Chapter 231: The Armada Fed His Feather to a Wakehound

Between one breath and the next, the injured male stopped lifting his breast.

He did not go still. His ribs continued moving beneath the female’s body, but each rise ended lower than the one before it. Their chick shoved its burned beak under his neck and called until the damaged edge turned the sound thin.

Jiang moved his belly off the chick.

Cold found the ragged gap in his flank before he had completed the motion. He set his sound foot wide, let the straight leg drag, and lowered his beak beside the male’s eye.

One dark eye opened. For a breath, it fixed on Jiang. Then it moved to the chick.

"He is here," Jiang said, though no emperor throat could give the words their human shape. "You kept him here."

His beak closed around a fold of the chick’s neck feathers. There was no strength in the grip, only enough pressure to keep the small body where he could feel it.

Valea approached without her blade.

Her left sleeve had been cut away above the white burn. Clear blisters shone across the forearm, and the line across her cheek had begun bleeding again. She held a fresh wad of cloth in her sound hand.

Jiang’s partner opened her beak at Valea.

Valea stopped. "You may keep the hand. I need the cloth beneath him."

Words failed, so she laid the cloth on warm stone and pushed it forward with two fingers. Jiang’s partner watched the empty hand withdraw before taking the cloth herself.

She worked one edge under her mate’s side. Dark red reached the new fabric almost at once.

Ilex came down the scar lip on her uninjured leg. A narrow splint still bound the other knee, forcing her to sit before she reached the emperor bodies. She set a palm against the stone beside the male’s beak rather than touching him. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

His next exhale barely stirred the moisture on her skin.

"Not here," Ilex said.

Mottle looked toward the sealed wound. "The water is gone."

"That is why not here. This scar is cooling."

White metal had kept the living wall inflamed. Now that the fragment was gone, Bellmother tissue folded inward and pulled its heat deeper with it. Stone beneath Jiang remained warm, but wet air above it cooled every exposed feather and strip of cloth.

Valea glanced at the emperor male’s darkening bandage. "Ninebell is too far."

"The west broodlift is not," Mottle said.

Hest rose from the basin with the broken half of his bar in one hand. "The west broodlift has been hanging over an open vein since the Bellmother turned."

Mottle looked at the cooling wall. "It still hangs, and he still breathes."

"That was the reassuring half of my objection."

Mottle ignored him. She had become skilled at it.

Beyond the scar galleries lay an old lift once used to lower injured flight-beasts toward heat rising inside the Bellmother. It offered no healer and no promise. It offered a route that did not end on a cooling ledge.

One breath failed to arrive.

His chick went silent against his beak.

Jiang tried to stand.

His sound foot settled into a groove. The straight leg swung behind him, caught the wet hide, and turned his hip before the damaged shoulder could compensate. Jiang struck the stone on his breast.

Pain drove the air from him. His new coat kept most water away, but the open flank landed against cold cloth and drank it in.

He hated the weakness more because everyone had seen it.

Jiang’s partner did not spare him by looking away. She stepped over Jiang, pressed one side against him until his sound foot returned beneath his body, and then went back to her mate.

Her answer was practical. Be useful from the body he had.

Hest put his broken bar on the warm hide.

"It has become short enough to be excellent," he said.

Valea glanced at him. "For what?"

"I was hoping someone else had reached that part."

Mottle dragged the hide flat with her good shoulder. Ilex threaded the iron through one folded edge, making a stiff side that would not roll the male onto his wound. Valea cut two narrow slits in the opposite hem and passed a scar-root handle through them.

Nobody tied a body to the carrier.

No human hands were going beneath her mate. She and Jiang had to move him.

Jiang took the head because his low body fit there. He slid his breast along the stone until the male’s beak rested over his nape. That weight made his injured shoulder tremble, but the male’s airway stayed clear.

At the hips, the female pushed. When her mate’s wound touched cloth, he released the chick and bit down on the hide instead.

His choice helped them roll him.

Once his body lay along the stiff edge, the chick climbed onto the carrier without invitation. It planted both feet beside the male’s breast and opened its beak at Ilex when she reached for the handle.

