Chapter 211: The First Guild Roost Shut Its Gates on the Penguin

Cairnspire closed its lowest bridge while Jiang was still wrapped in a nursery cloth.

The span rose between two dead-star shells, shedding people, baskets, and one protesting shellback seal onto the inner shelf. Iron teeth met beneath it. Rune light traveled across the join and turned toward Skykeel.

Not toward the armada behind them.

Toward Kaul’s hook.

The living thing lifted from his shoulder. Every rune tooth along the gate leaned after it with a metal scrape.

The rider pressed Kaul beneath the surviving rib. She laid his own blade across the hook without cutting. Olsa reached for her weapon anyway.

"We have already had this argument," the rider said.

"The gate is having it now."

"Then argue with the gate."

On the rising bridge, a broad woman caught the last handrail and walked uphill as the span folded under her boots. Copper rings covered both forearms. A hammer with two flat heads hung against her back.

She reached the inner shell, kicked a locking tooth into place, and shouted down through a speaking cone.

"Keep the road-hook outside Cairnspire. Close every inhabited span."

Irra stood at Ashwake’s broken mast. "Vessa Rane, look at Morrowfin’s wing."

"I am trying not to look at the lance behind it."

The red lantern had entered the mouth of the crosswake. More of the command ship followed, black hull first, with a new white weapon unfolding along its keel.

Guild beasts woke across Cairnspire.

Sea-wyverns strained against loose rest lines. Two young star-rays slapped the wet silver awnings above them and drove pale dust from the dead shells. Handlers opened the lines rather than hold frightened animals beside a closing gate.

The roost became motion without becoming welcome.

Skykeel hung outside it with two outer roots missing.

Kesta saw the command ship and pointed toward the nearest dead star. Residents pulled the lopsided city behind the round white shell. One group closed the exposed room mouths. Another opened the center beneath the nursery so air could pass through without rolling the remaining root.

The shell hid half the city from the armada.

Kaul’s hook still pulled the gate light around its edge.

Olsa looked at the torn place where her seven-point star had been. "If I still wore the iron, I could draw the sight away."

"You would also be dead beside it," Aylin said.

"Your gift for comfort remains poor."

"Jiang has complained about that."

He would have defended her if his tongue had stopped shaking.

Aylin knelt beside him at the copper lip. She had left his beak uncovered and the cloth loose over his breast so it could rise. The sound-ankle line remained attached, but she had fed enough slack through it for him to move away from her hands.

Jiang tried to pull his bad leg beneath himself.

The leg stayed straight.

"Do not," Aylin said.

"I dislike meeting new people from a blanket."

"It is a nursery cloth."

"That has made the impression worse."

The humor cost too much breath. He put his beak down and listened to the cloth tap against his shaking feathers.

Across the gap, Vessa Rane heard Irra’s second shout.

"Open the feeder throat," Irra called. "Only the water gate. She cannot hold that fire outside."

Vessa looked below Ashwake.

Morrowfin had left the crosswake, but black water still clung to the motion of her body. Her sound wing beat slowly beneath the roost. The wounded wing stayed folded, white fire leaking from the torn feeding scar toward the joint.

No clean shell waited in front of her mouth now.

She had followed Ashwake and stopped.

Vessa swung her hammer from her back. One flat head struck the rune tooth beside her. The inner bridges remained closed. Lower down, a narrow line split between two dead stars.

Water spilled through the opening.

"Feeder throat only," Vessa said. "No city root. No seven-point coat. No hook."

Olsa laughed once without warmth. "The coat is missing its point."

"That is why I can see the blood around it."

Irra lifted the last unbroken shell from Ashwake’s rack.

She did not cast it at Morrowfin. Her crew lowered it on the torn half-sail until the shell entered the water beyond Cairnspire’s narrow gate. The crew let the silver cloth go.

Morrowfin watched the shell drift.

Her dark eye passed over the gate teeth, Ashwake, and Skykeel. It stopped on Kaul’s hook. The pale bell covering his shoulder made a low call and pressed its body harder against him.

