Chapter 219: Aylin Crossed the Current Jiang Could Not Touch

Vessa turned the feeder cradle over and struck its roof with her knuckles.

The shell was broader than Aylin’s shoulders and deep enough for her to crouch beneath. Its open mouth faced the floor. Old cloth packed the joints along its back, but nothing sealed the lower rim.

"It keeps air because water has to climb into it," Vessa said. "Keep the mouth down and the roof up. Tip it, and you give the air away."

"How much air?" Aylin asked.

"Enough for feeding a wounded swimmer through a bad gate. Nobody built it for conversation."

Dust shifted beyond the fracture.

"That is a terrible description of the thing you want her to enter," Jiang called.

"I don’t want her in it. She asked how it works."

Vessa tied a dry twist of gray cloth beneath the cradle’s roof, then lowered the empty shell through the shelf opening. Water swallowed the rim. Bubbles escaped from an old seam in the back, slowed, and stopped.

Two Cairnspire swimmers steadied the shell without sharing a harness. The narrow-finned animal from the side arch kept its teeth on a left strap. A copper-backed swimmer chose the opposite side only after its rider removed a hooked spur that would have scraped the shell.

They brought the cradle up again.

Water poured from its mouth. Vessa reached inside and pulled down the gray twist. Its hanging end was wet. The knot under the roof remained dry.

"It leaks slowly," she said.

"Everything here leaks slowly," Aylin replied.

"Some things have started leaking quickly."

Stone settled under Jiang with a low grind. His ankle line tightened, then eased when Aylin put her hand over it.

"You crossed the wound once," he said. "It tried to keep you."

"I remember how close it came."

"You had a rope and people on both ends."

"I have that now, too."

"You have a feeding bowl."

Aylin looked into the dark shell. "A very expensive feeding bowl, from Vessa’s expression."

Vessa’s expression did not improve.

Jiang lowered the unbroken edge of his beak to the cloth. He could picture Aylin fastening the line around her ribs because he had watched her do it before too many other crossings. Fear made him want to tell her that his choice of body had bought the right to control hers.

It had not. Nothing had.

"Tell me what makes you turn back," he said.

Aylin answered without hesitation. "If the roof line frays. If either swimmer releases before the midpoint lip. If the water reaches my mouth while the shell is level. If you feel the forward line catch and cannot free it."

"If the living call stops?"

She listened. Beyond the fallen gate, the female emperor left her rough opening unfinished. The injured male filled part of it, breathing hard enough to break his answer. A chick moved between them and called from somewhere new.

"No," Aylin said. "I don’t drown because someone I love goes quiet."

Jiang closed his eyes against the dust.

"Good," he said. "That was the wrong answer last time."

Vessa passed the cradle’s forward guide through a shell eye above the water. Its thin root line emerged beside Jiang’s sound foot. He caught it against the cloth and drew the slack past a broken edge in the breath spine.

He could not pull Aylin across. The roof line and swimmers would carry the cradle. His task was smaller and no less capable of killing her: keep the guide from sawing open on the fracture.

Aylin removed her outer coat and every hard piece that could strike the shell. She kept a short knife flat against her forearm, crawled beneath the inverted cradle, and crouched with both hands around the inner grips.

Vessa touched the cradle roof.

"Breathe before you need it."

"That’s usually when I do."

"Aylin, listen to me now."

"I heard every word you said."

The cradle descended into blue water.

Cold water climbed over Aylin’s boots, thighs, and waist. Air crowded against the shell roof with the smell of old cloth and feeding oil. When the rim sank beneath the shelf, the water stopped below her breast.

She breathed before she needed it.

Outside the open mouth, blue light moved across the drowned road. The narrow-finned swimmer angled left while the copper-backed animal held against the current. Their different pulls kept the roof upright.

Cairnspire vanished behind broken shell.

Ahead lay a pale lip under the fractured breath spine. The feeder cradle had once docked there. Now the road between was full of fallen ribs, drifting grit, and white fire leaking around the emergency gate’s far edge.

Jiang felt the guide begin to scrape.

