Chapter 264: Sivra Cut Her Name Out of Myrn’s Harness

The guildhall fired before Sivra could raise an empty hand.

Green light ran along its outer wings. Its first discharge did not cross the distance as a bolt. It opened into a fan of silver hooks, each one curving toward the fixed call beneath Myrn’s shoulder.

Myrn dropped her sound wing, and rain and road rolled sideways. Jiang flattened against her neck as the party swung beneath the saddle. Hest’s boots tore loose from one brace. Valea snagged the back of his coat with a wrapped barb and slammed both of them against the harness.

One silver hook passed through the space where Jiang’s head had been.

Another struck the black plate without piercing. Green veins spread across the guild mark, and the copied note rose until Jiang felt it in the split of his beak.

The impact came through Myrn as a hard, false heartbeat. Her neck muscles clenched beneath Jiang’s breast. She tried to turn away, but the thorn dragged the injured shoulder back toward the point of impact and spoiled the beginning of her next stroke.

Jiang heard the difference. Myrn’s breath broke with effort. His copied note stayed smooth while the hook burned brighter, untouched by the pain it was causing.

Every remaining hook corrected toward them.

"They are following the mark," Aylin said.

Sivra held her mothglass edge beside the name scratches. "They are following me."

Aylin watched the green veins cross Jiang’s copied fibers. "Not anymore."

Myrn twisted out of the next hook. Her injured wing opened late and shuddered under the thorn. Blood streamed from the lengthened split. The loose harness plate beat against her shoulder with every stroke.

Jiang planted his feet on either side of the fold and pressed his breast low. He could not hold the plate. He could keep it from slapping down hard enough to drive the white growth deeper.

Holding that position sent a hot line through his failed wing.

Aylin reached past him with the inert vane. Three feeling fingers closed on its bitten edge. Her numb pair followed late and nearly let it turn.

Jiang caught the vane against his beak before it entered Myrn’s wound.

Pain flashed through his jaw. He shoved the flat half under the plate anyway.

Aylin began to pull it back when blood welled beside his beak. Jiang shook his head once. The vane was already taking the plate’s weight, and Myrn’s shoulder had softened beneath the small relief.

She hated the answer. He could see that without needing a shared language for it. She changed her grip instead of taking the choice away.

"There," Aylin said. "Living shoulder below. Mark above."

Sivra did not move her blade.

Another row of guildhall weapons opened. Behind them, the abandoned skiff burned in two falling pieces. Ahead, silver bridges folded into the hall’s ribs and left no open landing.

"Vetch," Hest called, "we have reached the part where hesitation becomes a decision."

"I know that part."

Valea braced the wrapped barb across Hest’s bent yoke. "Then perform it before his wisdom improves."

Hest glanced at her. "You wound me."

"Not while I am this busy."

Myrn’s shell jaw struck the saddle. The blow jarred the loose black scale from beside Sivra’s knee.

Jiang pinned it with one foot.

The white web on its underside aligned with the scratches still trapped in the mark. Sivra’s name curved through the center. The wing line crossed beneath it and disappeared toward Myrn’s puncture.

No single blow had carved the mark. Rider and mount had worn the glass together until repeated roads shaped them into the same surface.

That was why the thorn had found such an easy path.

Sivra rubbed her thumb over the curve of her name. The shallow center had been polished clear; one edge still held grit from an older black road.

"That scratch opened our first winter perch," she said.

"And now it opens her wound," Aylin replied.

Sivra’s thumb stopped. She did not defend the mark or apologize for loving what it had once meant.

Jiang nudged the loose scale until its broken edge completed the old pattern. Then he tapped the clear border outside both the name and wing scratches.

Sivra watched his beak.

"Cut around it?" Aylin asked.

"Cut it off," Sivra said.

Fresh hooks tore free of the hall.

Hest thrust the fork of his yoke through the mark’s lower ring. Valea hooked the wrapped barb into the upper ring and leaned away. Together they lifted the plate from the inert vane without pulling the white branch.

Their angle was ugly. The mark wanted to lie against Myrn’s shoulder. Jiang’s copied call pulled it toward the descending red lantern.

Aylin put her forearm across Myrn’s neck scales and held the vane flat with her palm. Her two numb fingers hung clear rather than pretending they could help.

"Jiang," she said, "out from under the edge."

He shifted his breast. His straight leg slipped on rain and folded, and the plate dropped with him beneath it.

Jiang turned the fall into a belly roll. Black glass struck his coat instead of Myrn’s wound. Valea recovered the upper ring, and Hest hauled the lower one high enough for Jiang to crawl free.