Morrowfin turned back to the clean shell.

She chose the feeder throat.

The roost opened just wide enough for her head and sound-side edge. Ashwake dropped beside her. Irra’s crew took their saws to the broken mast, cut away its rigging, and rolled the whole spar across the moving gate teeth.

The teeth closed on silver wood.

Ashwake’s last mast splintered but held the opening.

Morrowfin entered beneath it.

The first pull of her body sent black water through Cairnspire’s lower shelves. Empty feeding baskets struck rails. Handlers drew the young star-rays higher while the shellback seal climbed the bridge on its own belly and shoved two slow people ahead of it.

Vessa kept one boot on the gate lock. "Move the feeder clear. Leave the city where it is."

A thin cradle came down from the roost on two lines.

It was half a dead-star shell with dry gray cloth laid over its rim. A warm white stone rested beneath another folded layer, far enough from the edge that a body could leave it.

Aylin caught the cradle before it struck Skykeel.

She wanted Jiang warm enough to insult her and nowhere near Morrowfin’s wound. The two wants fought visibly in her hands. One reached for the gate line. The other stopped over his back and checked whether the nursery cloth moved with each breath.

Jiang hated that he could tell which want was winning.

"You may be angry after your beak stops shaking," she said.

"That sounds like a rule designed to last forever."

"Then you will have a very long grievance."

"For the bird," Vessa shouted. "Beside him. Not under him. If he cannot crawl away, it is too close."

The advice arrived with no promise of entry.

Aylin set the half-shell along Jiang’s feathered side, leaving a gap between warmth and skin. She raised the nursery cloth over both without tightening it across his chest. A small water skin lay in the cradle, but she left it closed.

She kept the warm stone near his feathered flank rather than the bare center and shifted it when his good foot failed to move away on the first try. The cradle remained open on the other side. Heat could reach him without becoming another thing holding him down.

"Tap once if the heat hurts," she told him. "Twice if you want it moved farther."

"What if I want the gate opened?"

"Develop a third foot."

"The System will hear you."

Pain returned first along the feathered rim of his breast. It crawled inward as a hard ache and stopped before the numb center. His feet kept shaking. His beak remained cold.

Warmth was reaching him. Recovery was not.

Behind the dead star, Kesta’s ropes groaned.

The command ship cleared more of the crosswake. Its unfolding lance could not see Olsa’s missing iron, but the pale joints along its shaft turned whenever Kaul’s hook rose.

The rider pulled Kaul farther behind the shell. Olsa took the opposite side of his root. They moved him together while keeping their blades between them.

"Do not confuse this with trust," the rider said.

"Everyone here has learned that sentence."

The star shell blocked the direct line at last.

The gate runes stopped turning toward Skykeel. They did not relax. White light gathered inside their teeth as Morrowfin’s wounded side reached the opening.

Her sound wing passed through.

The folded wing did not.

It struck the outer gate beneath Ashwake’s splintered mast. Morrowfin’s whole body stopped. The clean shell floated beyond her mouth, untouched.

White fire poured from the feeding scar and ran along the iron teeth.

Vessa jumped off the lock before the heat reached her boots. "Hold every inner bridge!"

Morrowfin flexed the wounded joint.

The dead-star shells on both sides of the feeder throat shifted apart. A crack opened beneath the lowest haul-out shelf and ran toward the sleeping shellback seals.

Irra dropped flat on Ashwake’s open keel. "Morrowfin, keep the fold."

The animal did not obey the words.

She felt the gate against her wound and chose stillness after one shuddering breath.

The crack stopped widening.

Between folded wing and iron teeth, dark water moved through a slit no broader than Jiang’s shoulders. Bubbles left the injured joint and hung against the white fire before breaking inside the gate.

Vessa stared into the flooded slit.

"No person fits that wound channel," she said.

Aylin’s hand closed over the nursery cloth.

"Do not even look at him," she called.

Jiang had not moved.

He put his good foot beneath himself anyway.