Chapter 152: All the Red Cliffs Answered

The nearest chain bridge buckled before the last aerie finished answering.

The scaled creature struck it from below. Cloud rolled away from a back longer than Ninebell’s smithing street, exposing black fins and a pale line of old scars. The bridge wrapped around its neck. It carried the torn links upward as if they weighed no more than rain.

People ran from both cliff ends.

Their bells kept calling Mottle home.

Jiang wanted the sound dead before the creature found the emperor family behind the fallen hide. Hest’s bars were the only reason the homebell had not already rolled back into the arch.

"Muffle that," Ilex said.

Hest had the homebell pinned between his broken iron bars. Every pull from the black-green strand dragged the copper across the cobbles and drove the lower bar against his thigh.

"I am accepting suggestions from people who can stand," he said.

Ilex tried. Her left leg remained caught through a bent saddle guard, and the attempt folded her back onto Pava’s glass screen.

"I withdraw the condition," Hest said.

Pava cut the leather joining the guard to Ilex’s boot. Aylin held Ilex above the knee after asking once and receiving a bite of a nod.

When the twisted metal came free, the leg returned to a human angle, but the knee swelled under Ilex’s trousers before either healer touched it.

"Not broken," Aylin said.

Pava pressed along the outside of the joint. Ilex swore at the fourth place.

"That is not the same as useful," Pava said. "You may choose to ruin it after I bind it."

Mottle pushed her muzzle between them and smelled Ilex’s hair, mouth, and wounded leg. The copper cut along her gums still bled. Pava raised one wet hand where the wyvern could see it, then waited.

Ilex touched the feathers beneath Mottle’s eye. "Her mouth first."

"Your knee first. She can throw me farther."

Mottle’s throat vibrated.

"That was agreement," Jiang said.

Ilex looked at the soaked penguin beside her. "You understand her?"

"No. I understand Pava. Most injured creatures eventually decide she is easier to obey."

"I heard that," Pava said.

She bound Ilex’s knee to a narrow splint taken from the ruined mask. Aylin cleaned Mottle’s jaw while Ilex kept one hand in the pale throat feathers. Mottle chose to remain. That choice did more than any rope in the street could have done.

The homebell rang again.

This answer began with Mottle’s low contact rhythm. Jiang’s stolen call rose beneath it, two rough voices forcing one cracked copper mouth beyond what its broken rim could carry.

The bellwyrm turned toward the arch.

"It hunts sustained bell sound," Ilex said. "Homebells tell the aeries which pair is lost. Enough answers show the thing where the nests are."

"And your people answered every nest at once," Valea said.

"Because this bell used Mottle’s living rhythm. It should not be able to."

Valea’s bent knife scraped deeper into the bronze threshold. "Neither should the road. We have had an educational day."

A dark wyvern dropped onto the arch’s outer lip.

It did not try to force its body through. The rider left the saddle in mid-stride, caught the lowest crossbar of the road with a hooked chain, and swung into Ninebell.

A broad chopping blade rode flat against his spine. The black links stitched across his coat formed a wing with no feathers.

Ilex reached for a knife she no longer wore. "Rill, don’t cut it."

Rill saw her leg, Mottle’s blood, and the strand running from Hest’s bell into the road. His hand went to the chopping blade anyway.

"The west chain is gone," he said. "That call is drawing the bellwyrm at the nursery. We sever this road now."

Valea pulled her knife from the threshold and put herself in front of him. "You sever my arch while that thread is inside it, the cut carries into every wet piece of bronze behind me."

Rill looked past her at Ninebell’s broken gutters, fallen bells, and rain channels. There was enough metal around them to give the thread a city.

"Then throw the homebell through," he said.

"It follows the bell," Ilex answered. "You would feed it back to the aeries."

Rill’s jaw worked. Beyond him, his dark wyvern screamed as the bellwyrm rolled under another bridge.

"Slate will not hold that opening alone."

Ilex kept her hand in Mottle’s throat feathers. "Mottle cannot fly."

At her name, Mottle lifted the injured wing. The outer feathers opened, shivered under their own weight, and folded before the joint reached level. Ilex’s fingers tightened in the ruff.

"She decides that," Ilex said. "After we give her a choice that is not pain or teeth."

The argument ended when Hest’s lower bar slipped.

The homebell struck stone. Its cracked rim opened around the clapper, and black-green fibers spread through the gap like wet hair.

Every distant answer grew louder.

Jiang could hear honest bells among them. Their rhythms varied with wind, frightened hands, moving wings, and the spaces between cliffs. The sound under Hest’s bars never stumbled unless the copper itself struck stone.

It had no body to interrupt it.

"Wood in the mouth," Jiang said. "Iron on the tongue."

Hest understood. He rolled the bell onto its side while Kedra kicked a split raker board toward him. Rill abandoned his chopping blade long enough to drive the board across the open rim.

Wood took the next strike instead of copper.

Jiang’s voices still came from the bell.

Black-green fibers pulled sound through the crack, vibrating the two broken edges against each other. Silencing the clapper had removed the part made by human hands. The borrowed call continued in the wound.

Jiang’s throat already felt flayed. He was afraid of meeting those teeth with no voice left. He was more afraid of hearing the chick’s call from inside them.

He could let the copy keep the last beat and draw the bellwyrm into Ninebell, or spend the voice he might need when its teeth arrived.

He looked at the female emperor. Her body covered the chick and half the male. She had moved them behind the fallen hide without waiting for him to solve the street.

Jiang raised his beak into the rain.

The first part of his call stayed low. He drove the second across it, held the rough beat until the bell took hold, then shortened his final pulse.

The bell repeated the longer ending.

Its cracked rim fought two timings. Black-green fibers tightened across the copper, each one visible for the first time.

The word scraped out of Jiang’s throat. "Now."

Ilex reached from Pava’s screen with the hook at the end of Rill’s chain. She caught the thickest fiber and pulled it over the wooden board. Rill struck the stretched strand with the back of his chopping blade.

The blunt iron broke only the stretched braid. The bronze arch remained whole.

The black-green braid snapped away from the clapper.

The homebell became ordinary copper in Hest’s bars. Its next movement produced one ugly knock and nothing more.

Across the road, the answering cliffs began to fall quiet.

The bellwyrm reached them before the final aerie stopped.

Its snout filled the arch. Rain and cloud came with it, carrying the smell of stone struck by lightning and meat left inside metal. The mouth opened around Valea, Rill, and the bent threshold.

Hest dragged the dead homebell clear. Valea flattened beneath one jaw. Rill drove his hook into the arch and let the chain take his weight as teeth crossed the place his chest had been.

The snapped black-green braid whipped toward the nearest copper it could reach.

It entered a crushed bell wedged between the creature’s teeth.

Jiang’s old, longer call rang from inside the bellwyrm’s jaw.