Chapter 171: The Sky Rang With Voices That Were Dead

Harrow called from three places before Jiang stopped shaking.

The first late-third beat came from below the western wall. The second crossed the egg-flight road. The third sounded far beyond Sablehook, faint enough to feel like memory until every homebell in the nearest aerie answered it.

Bracken lifted his head from the blue strand between his claws.

Jiang lay under a dry hide with the emperor pair pressed along his sides. His new feathers held warmth better than the ruin they had replaced. They could not make his lungs finish a breath.

Above the inner shelf, a nursery flight broke through cloud.

Four wyverns carried padded shell cradles beneath their saddles. Rain streamed from the covers. Riders bent low over the straps, trying to reach the warm ledges before the next squall closed the road.

One infected bell rang the nursery’s clear-landing call from an empty bridge.

A second bell answered from a stone wall.

The lead wyvern turned toward the bridge. Her partner behind her turned toward the wall. The two cradles between them pulled apart until their shared warm cover tore down the middle.

"Those shelves are gone!" Ilex shouted.

The riders could not hear her. Their own homebells filled the gap with familiar voices, each one promising a different safe descent.

Cress lowered herself beside Eda.

The copper-backed wyvern’s infected wing had closed but not settled. A dark line still marked the place where the feather ring cut her. She put that side toward the saddle anyway and waited.

Eda touched the rail, then Cress’s neck. "One circle. You choose the landing."

Cress opened both wings.

Rill was already fastening his waist line. Slate watched the separating cradles, then lowered his shoulder far enough for Rill to mount without pulling the wounded flank.

"One road," Rill said. "No bell chase."

Slate launched before the promise could become prettier than it was.

Jiang pushed out from under the hide.

His feet found stone. His bad leg folded before his breast cleared the ground, and the emperor male caught Jiang’s shoulder against his own body. The injured parent could not stand. He still kept Jiang from striking the floor.

Aylin knelt beside them. "You have already made one entrance today."

Jiang snapped at the hide instead of her hand. The effort brought cold air deeper into his chest and made him cough without sound.

"A devastating rebuttal," she said, but her eyes stayed on his breathing.

Outside, Cress climbed beneath the nursery flight. Eda scraped one boot along the saddle rail. Cress banked toward her.

The stolen bell below repeated the scrape.

Cress’s head turned toward the wrong sound.

Eda struck the rail again, louder.

Jiang pecked the stone.

His beak made one hard knock. He waited until Eda’s boot stopped, then scraped both webbed feet backward through grit.

A bell on the western wall returned the hard knock.

None returned the scrape.

Jiang did it again. Knock, wait, then a different movement. This time he brushed the hide with his working flipper.

The wall gave him yesterday’s answer.

Aylin followed his gaze from the bell to Cress. "It can repeat what happened."

Jiang hit the place where the old answer arrived.

"It cannot know what comes next."

Mottle coughed from the bridge mouth.

Her stolen homebell coughed back from inside the cloud, clean and exact. Mottle stepped toward it, mouth wound dark against her teeth.

Ilex put her palm flat on the bare groove where the low harness had been. She did not cough, ring, or pull. Her thumb pressed once, then moved to a place Mottle had never felt it before.

Mottle looked over her shoulder.

Ilex pressed twice against the new place.

The grounded wyvern turned away from her own copied voice and limped under the broken flight road.

"Change after they hear you!" Aylin shouted toward the riders. "Do not give the next answer where the last one was!"

Eda looked down once. Her boot left the saddle rail.

She laid two fingers along Cress’s neck instead. Cress felt the living hand, rolled away from the repeated scrape, and rose beneath the torn warm cover.

Slate came across the lead pair’s outer side. Rill dragged his hook over the saddle post, making a long iron complaint that no bell had stored.

The lead wyvern shifted toward it.

Rill immediately lifted the hook and struck Slate’s neck guard with the wooden handle. Slate ignored the old scrape when it returned below and followed the new touch through the cloud.

Other pairs began changing without waiting for an order.

One rider opened a gloved hand, then used a knee when a bell copied the glove buckle. Another wyvern folded the tip of her left wing after her partner moved his weight right. A gray pair answered a tail brush with a shoulder bump so awkward that both nearly missed the bridge and corrected together.

Their signals were not elegant. They belonged to the bodies using them now.

The rear shell cradle still dropped.

Its carrier had turned toward a dead landing call and caught one rear strap on a bridge chain. The wyvern beat upward while the cradle swung below, throwing its warm cover open. A pale egg rolled against the padded rim.

Mottle reached the chain from the ground.

She seized the hanging strap and planted all four claws. Her damaged wing opened from the strain, but she held the cradle away from the stone wall.

Ilex wrapped both arms around the bridge post rather than Mottle. "I have this end. You choose yours."

Above them, Cress folded into a shallow dive.

Eda shifted her hand from neck to shoulder before any bell could return the first touch. Cress crossed beneath the swinging cradle and struck its padded base with her uninjured side.

The impact lifted the pale egg away from the rim.

Slate caught the loose warm cover on one rear saddle hook. He did not take the cradle’s weight. He held the cloth high enough for the carrier wyvern to see her own egg and choose the bridge ledge beneath it.

She landed hard enough to skid.

Mottle released the strap before it pulled her wing farther open. Ilex lost her grip on the post and sat down in the snow. The cradle struck stone between them, but the padding held and the shell stopped moving.

Cress landed on the opposite ledge with blood sliding from the old feather-line wound.

Eda was out of the saddle before the wyvern folded her wing. "That was the circle."

Cress tried to look back toward the bells.

Eda stayed beside her shoulder. She did not ask for another launch.

The remaining nursery pairs came down by separate roads. No two riders used the same answer twice. One landed facing backward. Another arrived with a boot missing and no explanation worth delaying the eggs for.

Jiang remained beside the emperor male, upright only because the parent refused to move away. He watched riders tear cloth from their bell tongues and wyverns turn their saddles against the stone so copper could not swing.

No System line congratulated them for becoming harder to imitate.

Bracken rose behind the storm crypt.

Harrow’s late-third call came again from the western wall. Bracken took one step toward it, then looked down at the blue strand under his claw.

He stayed with the strand.

Every false bell stopped at once.

Silence crossed the Red Aeries so quickly that even the hatchlings lifted their heads.

Then the bells turned.

Their next notes moved toward the same high point beyond the nursery roads, a red-stone spire riders called Widow’s Needle. Old storm chains woke along its sides and drew tight through bridge after bridge.

Something long rolled inside the cloud around the spire.

Mottle’s homebell rang from its mouth.