Pale-Cheek climbed onto White-Nape's feet and thrust its beak into an empty mouth.
White-Nape strained again. Its throat worked beneath the yellow feathers, yet the chick found only breath.
Bent-Toe stood close enough to touch either one. It called to the chick, received a thin answer, and turned toward the walkers still arriving from the sea.
Every returning shape carried the same promise until it reached its family.
Then beaks opened, chicks begged, and hunger remained.
Jiang's own belly cramped against the ice. The smell of fish came from somewhere inside the huddle, faint and impossible to ignore. His tongue remembered sardine oil. His mind supplied hot rice, which was crueler.
Split-Beak emerged beside the grey-throated chick.
The adult lowered its head and brought up a narrow strip of silver fish. Grey-Throat lunged too early. The strip struck its beak, flipped through the wind, and landed between Jiang and Pale-Cheek.
Both chicks saw it.
Jiang saw it too.
His working foot drove before thought caught up. He slid from the silver shelter and reached the fish with his beak.
Grey-Throat ran from one side. Pale-Cheek came from the other, calling hard enough to wobble.
The strip belonged in Jiang's own throat; hunger made that answer bright and simple.
Even so, he turned it toward Pale-Cheek.
Split-Beak hit him below the eye.
The blow rolled Jiang onto his bad shoulder. Fish left his beak. Split-Beak caught the strip, stepped over Jiang's neck, and placed the meal into Grey-Throat's mouth.
Pale-Cheek pecked at the snow where it had fallen.
Jiang lifted his head with one side of his face burning. Split-Beak stood between him and its chick, split tip lowered, prepared to hit him again.
Fairness had lasted until a parent arrived.
Penguin Instincts offered pressure rather than words: own chick, carried food, stranger's beak, refusal. Split-Beak had crossed dark water for one young bird. Jiang had tried to redirect that relationship because another chick looked hungrier.
He would have hated any person who did the same.
Pale-Cheek's empty stomach remained hard to watch. The lesson merely stripped Jiang of the comforting lie that kindness always meant moving the nearest useful thing.
Jiang backed away on his belly. Split-Beak watched until his beak cleared striking range, then folded itself around Grey-Throat while the chick swallowed.
Pale-Cheek went back to White-Nape.
Bent-Toe followed, limping harder after its work at the broken wall. It touched beaks with White-Nape and faced the sea.
"There is your answer," Aylin said behind Jiang.
Her voice scraped so badly that each word sounded borrowed. She sat in the low silver shelter with one hand pressed to her throat and the other spread over the sheet.
Green-black frost had appeared beneath her palm.
Jiang slid back to her. The stain forked through the silver, one line following the returning adults and another curling inland.
Aylin's eyes followed the inland branch.
Moonlight appeared in the metal.
For one breath, the torn sheet held a river broad enough to carry stars. Warm lamps glowed along a bank Jiang remembered from Aylin's stolen memory. Her bare feet stood in summer mud beside four people whose faces the fragment had never learned cleanly.
It was River-Open Night.
A road she had already destroyed moved beneath her hand as if waiting for one more detail.
Aylin spread her fingers.
Beyond the false river, roofs tried to form. Blue tile gathered around a tower. The image stalled where a city name, gate, or remembered street could have completed it.
At the blank edge of the vision, Gredudande waited for her to finish Eres.
Her thumb moved toward the empty roofline.
Jiang struck the sheet with his beak.
The river shivered. Aylin's palm remained in place.
"My people are there," she whispered.
He knew. That made the temptation dangerous rather than foolish.
Aylin had burned her direct road rather than carry the fragment home. Now it offered the same betrayal in smaller pieces: one roof, one gate, one helpful memory at a time.
Jiang tapped the black-green branch leading to the sea. The rookery's hungry calls vibrated through the metal.
"And these lives are here."
Her fingers curled into a fist.
Cool essence drove through the silver. Summer river, blue roofs, and waiting tower fractured under a skin of white frost. Aylin tore the inland branch away and crushed it until only a scorched curl remained in her hand.
The sea branch kept moving.
"I have lost Eres twice today," she said.
Jiang rested his beak against her wrist.
Comfort felt small beside a city. It was also the only honest thing he had.
Bent-Toe called from beyond the huddle.
White-Nape answered beside Pale-Cheek. The two adults stood breast to breast while the chick moved between their feet, searching each beak again.
Bent-Toe stepped away from them.
The bad foot dragged a hooked line behind it. White-Nape called once more, longer this time. Bent-Toe gave a shorter answer and continued toward the sea.
Pale-Cheek tried to follow.
White-Nape blocked the chick with its body. Pale-Cheek struck both feet, squeezed under one flipper, and called after the departing parent.
Bent-Toe stopped halfway back.
Hunger pulled one way. Its chick pulled the other.
The adult turned back, crossed half the space, and met Pale-Cheek beak to beak. Their identity songs left room for each other. Bent-Toe waited through the chick's altered ending before giving its own reply.
Then it walked away again.
Jiang pushed the sling toward Aylin.
"You intend to follow?" she asked.
He pointed his beak at the black-green line in her silver.
"Your foot is useless."
Jiang struck the front loop of the sling. Pull.
Aylin stared at him, wind worrying loose hair across her mouth. "I crossed worlds to find a creature whose greatest power is making me carry him."
He gave one hard tap.
"Of course, Your Majesty."
The title held enough contempt to warm him.
Aylin wrapped the ruined silver around her shoulders and took the rear of the sling. They followed Bent-Toe outside the colony's shifting edge.
Black-Crown shadowed them for several body lengths. Its attention moved between Jiang's beak and the chicks behind it. Once the distance widened, it stopped and returned to the huddle.
The rookery gave them permission to leave. Nothing more.
Wind polished away the walkers' prints. Bent-Toe kept its bearing from calls ahead, dark shapes, and whatever an emperor penguin carried in its body after a lifetime between colony and sea.
Jiang had none of that history.
Bent-Toe's shoulders became his compass. Its body dipped whenever the bad foot landed and sank harder whenever Pale-Cheek called behind them.
Before the water showed itself, sea smell reached Jiang.
Salt and fish sharpened every hungry part of him. Ahead, the flat ice ended in a dark opening crowded with adults. Some waited on the lip. Others surfaced, shook water from their heads, and climbed out without food.
One waiting adult dived.
A chick called beneath the ice behind it.
The swimmer twisted before its feet cleared the edge. It clawed back onto the ice and answered toward the sound.
No chick stood there.
Another adult entered farther along the opening. A different young voice rose under its belly. That bird abandoned the water too.
The fragment had learned which calls could pull a parent away from food.
Bent-Toe reached the lip.
Pale-Cheek called from the colony, distant and alive. Its high song thinned across the wind.
From beneath the open water came the same call, close enough to touch.
Bent-Toe answered the water.
The recording returned unchanged. It left no room for the adult's new ending and carried no frightened variation back.
Jiang lowered one side of his head to the ice and listened through his skull. Black-green light moved below the surface, using the chick's voice as bait.
Bent-Toe lifted its head.
Pale-Cheek called again from the white distance.
The parent faced the living voice, answered it once, then turned and stepped into the sea.
Dark water closed over Bent-Toe's bent foot.
Above Jiang, broad wings cut across the light.
A hooked seabird folded itself toward the weakened swimmer.