Chapter 201: The Star-Lance Missed Jiang and Chained the City

The star-lance crossed the water without slowing.

White fire wrapped a bronze spear longer than a Skykeel street. A chain uncoiled behind it from the seven-pointed ship, each link turning inside a clear sleeve of air. The weapon should have flown straight.

It bent toward Kaul.

Jiang saw the reason ahead of the burning point. A filament as thin as a hair moved through the star-water, pale at one end and black-green where it reached the center. It had found the living hook beside Kaul’s ruined voice box.

Kaul felt it too.

His body twisted against the frame. Wet breath burst through the city copper mouths, but no warning traveled with it. His injured adult bell spread over the hook and covered as much of the red strand as its pale body could reach.

The filament passed through the animal.

It was following the root beneath both bodies.

Aylin grabbed the center line. "Can we cut that thread?"

Kaul’s rider brought his blade up and watched the lance behind it. "We can cut anything once."

"That was not comforting."

"I was not comforting you."

The filament reached the copper lip.

Jiang lunged for it.

Star-lance wake struck him broadside before his beak closed. The water spun his injured body away from Kaul. White fire, stars, Aylin, and the city crossed his sight in a hard circle.

His torn shoulder could not open far enough to stop the roll.

Fear came late and sharp. If he lost the filament, the weapon would choose Kaul, and everyone tied to Kaul would be chosen with him. Jiang wanted that choice out of the stranger’s hands.

The new skill waited where pain had left no room for anything else.

Jiang chose a heading.

[KEELTURN I USED.]

Nothing pushed him forward.

No force left his body. The roll already carrying him simply changed its ending. His feet swung beneath him, his tail followed, and his breast turned toward the filament instead of away from it.

Jiang opened his beak.

The guide struck his tongue like hot wire.

He clamped his beak shut.

White light filled the split in his beak. The filament stretched between the approaching spear and Kaul’s throat. Jiang twisted his neck while the lance wake carried him past.

The burning guide filament snapped.

Its black-green end recoiled into Kaul’s hook. Its white end whipped behind the spear and vanished in the burning head.

The star-lance stopped bending.

It did not stop coming.

Aylin hauled Jiang to the copper rib by the loose center line. He caught it with one foot and spat a smoking thread from his mouth. The burn had blackened the edge of his tongue and sealed blood along one side of his broken beak.

"You cut it," she said.

Jiang looked past her at the spear.

"Yes. I noticed the rest."

Beside him, Kaul’s rider tracked the new path. Without the guide, the weapon held its last course. That line no longer ended in Kaul’s throat.

It ended in Skykeel’s remaining south-tower root.

The root had already lost its outer half during the star-water crossing. Empty rooms hung from pale wood beneath it. One inhabited bridge still ran behind the broken section, carrying residents away from the center.

"Clear the bridge!" the rider shouted.

Her voice reached only the nearest street. Her blade rang once against the copper plate. Residents answered with pots, roof bars, and their own cries, passing the danger outward faster than one fixed call ever had.

Kesta heard the changing alarm from the tower side.

Her palms were wrapped in torn cloth, and neither hand could close around the south-root release. She kicked the copper jaw instead. It held. Two residents put their shoulders beneath the lower bar while Kesta wound a roof rope around both forearms.

The last family left the bridge.

Kesta dropped her weight onto the rope.

The release jaw opened.

South-tower rooms swung away from the inhabited span just as the star-lance reached Skykeel.

White fire entered the empty root.

Water vanished around the impact. Pale wood turned clear, then bright, as if winter had grown through it in one breath. The lance passed through three empty floors and stopped inside the broken tower core.

Its chain arrived next.

Links hammered through the crystallized rooms. The first caught the tower root. Another wrapped around the remains of a roof. By the time the chain drew tight, the weapon had tied itself through every structure residents had not managed to cut away.

Skykeel lurched toward the seven-pointed ship.

Aylin hit the center rib on one knee. Beras caught the back of her coat with his uninjured hand, then folded around his bruised ribs. Jiang lost his footing and struck Kaul’s boot.

Kaul’s rooted frame bent toward the chain pull.

His pale bell changed its grip before the hook could twist. One working limb caught the brace. The folded limb slid uselessly across Kaul’s blood. Kaul put his own hand beneath the animal and held its weight while it held the hook.

Wet breath traveled through Skykeel.

Not one word returned.

The chain began to reel.

On the attacking ship, three armored sea-wyverns took positions around a bronze wheel. No bit pierced their jaws. Each animal closed its own finned wings around a separate bar when its rider touched forehead to brow.

They pulled at different times.

The wheel turned anyway.

Skykeel moved through the star-sea toward them.

Other guild ships gave the chain a broad corridor. One vessel folded its silver sails and sank beneath the firing line. Another turned its armored side toward the seven-pointed banner but did not open a weapon. Lantern messages crossed between distant hulls too quickly for anyone in Skykeel to read.

The armada was reacting.

That did not make it united.

Kesta reached the center by sliding down the return rope. The wrapping on her palms had gone red. Neris came through another doorway with her swollen knee held off the floor.

"The south root is turning to glass," Kesta said. "If we cut it now, the chain takes the whole tower."

"If we leave it, the ship takes the whole city," Neris answered.

No one had enough intact structure for a clean choice.

Aylin looked at the chain, then at the open star-water around it. "Can riders reach the ship?"

The green-sailed woman lifted her cracked spar. Half a sail hung from it like wet skin.

"Not against that pull."

Jiang tested his shoulder and found only pain. The spin inside him had ended. Keelturn offered no second correction, no free recovery, and no answer for a chained city.

He entered the water beside the copper lip anyway.

The star-lance chain carried a narrow current back toward the weapon. Between the links, clear air moved inside a glassy sheath. A penguin might fit where armor and open wings would not.

Aylin saw where he was looking.

"You are not swimming into the spear that just cooked your mouth."

Jiang tapped the chain once with his beak.

"That was a statement, not a challenge."

Beras tried to laugh and held his ribs instead. "He has never respected the difference."

Before Jiang could enter the chain wake, something moved down it toward them.

A clear air bell slid from the seven-pointed ship. It rode the links without touching the burning lance head. Armored figures stood inside its dry center while star-water folded around the glass.

Kaul’s rider brought the blade down beside her leg. "Boarders."

"How many?" Aylin asked.

"Enough to arrive before an answer."

The air bell struck the crystallized south tower.

Its lower wall opened like an eyelid. Water stayed outside. Six armored hunters stepped onto the ruined root with hooked white blades held low, each one connected to a fin-winged animal swimming beside the bell.

Their captain came last.

She wore no helmet. Close-cropped gray hair floated around a brown face marked by three pale scars beneath one ear. A seven-pointed iron star covered the breast of her white scale armor.

The captain ignored Aylin, Jiang, and every raised blade.

Her gaze found the black-green hook in Kaul’s throat.

She drew a short burning rod from her belt and pointed it at Skykeel’s center.

"Seal the nursery doors," she told her hunters. "Then burn this root before it learns our names."