Chapter 204: Olsa Refused to Burn the Brood

Star-fire touched the air trapped beneath Jiang’s feathers.

The ribbon turned toward him.

He kicked away from it, but the coolant seam offered no room to pass. Bronze scraped his back. The clear wall pressed his breast from the other side. Aylin’s line ran through the white glow and vanished toward the entrance.

Heat tightened the loop above his ankle.

Jiang twisted his beak toward the release tail. One pull would free him from the rope before it burned into his leg. It would also leave Aylin holding an empty line.

He kept the loop closed.

Another sea-wyvern surge pushed cold water beneath him. Loose breast feathers lifted in the current, each one carrying a bead of trapped air. Star-fire abandoned his body to follow the beads.

Jiang saw the opening his damaged plumage had made.

He rubbed his breast against the rough side groove.

Feathers tore free. Cold found the skin beneath them at once, sharp enough to steal the strength from his good foot. A trail of silver bubbles climbed toward the upper wall, and the bright ribbon climbed after it.

Jiang pressed himself to the bronze floor and kicked.

Coolant rolled over his bare patch. The fire passed above his back, close enough to curl the black tips of his remaining feathers, but it did not enter his flesh. It followed the trapped air toward a fracture in the clear sheath.

He reached the other side of the leak.

Aylin’s steady pull found him.

Jiang let the line draw him through the open joint while he scraped more loosened feathers into the upper groove. Bubbles rose behind him. So did the star-fire.

At the seam entrance, two armored hands caught the chain and held it apart. Olsa’s hunter had removed one gauntlet after the vent heat warped it. His fin-winged companion hooked its forelimbs under his breastplate and kept the turning bronze from taking him.

Jiang shot between them.

Aylin caught his wet body against her forearm and immediately lowered him into the flooded lip. She did not wrap him close. Her palm stayed beneath his breast until his good foot found copper.

"You are missing more feathers," she said.

"I know where I left them."

"That was not my concern."

"I still prefer concern."

Her laugh broke when white light entered the root beneath them.

The star-fire had found the sheath fracture. Instead of remaining inside the weapon, it spilled through the crystallized south tower in branching lines. One ran into empty rooms. Another entered the old nursery grain of the root.

Every copper brace around the sealed doors turned white.

Olsa’s hunters looked to their captain.

"We can fire-seal the whole branch," one said. "The brood room goes with it."

Olsa stared through the door seam.

Beyond it, Dema had the occupied cradle against her body. Tovar braced the inner bar with one shoulder. Neris’s gray bell covered two injured juveniles while the freed young crowded beneath roof cloth and broken ribs of wood.

No black-green strand moved among them.

Olsa looked back at the air bell. Its lower wall remained open on the ruined tower, ready to take her people off Skykeel.

She cut the bell’s chain.

The clear vessel began drifting away from the city.

"No retreat through the nursery," she said. "Cut the dead rooms open. Give the fire somewhere else to go."

Her hunters hesitated only until the first fin-winged companion left the bell and drove its head beneath the drifting wall. The others joined it. Together they pushed their only dry shelter toward the empty side of the tower, away from the brood.

Olsa put her burning rod against the crystal floor.

Aylin caught her armored shoulder. "That line runs beneath a family room."

"Then show me one that does not."

Kesta slid down the release rope with blood soaking both hand wraps. She kicked a loose copper plate toward the abandoned roof row.

"Under that," she said. "We lost the rooms in the crossing. Nothing living is left there."

Kaul’s rider drove his blade through the plate and used it as a lever. Aylin added her good shoulder. Olsa changed the angle of her rod until white flame began cutting away from the nursery grain.

They worked beside one another without trust.

Jiang entered the flooded channel above the new cut. His exposed breast screamed in the cold. That pain meant heat was leaving him; it did not mean he could hold the star-fire.

He turned his body across the nursery-bound current and shook the last loose air from his feathers. Bubbles gathered along his back, rose, and slid toward Olsa’s opening. White flame followed their warmer path through the water.

A roof brace cracked behind him.

One injured juvenile bell tumbled from Neris’s cover and struck the outer door as it opened under pressure. Olsa dropped her rod.

She caught the juvenile against her white scales before the hot brace could fall across it. The animal wrapped both forelimbs around the seven-pointed star on her breast and refused to release.

Olsa could not reach her weapon.

Kaul’s rider took it from the floor.

For one dangerous breath, she held Olsa’s fire in the hand that also held Kaul’s blade.

Then she returned the rod handle-first.

"Save it first," the rider said. "We can hate each other after."

Olsa passed the juvenile to Neris’s gray bell. Only when both animals had chosen their grip did she release her supporting arm.

"I have already begun," she said.

She drove the rod into the abandoned roof line.

The cut into the empty rooms opened.

Star-fire changed course through the crystal grain. It crossed beneath Jiang’s bubble trail, left the nursery branch, and burst from the ruins in a white plume. The drifting air bell caught the blast on its empty outer wall. Its clear skin blackened, folded, and carried the fire away from Skykeel.

A second plume crossed the chain in the direction of Olsa’s ship.

Her three sea-wyverns released the bronze wheel before it reached them. One rider cut a bar free; another opened both hands and let her animal choose the water below the hull. They scattered with the returning fire behind them, carrying no part of the weapon’s load.

Olsa watched until every animal cleared the wheel.

Only then did she turn to the root glowing beneath Skykeel.

The leaked fire had made the crystallized channels visible. Black-green traces remained around Kaul’s hook and the dead surface scar where the lance guide had entered. Past the center, every old feeder route stood empty. None reached the nursery. None crossed the chain.

"It withdrew," Aylin said.

Olsa touched the glass-packed hollow above her shoulder. No dark thread rose beneath it now.

"The traveling root withdrew," she said. "The hook did not."

"Then stop treating the whole city as the hook."

Olsa looked at the juvenile still clinging to Neris’s bell. "That is why they are alive."

She retrieved her rod but did not point it at Kaul.

"The first lances were built after a speaking road crossed a linked fleet through its cooling water," she said. "They pin the infected city, separate what still lives, and burn what keeps traveling. This road has stopped traveling."

Kaul’s rider kept his blade raised. "You sound disappointed."

"I sound corrected. Do not confuse that with harmless."

A red lantern unfolded above the largest ship in the armada.

Olsa’s vessel answered with a white signal. Its damaged wheel no longer turned, and its riders were still gathering the freed sea-wyverns beneath the hull.

The red lantern descended anyway.

Other ships opened armored sides. Chained spear heads emerged into the star-water, aimed past Olsa’s stranded hunters at Skykeel.

Olsa read the moving lights and went still.

"They have canceled my recall," she said. "My ship is ordered to abandon us. The armada will burn Skykeel from range."