He trapped it beneath his beak and shifted his sound foot. His injured leg offered nothing. His tail found the seam wall, but the movement dragged exposed breast skin over dust and left him breathing through an open beak.

"Line is clear," he called.

The words reached Aylin through shell and stone as a dull shape she could not understand. His two answering pulls on the guide were clearer.

She returned two from inside the cradle.

A white hook rose beneath the copper-backed swimmer.

Its rider saw the pale bend before Aylin did. She released her hold on the cradle, struck the swimmer’s neck with an open palm, and both turned away from the hook. The choice saved them from its teeth.

It also left the cradle with only one side held.

The shell tipped toward open water.

Air fled past Aylin’s ear in a bright rush of bubbles. Water rose over her breast and slapped her chin before she threw her weight toward the high grip. The narrow-finned swimmer twisted around the left strap, fighting the cradle rather than the hook.

Outside, the copper-backed animal rammed the armada diver from below. Its rider used no command line. She had none. She held the swimmer’s back groove and went where it chose to strike.

White fire cut through the abandoned right strap.

The loose end whipped toward the fracture.

Jiang felt the forward guide jump onto a shard edge. He could not see the cradle. He heard Aylin cough once inside the shell and understood enough.

He drove his sound foot over the guide and rolled his body away from the shard.

Pain entered through the straight hip before the line moved. His split beak closed around the root braid. The fibers tasted of stone dust and his own blood.

Jiang pulled the guide into the shallow groove left by the air shutter.

The old hinge cut his shoulder when he passed beneath it. He held the line there with his beak until the scraping stopped.

Below, the narrow-finned swimmer brought the cradle level. Its rider surfaced inside the shell mouth for half a breath, eyes open in the trapped air.

"Are you still here?" she asked.

Aylin coughed water from her nose. "Annoyingly."

The rider bared her teeth and dropped back into the road.

The struggle below kept moving without a command from Jiang. The copper-backed swimmer drove the diver into a bridge rib and broke away when another white hook opened. Its rider caught the severed cradle strap, wrapped it once around her forearm, and took the missing side by hand.

Morrowfin remained outside the narrow mouth. Her wounded wing stayed closed, blood darkening the fold. When two more divers tried to pass over her, she spent no second pressure stroke. She rolled her broad back against the opening and forced them to find a path around her living weight.

The feeder cradle crossed the last flooded break.

Its rim struck the pale midpoint lip. Aylin caught stone with both hands and crawled from beneath the shell into trapped air.

She lay on a wet ledge while the cradle rocked behind her. Her lungs worked. That was enough for the first moment.

"Aylin?" Jiang’s call reached through the wall, thinned by the fracture.

She found the guide line and pulled twice.

His answer came back twice.

The midpoint chamber was not built from Cairnspire’s blue shell. Rounded white ridges crossed one wall in layers. Between them lay black-gray material that gave faintly beneath Aylin’s palm, warmer than the road water.

She knew where she had felt that warmth.

At Red Aeries, she had pushed her bare hand between a white scar ridge and buried iron while the Bellmother’s living flesh tried to close. She had felt old healing split around the city’s chain. Here, the same rounded growth embraced a rust-dark groove no tool had cut.

A black-green splinter rested inside it.

The female emperor called beyond the wall. Her voice trembled through the splinter, but the glass did not repeat it. When the injured male answered early, the vibration changed. A chick bumped something soft and called again from lower down.

Ordinary bodies. Living wound. Familiar glass.

Aylin put her forehead against the white ridge.

"I’ve touched this scar before," she called to Jiang.

The armada hook caught the cradle’s severed strap.

White fire tightened outside. The feeder shell tore away from the midpoint lip before either swimmer could release it cleanly. Its rim struck the low outlet and dragged an old shell flap down behind Aylin.

The passage closed behind her.

Her guide line remained through a narrow notch, but water began spreading across the ledge from beneath the flap. It covered her fingers, then her wrists.

Jiang pulled once in alarm.

Aylin answered with the nursery signal they had changed after the gate fell: two pulls, then stillness.

Do not drag me into the danger beneath us.

Beyond the scar, the female emperor gave an unfinished call.

This time, Aylin heard the chick answer from close against her body.