Chapter 157: The Nursery Was Too Warm for a Penguin

The water beneath the egg knocked with the hatchling’s rhythm.

The black-feathered mother answered before she saw where the sound came from. Her chest vibrated against the shell. Below her, dark water trembled in the copper channel and returned the same uneven pattern.

Then it returned it again, exactly.

Jiang struck the channel with his beak.

The copper was warm enough to hurt.

He jerked back. A strand no thicker than wet hair slipped through a seam beside the pipe, black at its center and green where the nursery light touched it.

Aylin crouched without putting her hands near the egg. "It is inside the heating line."

Ilex leaned over Mottle’s shoulder to see. "Then we do not cut the line."

Rill had drawn his hook knife already. He stopped with the blade above the copper.

"That feeds six beds," Ilex said. "The storm furnace heats the spine. The channels carry it up. Break this one, and every shell along the lower wall cools."

As if the eggs understood her, one of them scraped from within its shell.

The false rhythm traveled beneath the beds. Three adults turned toward three different pieces of stone.

Mottle put her uninjured shoulder against the hanging bridge and shoved it higher. The effort bowed her front legs. Ilex caught the saddle rail before her bound knee slid into the wyvern’s wounded wing.

"There is an under-run," she said. "Broodkeepers clear feathers from it between clutches."

Slate pointed over the ledge with his chin. "Its outer gate has not opened since the cliff shifted."

"Can one of you fit?" Aylin asked.

Rill gave her a humorless look. He had shoulders wider than Jiang was long.

The vent mouth lay behind the rescued bed, half hidden by warm nesting grass. It was low even for a penguin. Jiang lowered himself and felt air breathe across his beak: hot, damp, and tainted by old metal.

Aylin put two fingers against the loose cloth at his shoulder.

Jiang caught her glove in his beak before she could use the binding as a handle.

"I was checking it."

He held on, keeping the glove pinned between the cracked edges of his beak.

"All right. I was also considering tying something to you."

Jiang released the glove.

Ilex cut a narrow thong from the ruined homebell cradle. Aylin looped it loosely behind Jiang’s good ankle, leaving enough room that it would not bite when his foot spread.

"One pull means stop," she said. "Two means I drag you back."

Jiang pecked twice at the floor, then once.

"You want those reversed?"

He pecked the vent.

"That did not answer the question."

There was no time to invent a language out of floor scratches. Jiang shoved his head into the brood vent and crawled.

Stone closed around his back.

His failed flipper caught at the entrance. He folded it as far as it would go, pushed with the better leg, and scraped through on his belly. Behind him, Aylin fed the thong into the dark.

Warmth soaked through his chest.

For days, cold had lived beneath his feathers where wind and water found the torn coat. Here the stone pressed heat into every gap. His first breath loosened something deep in his body. His fourth came too quickly.

Above him, an egg shifted. The movement traveled through his breastbone as a faint roll, a pause, then a weak scratch.

Farther ahead, bell metal tapped beneath the floor.

Three beats. Pause. Three beats. Pause.

No fatigue. No searching claw. Nothing alive changed its mind so perfectly.

Jiang crawled toward it.

The thong tightened around his ankle.

He stopped. It tightened again.

Aylin was asking whether he was safe. Or ordering him out. Or had merely run out of slack.

Jiang tugged once for more line.

She hauled him backward.

His belly feathers reversed against the stone. The broken edge of his shoulder wrap snagged, and pain flashed down the failed flipper. He jammed both feet against the walls before she could pull him all the way out.

"Jiang?" Her knuckles struck the roof of the vent.

He could hear the fear in her voice. He could not answer it.

He worked one foot free, reached back with his beak, and bit through the thong.

The severed end vanished toward the entrance.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Aylin slid the thong back in with a short wooden toggle tied at its end.

"You hold it," she said. "If you let go, I pull. Nothing else means anything."

Jiang took the toggle in his beak.

It was a better plan because it admitted how little they understood each other.

He crawled on, dragging the loosened shoulder cloth beneath him.

The vent widened beneath the center of the nursery. Copper channels crossed overhead, close enough to graze his crown. Black-green fibers climbed them in wet curls, but the strongest pulse came from below.

Jiang flattened the webbing of his good foot on the stone.

An egg rolled above his left side. The webbing felt its weight wander across the bed and settle.

The false knock struck beneath his right.

He shifted right until his belly rested over a narrow ridge. Heat throbbed through it. Buried under lime and red dust lay a strip of dark yellow metal broader than any pipe.

Jiang scraped it with the side of his beak.

Old hammer marks emerged. Mineral crust filled their edges. The cliff’s warm stone had grown around the strip layer by layer; this was not a piece carried in with Mottle two days ago.

It had been waiting under generations of eggs.

The fibers wound around it tightened.

The metal rang once beneath Jiang’s ribs.

Every false hatch rhythm in the nursery answered.

Outside the vent, wings battered stone. Mottle roared, not in threat but in pain as the bridge chain slipped across her shoulder.

"Open the west throat!" Ilex shouted.

Metal struck metal beyond the cliff. Rill and Slate were working the outer cooling gate from opposite sides.

A breath of mountain air reached Jiang.

He opened his beak around the toggle and panted. The wood nearly fell. His damaged coat held the chamber’s heat against his skin while his body searched for a cold place that did not exist.

Sweat could not save a penguin. Jiang spread his good flipper from his side to bare what skin he could. The other refused to follow, trapping another pocket of heat against the wound.

The black-green fibers moved toward the sudden draft.

Jiang saw the fibers wrapped around the buried bell strip and the copper lever that held the cooling gate open.

He lunged and caught the nearest strand.

It tasted of bitter water and bloodless rot. He braced both feet and tore his head sideways.

Fibers peeled from the lever.

The whole root contracted.

Somewhere below, a gate slammed.

The cool breath vanished. Hot darkness settled over Jiang’s back.

Water rushed through the low run beyond the bell-metal ridge.

Something heavy slid with it. Shell scraped stone, struck once, and broke wider.

Jiang dropped the wooden toggle.

Aylin began pulling the line.

He did not follow.

From under the fallen stone came a thin, wet breath.

Then a hatchling coughed in the dark.