Chapter 178: The Penguin Swam Above a City of Wings

The first hunter came out of the ceiling sea feet-first.

Water sheeted from folded hide wings. The frames snapped open as soon as the hunter cleared the surface, catching Skykeel’s updraft and turning a fall into a hard rising sweep around the chain root.

Kesta shoved Jiang back into the ocean.

She followed an instant before a hooked boot cut through the air where her ribs had been. Her brass wrist hook scraped one chain link, changed angle, and vanished beneath the dark surface.

Cold swallowed Jiang again.

This time he knew which way led to air. He ignored it.

Kesta pointed through the ceiling water, away from the chain root and toward a forest of black supports. Pale growth crusted each chain where it entered the water. Schools of flat silver fish turned between them, flashing over a city that hung below like a reflection which had forgotten the ground.

Jiang kicked after her.

He passed her before the second chain.

Kesta had survived the ceiling sea through training, hooks, and a wing-sail meant for open air. Jiang had survived colder water with nothing but feathers, feet, and an appetite that had just been personally offended by lunch. His bad leg spoiled every sharp turn, yet his whole body still belonged here in a way hers did not.

For the first time since reaching Skykeel, the flightless one was faster.

Speed did not make him whole. The bad leg trailed whenever he drove hard, and each full stroke tugged the shoulder that should have been resting after the molt. Still, water supported the weight his bones could not manage on stone. He could roll without falling, turn without a wing, and choose depth before a hunter finished opening one frame.

Skykeel had built its power around the bodies that owned the air. Nobody had planned for a wounded emperor penguin to arrive through the roof.

Below the water’s skin, riders swept between towers on cloth wings. Some wore bright paired colors and banked away when the living bell called. Others carried the same black hooks as Kesta’s pursuers and climbed toward the ocean in tight circles.

Not every wing belonged to the hunt.

A rider in a green sail ignored Jiang completely and dropped onto a bridge that had begun pitching under the copied cry. She caught one rail with both boots while two workers pulled a frightened copper-backed wyvern away from the edge. Farther down, a broad blue wyvern intercepted a falling food basket and returned it to an old man on a chain balcony.

People lived here. Some hunted. Some held the city together while the hunters made it shake.

Kesta tapped her brass hook twice against a chain, then started toward the next support.

The nearest pale bell repeated those two taps.

She stopped before completing the turn.

Jiang had already seen her shoulders tighten. He abandoned the chain and swam into open water. Kesta changed with him, pushing away from every surface the copied rhythm could name.

One of the hunters entered behind them with metal weights locked beneath both boots.

The body sank fast and ugly. Folded wing frames dragged at the shoulders while a hooked line searched through the fish. The hunter could descend. Turning was another matter.

Jiang let the line pass above his back.

He rolled under it and drove upward along the hunter’s side. His cracked beak caught the cord that held one hide wing folded. A hard sideways pull opened the lower frame inside the water.

Trapped air filled the cloth.

The hunter shot upward, arms flung wide, away from Kesta and away from the air beneath the sea. Jiang released before the swollen wing could take his beak with it.

Pain answered from the damaged tip anyway.

Kesta reached him at the next chain root. She pressed two fingers to her throat, pointed at the pale bell hanging under the nearest tower, and made a closing fist.

"Hook Choir," she said through the water. The words escaped as broken breath.

She touched the raw line around her neck.

"The Hook Choir takes calls."

Another of Jiang’s cries rolled through the ocean.

The silver fish turned together. Not toward Jiang, but toward a black-green strand drifting from Kesta’s severed tether. The strand pointed back along their route, toward the small wound that had closed over Aylin’s basin.

The hunters did not need to see the Red Aeries road yet. The stolen call was teaching their leeches where to look.

Jiang pecked the loose strand from Kesta’s collar.

It wrapped around his beak.

Every fish in sight changed direction.

Kesta grabbed for it. Jiang twisted away before her bare hand closed. He wanted the strand noticed. He wanted every hooked wing following it somewhere that was not a nursery full of eggs and one emperor chick with no sense around suspicious fish.

He swam toward the center of Skykeel.

Kesta caught on quickly. She stopped reaching for the tether and drove her wrist hook along his chosen line. When he changed depth, she did not copy the turn exactly. She shifted behind another chain, kicked off pale growth, and met him farther ahead.

The bells learned each abandoned movement.

A pale throat beneath one tower gave Jiang’s cry. Another answered with Kesta’s hook scrape. A third repeated the burst of bubbles from the hunter Jiang had sent upward.

None produced the living action happening now.

The gap was short, but it was enough.

They crossed above a wide circle of hanging towers. Immense chains descended from the ocean around it and met at a bone-white ring far below. Each stolen call made the ring flex. Bridges rose or sank with the rhythm, keeping their decks level while wind pressed against the city.

Kesta put one palm against a chain.

"Bells hold keel," she said.

Jiang felt the vibration through his breast where it touched the same growth.

The city was not merely listening to the voices. It was standing on them.

Now Jiang could see the cost of simply silencing every bell. Homes hung from the moving ring. A nursery bridge flexed between two smaller towers. Wing-sails could save one person from a broken platform, perhaps several, but nobody could carry a street when its chain went slack.

The Hook Choir had wrapped a living wrong around a real need. Breaking only the wrong part would require more than biting through copper.

Kesta pointed beneath the ring.

Rows of wet cages hung in the shadow below Skykeel. Something pale moved inside each one. The distance hid their shape, but not the way every cage contracted when the city bells opened.

Kesta dragged a hooked finger across her throat mark.

"Brood," she said. "Cut for bells."

She pressed the raw mark again and pointed into the cages.

"Mine came from those cages."

Anger made the shared guild words clearer than grammar. Kesta had worn one of those voices around her own throat. Whatever had happened before Jiang saw her, she had chosen to cut it off while hunters dragged her away from air.

The meaning arrived in pieces and still made Jiang’s stomach turn harder than the missing third fish.

Adult bells might choose riders. The pale young things beneath the city had not chosen to become its floor.

A hooked shadow passed beneath them.

The first hunter had left the water and circled through open air. Now the wing frame carried the body easily. The hunter landed on the underside of a chain platform, drove both boots against the wood, and buried a crescent blade in the pale crust where chain met ocean.

Kesta struck the water with her palm.

"You cannot cut the sea!"

The hunter pulled the crescent blade.

A white seam opened across the ocean’s underside.

Water bulged toward Skykeel. The fish scattered. Kesta’s ruined wing-sail snapped downward, caught by the first spill, and tore its last dry fold from her shoulder clasp.

Jiang swam for the unbroken edge.

His bad leg failed halfway through the turn.

The seam ripped wider beneath him.

For one breath, Jiang could see open sky through a clear wall of water. Riders banked away. Bridges tilted. Far below, a hanging catch basin swung between two towers, already filling with the first rain from the cut.

Then the ceiling sea opened.

Jiang fell with it.