Chapter 169: Mottle Bit the Bell Off a Living Wing

Bracken reached the drop before anyone understood what he meant to do.

His good wing opened against the wind. The injured one dragged half-spread behind him, catching snow and knocking it into the storm crypt path. He had no chance of flying. Grief had not made his bones foolish, but the homebell above him had rung in Harrow’s hand.

The copper-backed wyvern came out of the cloud sideways.

Her left wing beat. Her right wing jerked at the elbow, recovered, then jerked again. A rider lay over her neck with both boots out of their rests and one arm buried in the harness beneath the throat bell.

"Cress!" the rider shouted. "Give me the ledge. Any ledge."

Cress turned toward the nursery wall. The bell beneath her breast gave Harrow’s late third beat.

Bracken jumped after the bell.

Rill caught the blue strand between the wyvern’s teeth and let it burn through his palm. Bracken’s rear claws left stone before the line stopped him. His bad wing snapped open with a sound that made Jiang’s stomach tighten.

The new feathers across Jiang’s shoulders lifted in the draft. Snow found the tender seams beneath them. He backed under the crypt arch before his body could mistake falling water for a road.

Cress passed close enough for the bell to strike the ledge.

Black-green filament ran from its cracked crown into her harness. It crossed the leather beneath her throat, climbed one copper feather ring, and disappeared through a long flight feather on the failing wing. Every time the strand tightened, the bell struck and the feather twisted in living flesh.

This was no shell being dragged by a buried feeder. Cress was choosing between pain and stone on every wingbeat.

The bell changed its voice.

Mottle’s low landing cough sounded from under Cress’s breast. Slate’s two short answers followed it from the same piece of copper.

Both grounded wyverns looked up.

Mottle took one running step before Ilex pulled the red release on her new harness. The low leather dropped away from the wounded wing and slapped onto the snow.

"Go without me," Ilex said.

Mottle went on foot.

She struck Bracken shoulder-first and threw him back from the edge. Then she planted her front claws, raised her head, and waited beneath Cress’s next broken circle.

Jiang could see what she wanted. The people could not. Rill was hauling Bracken away. Aylin had her arms around Jiang’s middle, keeping his unfinished shoulders beneath the arch while she watched the sky. Ilex dragged herself after Mottle using one saddle rail as a crutch.

The emperor female called from the nursery.

It was not a warning used by riders. The note rose from her belly with the chick pressed over her feet, a blunt demand for distance from the huddle. The injured male answered from the stone. His voice broke, but the break belonged to him.

Cress’s working eye shifted toward the two calls.

Jiang struck the crypt floor with his beak. He copied neither note. He tapped where Mottle stood, scraped toward the open strip of ledge, and struck again.

Aylin looked down. "You want her lower."

Jiang hit the stone hard enough to hurt his cracked beak.

"Rill! Clear the funeral road."

Rill did not ask for an explanation. He hauled Bracken behind the crypt wall, then swung his hook chain low across the ledge. Slate caught the moving links with one front claw and dragged them over stone.

Iron made a rough, ugly rhythm no homebell had ever used.

Cress heard that too. She folded her working wing and dropped toward the scrape.

The rider saw Mottle waiting below. "Bad idea!"

Ilex stopped beside Mottle’s empty harness. "It is hers."

Cress struck the ledge on both rear claws. The infected wing stayed open because the filament would not let it fold. Her body spun toward the drop, and the rider’s buried arm came free with blood across the glove.

Mottle lunged under the open wing.

Her jaws closed on the bell strap, not Cress’s throat. Copper smashed against her teeth. The old wound along her gums opened at once, painting the pale leather red.

Cress screamed and snapped down.

Mottle did not release.

Ilex seized the fallen low harness and pulled it away before Cress’s hooked claw could drive the loose straps around Mottle’s injured wing. She rolled under the sweep of a tail and lost her saddle-rail crutch over the edge.

"Tear through it, Mottle!"

The leather stretched. One buckle struck Mottle’s cheek. She shifted her bite to the blood-slick place where the bell strap had been cut and mended before.

Jiang wanted to run out from the arch. His feet had already carried him to the line where dry stone turned dark. Rain blew past it in silver sheets. One more step would soak the open seams at his crown and shoulders.

