Chapter 156: The First Egg Knocked Back

The nursery wall knocked three times.

Every adult wyvern in the nearest chamber turned away from its eggs.

Through the bronze arch, Jiang saw scaled tails and folded wings crowd toward blank red stone. A black-feathered parent struck the wall with her muzzle. Again, the fixed rhythm sounded from deeper inside it, clean and patient.

Behind her, one egg moved.

Its feather bed had slipped sideways on a hanging shelf. The shell’s weight carried it into the sagging rim, where it stopped and knocked once against the wood. Neither parent heard it over the stone.

Rill appeared on the far side of the arch with Slate’s hook chain around his waist. "The nursery shelf is going. If the adults hit that wall again, the lower bridge comes with it."

Jiang tried to tell him which sound was alive.

Air scraped through his throat. Nothing else came.

Aylin’s face tightened, but she did not finish the thought for him. "Show me."

Jiang pecked the street twice at the same interval, paused, and repeated it without change. Then he knocked once, dragged his beak, and let the second tap arrive late.

Aylin looked from the blank wall to the moving shell. "The wall is answering the egg?"

Jiang struck her boot with the flat of his beak. He hated how easily silence turned a clear thought into someone else’s almost-right answer.

He repeated the fixed knocks, then scraped a hard line through them. For the egg, he tapped once and let his bad foot slide before the answer.

Ilex watched from Mottle’s saddle. Her splinted leg remained bound to the rail, and half her weight rested across the uninjured side of the wyvern’s neck.

"Stone repeats without changing," she said. "The egg cannot."

Jiang struck the uneven pattern again.

Ilex looked through the arch at the rolling shell. "The bed has trapped its lower side. The hatchling cannot turn to break the wide end."

Mottle gathered both hind legs beneath her and rose.

Fresh blood marked the missing feather in her folded wing. She could not fly back to the nursery, but the arch opened onto a chain shelf broad enough for her feet.

Valea held her bent knife in the lower hinge. "One body at a time. The upper frame is no longer interested in promises."

Mottle entered first, both wings folded tight against her body. Her shoulders brushed the bronze frame. Ilex kept the injured leg above the edge while Rill pulled the front of the saddle from the far side.

Bronze scraped across Mottle’s wounded wing.

Mottle stopped with bronze pressed beside the wing wound.

No rider pressure moved her. Ilex put one hand against the throat feathers and waited. Mottle lowered her body, shifted the wing herself, and stepped into the Red Aeries.

Jiang went under the place her belly had cleared.

The emperor chick called behind him from the fallen hide. Jiang lifted his beak and gave it air. Beside the chick, the female answered the empty sound without leaving the male, roughening her second voice around the smaller call.

Jiang looked back once. He could not promise a return they would hear. He put his good foot against the lower frame and crossed anyway.

Aylin followed on hands and knees. When the frame lowered toward Jiang’s damaged coat, she caught the bronze with her sound shoulder rather than grabbing him. He slid past her on his belly. Valea and Hest held the opening behind them with one bent knife and one iron bar.

Nursery heat struck harder than the wind.

Warm air came from cracks beneath the shell beds, carrying feather dust, wet stone, old copper, and the animal smell of crowded nests. Jiang’s cold body welcomed it for half a breath. Then heat found the gaps in his ruined oilcoat and stayed there.

Blank stone knocked again.

Two more parents left their beds.

Mottle planted herself across the chamber mouth. She did not threaten them with teeth. Her grounded body made the narrow entrance smaller, forcing each adult to slow and choose whether to push an injured wyvern aside.

One adult stopped short of Mottle’s wounded side.

Another climbed the wall above her.

Rill swung his hook into the bridge chain before the added weight could tear it loose. Slate braced from the outer ledge with both hind feet. Ilex cut the empty homebell cradle from Mottle’s harness and threw the broad leather beneath the tilting egg shelf.

"Get the bed onto that," she said.

Aylin reached the shelf first. Black feathers flashed as the parent snapped at her hand.

She withdrew it before the teeth closed. "I am not touching your egg."

Words meant nothing to the parent. She understood the empty hands and the moving shell behind her.

From the bed, the egg knocked once more.

Its real parent turned halfway, but the stone produced the perfect three beats again. Her head swung back toward the false sound.

Jiang crawled beneath the shelf.

Only warm air and falling shell chips normally used that narrow space. His belly scraped nesting grass. The tilted frame pressed against his failed flipper, and the egg’s weight came through the board above his spine.

A clump of wet feathers had twisted around the lower roller.

Each time the hatchling pushed, the roller caught and returned the shell to the same bad angle. Jiang could not lift the egg. He could reach the thing preventing it from moving.

He hooked the wet feathers with his beak and pulled.

His cracked tip slipped. Blood touched the nesting grass.

Jiang pinned the clump with his good foot, turned his head, and tore it sideways. Wet fibers snapped away from the roller.

Above him, the egg shifted.

It rolled away from the sagging rim, bumped the wide end of the shelf, and knocked twice in quick succession. A pause followed. The shell moved under its own weight and scratched once from inside.

Black feathers swept away from the wall.

She crossed the chamber in two strides, put her muzzle against the wide end, and answered with a rough throat vibration. Her gray mate left the false rhythm after her. Together they steadied the shell between their chests.

Jiang had shown them movement. Both living parents chose their egg.

Above Mottle, the climbing adult struck blank stone with both hind claws.

Red stone broke around her feet.

Half the lower bridge dropped.

Mottle caught its first chain across her uninjured shoulder. Rill’s hook took the second. Slate pulled from the ledge while Ilex used both saddle rails to keep her bound knee from twisting.

Ilex’s broad leather caught the tilting egg shelf and kept the shell from rolling.

Aylin reached under it and dragged Jiang out by the strip of loose shoulder binding after he caught the cloth in his beak. She released as soon as his body cleared.

His feet folded beneath him.

Ilex tore open a hatch-feed pouch with her hook knife. Small silver rainfish spilled across the warm floor. Aylin pushed one against Jiang’s beak.

He shook his head once and looked toward Mottle under the bridge.

Aylin pushed the fish back. "She needs the penguin who can still stand."

That was an ambitious description of his condition.

Jiang swallowed the rainfish.

Cold flesh hit an empty stomach. No System notice gave him heat, healing, or congratulation. His body simply stopped shaking hard enough to blur the floor.

Under the rescued egg bed, the warm stone cracked.

Black-green water climbed through old copper and began tapping against the shell from below.