Chapter 168: Bracken Refused Harrow’s Last Flight

By the third week of Jiang’s fast, Bracken was still lying across Harrow’s flight straps.

Snow had replaced rain along the highest Red Aeries ledges. It gathered on the cold hide over Harrow and melted wherever Bracken’s pale breast touched the cloth.

Rill came every morning with Slate.

Bracken showed him teeth every morning.

"Harrow waited longer for me to learn a crosswind," Rill said on the nineteenth day. "I can wait longer than you can threaten."

Bracken put his head back down over the straps.

Slate stood behind Rill in a new low harness. The torn flank had closed into a dark ridge beneath his feathers, though the wing on that side still opened more carefully than the other. Leather crossed his chest and back without a homebell rail. The repaired rescue net hung folded between the rear posts.

Mottle wore a matching low harness beside the emperor ledge. Hers ended before the missing flight feather and left the wounded wing free. It could take a ground chain. It could not put the lost feather back.

Ilex remained on a low saddle seat with her knee bound beneath her coat. She had stopped tying the leg straight, but she still could not put full weight through it.

"Slate can carry Harrow cleanly," Rill said.

Ilex traced the empty groove along Mottle’s old bell rail. "Bracken said no."

"Bracken still cannot fly."

"That is not the same sentence."

Rill faced her. "Harrow taught half these cliffs. Every pair he brought home will ring when Slate takes him past."

"And whose wing will Harrow answer from?"

Rill looked at Slate.

The dark wyvern lowered his head. He had carried Harrow’s body from the undercloud shelf because a living rescue required it. Carrying the body through another pair’s farewell was a different choice.

Slate stepped away from the folded net.

Rill’s hand stayed on the buckle.

Across the ledge, Jiang watched from between two emperor bodies.

Most of his old coat was gone. New feathers lay dark and close along his breast, but short pins still crowded the shoulders and the base of his crown. One ragged band of old plumage circled his neck like a collar he had lost an argument with.

He had grown thinner during the fast. The shoulder bite had closed at its edges, and the beak crack no longer bled when he ate because he no longer ate. The failed flipper, bad leg, and crooked rear claw remained exactly as interested in healing as stone.

Jiang could not cross the wind bridges in that coat. He could understand a body refusing a saddle.

He walked to Bracken on the dry inner side of the ledge.

The pale wyvern lifted his muzzle. Bracken had regained enough strength to stand and enough anger to make the standing everybody else’s concern. His left wing stayed low. The split rear claw had grown a hard dark edge but still avoided full weight.

Jiang pecked Harrow’s blue flight thong.

Bracken closed his teeth around the other end.

Jiang pulled toward Slate.

Bracken pulled the thong back.

Jiang released the thong and pecked the stone beneath Harrow instead.

He struck a path toward the first anchored bridge, then returned to the body and struck the stone again.

Rill’s expression tightened. "He thinks Bracken wants to drag him."

"Ask Bracken," Ilex said.

"With which shared language?"

Ilex pointed at the blue leather between beak and teeth. "That one appears busy."

Rill crouched beside Harrow. He laid one hand on the covered shoulder and the other on the low end of the thong.

"Last Flight crosses the seven homebells you answered in life," he said. "Your pair carries you. The others fly behind until the storm crypt takes your name."

Bracken watched his mouth.

Rill pulled the thong toward Slate.

Bracken planted both front claws.

Rill moved his hand toward the stone path Jiang had struck.

Bracken lifted his damaged rear foot, stepped over Harrow’s strap, and faced the bridge.

No translation made the answer easier.

Rill sat on the cold stone.

He had spent nineteen mornings checking Slate’s carrying net, oiling hooks, and measuring straps that did not need another inspection. Rill wanted the Last Flight because it was an ending his hands already knew. Buckles could be tested. A route could be flown. None of that required him to look again at Harrow knocking the rescue hook away.

Harrow had once crossed two bridges on foot beside Rill after Slate tore a wing membrane in sleet. Rill complained until the older rider asked whether he had paired with a wyvern or rented a set of wings. At the time, Rill had hated the walk and remembered the insult.

Now Bracken offered him the same road without the joke.

"He taught me never to repeat a signal after weather changed it," he said. "Now I want to repeat his whole ending with the wrong wyvern."

Ilex leaned forward against Mottle’s neck. "You want him in the sky because you left him under it."

Rill’s head came around.

The words landed badly because they were true and incomplete.

"I came back," he said.

"You did. Harrow still chose what happened next. Both things stay."

She did not forgive him on Harrow’s behalf.

Rill looked at Bracken. "If we walk, every rider dismounts. No homebell rings above him."

Ilex answered, "Then the cliffs hear feet."

Rill remained seated until Bracken nudged the blue thong into his lap.

They built no new funeral machine.

Harrow’s cold board became the carrying board. Rill passed two low straps through its old handholds and left them loose enough for Bracken to step away. Ilex clipped Mottle’s ground chain to the rear only after the wyvern lowered her shoulder beneath it.

Slate took the other rear line without a rider.

Bracken held the blue thong at the front.

When he walked, the board moved.

Rill walked beside Harrow’s shoulder. Ilex stayed on Mottle because her knee could not manage the hanging bridges. Jiang remained at the nursery with the emperor family and watched the first links take weight.

Every Chainwing pair along the route came down from the sky.

Riders opened their saddles and put boots on bridge boards. Wyverns folded wings and walked beside them. Homebell tongues were wrapped in cloth before Bracken reached each crossing, leaving only claws, chains, breath, and the wind moving through red stone.

The procession did not move cleanly.

One bridge dipped under the board and scraped Harrow’s covered hand. Bracken stopped until Rill tucked the arm back beneath the hide. Mottle’s injured wing struck a chain upright. Slate took too much rear weight on the wounded flank and had to give it back.

Nobody repaired the awkwardness into dignity after it happened.

At the fourth bridge, a gray-haired rider unwrapped her homebell tongue and laid the cloth beneath Harrow’s elbow. Harrow had reset her shoulder after a cliff strike years earlier, then made her mount from the wrong side until fear stopped choosing for her. She said none of that aloud. Her wyvern pressed one scarred muzzle to the carrying board before they walked on.

More pairs joined behind her. Some touched the board. Others kept a distance Bracken could see. Each one left the air and accepted the swaying boards beneath their own feet.

At the seventh crossing, the storm crypt opened in a wall of red rock.

Old rider hooks lined the entrance. Broken masks, saddle knives, painted reins, and shed wyvern feathers filled shallow cuts around the door. No names had been carved where rain could smooth them into someone else.

Bracken dragged Harrow inside.

Rill removed the cold hide from the rider’s face. Time had not softened the bruises from the undercloud shelf. Harrow still looked as if one insulting sentence might bring his working eye open.

It never opened again.

Bracken touched his muzzle to Harrow’s hair.

Rill laid the blue thong across the rider’s hands again. Bracken caught one frayed end, pulled until a single strand separated, and kept that strand between his teeth.

Ilex did not tell him where to carry it.

The storm door lowered on Harrow without a homebell sounding.

Rill stood outside with one hand against the red stone.

"He reached the crypt," Ilex said.

Rill nodded. "On the ground."

"With all of him."

Bracken turned toward the nursery and the pale egg waiting there.

A homebell rang above the crypt.

One note crossed the snow. Two followed close together. The late third arrived with Harrow’s private hesitation.

Bracken stopped beneath it.

A copper-backed wyvern came through cloud with a rider bent low over its neck. The homebell beneath its breast rang Harrow’s answer again while both living wings were still moving.

Bracken opened his injured wing and ran toward the drop.