Chapter 151: The Wyvern Tried to Eat His Voice

The voice under the wyvern’s breast was Jiang’s.

Her teeth came down on it.

Copper burst across the street as her narrow muzzle struck the broken harness. She missed the largest bell and bit through a smaller one. Its crushed tongue cut her gums. Blood brightened the pale feathers along her jaw.

The wing covering the masked rider drove harder into the cobbles.

Pava dropped beside the trapped woman. "She is breathing. She will not keep doing it with that bone on her chest."

Hest shoved one broken iron bar beneath the wyvern’s wing joint. The other went across his shoulder. He had used those bars to hold Varn’s killer less than a minute ago. Rain still ran through the empty links on his coat.

"Tell me when," he said.

Pava looked at the great wing, the blood beneath it, and Hest’s shaking hands. "When she stops trying to eat herself."

The bell called again.

Jiang heard both parts of his own voice knock against the cracked copper. The beat was exactly the warning he had thrown across the street when the wyvern fell. It carried his raw ending and the tiny break where his beak had hurt.

It was accurate enough to make his skin crawl.

It was also old.

The wyvern twisted for another bite. Her hooked hind claws tore furrows through Ninebell’s street. One talon struck the bronze arch, and the view beyond it jumped from red cliffs to cloud and back.

Valea held her road knife in the threshold with both hands. "Keep her away from this side. The road is already biting through my blade."

That removed the useful direction.

The female emperor had the chick buried under her brood fold. She struck the hide once when the wyvern’s tail swept near them. Beside her, the male heaved against the hide and made it only as far as his breast.

Jiang pressed his shoulder against the male until the trembling body settled.

Then he left the family’s warmth.

His numb leg folded on the first step. He caught himself on his belly, loose shoulder binding dragging through black water. The cold street found every place his damaged coat no longer sealed.

Aylin moved with him. "What did you hear?"

"My last call. Not this one."

He lifted his head and sounded the lower half of his two-voice call. The cracked beak pulled at his throat. Before the second voice joined, he forced its beat wide, then brought it close enough to roughen the ending.

Pain scraped down both sides of his chest.

The homebell answered with the pattern from before he changed it.

The wyvern’s head stopped above Jiang.

Her eyes were not the black of a bird’s. A ring of amber surrounded each narrow pupil, bright with pain and rain. She looked from the small living body on the street to the copper thing beneath her feathers.

Jiang did not know what she understood.

He knew where she bit.

Her jaws closed around the homebell instead of him.

Black-green water squeezed from its crack. The strand leading back to the arch went taut, and the bell slipped between her teeth before she could tear it free.

"Hold her head left," Aylin said.

"She has declined my first management proposal."

"You called from her right. Move."

That was annoyingly better.

Jiang dragged himself across the wyvern’s view. Her head followed the living sound with no obedience in it. She could have bitten him at any point. Instead, she kept one eye on him while she worried the alien voice under her own breast.

Hest pushed up. The wing rose by the width of Pava’s hand.

Pava slid her broken glass screen over the rider’s face and shoulder, protecting both from loose stone. Aylin reached under the screen, found the rider’s neck, then shifted her grip.

"Her mask is hooked into the saddle strap," Aylin said. "If we pull, it takes her throat with it."

"Then do not pull," the rider whispered.

Her mask was woven from copper wire and dark hide. One side had caved against her cheek. Blood ran from beneath it, but the eye still visible went first to the wyvern.

"Mottle," she said. "Down. I am here."

Mottle did not lower her head. She stopped tearing for one breath.

The rider used it.

Her trapped hand crept from beneath the wing and touched two fingers to the pale feathers under Mottle’s jaw. She made a low sound Jiang could not have mistaken for a command. It had too much apology in it.

Mottle’s teeth loosened around the bell.

Pava leaned close to the mask. "Name."

The rider’s answer barely crossed the wire. "Ilex."

"Good. I refuse to lose another person today without knowing what to shout at them."

Something changed behind Ilex’s visible eye. She had not known about Varn, but grief recognized a room where it had already been working.

"Red release," Ilex said. "Under her throat. Turn it down. Do not cut the breast strap."

Aylin found the release first. A braided loop, dark red beneath blood and rain, lay between Mottle’s chest feathers and the cobbles. A standing person could not reach it without putting an arm between the wyvern’s jaws.

Jiang was already at that height.

Aylin saw where he was looking. "No."

"That sounded less like medical advice."

Aylin kept her eyes on him. "It was personal."

Mottle’s head jerked as his copied voice rattled against her breast again. The homebell used the same beat. It had not learned the call he had made afterward.

"Then make the useful part fast," Jiang said.

Aylin pulled a narrow copper tongue from the wreckage and pushed it along the street. It stopped beside his good foot.

"Hook the loop with this. Keep your beak off the metal."

He caught the flat end between the sound edges of his beak. The crack at the tip opened anyway. Warm blood touched his tongue.

Mottle watched him crawl beneath her jaw.

Up close, she smelled of hot feathers, storm rain, and the bitter smoke caught in Ilex’s coat. Each breath moved the whole ruff at her throat. A broken harness buckle had cut a channel along her breast, but the black-green strand remained in the bell, not the wound.

Jiang pushed the copper tongue through the red loop.

His bad leg slid sideways.

Mottle’s jaws opened above his back.

Ilex pressed her fingers into the jaw feathers. "Mottle. Here."

The amber eye shifted toward her.

Jiang rolled his head down.

The release fought him. It had been made for a rider’s gloved hand, not a bleeding beak and one useful foot. He pinned the copper tongue against the stone with his webbing and pulled until the edge cut between his toes.

The buckle turned, and the homebell dropped from Mottle’s breast.

Hest caught it between his two iron bars before it struck the road. The impact drove him to one knee. He made no sound, but the empty chain on his coat slapped the bell hard enough to remind everyone whose weight was gone.

Mottle recoiled from the space where Jiang’s voice had been. Her wing lifted with her body.

Pava and Aylin pulled Ilex clear. Ilex tore the mask loose herself before its broken wire could take her ear. One side of her face was bruised purple, and her left leg lay at an angle that made Pava swear.

Mottle lowered her head over the three women.

Ilex put her palm against the blood on the wyvern’s jaw. "I am still here."

The answer came as a rough vibration through Mottle’s feathered throat. No bell helped her make it.

Jiang backed out from under her, dragging the useless leg. Aylin reached toward his shoulder and stopped before touching. "May I?"

"After the street stops growing teeth."

The black-green strand tightened between Hest’s iron grip and the bronze arch.

Valea’s knife bent.

The homebell rang once.

This time it did not use Jiang’s warning. It used the deep, uneven rhythm Mottle had made when Ilex touched her.

Beyond the arch, a bell answered from the nearest red cliff. Another answered across a chain bridge. Then the sound spread through the foreign sky until every aerie Jiang could see was calling Mottle home.

Ilex pushed onto one elbow despite Pava’s hand on her chest.

"That was our nest-call."

High over the red cliffs, the long scaled shape rolled out of the cloud.

Crushed copper bells shone between its teeth.