Chapter 242: The White Roots Learned His Coat

A white root crossed the road above Jiang’s head.

It brushed Hest’s coat without slowing. A second slid over Valea’s injured forearm and ignored the blood darkening her sleeve. Every pale tip turned downward only when Jiang crawled beneath them.

They were not hunting warmth.

They had learned him.

Jiang flattened until his beak scraped breathwood. His partner pressed against his other flank, the chick tucked beneath the safest part of her breast. Bellwyrm held the passage ahead with its sound shoulder while white roots opened around its long body.

"Do not let one touch the coat gap," Valea said.

"I had planned to offer it my better side."

"You no longer have one."

That shut Jiang up.

Bellmother flesh widened as air rushed inward.

Air rushed toward the outer road. Pale roots streamed with it, flexible until their tips found the wet line beneath Jiang. Then their soft hooks hardened and struck.

His partner caught one across her beak.

Jiang knocked another aside with his sound wing. Pain entered the shoulder before the wing finished opening, and the limb folded against his body. The root he had deflected curled around the useless edge.

Its hooks combed his feathers.

They found the waterlogged undercoat below his shoulder and pulled.

Jiang drove his beak into the pale stem. His tongue wound opened against its bitter jelly, but he kept biting until his partner tore the hooked end away from his wing.

The stem recoiled with a mouthful of blue-black down.

Every root in the passage changed direction.

They turned toward the one carrying his feathers.

For an instant, Jiang thought that helped. The severed down traveled away from him through the lattice, passed above Hest, and vanished into a white knot grown around the next red rib.

The knot closed over it.

New roots opened from the far side.

"It tasted enough," Hest said.

Valea looked behind them.

The discarded casing was crawling closer. Pale fibers beneath its split ring gripped one seam after another. Grease shone across the white plate, mixed with wakehound fluid, Bellmother blood, and traces from every time the harness had scraped Jiang.

"Then give it the larger meal," she said.

Hest slipped the saddle pin inside the ring. "You told me to move this away from him. I have been attempting to make that a lasting arrangement."

"There are two breathing forks ahead. We need it inside the one we do not take."

Beyond Bellwyrm, the road divided.

One fork rose beneath dry sacs that filled on each inhale. Its red fibers lay in the direction of moving air. The other dipped behind a scar ridge and ended in a black hollow where old cilia had dried flat.

Neither came with a sign.

Jiang smelled the upper fork. Cold, salt, and a faint outer-water scent reached him. The lower carried old grease and the sour remains of something the Bellmother had shed.

Bellwyrm made the choice without waiting for them.

It turned its head toward moving air, tested the red floor with its sound claws, and began forcing its shoulders through. The burned forelimb stayed folded. When the passage pressed its damaged jaw, the creature stopped rather than tear itself wider.

Hest braced the split casing against the lower fork.

"On her next breath," Valea said.

White roots descended around his wrist.

They ignored skin and reached for the casing instead. One hook touched hunter grease. The entire cluster wrapped the plate so quickly that Hest lost sight of his hand.

He released the saddle pin.

Bellmother breath reversed before the shell could fall.

Air reversed. Casing, roots, and loose pin slid toward the black fork. Hest caught the end of the pin with his reliable hand and let the ring tear free. The plate vanished into darkness under a coat of pale fibers.

Most of the roots followed.

They poured from the upper rib, abandoned Jiang’s fresh trail, and crowded after the stronger scent held in the casing. White knots along the road thinned as their stems fed into the false fork.

Jiang wanted to believe the plate had fooled all of them.

The roots vanished after it with the terrible eagerness of starving things. Their retreat opened red floor ahead, moving air above, and enough room for the chick to pass without brushing a hook. Relief loosened Jiang’s breast before he could stop it.

He had seen the graft choose his loose feathers over his whole body once already. A larger scent could hold it. That was ordinary animal logic, something he understood well enough to trust.

He was afraid the rootcraft understood it too.

"Move through the upper fork," Valea said.

Bellwyrm lowered its long body.

