Chapter 148: Tideglass Came Up Through the Street

Drowned water slapped Brinn’s face through the new street crack.

Tir struck somewhere below it. Elen answered farther away, and loose stone swallowed half her glass note.

Brinn wanted both sounds on the same side of the floor. Jiang wanted to reach them before Gredudande learned how badly she wanted it.

The human-width rupture could not give them either thing yet.

Its upper mouth opened beside Varn, but the break twisted away under the street. Roots bridged the gap without bearing weight. When Hest lowered one boot onto the nearest, the whole shaft narrowed around his ankle.

"It closes on a load from above," Varn said.

"Then we pull from below," Brinn answered.

"First we put a line below."

Everyone looked toward the surviving spill groove.

It ran beneath Pava’s tilted screen, scarcely wider than Jiang’s shoulders. Bellmaw blood had washed from it, but cold water still passed from Ninebell into the drowned hall. Sound moved through. So could one penguin who had already paid for knowing the bends.

Aylin crouched beside Jiang. Her wrapped palm remained against her own chest.

"Underice Sight is still locked," she said.

Jiang pecked the groove lip.

"Your left flipper still does not work."

He pecked it again.

"Your argument has not improved."

The mother called from the screen.

Her two voices crossed in a beat Jiang could feel through the floor. Beside her, the male added a weaker answer. The chick interrupted both with one impatient note from warm feathers.

None asked Jiang to stay.

Brinn pulled the soaked lace from her shattered mask. Green knots marked the places where Tir had repaired it and Elen had complained about his repairs.

"This reaches me," Brinn said. "They pull it once, I send Varn’s rescue chain. Anything else is a lie."

She looped the lace loosely behind Jiang’s beak. He could release it by opening his mouth.

Pava checked the line beneath his failed-flipper binding. "Bring my patient back before you bring anyone else."

"That appears mathematically difficult," Hest said.

"Then be surprised when he manages it."

Jiang slid into the groove.

Water reached the gaps in his damaged feathers before his feet left stone. Cold touched skin along his breast and bad shoulder. His body should have held a warm layer beneath the outer plumage. Too many broken shafts admitted the current instead.

He pushed before the cold could become a reason to turn.

The sound flipper swept wide. His failed one stayed against his side, forcing every stroke into a slow roll. Jiang used both webbed feet to correct, scraping the backward claw along one wall whenever the current turned him too far.

Dark green closed over his eyes.

Underice Sight waited behind blurred afterimages and pain. Jiang left it there.

He knew the first bend from the stone against his belly. The next dropped beneath a shutter tooth. At the third, the ruined carrier arch had once sent a warm current across his tail.

Only cold came now.

Gredudande called with Brinn’s voice ahead of him.

The copy carried her first instruction exactly. It even wore the anger she had used when Varn questioned the line.

No green lace moved in Jiang’s beak.

He swam past the voice.

The groove opened into the drowned hall under a field of broken mask glass. A pale shaft from the street rupture crossed the water ahead, full of tumbling earth and root splinters.

Tir’s injured hand struck to Jiang’s left.

Elen answered on the right.

Black-green water copied both from below.

Jiang could not sort four directions by melody. He opened his beak and let Brinn’s lace slide across his tongue.

One real pull tightened it.

The motion came from the left, passed Jiang, and continued toward Elen. Tir had found the lace and was carrying it between them.

Jiang followed the living tension.

His breast struck a submerged root. Pain burst through the shoulder wrap. The lace almost left his mouth, but Tir’s hand closed around it before the current took the end.

The Tideglass worker floated beneath a tilted green pane. One hand was wrapped against his chest. His useful arm held the pane above an air pocket barely deep enough for his mouth.

Elen reached them through the rubble with one leg dragging. She had wrapped a strip of her coat around a cut below the knee. Instead of greeting Jiang, she caught the mask lace, inspected Tir’s knot, and retied it.

Tir looked deeply offended.

Even underwater, the expression needed no translation.

Elen pulled the lace once.

Above, Brinn felt the repair travel into her palm.

"Them," she said. "Send the chain."

Three delvers fed a dry rescue chain through Varn’s hands. He did not use the wet source line climbing from the crack. Hest and Valea held the upper mouth apart with crossed iron and a road knife while Pava laid padding where the links would pass over stone.

Brinn tied the chain to the lace.

"This knot is better," she said after it vanished below.

Hest braced beside her. "Family reunion appears healthy."

The chain descended through the street crack and crossed the drowned hall to Jiang. Tir guided it around the leaning green pane. Elen fixed it to a buried mask rack that still held the lower wall.

When she pulled twice, Varn took the weight.

"Lower anchor set," he said.

Tir refused to climb first.

He pushed Elen toward the chain. She struck his wrapped hand, pointed at the water around his mouth, and shoved him back toward it. Their argument used no voice Gredudande could keep.

Jiang settled it by biting Tir’s coat and pulling him toward the first link.

Elen approved with rude enthusiasm.

Tir climbed with the useful hand and both feet while Elen held the lower chain away from the shifting roots. Each time his injured hand struck stone, he stopped, found breath, and chose the next grip himself.

Varn’s delvers pulled only when Tir signaled through the links.

The street rupture tried to close around the first human shoulder. Hest drove one broken bar into the narrowing side. Valea changed the angle of her knife without turning the road. Brinn reached down until Tir’s working hand closed around her wrist.

She hauled him into Ninebell.

For one breath they lay face to face in rainwater and dirt.

Tir tapped her forehead with his bandaged hand.

Brinn hit him back with the mask shard.

Pava dragged both clear before affection became another injury.

Elen took the chain next.

Below her, Jiang held the lower chain against the current with his good foot. The family call reached him through wet stone: mother, father, then chick in the middle where no copy expected it.

He wanted that warm disorder above him.

Elen cleared the last root as the lower mask rack tore from the wall. Varn’s crew took her weight. Hest caught her under the arms, and Brinn kept hold of Tir while catching Elen’s coat with her free hand.

All three Tideglass workers touched the same street.

Jiang released the chain and followed the green lace home.

Cold had reached the skin along his belly. His sound flipper shortened each stroke. At the final bend, the failed side dragged him against the shutter tooth and held him there.

The mother’s call came through the stone above his beak.

Jiang kicked with both feet. The backward claw caught the groove and gave him one ugly purchase. He tore loose, left two black feathers behind, and slid from the spillway onto Pava’s padding.

Aylin caught the lace, not his body. The mother reached over the screen edge and closed her beak around the loose skin at his neck.

She dragged him the last span to the hide.

No System warmth followed. Her breast against his wet back was enough to hurt as feeling returned.

Behind them, the rescue chain pulled upward again.

Tir and Elen were already clear. No delver had signaled.

Black-green wetness climbed link by link against gravity. The callbody had learned the rescue rhythm.

Varn caught his short source chain and stepped into the rupture.

Hest seized the back of his coat. "Everyone is above. So are you."

"The bait is above," Varn said. "The thing returning it is not."

He passed Hest the dry rescue chain and kept the wet line around his bare arm.

Then Varn dropped below the street and drove his hook through the closing root from underneath.

Stone locked across the opening behind him.