Chapter 173: Slate Bit His Stolen Voice in Half

Slate was airborne before Rill had both boots in the saddle.

His stolen homebell scraped from inside the cloud, using the sound Rill had made only moments earlier. Slate followed it with his wounded side low and his neck stretched toward a piece of copper that knew where he used to turn.

Rill caught the front rail. "Slate, I changed it."

Copper under the cloud gave back Rill’s scrape.

Rill struck his boot with the hook handle.

Slate heard the living answer. His head shifted toward Rill, then swung back when the bell called again from Widow’s Needle.

He wanted both voices to be real.

Jiang understood that better than he wanted to.

He left the cold ledge at a waddle that became a run only when gravity helped. The first bridge sloped toward the Needle. His injured leg tried to turn him sideways, and every third step knocked the shoulder against his ribs.

Aylin stayed beside him without reaching down. Mottle limped ahead. Ilex followed on her hands and one boot, dragging the bound leg over wet boards while refusing every offered back.

"If anybody says this looks dignified," Ilex said, "Mottle may eat them."

Mottle glanced over her shoulder and kept walking.

Above the bridge, Slate disappeared into cloud after his own bell.

Black-green filament ran along the underside of the storm chain. It slipped through each iron eye without tying itself, wet as hair and tight enough to hum against the links.

Jiang pecked it once.

The line struck back against his beak.

Far above, a wyvern screamed.

The pair Jiang had freed beneath the cataract came through cloud upside down.

Their changed claw scrape had proved they survived. It had not removed the infected feather from the outer wing. Black-green fiber crossed those living barbs and dropped below the body in a long loop.

Slate’s homebell hung from that loop.

The rider had both hands around the wingtip, trying to keep the bell from pulling the feathers apart. Every time the wyvern rolled upright, the copper weight dragged the infected side down again.

Slate reached them first.

The homebell sounded Rill’s boot tap.

Slate turned beneath it and opened his jaws.

"Carrier first!" Rill shouted.

Harrow’s late-third call rang before Slate could bite.

Rill froze for one wingbeat.

The trapped rider lost one hand. The bell dropped, black filament ripped across the living wing, and a row of outer feathers bent backward at their roots.

Slate could catch the bell or shoulder the carrier.

He struck the other wyvern with his uninjured side.

Both bodies rolled together. Rill threw his hook past the copper and caught the trapped rider’s rear saddle ring. The jerk tore skin from his already burned palm, but the rider stayed above the falling wing.

Slate’s bell dropped beneath them untouched.

At the bridge, the filament snapped tight.

Mottle planted her claws around one storm-chain eye. Ilex pressed both hands against the bare harness groove and felt the pull travel through the grounded wyvern.

"It enters the Needle," she said.

Widow’s Needle had no door at bridge height. Rain entered through a crack below the chain, crossed a shallow red-stone run, and vanished into the spire. Only Jiang’s low body could enter; Mottle’s shoulders could not.

Aylin crouched beside it. "You have eaten two fish."

Jiang stepped into the running water.

"That was not permission."

He looked back at her and bit the flat pull line dangling from her belt.

Aylin’s anger changed shape. She threaded the line around his belly without crossing the shoulder and placed the wooden toggle before his beak.

"Keep your grip and you stay in. Let go and I pull. No falling water, no skill, and no pretending this is a third fish."

Jiang bit down on the toggle.

The rain run took him breast-first into Widow’s Needle.

It stayed shallow enough for his feet to find stone. Cold flow streamed over the new coat without soaking through, but the current pushed against the empty strength left by the molt. He moved with belly low, good foot forward, bad foot sliding where it could.

The filament passed through the run beside him.

Each pull from the sky dragged it over a copper eye set into the inner wall. The eye had no knot. A narrow red tooth held its open side against the stone, trapping the fiber whenever it tried to reverse.

Jiang could not bite the black-green strand without letting it saw through his beak.

He attacked the red tooth instead.

The first peck drove pain through the crack at his beak tip. The second chipped stone from one side. Water carried the grit under his breast and left the tooth leaning in its groove.

Above him, Slate’s bell rang Mottle’s cough.

Mottle answered from the bridge with silence.

Ilex changed her hands from the harness groove to the base of Mottle’s neck. Mottle leaned backward against the chain, pulling the copper eye toward the crack.

Jiang felt the wall move.

He put his broad good foot over the red tooth and shoved with the whole web.

Stone broke around it.

The copper eye opened.

Filament tore through the gap and ran across Jiang’s coat. The new feathers turned the sliding fibers aside before they reached skin. His shoulder struck the wall anyway, and the toggle nearly left his beak.

Jiang kept his beak closed.

Outside, the long loop beneath the infected carrier went slack.

Rill saw it happen. He pulled the trapped rider against Slate’s flank while the rider reached down and unwound the loose fiber from the living feather roots.

The carrier wyvern folded the injured wing, dropped through the loop, and opened clean air beneath it.

Rider and wyvern fell away from the bell together.

One changed claw scrape came through the cloud. Another answered from the rider’s boot against the saddle. They were alive and using neither signal twice.

Slate’s homebell swung free below Rill.

Harrow called from it again.

The late third beat carried the hesitation that had once meant an older rider was alive at the other end of a storm. Rill stared at the copper crown. His bleeding hand loosened on the hook.

"I know what you are," he told the bell.

He did not reach for it.

Slate folded one wing and dropped.

The homebell began Rill’s scrape. Slate caught the copper in his jaws before it finished.

His teeth closed through the split crown.

The bell bent. An old saddle ring struck his tongue. Slate bit harder until copper tore along a repair seam and the homebell came apart in his mouth.

One half fell into cloud.

Rill caught the other by instinct.

Slate looked back at the hand holding it.

Rill opened his fingers.

The last half followed the first.

Black-green fibers recoiled from the empty air and pulled toward Widow’s Needle. They cut across Slate’s wounded flank on the way, opening the dark ridge into fresh blood. Rill grabbed the line with his injured palm and threw it clear before it wrapped the wing.

The Bellwyrm rolled out of the cloud above them.

Broken bells filled the long creature’s jaws. Mottle’s homebell hung deepest in the black-green braid. The Bellwyrm saw Slate without copper, twisted around the tightening storm chains, and fled toward the top of Widow’s Needle.

Inside the rain run, Jiang opened his beak and let the toggle go.

Aylin hauled him backward while Mottle gave the chain room. He emerged coughing water onto the bridge and found Ilex staring at the red stone beneath her feet.

Mottle’s landing cough sounded again.

This time it came from inside Widow’s Needle.