Chapter 179: Stormdive Fell Through the Upside-Down Sea

Jiang fell out of an ocean with the stolen tether wrapped around his beak.

Water hammered his back and spun him breast-up. Skykeel turned beneath him: towers, bridges, wing-sails, then towers again. The hanging catch basin crossed his vision on every roll, close enough to promise survival and far enough to miss.

Kesta fell above him.

Her damaged sail had opened into a wet knot behind one shoulder. One clasp remained. The other trailed broken cloth, and the weight of the falling water kept both wings pinned to her spine.

She reached for the brass catch at her collar.

Cold water stripped her fingers away.

Jiang spread both flippers inside the fall.

Water descended with him. The swinging basin below was already receiving the same stream. Every condition that had been absent in the flooded throat and ceiling sea now held his body at once.

At last, `Stormdive` answered him.

The water gripped his new feathers without softening the fall. It offered direction, not mercy.

Only one turn waited inside it.

Jiang chose the basin.

His body rolled breast-down. Falling water bent with him in a single dark curve, carrying him across open air toward the basin’s next swing. The change dragged at his bad hip. His shoulder gave a hot, deep throb beneath the cold coat.

Kesta crossed his path as the turn completed.

Jiang struck the brass catch at her collar with the side of his beak.

The remaining clasp opened.

Wet cloth tore free of her back, snapped once in the air, and spread between both wing frames. Kesta caught the handles. Her fall became a steep glide that belonged entirely to her.

Jiang kept falling without her.

`Stormdive` had spent its turn. No second bend came when the catch basin swung away. No lift gathered beneath his flippers. He tucked his head, kicked once with the good leg, and entered the basin near its outer wall.

Water hit like stone.

His shoulder took the first blow. His hip struck copper beneath it. The world became bubbles, old pain, and the black-green strand winding tighter around his beak as the basin rolled on its chains.

Jiang tried to swim upward.

The bad leg moved without force.

A brass hook entered the water above him.

Kesta had landed on the basin’s suspension arm. She lay flat across wet copper, one boot locked under a chain, and lowered the leather strap behind her wrist hook until it brushed Jiang’s face.

He closed his beak around the strap.

Kesta hauled while Jiang climbed the basin wall with both feet. The useless leg found one rough seam and slipped. His good foot caught the overflow lip. Together they brought his breast over the edge before the first hooked line struck the water behind them.

Kesta rolled him into a spill channel.

Jiang struck the boards on his side and coughed basin water through his beak. His new feathers shed the stream beautifully while everything beneath them complained. The shoulder had lost what little strength remained in it, and the bad leg dragged before he forced both feet under his body.

"Move," she said, coughing between the shared guild sounds. "Hook Choir comes."

Jiang would have preferred a brief argument about whether movement remained one of his available talents. A barbed spear pierced the basin where his body had been, which settled the matter.

The spill channel carried them beneath a hanging platform. Kesta slid on one hip. Jiang went on his belly, coat shedding the water that poured after them. Above, wing frames cracked open and shut as hunters landed on the basin arms.

The black-green strand still circled his beak.

Kesta reached for it.

Jiang stopped beside a grated drain and let her pull.

The strand had cinched around the chipped end of his beak. Its removal opened the cut and sent a thin taste of blood over his tongue. Kesta wrapped the living fiber twice around her brass hook and drove the hook into a wooden beam.

"Let them find that," she said.

The strand writhed toward the basin while Jiang and Kesta left it behind.

They entered the wet dark beneath Skykeel.

Warm brine, old blood, and the sour oil used on chain pulleys filled the space. Water clicked through roots beneath the floor. Between those ordinary workshop sounds came a softer pulse, many small bodies drawing water in and pressing it out again.

Warm water ran through shallow channels in the floor. Curved cages hung between the beams, each woven from pale root and black chain. At first Jiang thought the bodies inside were folded fish.

Then one pale body opened.

It had a broad white mouth rim shaped like a bell, a soft body tapering into two finned tails, and four small gripping limbs folded against its sides. Dark eyes sat beneath the mouth instead of above it. The juvenile pulsed water through its open rim and drifted to the cage wall.

The sound it made was not Jiang’s cry.

It was a frightened, changing trill that no tower had repeated.

Other cages stirred. Some held whole juveniles curled around one another. Some held bodies with the pale mouth rim scarred where narrow strips had been cut away. Empty cages carried dried blood along their roots.

Kesta stopped at one of them.

Her fingers hovered beside the bars and did not enter. "Young bells," she said. "Before rider. Before choice."

Jiang looked up through the gaps in the platform.

Living bells hung beneath riders and wyverns throughout the city. Some moved with the bodies above them, opening when a partner leaned or changed breath. Those might be willing bonds. The cages below had no open sky and no one asking.

Kesta pointed toward a row of iron teeth set across the nearest water channel.

"Kaul cuts mouth. Choir keeps voice. City keeps level."

Footsteps crossed the platform overhead.

Not the scattered impacts of hunters landing. One measured crossing moved from the basin to the center beam. Every Hook Choir bell nearby stopped repeating Jiang and opened on a single low note.

Kesta’s hand closed around her wrist hook.

"That is Kaul," she said.

Through the grate, Jiang saw a man in a copper-black wing frame kneel beside the split sea channel. A pale adult bell covered his breast from collar to ribs. Its mouth opened with no copied voice at all.

Kaul put one gloved hand on a chain wheel.

He looked down through the grate only long enough to locate Jiang and Kesta.

Then he turned the wheel.

Iron teeth closed across the upper spill channel. The connected water from the ceiling sea broke apart above them, cutting off the clearest route back. Kaul rose before the last sheet fell and sent his hunters toward both ends of the brood works.

He had not needed a speech. Closing the water said enough.

Kesta tested the first cage latch with her hook.

"We go," she said, but her hand remained on the root bar.

Jiang heard the choice she had not made.

The nearest juvenile pressed its pale mouth against the cage.

Jiang’s two-voice cry came out.

Every juvenile in the wet dark opened at once.

His stolen call passed from cage to cage beneath Skykeel, softer than the tower bells and far more alive. Water trembled around Jiang’s feet. The chain beams overhead answered with a groan that traveled beyond the platform and into the ceiling sea.

Something immense pulsed above the city.

All the water in the brood cages leaned in the same direction.