"That one appears assigned," Hest said.

Ilex took the opposite end.

Valea and Hest lifted first. Mottle steadied the stiff side from the ground. His partner kept her flank against her mate while Jiang walked backward beneath the hanging beak, guiding his head around each rise in the living floor.

He could not pull. He could keep one skull from striking stone.

That was enough work to make his breath shorten.

Behind them, Bellwyrm raised its head from Ilex’s discarded cloth.

Fresh burns had swollen Bellwyrm’s lower jaw until the mouth could not close. Blood hung in strings between the old splits. When Mottle looked back, the long creature turned one black eye toward the smallest juvenile hidden in warm hide.

It could remain beside the cooling wound or follow the bodies moving away from it.

Bellwyrm dragged its burned forelimb beneath its chest and rose.

No one called it.

Their carrier left the basin between two folds of living stone.

Valea took the forward handle despite the burn climbing her forearm. Hest walked backward at the other end, using his hip when one hand slipped on the blood-wet hide. Mottle kept her good shoulder beneath the iron-stiffened side. Ilex followed along the wall, moving her splinted knee only after both palms had found their next hold.

Nobody had a sound body to spare.

Around the emperor male’s feet, the gallery narrowed. His joined toes caught on warm tissue and pulled his hips sideways. Jiang’s partner struck Hest’s wrist when he reached down, then used her own beak to free the feet one at a time.

Her mate did not wake.

Beside his breast, the chick offered the opening of the call they always changed together. Silence followed where the male’s answer belonged.

Jiang tried the missing beat.

His split beak roughened it. That note arrived wrong, neither father nor chick, but the male’s beak tightened against Jiang’s nape. A small pressure traveled through new feathers and vanished before Jiang could decide whether it had been recognition or pain.

"Again," Hest said, hearing only that something had changed.

Their chick called. Jiang answered. On the third exchange, the male breathed through the turn instead of after it.

They carried him that way.

Old guild iron began appearing in the walls: a hook swallowed to its eye by red tissue, a chain link broad enough to hold a flight-beast’s chest, and a cracked copper bell with no tongue. None moved, but every piece leaned in the same direction.

Ahead, the gallery opened over a depth filled with warm red mist.

Somewhere below, a hanging cradle struck chain once and waited.

Far outside Red Aeries, the white-armored diver reached a skiff with no sail.

Its missing heel plate left one dark foot exposed to the water. The diver caught the skiff’s low rail, shoved the retrieval fork across it, and let waiting hands take the tooth fragment and Hest’s hooked iron away.

The whole black feather stayed inside its chest.

A narrow door opened along the skiff’s belly. Water poured through a cage of white ribs, carrying the smell of burned metal and living salt. Something long shifted inside.

It had no eyes Jiang would have recognized. Pale skin covered the place where a face should have been, broken only by a circular mouth and six red gill cuts on either side of its neck. Two broad fins folded against a body longer than the skiff.

A harness lay behind the gills.

Short white barbs filled its outer sockets. A black retrieval line passed through a ring along the spine and returned to the skiff.

The diver opened its chest armor.

Jiang’s feather emerged bent but whole. Blood had dried dark at the root while water still beaded along the black vane.

One handler held a wet silver comb beneath it. The diver drew the feather across the teeth once.

Oil shone between them.

The handler lowered the comb into the rib cage.

Water passed over the oil and through the creature’s open gills.

Its body stopped moving.

The mouth opened, closed, and opened again. Along its back, every white barb lifted in its socket.

The handler turned the comb toward a second current. The creature ignored it. When the comb moved toward the red-black water leading back to the scar, the long body struck the cage hard enough to rock the skiff.

No voice gave it Jiang’s name.

The stolen feather had given it something simpler.

The diver sealed the black vane inside its armor again. Two handlers raised the white ribs.

The wakehound entered open water.

For a moment it circled beneath the skiff, tasting the diver’s trail, the tooth’s burn, and the blood Bellwyrm had left on the missing heel plate.

Then Jiang’s oil reached its gills.

The wakehound turned toward Red Aeries and pulled the black handler line taut behind it.