Chapter 205: Skykeel Broke the Armada’s First Chain

The armada’s next spears opened around Skykeel like white teeth.

Captain Olsa Venn watched them emerge and struck the first chain with her iron star.

Bronze carried the blow toward her abandoned ship.

She struck again, changed the spacing, and waited with one gauntlet pressed to the link. Far across the water, the three freed sea-wyverns lifted their heads beneath the hull.

"What did you tell them?" Aylin asked.

"That the wheel can turn backward now."

"Will they choose to come?"

Olsa closed her hand around the star. "They heard me. The rest belongs to them."

The largest wyvern approached the damaged wheel first. Its rider did not touch the animal until it offered its brow. Together they took one loose bar. The other two circled through the cooling plume, tested the water, and chose different sides of the frame.

None resumed the old pulling rhythm.

They waited for the chain to become light.

Olsa turned toward Skykeel’s center. "We unload the capture jaws, cool the split core, and remove the separator pin. In that order. Break the pin early and both ends burn."

"I found that part," Jiang said.

He stood in the flooded lip with Aylin’s palm beneath the bare patch on his breast. Cold shook his legs whenever she took the support away.

Her fingers tightened. "You are not going inside again."

"I am smaller than everyone who agrees with you."

"That is not the winning argument you think it is."

Beras leaned against a cracked rib and held his injured side. "For what little comfort it offers, he has never had a winning argument. He simply survives the losing ones."

Jiang looked at him. "You can go back to being crushed."

"I would, but we destroyed my frame."

The exchange gave Aylin enough time to stop squeezing Jiang’s ankle line. She loosened it herself, checked the release tail, and left the loop where they had agreed.

"You come out when I pull," she said.

"Steadily, or while you are screaming?"

"Either. I have revised the system."

Her joke did not hide the fear in her voice. Jiang wanted to promise he would come back, but he had never controlled that answer. He pressed his beak once against her knuckles instead.

No blue panel appeared to argue with her.

At the buried lance head, Kaul’s rider tore the remaining green sail from her cracked spar.

The cloth was barely large enough to spread across the white core. Its edges still carried the dark salt stains of flights made before Jiang had seen Skykeel. She laid it over the split housing and watched heat eat the color from it.

Kaul’s copper plate hung beside her, warped from all the alarms struck across the falling city.

She cut its straps.

Kaul moved one hand toward the plate.

The rider stopped without looking at him. "Do you want the city to keep your old voice, or do you want it alive?"

Wet breath answered through the copper mouths.

Kaul lowered his hand.

The rider broke the plate across the lance jaw. One half curved beneath the cracked core. The other covered it from above. She wrapped both pieces in her wet green sail, then snapped the last sound length from her spar and drove it through the bundle as a brace.

Her wings were gone. So was the plate that had once carried Kaul across every street.

"Core held," she called. "Until it is not."

Kesta answered from the south-root ropes. Residents had run every surviving line through walls, bridge teeth, and open doorframes. Neris held the nursery brace with her gray bell gripping from the opposite side. Dema and Tovar moved the occupied cradle beneath the strongest remaining arch.

No line could save the whole tower. Together they could keep it from following the chain for one release.

Olsa’s hunters entered the flooded root around the four capture jaws. Their fin-winged companions took the outer holds, bodies curving with the current instead of fighting it. Nobody touched the white core wrapped in green.

"Jaws are loaded," one hunter said.

Olsa looked at Kaul.

"The root is holding them open."

Kaul could not answer with words. His pale bell spread over his throat while the black-green hook tightened beneath it.

He placed his good hand against the center brace.

Then he looked at the rider.

She understood before anyone else. "If you empty your breath, the hook may close with it."

Kaul’s fingers pressed harder against the brace.

"That does not forgive anything," she said.

His chest rose once.

The bell shifted from his throat to his shoulder by its own choice. Kaul exposed the living hook and drove his thumb beneath the red strand binding it to the frame.

Wet breath entered every surviving copper mouth in Skykeel.

It came without a voice, long and rough, carrying no command. Residents felt the braces soften around their ropes. The crystallized south root loosened just enough to move against the lance jaws.

Kaul kept breathing out.

Blood ran over his wrist. The black-green hook folded tighter around his throat.

Olsa raised her iron star. "Take the weight."

Her hunters pulled the jaw arms inward. Their companions added their bodies a breath later, each after finding its own hold. Kesta dropped against the release ropes. Neris and the gray bell pushed the nursery brace away from the chain. Beras used his good hand to open the last roof catch.

Across the star-water, the three sea-wyverns leaned into the broken wheel.

Far away, bronze turned backward.

Slack entered the first chain.

Jiang slipped into the coolant seam.

The water there had lost its burning light. It remained hot around the wrapped core and bitterly cold along the open return gill. He swam close to the bronze floor, protecting his bare breast as poorly as his body allowed.

Olsa’s wedge still held the gill open.

Jiang hooked his lower beak beneath it and worked it loose. Coolant pressure tried to steal it. He trapped the wedge beneath his bent toes and carried it to the separator pin.

Aylin’s line floated behind his right foot.

One steady pull reached him.

"Not yet," he said around the wedge, knowing she could not hear him through bronze.

Outside, Kaul’s breath broke.

Every copper mouth fell silent.

His own chest jerked beneath the pale bell. Air entered him in a thin local gasp, but nothing traveled into Skykeel. The last citywide trace of his breath did not return.

The south root relaxed.

All four capture jaws folded.

Jiang drove the white wedge beneath the separator pin.

He had no skill for the push. His torn shoulder failed first. He changed the angle, planted his reliable foot on the link, and drove his breastbone into the wedge.

Pain erased the cold.

The separator pin finally moved.

He struck it again while Olsa’s sea-wyverns took another turn from the wheel.

The separator slid free.

Chain and lance head came apart without opening the wrapped core.

Released bronze rushed toward Olsa’s ship. The sea-wyverns left the wheel as soon as it had the weight, letting the empty chain coil through star-water without dragging them into its path.

Aylin hauled Jiang from the seam.

At the same instant, Kesta released the south ropes. Residents opened their hands in sequence. The crystallized tower shifted away from the detached lance head while Olsa’s hunters and their companions held the wrapped core inside the abandoned rooms.

Unchained, Skykeel drifted free.

No cheer crossed the city.

Kaul lay beneath his pale bell, drawing shallow breaths that belonged only to his body now. His rider stood beside the colorless remains of her sail. Olsa still wore a burning rod and a scar that answered roots. The armada still had more weapons than Skykeel had roofs.

Freedom lasted one heartbeat before another white core began to shine.

The command ship had chosen a second lance.

Silver sails moved between it and Skykeel.

One guild vessel had already put an armored flank between Olsa’s banner and the others. Now it opened the plates along its keel. A black current spilled from the hull, twisting across the star-sea in a road wide enough for damaged Skykeel.

No welcoming signal followed.

Olsa watched debris vanish into that current and strike sparks from stars farther inside it.

"Crosswake," she said. "It may tear your outer roots off."

Aylin looked at the charging lance, then at the dark road.

"Will staying tear off less?"

The second weapon unfolded its chain.

Skykeel had one dangerous current and no safe direction left.