Aylin’s grip loosened instead of tightening. She left him the choice.

Jiang stayed dry and hated it.

Rill threw the hook.

He did not aim at the bell. The iron passed over Cress’s neck and caught the far edge of her saddle. Slate backed across the ledge, scraping his front claws in the same rough rhythm. The pull kept the rider above Cress when her legs folded. It did not force the wyvern’s head or wing.

"My name is Eda," the rider gasped. Her free hand spread against Cress’s neck. "I need the feather loose. She needs to feel me before you touch it."

Aylin ran from Jiang only after he settled his breast against the dry floor. She slid beneath Cress’s working wing, caught Eda’s bloody wrist, and helped her reach the copper ring around the infected feather.

"Tell me when," Aylin said.

Eda pressed her forehead into Cress’s neck. Whatever passed between them had no copper in it. The wyvern’s eye found her, left her, and returned.

Cress lowered the infected wing until the long feather lay across the stone.

"Do it now," Eda said.

Aylin held the ring. Eda pulled the feather shaft free of its leather loop instead of ripping it from the wing. The black-green strand fought them. It cinched around the barbs and drew a fresh line of blood from the skin.

Mottle bit through the last of the bell strap.

Copper hit stone. The false voices stopped beneath Cress’s breast.

For one relieved breath, everybody watched the bell roll.

The filament left it.

The strand tore out through the split crown, whipped across Aylin’s sleeve, and lifted into the storm with the loose infected feather still tangled at its end. Eda caught for it and missed. Cress shoved her backward with the uninjured wing before the strand could wrap her hand.

Mottle spat leather and blood into the snow. The wound along her gums had opened wider, and one side of the new harness lay beneath Cress with its chest loop torn nearly through.

Ilex crawled to her muzzle. "I know. I liked the harness too."

Mottle sneezed blood across her coat.

It was a poor time to laugh, which did not stop Rill. The sound came out once and broke against whatever he had left at Harrow’s crypt.

Eda sat against Cress’s shoulder while Aylin wrapped the rider’s forearm. "We came from Sablehook," she said. "Three aeries east. Our bell started answering strangers after the last red storm. We cut it loose twice. It grew back through the feather rings."

"Then you do not fly home alone," Rill said.

Eda looked at Cress. The copper-backed wyvern had folded both wings, though the infected one trembled against the ledge. "We aren’t going home first. There are egg flights between here and Sablehook. They need a voice that can change while they listen."

Rill glanced at the broken bell. "No copper."

"No copper," Eda agreed. She scraped her boot over the stone once. Cress answered with one claw.

The escaped feather turned once above the nursery, a dark barb spinning in white air, then vanished around the red outer wall.

It did not return that day.

For the next six mornings, Eda and Cress took the bridge roads one aerie at a time. Eda scraped her boot. Cress answered with a claw. Riders who had trusted bells all their lives came down from their saddles to learn the ugly little sound. Cress did not open the wounded wing until she could do it without blood touching the copper feathers along her back.

Mottle’s torn harness remained in Ilex’s lap. Bracken slept with Harrow’s blue strand caught between two front claws. Nobody hurried either of them toward the sky.

Jiang’s last crown pins opened while he waited.

The itching made sleep a personal enemy. He woke once with an old cheek feather stuck across his nostril and found the emperor chick trying to steal it without leaving its mother’s feet. Jiang snapped at the loose end. The chick pulled harder. Its mother watched both of them with the exhausted contempt of someone raising two fools of different sizes.

On the sixth evening, rain reached through the crypt arch and struck Jiang’s crown. He flinched from the expected cold grip against skin.

The water beaded, rolled down his new back, and fell from the clean black tail.

His shoulder still hurt. His bad leg still turned when he tried to rise too quickly, and hunger had hollowed the strength from his breast. The finished coat gave him back the water. It returned nothing else.

A second wyvern crossed below the ledge before anyone could celebrate.

The escaped feather came over the wall behind it, dragging a black-green filament through cloud. Wind flattened the barb against the wyvern’s wet outer wing. The strand curled through the living feathers and held.

Far beneath them, Slate’s stolen homebell answered.