Myrn beat her sound wing once. The movement threw all of them toward the injured side.

Sivra caught no rein. She put one knee against the saddle and brought the mothglass blade down beside the first curve of her name.

Green light inside the blade brightened.

Fear tightened the old burn web on Sivra’s cheek. Jiang had not seen that expression when she put a blade to his throat or when her own road fired on her.

Her gaze went to Myrn’s head.

Myrn watched the empty air ahead, measuring a road nobody else could feel.

"You chose me on the salt dark," Sivra said.

Rain ran through Myrn’s working neck slits.

"This one is mine."

Sivra cut through the first stroke of her name.

Green weapons across the guildhall flickered. Every silver hook already in flight jerked as if a hand had shaken its line.

Mothglass screamed beneath the blade.

Sivra cut the second stroke. A green reflection crawled across her fingers and vanished. Beside Myrn’s feet, the nearest silver road went dull.

A far perch folded into the hall. A green-lit beast bay shuttered before they reached it. Sivra’s place disappeared in pieces she could watch, each one closing while her blade remained inside her own name.

She drew one breath through her teeth. Then Myrn’s white branch tightened across the wing scratches, and the old split opened another wet hairline.

She could have stopped there. Half a name might still have opened a hunter’s perch. Half a mark might still have told the road where she belonged.

White growth pulled toward Myrn’s wing.

Sivra drove the edge through the final curve.

Her name broke away in a clear shard that flashed once in Sivra’s hand.

The command tack remained beneath it, a black tongue threaded through the same cloudy wing scratches. Sivra hooked the blade under the tongue and tore upward.

Myrn cried out as Jiang felt the thorn move inside her shoulder. Living pressure did not follow the plate, but the imposed pull did.

Jiang struck the yoke once with his beak.

"Keep it high," Aylin shouted.

Hest and Valea leaned until the bent fork trembled. The mark lifted. White fibers came out of the worn scratches one wet strand at a time, leaving the thorn buried in living flesh.

Sivra saw the last strand separate.

She cut the command tack.

The entire plate came free above Myrn’s shoulder.

Myrn’s injured wing folded from pain, then opened on a ragged beat that belonged only to her. The shoulder still bled. The thorn remained. Nothing about the motion was easy or healed.

That ragged wing beat was hers.

Aylin slid the inert vane out from the empty space. She checked the underside for torn flesh before tucking it beneath the high-root coil. The puncture stayed open around the thorn, but no new strip of Myrn’s hide clung to the removed mark.

Sivra saw the same thing. Her shoulders loosened for a breath, then locked again; the guildhall was still firing, and freedom had not made Myrn less wounded.

The detached mark hung between yoke and barb, shrieking Jiang’s perfect first note.

Every hook in the volley turned toward it.

"Let it fall," Sivra said.

Jiang looked down. Far beneath the silver roads, the Armada lantern burned through the storm. The copied voice in the mark pulled toward it like a hooked fish. Dropping the plate would send one more piece of him into that red descent.

Keeping it would send the guildhall’s weapons through Myrn.

He bit the short high-root turn holding Valea’s barb to the ring.

His cracked beak opened farther. Warm blood ran over his tongue before the root parted.

Valea released her wrapped point. Hest twisted the yoke free.

The mark fell and spun beneath them, still calling in Jiang’s voice. Silver hooks curved after it. Their volley struck the falling plate in a burst of green fire and drove its broken pieces toward the red lantern.

Jiang heard the fixed call scatter into smaller echoes.

None returned to him. Cutting the local mark had saved Myrn from its pull; it had not taken Jiang’s voice out of the Armada or restored what Breathwood had already kept.

Aylin saw him listening. She put one blood-slick knuckle against the saddle beside his foot, close enough to answer without touching him in the middle of flight.

Myrn climbed through the empty space the hooks had left. Her sound wing pulled. Her injured wing answered with a shorter stroke, shaking clear scales and blood into the wake.

Sivra laid her open hands against the saddle.

No rein tightened. No black tongue told Myrn where to turn.

Myrn chose the moving guildhall.

They rose toward its lowest folded bridge. Figures appeared behind the luminous walls: hunters with glass blades, winged beasts clinging beneath the bays, and one broad shape beating against a door that would not open.

Sivra lifted the shard that had carried her name.

Below them, the bridge stayed dark.

No green vein recognized her. No perch unfolded for Myrn. The guildhall received its returning hunter as a stranger riding an unmarked, bleeding beast.

Weapons that had followed the falling mark began to close.

Then a deeper row opened along the guildhall’s black ribs.

Every one of them turned toward Myrn.