Chapter 154: Penguins Are Not Built for Saddles

Mottle offered Jiang her shoulder while blood ran down it.

He hated the answer that deserved.

"I can find the false bell," he said.

Ilex pulled herself upright against Pava’s screen. "Then we fly close enough for you to change it."

Pava tapped the splint. "That knee cannot hold a saddle."

"It does not have to. Mottle holds the saddle."

"That sentence explains the condition of both of you."

Mottle stepped over Ilex and lowered until the saddle’s near side touched stone. Her wounded wing stayed tight against her body. The uninjured wing opened enough to shelter Ilex from the arch rain.

Ilex laid her hand flat on the scarred leather. "One flight. Then you choose the ground."

Mottle answered through her throat and remained down.

Pava bound Ilex’s splinted leg along the saddle rail with a broad strip that could be pulled free from above. Rill tested the waist grips, the remaining breast strap, and every buckle the crash had spared. He left the empty place where Mottle’s homebell had hung untouched.

"She needs the cliff drop," he said. "That wing will not lift her from a street."

Beyond the arch, Slate circled below the threshold. The bellwyrm had already crossed half the distance to the nursery cliffs. Jiang’s stolen call reached them whenever the creature rolled in cloud.

Valea leaned her weight against the narrowing frame. "I can give you one clean crossing out. The road decides whether you get one back."

"That is almost encouraging," Jiang said.

"Ninebell uses encouragement on people with better plans."

Aylin recovered the red release strap from the smithing gutter. She washed grit from it in the rain, then threaded it between the low bars at the front of Ilex’s saddle.

The wide middle became a cradle against Mottle’s back, just deep enough to keep a penguin’s belly from rolling sideways.

She put no leather across Jiang’s throat or injured shoulder. His good foot rested against one saddle post. The bad leg lay along Mottle’s feathers without bearing weight. One bite on the loop beside his beak would drop the cradle open.

"Test it," Aylin said.

Jiang pulled the loop. The red strap fell away from his breast and left every feather with him.

Aylin reset the cradle without taking her eyes off the knots. "Again."

He released it a second time.

Her hands stopped beneath his body when she lifted him toward Mottle. For one breath, Jiang felt the tremor she had hidden while tying every knot.

"I still dislike this personally," she said.

"You can explain the full list when I come back."

"Do not turn hope into a contract."

"I am turning it into motivation."

She looked as if she wanted to argue and had found nothing worth wasting the remaining road on. Her thumb touched the clean feathers below his beak. Jiang leaned into it before pride could make the decision worse.

Then Aylin placed him in the cradle.

The female emperor called from behind the fallen hide.

Her first voice carried steady through Ninebell’s broken street. The second roughened around the chick’s small answer. Beside them, the male lifted his beak from the hide and gave the broken pause that still belonged to him.

Jiang answered with the ordinary beat they knew.

The family did not grant permission. They told him where living voices waited.

Ilex settled behind him. With one knee bound straight, she used her sound leg and both hands to give Mottle the familiar pressure for rising.

Mottle gathered her legs beneath the saddle and stood.

Jiang’s cradle remained close to her feathers. Warmth moved under his belly, stronger than the thin heat his damaged coat could keep. He had spent days wanting warmth without a price. Naturally, the useful supply came attached to a cliff.

"When she jumps," Ilex said, "stay low."

"My entire species has prepared me to stay low."

Mottle ran at the arch.

Valea twisted her bent knife. Bronze opened around the injured wing by less than a hand on either side. Mottle folded both wings, crossed the threshold on her hind legs, and found no street beyond it.

She fell into the Red Aeries.

Jiang’s stomach stayed above the cliff.

The rest of him went with Mottle.

Air tore beneath his feathers where water should have supported them. His damaged outer coat lifted in separate patches, letting cold reach the down below. Both webbed feet kicked for a surface that had ceased to exist.

Ilex pressed herself over the saddle rail. "Low."

"I am working through a disagreement with gravity."

Mottle opened the uninjured wing.

The wounded one followed late. Its outer feathers shook, then caught enough air to turn the fall into a slant. Mottle skimmed past a red cliff face close enough for Jiang to see pale nesting grass packed into cracks.

He stopped trying to grip the narrow saddle bars. A penguin foot spread for ice and water, not leather no thicker than a human wrist. He tucked both feet behind him, put his rigid breast into the cradle, and flattened his head into Mottle’s neck feathers.

The posture belonged to a dive.

It also stopped him rolling every time she banked.

Ilex leaned over him. "Better."

"Please sound more surprised."

Slate rose beside them with Rill bent over the dark wyvern’s neck. Three other Chainwing pairs came off the hanging bridges. None waited for a formation call.

One rider cut a loose bridge end before it struck a nest. Another dropped beneath the bellwyrm and used a hooked chain to turn its head from the closest aerie.

Names had been painted along their saddle rails. Feathers, repairs, and old bite marks made every partnership different.

The guild was not a row of matching weapons.

It was people and wyverns trusting that the others would see the same falling body.

The bellwyrm rolled under them.

Crushed bells moved along its jaw with each bend of the long skull. Mottle’s swallowed homebell sounded somewhere deeper, a dull copper note surrounded by flesh. Jiang’s stolen call came from higher and farther forward.

Cloud swallowed the head.

His blurred sight filled with pale afterimages. Underice Sight stayed locked, and no helpful line showed him where the black-green strand had gone. He closed his eyes before false edges could make him choose the wrong tooth.

The copied call remained.

Jiang took one breath that hurt and changed the beat between his voices.

The lower part held. He drew the other away for a pulse, then brought it back with a short ending.

Something tore in his throat.

His sound thinned before he finished.

Inside the cloud, the infected bell answered with the old longer ending.

Black-green light showed through one gap in the bellwyrm’s forward teeth. The strand had wrapped around a jaw scale and entered the crushed bell through its split crown.

Jiang opened his eyes. "Front left. Pale tooth."

Ilex saw it when the creature broke from cloud.

She released a short jaw hook from Mottle’s saddle and swung it once. The hook caught the bell’s split crown. Rill and Slate crossed above them, taking the returning line over Slate’s rear saddle post.

For half a breath, two wyverns held the infected bell between them.

The bellwyrm folded its black fins and dived.

The line snapped tight. Mottle’s wounded wing opened against the pull, and one long flight feather tore free at the root.

Mottle dropped on that side.

Ilex screamed her name. Rill cut his angle toward them. The jaw hook dragged across Mottle’s saddle, caught the red cradle strap, and ripped it out from beneath Jiang’s breast.

He fell past Mottle’s flank.

The backward claw on his bad foot caught the lowest saddle loop.

Pain shot through the numb leg hard enough to give it feeling again.

Above him, Mottle fought for lift with blood moving through the gap in her wing. Below, the bellwyrm carried the nursery call into cloud.

Jiang hung between them by the one part of his foot that had always pointed the wrong way.