Chapter 167: Jiang Began Molting Above the Clouds

On the seventh morning, Jiang refused the fish.

Aylin turned the rainfish so its silver belly caught the nursery light. Jiang had swallowed everything she put near him for six mornings, including one fish that struck his beak while he was still working on the previous tail.

Now the smell made his throat close.

"You are the first patient I have seen become less cooperative after eating," Aylin said.

Pava crouched on the other side of him. "He has been saving his strength for the argument."

Jiang pecked neither woman. The effort seemed excessive.

Old feathers surrounded him in white and black drifts. Each time he shifted, more released from his breast and back. The new pins underneath pressed together like dark brush bristles, soft at their tips and sore where they entered bare skin.

His body looked twice its usual size and felt half as useful.

Pava touched a loose feather without pulling. "The old coat has stopped belonging to him. The new one is not ready to do the job."

Aylin set the fish farther away. "How long before he can enter water?"

"Ask his feathers. They have ignored me all week."

Jiang would have laughed if his throat could produce more than dry air.

The female emperor stood over the chick near the inner wall. Her mate lay at her flank on a folded strip of the old cradle leather. He still could not stand, but he had begun dragging himself between the coldest stone and the family without another body beneath him.

Neither adult approached Jiang’s loose coat at first.

When the wind changed, the female moved sideways until her sound flank blocked it. She kept the chick beneath her brood fold. The male shifted against Jiang’s other side by pulling with his beak, rested, and left one feather’s breadth between them.

Jiang closed that final distance himself.

Warmth gathered slowly between three bodies. No ability carried it. His pin feathers still hurt, his skin still cooled, and his rejected fish remained uneaten on the stone.

Across the nursery, Mottle had become a pale hill beneath a pile of shed penguin feathers. The gray wyvern hatchling had brought each mouthful from the ledge and dropped it over Mottle’s forefeet.

Mottle endured the fifth delivery before blowing the feathers back into the hatchling’s face.

The small wyvern sneezed, snapped at the white pieces, and returned with more.

Ilex watched from a low saddle bench with her bound knee stretched along Mottle’s side. "You encouraged this by reacting."

Mottle hid her muzzle beneath one uninjured wing.

For several mornings, that was the worst crisis on the cold ledge.

Pava changed Jiang’s shoulder wrap. Aylin cleaned the blood from his bitten side and stopped whenever he pressed his beak to her wrist. Valea and Hest let the damaged arch settle after the family crossed, leaving a low opening wide enough for a penguin and no longer tall enough for a wyvern.

Rill mended the torn rescue net on Slate’s saddle. At Mottle’s side, Ilex removed both empty bell rails rather than letting loose metal strike the injured wing. Neither pair tried to hang replacement copper in the open spaces.

Bracken kept his place over the pale egg with its other parent.

Harrow remained beneath a cold hide in the deepest shadow of the nursery wall.

Rill visited the body at dawn and left before Bracken saw him there.

The seventh afternoon brought rain sideways.

It came beneath Mottle’s sheltering wing and across the cold ledge in a flat gray sheet. The first drops reached Jiang’s new pins like small stones. His old outer feathers caught the water, held it against skin, and folded under their own weight.

Cold entered everywhere at once.

Jiang tried to stand.

His swollen coat dragged against the stone. The bad foot found no grip. Water lifted the loose feather mat beneath him and moved his whole body toward the outer rain channel.

Aylin caught the edge of the cradle leather beside his belly.

She did not have the strength to stop him alone. Her reopened palm bled through its wrap as the soaked hide pulled between her fingers.

"Dry crack!" Pava shouted.

A narrow split opened behind the female emperor, sheltered by the nursery wall. It was only a short crawl away on stone.

The rain channel lay closer.

Water poured through it toward the basin below. Jiang could feel the current through his webbing. A dive would take the weight from his bad leg, support his breast, and let his body become something other than a wet sack of unfinished feathers.

He turned toward it.

The System crossed his sight before his beak reached the water.

[MOLT PHASE ACTIVE | WATER INSULATION UNAVAILABLE | STORMDIVE LOCKED]

The notice offered no opinion about drowning slowly after a successful dive.

Jiang hated it for being useful.

He turned away from the channel.

His working flipper slipped across wet stone. The failed one could not lift from his ribs. Jiang clamped his beak around the loose cradle corner and crawled toward the dry crack while Aylin fed leather toward him instead of pulling his body.

The female emperor moved first.

She carried the chick into the crack, turned, and pressed her breast against the windward opening. Her mate dragged himself behind Jiang and put his sound flank against the loose coat whenever water tried to turn it.

Neither could carry him. Together, they kept the shortest dry route from closing.

The gray hatchling lost its footing near Mottle.

One gust pushed it onto the flooded feather mat. It slid past Mottle’s foreclaws, wings opening too late, and spun toward the same outer channel Jiang had refused.

Jiang saw the rust-throated mother launch from the nursery wall.

He also saw the low chain between them.

His beak could reach the chain or the hatchling, not both.

Jiang struck the chain three times against stone.

Rill looked up from Slate’s web.

Jiang struck toward the moving hatchling, then crawled deeper into the dry crack.

Every part of him that still remembered water wanted to turn back and finish the rescue himself. He kept moving away from it.

Rill threw the repaired carrying web across the channel. Slate caught one end beneath a rear claw. Mottle planted her uninjured shoulder under the middle and lifted the net from the water.

The hatchling struck leather instead of the cataract.

Its mother landed across the web, seized the loose skin at the back of its neck, and pulled it toward stone. When Rill reached for the hatchling, she snapped close enough to cut his sleeve.

Rill withdrew. "I see rescue has not improved my popularity."

The rust-throated mother carried her hatchling away herself.

Inside the dry crack, Jiang’s body shook against the emperor pair.

Aylin crawled in after him with the loose end of the cradle leather. She waited until Jiang pushed his beak beneath her good hand, then folded the dry half over his back without pressing the new pins.

Pava blocked the remaining wind with a discarded saddle board.

"Do not warm him too fast," she said. "And do not feed him because you dislike seeing the fish sit there. His body has chosen the fast."

Aylin looked at the rejected rainfish outside. "His body chooses many rude things."

Jiang rested his crown on her wrist.

Her fingers moved once over the bare line behind his beak, where no old feather remained to catch. The touch was careful enough to irritate him and gentle enough that he did not move away.

Rain passed over the nursery.

By dusk, Jiang was dry enough to leave the crack. The female went first with the chick. Her mate followed by dragging his breast, accepting Jiang’s sound flank only on the steepest part.

Outside, Rill had spread Harrow’s carrying web beside Slate.

Bracken stood over the rider’s cold-covered body.

Rill approached with both hands open. "He should have his Last Flight."

Bracken caught Harrow’s shoulder strap between his teeth.

The pale wyvern dragged the body onto the cold ledge, lay across every flight strap, and looked at Slate.

His answer did not require a homebell.