin beat against stone above them, still carrying Ninebell air.

Tir pointed toward a side opening hidden behind the collapsed stair. Elen had already wrapped both hands around a green shutter lever.

Brinn struck the pane twice, scraped once, then pointed at the skin.

Tir answered with his uneven hand and pulled the spare line through a wall ring inside the east arch.

The lure began moving sideways.

The Bellmaw changed with it.

Its mouth left the crushed carrier bell and followed the warm skin across the hall. No call turned it. No person controlled its body. Moving air passed behind the east arch, and a hunter followed prey shaped like breath.

Jiang kicked after the lure to keep its line clear of a broken bell rib. The current helped until the Bellmaw’s draw caught his tail.

His body accelerated backward.

Brinn released the hold and caught his safety loop. Her mask struck the wall. A thin stream of bubbles escaped from one edge.

The Bellmaw turned toward her.

Jiang seized the leather skin’s cloth with his beak and tore it from the snagged rib. The lure shot into the east arch. Its warmer, fuller pocket crossed in front of Brinn’s leaking mask.

The pale plates followed the skin.

Tir pulled from inside the side chamber. Elen leaned on the shutter lever with her whole body. The Bellmaw drove half its head through the arch before the green metal began to close.

Brinn hauled Jiang toward the carrier throat.

They reached the upward current as the shutter struck the Bellmaw behind its mouth. Tir and Elen released the lure line and threw themselves against the lever together.

The green shutter closed.

The leather skin vanished on the other side with the predator.

Tir braced the lever with one shoulder. Elen kept both hands on it and looked through the pane at Brinn. None of them mistook a closed door for a finished hunt.

Jiang and Brinn climbed through the open drain without the Bellmaw beneath them. Pava caught the hide under Jiang’s breast. Aylin pulled Brinn by the wrist while keeping her other hand on the two-moon rib.

For one breath, no water moved under Ninebell.

Then a circular dent pushed out of the green shutter below.

Pale mouth plates appeared between the splitting seams.