The chick entered the narrow space beneath its chest by choice, moving when its mother called and stopping whenever the burned jaw shook above it. The female followed so close that her breast feathers covered the chick’s back.

Hest turned sideways after them. Valea kept the wrapped barbs against her own body so neither point could catch Bellwyrm or living wall.

Jiang reached the gap last.

His body should have fit best. An emperor’s low breast and narrow shoulders had carried him through roads no adult human could enter. This time, the roots had changed the opening around his shape.

One pale knot remained beneath the rib.

It opened as he approached.

The root did not turn toward the vanished casing. Blue-black down protruded from its center, wet with the blood from Jiang’s tongue. This branch had sampled the body instead of the shell.

It struck his flank.

Hooks entered the open coat path and closed against skin.

Jiang’s belly slammed down. The root pulled upward, trying to draw him into the rib where no space existed for his bones. Warm blood ran beneath his feathers and gave the knot a fresher answer.

His partner came back through the gap.

She left the chick under Bellwyrm’s chest only after Bellwyrm laid its sound forelimb across the opening. Then she seized the feathers at the back of Jiang’s neck and pulled toward the upper road.

Still, the hooks held him.

Hest reached over her with the old red yoke. He jammed one curved arm beneath the root and twisted. The graft tightened around Red Aeries metal but did not recognize it as food.

Valea could not bring an extracted barb down without driving its points toward Jiang’s skin.

"The core," Jiang said through his clenched beak. "Inside the rib."

The white knot had sunk into a hollow above him. Humans could reach the outer stems. Bellwyrm could hold the passage. Only Jiang’s head fit beneath the lowest crossing root.

He crawled toward the thing pulling him.

His partner resisted until his call changed. Then she released his neck and moved to his injured side, keeping the right wing closed while he used the pull instead of fighting it.

The hooks drew him under the lattice.

Jiang wedged his good foot into a floor groove. His rigid leg trailed. With his beak turned sideways, he slid beneath the knot until white jelly pressed against his face.

No current sense told him where to bite.

He watched the dark rings.

They tightened after each Bellmother pulse, the same delay Valea had seen in the severed filament. A narrow space opened between two rings whenever the living wall relaxed.

Jiang drove his lower beak into that space.

The knot collapsed around his head.

Hooks in his flank pulled hard enough to lift one side of his body. His right wing opened from the strain and failed again. Breathwood scraped his Wake Scar. The cold pain was so clean that the rest of him vanished behind it.

Jiang bit through another ring.

Something struck the root from the far side.

Metal rang through the white core.

The note arrived uneven, stronger along one edge than the other.

Valea froze. "My shaving."

A second strike followed, then a scrape that curved away from its own cutting edge.

Hest tightened the red yoke beneath the root. "Aylin."

The name reached Jiang while his beak was buried in bitter flesh.

He had missed the sound of her hand making tools complain.

For a month she had steadied his molt cloth, held fish near a beak too weak to take them, and slept close enough for his oil to enter her sleeves. Her hand had been the last thing touching his tail when he entered the flooded road. Since then, silence had offered him every possible ending.

Relief tried to make this one strike mean she was safe.

Jiang refused that comfort too. The root proved only that Aylin was alive on its far side and angry enough to cut. It said nothing about water around her knees, the condition of Cairnspire, or what waited outside her reach.

Alive and striking was enough for the next breath.

He could not answer with words. He struck the knot once with the hard side of his beak, paused, and struck twice more. The old rhythm was ugly through the root, but it belonged to him.

Metal answered with two hard taps.

The far-side cut and Jiang’s bite met inside the dark rings.

White tissue split upward.

The hooks tore free of his flank. His partner dragged him beneath Bellwyrm’s guarding limb as the root peeled from the red rib. Cold light opened through the wound it left behind.

For less than a breath, Jiang saw Cairnspire’s flooded shutter beyond the moving graft.

A scarred human hand held Valea’s off-center shaving against the white root.

Then Aylin drove the metal in again.