Chapter 159: Mottle Chose the Egg That Moved

Three egg beds moved at once.

Their parents moved faster.

Wings struck walls. Claws tore nesting grass from the floor. The rescued hatchling vanished beneath its rust-throated mother’s chest while the hanging beds slid toward the crack, each shell rocking inside a rim of wood and feathers.

From every bed came the sound of a hatchling trying to break free.

Too loud. Too even. Too many.

Jiang wanted every parent here to keep the choice his emperor family still possessed: answer a living body, or refuse a copy. He needed the beds off the buried metal before the root turned that love into leverage.

Mottle left the bridge chain on her shoulder and limped into the crush.

The black-feathered mother snapped at her. A blue-backed father climbed over the next bed with both wings open. At the highest shelf, a pale wyvern stood alone and called to a shell that answered from somewhere beneath the floor.

No second parent guarded the other side. A frayed flight thong hung from the empty perch, cut rather than unbuckled. The pale wyvern kept shifting across both places, trying to be two bodies whenever the egg moved.

Mottle ignored all three answers.

Chainwing hunters reached the nursery through the upper storm door. The first wyvern landed on the wall rather than the damaged bridge. Her rider came down with a short maul already raised over the nearest copper support.

"Ringing line!" he shouted. "Break it clear!"

Ilex threw the empty rainfish pouch at his face.

It lacked dignity, but it corrected his aim.

Warm stone broke beside the copper when the maul landed. A crack ran under the black-feathered mother’s egg.

"That line is carrying the beds," Ilex said. "Hit it again and you hatch six eggs with a hammer."

Above his weapon, the shell shifted, and the hunter stared.

"Put the maul under the shelf," Aylin told him. "Become useful."

He obeyed, sliding the maul head beneath the sagging shelf.

Jiang struggled out of the nesting feathers. Water dripped from his damaged coat. The small gray hatchling had crawled after him, stopped when he moved too close, then followed again when a false call sounded beneath its feet.

The rust-throated mother barred the space between them with her worn horn.

Jiang stepped back until the mother’s horn no longer touched his breast.

On her side of the horn, the hatchling remained. When the floor knocked, it put one foreclaw on Jiang’s foot.

That was its decision too.

Above them, Mottle reached the loudest shell.

Perfect blows shook the bed from inside. Its blue-backed parent struck the rim in answer, and the sound below copied him before his claw left the wood.

Mottle passed it without answering the perfect sound.

Her wounded wing dragged across the shelf rim. Fresh blood darkened the place where the long feather had torn out, and the crowd forced her to turn that side toward teeth. She could not outshout the buried bells. She could still put her own face beside a shell and wait for life to answer badly.

She stopped at the pale parent’s bed, where the shell had gone quiet.

At Mottle’s approach, the lone wyvern screamed.

Mottle lowered her muzzle until one nostril touched the shell. Nothing answered. She waited while the floor rang and the other adults shoved around her.

The pale parent pressed the side of his face against the shell.

Something inside shifted toward the warmth.

It did not knock. It dragged one weak claw across the inner wall, following the parent’s changing touch.

Mottle struck the bed once with the soft side of her muzzle and stepped back.

The pale wyvern gathered the shell between his forelegs.

Across the nursery, the black-feathered mother watched him choose weight over sound. She put her chest against her own egg. Her gray mate tore the feather pad from its sliding rail, and together they rolled the shell onto it.

The blue-backed pair stopped answering the perfect blows. One parent held their shell while the other ripped loose a wooden rest.

Nobody commanded them. Mottle had chosen one living movement, and the parents chose what they knew.

The rider who had swung the maul flattened himself against the floor and offered both arms to the black-feathered mother. She drove him back with one snap. He stopped trying to touch her shell, set a padded board within her reach, and used the maul as a brace while she and her mate rolled the egg themselves.

