Chapter 158: The Hatchling Breathed Under Stone

The hatchling coughed again.

Water covered the sound before Jiang could find it.

He shoved his beak into the crack beyond the buried bell strip. A low run opened under the stone, black water filling it faster than it could spill through the choked drain. Broken eggshell turned slowly in the current.

Something small kicked beneath it.

Jiang dropped from the vent.

Water took him sideways before his feet found the floor.

His failed flipper folded uselessly against his body. The other struck once, too hard, and spun him toward the wall. He caught red stone with his good foot before the current could drive his cracked beak into it.

This was water. His body knew it, even when half of that body refused to help.

Jiang pushed with both feet and let the current carry his belly low. He used the working flipper to correct rather than fight. The black-green flow rolled him once, scraped his bad shoulder along the floor, and delivered him beside the shell.

At the shell’s broad end, the hatchling had broken into the flooded dark.

Wet gray down clung to its narrow head. One foreclaw was free; the other remained caught in a white inner membrane. A soft beak opened under the shell rim and drew water instead of air.

Jiang wedged his crown beneath the rim and lifted.

Jiang raised the shell. A raw whistle came from the hatchling’s first clean breath.

Then it bit him.

Tiny teeth closed on the skin beside his beak fracture. Jiang recoiled, and the shell dropped between them. He tasted his own blood in the water.

Above the run, claws hammered the nursery floor.

A rust-throated wyvern with one horn worn blunt had followed the cough. Jiang saw one amber eye through a crack as she tore at the stone. Her next strike shifted the slab over the hatchling.

Mottle hit her from the side.

Neither wyvern fell from the impact. It turned the parent’s claws away from the weak center. Mottle planted her feet, pressed her chest against the frantic adult, and held while Ilex shouted from the saddle.

"The roof will crush the run! Lift at the edge or leave it!"

The parent snapped at Mottle’s throat.

Mottle did not answer with teeth. She leaned harder, wounded wing trembling against her ribs.

Aylin’s face appeared through the vent Jiang had left. "I cannot see him."

She pushed the empty extraction line into the water. Its wooden toggle bobbed past Jiang and vanished down the drain.

"Jiang, touch the line if you can."

He could touch it or keep the hatchling’s beak above water. He planted his feet and lifted the shell again.

Jiang felt the hatchling wake fighting.

Its free claw raked Jiang’s crown. It twisted away from his white breast and tried to climb the current by itself. The membrane held its other leg. Water rolled over its nostrils.

Jiang did not pin it.

He moved downstream instead, setting his broad body across the narrow run. Water struck his back and broke around him. In the quieter pocket between his breast and the shell, the hatchling found the floor with its free claw.

It bit at him again.

Jiang stayed where he was.

Its bite missed. The hatchling stretched its neck into the air pocket his body had made and breathed.

Jiang remembered the emperor chick tucked beneath its mother’s brood fold, answering the empty shape of his voice. The memory made him want to seize this hatchling and force its head higher. He kept his beak away. Fear did not become trust because the rescuer meant well.

"There," Ilex called from above. "I heard it. Mottle, left edge. Rill, give her the bridge chain."

Iron dragged across stone.

Jiang could not see their hands or claws, but he felt the chain take weight through the roof. Dust rained into the run. The rust-throated parent crooned once, stopped, and changed the note when the hatchling scratched.

Against Jiang’s breast, the hatchling froze.

From the cliff came a perfect copy of the first note.

Its mother changed again.

This time the hatchling scratched toward her.

Mottle lowered her head beneath the chain and heaved.

The roof lifted at one corner. A blade of warm nursery light reached the water. Aylin drove Ilex’s hook knife into the opening and used the flat to keep it from closing.

"I have the shell," she said. "I do not have the leg."

"Do not pull the membrane," Ilex told her. "Wet it and open it along the tear."

Aylin dipped two fingers through the crack. The hatchling snapped at them.

"That part appears healthy."

Jiang pushed the shell toward her hand.

Aylin caught its broken edge and held it out of the current. With her other hand, she followed the wet membrane until she found the tear the hatchling had already made. She widened that tear with her thumb.

The trapped foreclaw came free.

The hatchling scrambled over Jiang.

Every claw found a different injury. It crossed his bad shoulder, kicked the cracked edge of his beak, and planted both hind feet in the damaged molt above his brood patch.

Jiang sank under its weight.

Cold water closed over his eyes. His working flipper struck empty current. For one hard beat, the white glare returned across his vision.

The hatchling could have climbed toward the light.

Instead, it turned back and caught one foreclaw in his loosened shoulder wrapping.

Jiang rose with it clinging to him.

Aylin caught the cloth above the claw. Mottle held the slab while the bridge chain creaked around her uninjured shoulder. Together they lifted hatchling and penguin through the break.

The rust-throated parent lunged.

Ilex dropped the hook knife and put both empty hands against Mottle’s saddle rail. Aylin set the hatchling on warm stone and withdrew.

The mother lowered her blunt horn to the wet gray bundle.

The hatchling sneezed black water into her nostril.

Her wings sagged with such visible relief that Rill laughed once from the chain. Even Ilex’s mouth bent before pain pulled it tight again.

The hatchling did not climb to its mother yet. Its wet down had lost all lift, and mountain air poured through the broken cooling throat. It stumbled back to the nearest warmth it recognized and pressed its narrow chest against Jiang’s bare brood patch.

Jiang wanted the contact. That did not make it a bond.

No light marked the hatchling. No notice claimed it. The small body simply shook against his, and Jiang held still enough to let it choose.

Aylin wrapped both of them in dry nesting feathers without closing the space to the mother. Ilex pushed another silver rainfish across the floor.

"Eat before she mistakes you for hatch feed," she said.

Jiang swallowed the fish while the hatchling watched with unreasonable interest.

Warm stone worked slowly through his wet belly. The water had taken the worst of the vent heat, but now it found every split in his coat and turned cold there. His shoulder still burned. His throat remained empty. Nothing inside him had returned except the ability to stop panting.

Beneath the nesting feathers, the bell-metal spine tightened.

Three occupied shell beds lurched toward the same crack.