Chapter 227: The Chick Heard Him Behind the Burning Tooth

Jiang called because the injured male had stopped answering.

Water crushed the first note against his split beak. He forced the second voice beneath it, rough and lower, until both sounds beat against each other inside the narrow road.

Between him and Red Aeries, the white tooth trembled.

His call went through anyway.

On the other side, the chick heard him before any human did.

It had been crouched beneath the female’s breast with its burned beak held partly open. Jiang’s changing beat reached the basin, and the chick lurched out between her joined feet.

A sweep of her brood fold caught it.

Her body moved before recognition softened anything. She pushed the chick behind her sound leg, turned her breast toward the white fragment, and left her injured mate inside the shelter made by her flank.

Only then did she answer Jiang.

Her opening matched the call she had sent through the drowned road. Its ending changed when the chick struggled beneath her. No glass copy could have adjusted to that small body at the same time.

Jiang pressed his crown to the tunnel roof.

Burned beak open, the chick forced a reply.

Its first voice came thin. The second broke when the beak failed to open fully, recovered, and pushed a crooked little beat through the female’s call.

Jiang had heard that mistake from farther away. At this distance it hurt worse.

Jiang answered with more force than breath allowed.

Too much effort caught in his damaged breath and folded into a cough. Bubbles ran over the blade hanging across his path. White fire followed them up the hinge.

Across the fragment, Valea saw the light change.

"He is inside the passage," she said.

Hest had already put his remaining iron bar against the scar ridge. It was bowed from the hook fight and dark where living warmth had cooked old blood into the metal.

"Inside is not through," he said.

A second answer pushed from the chick.

Its mother lowered her breast until the sound came from beneath her rather than nearer the tooth. The injured male dragged himself across her outer side by beak and chest. Folded legs followed without helping.

Cloth under his reopened wound darkened.

He had not gone silent because he was dead. He had spent the breath moving between the fragment and the chick.

Valea stepped toward him with another folded strip.

Beside the cloth, the male struck stone near Valea’s hand and kept crawling.

She left the cloth where he could choose it. The chick reached from beneath the female, caught one corner with its burned beak, and pulled the strip toward him in short, furious jerks.

He stopped with the cloth beneath him.

That was the closest any of them came to accepting help.

Valea wanted the family off the basin floor before the fragment moved again. She stepped wide of the male, held both hands where the female could see them, and pointed toward the higher ledge.

The female understood danger without understanding the gesture. She moved the chick behind her other leg, shifted her mate closer to the wall, and stayed within reach of Jiang’s call.

"She will not leave him behind the tooth," Valea said.

Hest tested the scar with his bar. "She will not leave either male. That is a worse problem."

Ilex offered the torn edge of a warm hide from outside pecking distance. The chick stretched toward it. Its mother blocked the reach with one foot and pulled the small body back beneath her.

Mottle watched the refusal and turned away. Rather than crowd the emperor family, the wounded wyvern hooked the warm hide with one claw and dragged it toward the smallest juvenile.

Nobody won the argument. The family gave Valea one safer body length and no more.

Once the hide covered the smallest juvenile, Ilex limped around Mottle’s uninjured side and cleared loose line from the basin without asking the wyvern to move.

Bellwyrm chose the scar instead.

Its burned forelimb could not close around the white shaft. It planted the unburned one against warm tissue below the hinge and leaned until the living wall groaned.

Hest looked at the Bellwyrm, then at the bar in his hands.

"If it pushes now, the blade turns toward him," Valea said.

"If it stops, the blade keeps opening."

"Those are both bad answers."

"I noticed both of those problems," Hest said.

Hest lifted the bar away from the hinge and struck its end against the ridge.

One impact traveled through living scar. He dragged iron across the surface and struck again.

The sequence carried the same old order: a heavy strike, a scraping pause, then the lighter answer that once preceded added weight.

That familiar rhythm entered the flooded road as an uneven tremor.

Jiang felt it through his breast before his ears separated the iron. No trait named Hest. The first strike landed heavier than the second, and the drag between them caught twice on damaged stone.