At the next bed, the blue-backed pair refused Slate’s first board because it rocked beneath one corner. Slate tore off his own leather cuff, wedged it under the wood, and stepped away. Only then did they move.

"Beds first!" Rill called.

Hunters laid mauls beneath the rails. Slate pulled loose boards from an empty shelf. Aylin kicked nesting feathers across them, and adult wyverns moved their own eggs onto the rough cradles.

The pale parent’s bed slid hardest.

One copper hook remained caught beneath it. Each pull tightened the hook around the buried spine and drew the shell closer to the broken floor.

Jiang pecked the hook.

"Of course it is under there," Aylin said.

He pecked it again.

"I understood you. I was objecting to the universe."

She dropped to her stomach beside him.

The gap under the bed admitted her arm and Jiang’s whole body. He went first. The gray hatchling came to the edge, peered into the dark, and retreated under its mother’s jaw.

That retreat was good. The hatchling had chosen its mother’s shelter when danger offered Jiang’s shadow.

Jiang crawled beneath the copper hook. Aylin reached past his good side with the hook knife, keeping the blade away from his coat.

Warm plaster had broken from the buried metal. Beneath it lay a chain of flattened yellow arcs, each one scarred by a filed groove.

Ilex saw them from above.

Her face changed before her hands found the old grooves.

"Those were homebells," she said.

Rill stopped levering the next bed. "Whose?"

"Nobody living. Look at the saddle grooves. They cut the old bells open and laid them end to end."

Ilex rubbed one thumb over Mottle’s now-empty bell rail. "My first flight-pair retired theirs when I was a child. We carried it here with flowers in the mouth. They told us no trusted call should be wasted."

The nursery floor rang beneath her.

"We thought the furnace burned every voice out," she said. "We put the metal under eggs because it had once brought riders home."

Mottle touched one exposed arc with her claws. The metal answered through the floor, a tired note beneath the false hatch cries.

Ilex looked around at the warm shell beds. "Retired bells went into nursery walls before my grandmother flew. We thought the storm furnace emptied them."

The root had not entered with Mottle. It had found a road the Red Aeries built for warmth and forgot beneath its young.

Aylin set the hook knife against the copper catch. "Can we mourn the architecture after the egg moves?"

Ilex’s laugh came out once and hurt her knee enough to end it. "Turn the catch toward the wall. Do not cut the spine."

Jiang gripped the hook with his beak. Its heat opened the bite beside his fracture. Aylin pushed the knife handle while he pulled.

The catch turned halfway.

Black-green fibers squeezed between Jiang’s feet.

They wound around the copper and pulled back.

Above him, the shell rolled against the pale parent’s chest. The wyvern spread both forelegs, but the bed rim had trapped one side.

The gray hatchling returned to the gap.

Its mother was trapped behind the pale parent and two moving cradles. She called once, changing the note around the hatchling’s frightened scratch. The false answer came from below Jiang’s feet, nearer and cleaner than she was.

Jiang wanted to shove the little body toward the distant, imperfect voice. With no voice of his own, he had only the floor and the trust the hatchling had not promised him.

Jiang slapped the floor with his good foot. Go back.

It cocked its wet head.

He struck harder, trying to drive it toward its mother’s feet.

The floor split beneath his foot.

The hatchling fell through.

Aylin caught one wing at the joint and lowered it rather than wrenching it up. The hatchling landed against Jiang’s chest, all claws and startled breath.

The buried homebell chain tightened.

Mottle left the pale shell to its parent and threw her body across the bed from above. Aylin pulled her arm free, rose to one knee, and caught the opposite rail.

"Turn it now," she told Jiang.

He braced the hatchling against his brood patch with his injured flipper and took the hot copper in his beak again.

The catch opened with a copper snap.

The pale parent dragged the egg onto Slate’s feathered boards.

Then the root broke the bed support.

Wood, warm stone, and old homebell metal came down around Jiang.

The hatchling chose him over the dark and pressed itself flat against his bare brood patch.