Chapter 172: Every Wyvern Broke Its Own Song

By dawn, riders on the closest ledges had wrapped their homebells in something they were willing to ruin.

One wore a shirt. Another had half a saddle blanket knotted around its crown. A little copper bell above the nursery disappeared inside a child’s wool cap and rang against the pompom whenever the wind grew rude.

None of that stopped the voices beyond the wall.

They called from moving wings, from Widow’s Needle, and from the cloud roads where nobody living should have known the old pair songs. The wrapped bells stayed quiet while the stolen ones rehearsed the Red Aeries without them.

Jiang woke to a rainfish beside his beak.

Aylin had laid it on flat stone rather than holding it for him. The silver body smelled of clean blood and the upper cistern, sharp enough to make his empty belly clench before pride could object.

He swallowed the head first.

The rest caught against his damaged beak. Jiang braced the fish with one broad foot, tore it into two ugly pieces, and swallowed those too. Heat did not arrive as a System bar. It spread slowly from a stomach that had forgotten work and made him want another fish badly enough to resent everyone who saw.

The emperor chick saw.

It leaned from the female’s feet and snapped at the tail of his second rainfish. Jiang caught the other end. For several breaths, the cold ledge hosted a contest between one starved adult and a chick too young to understand shame.

The female took the fish from both of them and swallowed it herself.

Aylin covered her mouth with one hand.

Jiang glared until standing became possible again.

The injured leg kept rolling inward. His shoulder still pulled when he used the working flipper for balance. He crossed the cold ledge without the emperor male bracing him, stopped with both feet beneath him, and did not pretend the short walk felt small.

At the flight road, Eda had placed Cress’s severed bell strap on the stone.

Riders gathered around it with their wyverns. Nobody stood in a rank. Some pairs remained together. Others faced away from one another as if the old song had been an argument neither knew how to end.

"We are not replacing bells," Eda said. "If all of you learn one clean answer, the cloud only needs to steal it once."

A broad rider raised a bare hand. His green-backed wyvern watched the fingers. "We need something the other roads understand."

"Then tell them how to change," Eda said. "Do not tell them what to change into."

She put one boot against Cress’s empty rail.

Cress held her ground.

Eda shifted her weight forward. The wyvern lowered her shoulders.

The broad rider frowned. "Was that the answer?"

Eda stepped away. "Ask her."

Cress bumped the rider in the chest with her muzzle and nearly put him on his back.

That answer spread through the waiting pairs faster than a lecture would have.

Mottle and Ilex practiced on the ground. A touch in the bare harness groove became two knuckles against the neck, then the flat of Ilex’s wrist under the jaw. Mottle refused one touch by turning away. Ilex did not repeat it harder.

Slate watched them from the launch ledge. ℴ

Rill scraped his hook once along the rear saddle post. Slate folded his right wing.

The same scrape came from Widow’s Needle.

Slate kept the wing folded.

Rill struck the hook handle against his own boot instead. Slate opened both wings and shook rain over him.

"I deserved less of that," Rill said.

Slate sneezed into his hair.

The first pairs took the short flight road one at a time.

A gray wyvern followed a heel press out from the ledge. Her rider changed to a shoulder lean before the first bell could return it. A scarred male answered a neck touch, then ignored the same touch on the next pass until his rider drummed two fingers against the saddle cloth.

No pair looked graceful while unlearning years.

That was why the method worked.

Jiang watched from beneath the covered nursery arch. Aylin had tied three loose feather strips to a bridge rail where he could see them. Wind turned all three toward Widow’s Needle, but the calls did not follow the wind. They arrived after each successful turn, late enough to chase where a body had been rather than where it was going.

He pecked the rail when the delay shortened.

The infected bells were listening faster.

Eda understood his warning. She stood beside Cress’s wounded side and rested one hand on the empty saddle.

"The next bridge can only hear this from the air," she said. "Do you want the road?"

Cress looked at the storm chains tightening above them. She opened the uninjured wing first. The wounded one followed with a tremor along the feather line.

Eda waited without touching her.

Cress lowered for the saddle.

They launched toward the nearest open bridge with two other pairs behind them. Rill and Slate took the rear, near enough to break a fall but far enough that Slate’s wounded flank did not carry another body.

Eda used no boot scrape. She leaned left, touched Cress’s shoulder, and shifted her knee away before the bells returned the first movement.

Cress crossed the bridge cleanly.

The pair behind her did not.

Its rider had chosen a palm against the neck. The red-feathered wyvern followed it through one turn, then a second. On the third approach, the rider used the same palm because the bridge was close and fear liked familiar tools.

A stolen bell struck the exact neck-touch rhythm against copper.

The wyvern turned toward the sound.

One wing clipped a storm chain. Iron wrapped the outer feathers and pulled her toward the bridge tower.

Her rider slapped the neck again.

The bells slapped back.

Jiang pecked the feather rail hard enough to tear one strip loose.

Rill saw the falling white feather. His hook came off Slate’s rear post, scraped once along the saddle, and stopped.

Slate began the turn that scrape had always requested.

Rill dropped the hook and put his bare hand against Slate’s neck instead.

Slate changed direction before the copied scrape arrived.

He crossed above the tangled pair. Rill caught the storm chain with both hands and pulled it away from the trapped wing while the other rider finally abandoned the neck touch and pressed her forehead against the red feathers.

The wyvern felt the living weight. She folded the caught wing instead of beating it.

Chain slid from the feather tips.

She dropped beneath the bridge, opened again, and climbed with her rider still pressed against her neck.

Cress returned to cover the climb.

Eda’s hand changed from shoulder to saddle cloth before the first movement could be copied. Cress answered, but the reopened wound left a red thread down her copper back.

"We land," Eda said.

Cress landed at the next bridge rather than flying home. The choice stranded Eda on the far side with her, and neither tried to make that noble.

Rill and Slate came back alone.

Slate’s flank shook when his claws found the ledge. Rill slid from the saddle and kept one hand against the place where a homebell used to hang.

"You followed the hand," he said.

Slate turned his head toward him.

Rill picked up the dropped hook. He dragged its point once over the stone between them, then changed to a tap against his boot.

Slate stepped toward the tap.

Inside the cloud around Widow’s Needle, Slate’s stolen homebell repeated the scrape Rill had just abandoned.

Slate’s whole body turned toward his own voice.