Living hands had made those mistakes before.

Jiang could not send a plan back. He could send proof that something living remained behind the tooth.

He struck shell with the less-damaged edge of his beak.

His first blow reopened pain along the split. The second landed too close. He waited for the white pulse, then gave a third after it passed.

On Red Aeries, Hest heard a damaged answer that no smooth call glass would have chosen.

"That is him," Valea said.

"That is a beak. Keep your certainty smaller."

Valea looked toward the family. "The female already decided."

Hest did not argue with an emperor penguin about another emperor penguin.

He slid his bowed bar beneath the upper tooth without lifting. Valea brought her bent blade to the scar tissue surrounding the hinge. Neither moved metal while Jiang’s breast might be against it.

Mottle backed the smallest juvenile out of the basin beneath her lowered wing. Ilex followed at the animal’s pace, one hand near the old saddle buckle and never on it.

Still, the chick remained with its family.

It answered Jiang once more from beneath the female’s body. Beside the chick, its wounded father attempted the rough middle and produced only breath.

Water changed outside the scar.

Jiang felt a broad displacement beyond the tooth. It approached from the side that had carried the main hook away, pushing a narrow wake ahead and a heavier drag behind.

Pressure alone gave him no armor, fork, face, or allegiance.

Across the tooth, Valea saw all four.

A white-armored diver rose through the armada-facing slit with a narrow retrieval fork held along one forearm. A black cord trailed from the fork into deeper water, loose enough to bend with current rather than pull the diver blindly.

Bellwyrm caught the diver’s attention first.

It stopped outside the animal’s reach.

No charge followed. The white mask turned from Bellwyrm to Hest’s bar, then toward the fragment. One hand shortened its hold on the fork while the other checked the black cord behind it.

Whoever wore that armor wanted the tooth and wanted to leave alive.

Valea eased her blade toward the tissue above the hinge. Cutting there would let Bellwyrm press the fragment into a soft fold, but Jiang’s call had come from directly behind it.

"If I free the upper root, I may drop the point onto his spine," she said.

Hest kept his gaze on the diver. "Then keep it attached until he gives us room."

"He cannot hear that."

"No. So we hold what he has, not what we wish he had."

Valea lowered the blade without sheathing it. Waiting cost them the first move, but cutting blind could turn rescue into the thing that killed him.

"It is not coming for us," Valea said.

"It does not need us," Hest replied.

Patiently, the diver waited until Bellwyrm shifted weight away from its burned side.

Then the retrieval fork entered the scar.

One prong passed above Valea’s blade. The other found the open white hinge from beneath. Hest turned his bar, trying to throw the prong away without driving the tooth down toward Jiang.

Iron skidded off white metal.

One gloved hand released the fork before the impact could pull its shoulder into the slit. The black cord caught the tool, swung it back, and kept the diver outside Bellwyrm reach.

It tried again from lower water.

Jiang saw two pale tips enter the gap ahead.

The diver remained beyond Jiang’s sight. Pressure reached him as a moving body behind the fragment, the fork as a thin split in the flow, and Hest’s bar as a blunt interruption with no name.

Its lower prong caught the hinge.

White fire ran around the hinge.

Valea cut one strand of living tissue before it could tighten across the fork. Hest drove the bent middle of his bar beneath the upper blade. Bellwyrm leaned from below without being asked.

For one breath, those separate forces held the tooth open.

The diver pulled backward through the slit.

Its black cord straightened into deeper water. The fragment tore partway out of the scar and rotated around the caught hinge.

Inside the flooded road, the upper point swung toward Jiang’s back. The lower blade crossed toward his breast. Water that had moved through a shoulder-wide gap narrowed into a slit his head might pass and his body could not.

Jiang flattened against the lower wall.

White pressure struck the Wake Scar without crossing it cleanly. His good foot slipped. Behind the blade, the chick gave its broken call again, close enough that he heard the small beak strike the female’s feathers.

He answered from behind the metal barrier.

Another backward pull turned the burning tooth farther through him.