Chapter 182: Kesta’s Wingmate Chose the Falling Bridge

Kesta did not say the hunter’s name until his hook closed behind her neck.

He came down the channel root with both dark sails open, silver stitching bright on his right shoulder. Skykeel’s sideways rain shoved at him. He leaned into it without looking, let one wing collapse, and dropped through a gap that should have broken a rider against the bars.

His free hand found the root above Kesta. His capture hook found the narrow space between her throat and her remaining frame.

"Beras." Kesta barely breathed it.

The name left Kesta quieter than fear.

Jiang had one foot against the wall and Aylin’s fingers against his face when the moving chain snapped the water between them taut. Her hand vanished into the wound. Current flung Jiang backward, and Kesta’s old wingmate tightened his hook.

"You cut your bell," Beras said.

"It was never mine."

Wood cracked below them.

Everyone looked down except Kaul.

The nursery bridge they had just leveled had begun to roll around its restored chain. Its city-side suspension was sliding toward the Bellmother’s pull, while the freed ocean-side chain held. The whole deck twisted between them.

One cradle struck the upper rail and split its padded shell. A wet, furious hatchling spilled into the green-sailed rider’s arms. The old man from the bridge caught its tail before the next roll could throw both of them into open air.

Beras had Kesta where he wanted her.

He also had one intact wing, one hand on a root, and a clear drop to the bridge.

His hook opened without warning.

Kesta fell half a body before her brass wrist caught the lower bar. Beras pushed away from her and folded both sails into the rain.

He reached the bridge before the broken cradle did.

One boot struck the high rail. His left sail opened across the deck, not to fly, but to catch three sliding baskets and a worker who had lost every handhold. Their combined weight dragged him toward the edge.

Kesta made a sound Jiang had not heard from her before: two hard clicks of brass against chain.

Beras answered by folding the tip of his right sail.

Neither had needed words.

Kesta swung beneath the channel on her hook strap. Her ruined frame could not lift her, but it could still change the shape of a fall. She kicked away from the wall, let the sideways rain take her, and curved under Beras instead of toward him.

He released his left sail at the moment she passed.

Kesta caught its lower spar with both feet. Her weight pulled that side of his frame down. Beras rolled with her, turned the loaded sail into a cradle, and spilled the trapped people back against the safe rail.

It was the sort of movement built from many bad landings survived together.

It ended with Kesta hanging below his wing and Beras refusing to look at her.

Her brass hook rested close enough to cut one of his flight straps. She left it still. Beras could have rolled and crushed her against the rail. He held the angle instead. Whatever trust remained between them had become this: knowing exactly how the other could hurt them, then waiting to see whether they would.

The bridge kept twisting.

Jiang dove along the chain channel.

Warm water rushed past his head toward the moving root. He kept his injured flipper against his body and drove with both feet until the bad leg lost its stroke. The chain beneath him shuddered through every feather on his belly.

Near the city-side guide, a cradle sling had wrapped around the braking jaw. Each turn of the chain pulled the cloth deeper. The brake could neither close nor release, so the bridge took every movement as a new twist.

Jiang bit the sling.

Pain flashed through the split in his beak. He let go before stubbornness made the injury useful to nobody.

Cloth would not fear him. Fine.

He pushed his good foot through the loop, rolled onto his back, and kicked with his whole body. The sling tightened around his ankle. Water filled his nose. His shoulder struck the guide, and for one ugly breath he hung where the cradle should have been.

Then the cloth slipped over his heel.

The braking jaw slammed shut.

Above him, chain links stopped racing.

Kesta clicked her hook once.

Beras hauled up with both sails. She dropped from his spar at the top of the roll, caught the bridge rail, and let her weight pull against the last twist. Riders and residents joined her wherever they stood. The copper-backed wyvern planted all four gripping feet and leaned until its throat scraped wood.

Skykeel did not become level. For the moment, the nursery bridge did.

Jiang worked his foot free and surfaced inside the root channel. Blood from his beak touched the current and disappeared toward the Red Aeries.

A plain rope came back.

Its end nosed through the living wound wrapped around a smooth piece of black stone. Aylin had tied the same off-center hitch she used when she wanted a line to pull around a body instead of through it.

Jiang caught it with the unbroken side of his beak.

On the other side of the wound, Aylin pulled once.

He answered with one pull.

No voice road translated it. No copied call arrived late. A rope held between two sets of living hands was enough.

Beyond the wound, Hest braced the line around his forearm while Valea kept its edge away from hungry stone. The smallest juvenile paced through the runoff beside them. Whenever it stopped, the opening tightened around the rope; whenever it moved, water gave the line room to tremble.

Kesta climbed back into the brood channel and fixed the line around a root with her brass hook. Beras landed behind her.

This time his capture hook stayed lowered.

"You remembered the drop," Kesta said.

"I remember everyone who would have died when you missed it."

"You remember the bridge. Not the bodies under your bells."

Beras looked through the grate at the pale juveniles still climbing the opened cage roots. His jaw tightened before he looked away.

"Without the chorus, every bridge does that."

"Then learn another song."

"Before or after the city falls?"

Neither won. Skykeel groaned around them and made winning sound childish.

The second main chain pulled again.

Pale roots peeled away from its wet iron. Beyond them, the ceiling ocean darkened across a moving shape so immense that Jiang first mistook it for the return of night.

The Bellmother turned close enough for her hide to show.

Old scars crossed it in white ridges. One had never healed around the city chain. Iron vanished into a raw-edged groove, and living flesh had grown over every link except the one Skykeel’s movement kept tearing open.

Their city was not merely hanging beneath her sea.

One district was hooked through her wound.

Kaul reached the shear perch above the nursery roofs. His adult bell clung beneath his frame, throat swollen around a note it had not released. While riders still passed cradles from the twisting bridge, Kaul opened a copper guard beside the district chain.

Inside lay a red pull-loop and a row of hooked teeth.

He drew the loop only far enough to test it.

Every hooked tooth moved.

Roots around the nursery district tightened. Roofs knocked together. A hatchling screamed from the bridge Beras had just saved.

Kesta climbed toward Kaul. Beras barred her with one dark sail.

"They’re still crossing," she said.

Kaul watched the scar in the Bellmother’s hide stretch around the buried chain.

"Then clear them before her next turn."

He drove his copper hook through the red loop and left it there.

Across Skykeel, Hook Choir riders saw which district their master had marked for cutting.