Jiang heard Bent-Toe behind him before the dead bird called its own chick.
The voice traveled under the ice from the rookery, passed beneath his sling, and continued toward the sea. Its full identity stayed clean despite the distance.
Pale-Cheek answered far behind them.
Jiang stopped sliding forward.
Black-Crown's beak punched a warning mark behind his tail.
Keep moving. Keep the dangerous sound away.
The pressure reached Jiang without language, and he hated how sensible it felt.
Aylin lowered the sling. Her bruised forearm had bled through the strip wrapped around it. "The call passed us. It is leading rather than following."
Her hand stayed on the loop while she listened. Pulling Jiang onward might draw the branch cleanly away; turning back might return every stolen adult to the chicks. Either choice used his body as a lure.
Jiang settled his breast against the ice. Black-green frost pulsed toward the sea, carrying Bent-Toe's identity ahead. A second line remained under the rookery.
He turned toward the colony.
The colony had become a dark shape in blowing snow. A small figure stood outside its edge.
Pale-Cheek ran toward them.
White-Nape followed on heavy feet, calling with its slow opening beat. The chick turned, answered, then heard Bent-Toe farther seaward and turned again.
Two relationships pulled through the same little body: one living parent behind, one perfect dead recording ahead.
Aylin gripped the sling. "We go back."
Jiang pushed himself toward the rookery.
Black-Crown blocked the return.
The adult placed its breast across the sling and struck at Jiang's beak when he tried to pass. Behind Black-Crown, another parent call moved under the ice.
This one belonged to neither Bent-Toe nor Jiang.
A second chick left the huddle. Then a third voice sounded along the outer edge, and another young bird followed it into the wind.
The calls stayed individual. One opened with a slow double beat, another broke high at the end, and each drew a different young head. Gredudande needed no command when it could place a known parent where no parent stood.
Gredudande had recorded more families during the broken crossing.
Jiang opened his beak.
Black-Crown hit him before sound came out.
His cracked tip split against the side of the adult's bill. Jiang folded over the pain, beak shut. The warning call he wanted would have added another false adult beneath the chicks.
Silence left him furious and useful. He could feel the alarm swelling in his chest, built for a colony that would hear only another weapon if he released it.
Aylin moved around Black-Crown.
"Let him pass this once."
The adult charged her.
Green warmth rose along Aylin's fingers. She closed her hand around it until steam leaked between her knuckles. Snow darkened under her fist, and Black-Crown remained untouched.
"Yes," she rasped. "I remember. We are the problem."
The first wandering chick passed behind Black-Crown.
Jiang abandoned the direct route. He pushed sideways, rolled over one shoulder, and let the sling slide him around the adult's tail.
Black-Crown turned to follow.
Aylin stepped between them.
"Chicks first. Peck him later."
Her throat broke on the last word. Black-Crown swept past her legs and chased Jiang anyway.
Jiang reached the nearest chick with his belly flat.
It called into his face. Hunger and alarm sharpened the small sound. A copied parent answered from the sea, and the chick tried to climb across Jiang's back to reach it.
He spread both flippers.
The left failed halfway and dropped, sending pain into his open shoulder. The right stayed across the chick's path.
Tiny beaks struck his neck and face. Jiang endured three blows before the chick found the gap beneath his bad flipper.
Black-Crown filled the opening.
The adult pushed the chick sideways with its breast. Jiang moved with it, shaping a low funnel from two bodies that trusted each other not at all.
Ahead, the chick's living parent broke from the huddle and called.
The young bird stopped between the false voice and the real body.
Its parent waited through the answering beat, then replied from close enough for breath to stir down.
The chick ran back.
Black-Crown pecked Jiang behind the eye.
Successful rescue had changed nothing except the number of chicks on open ice.
Jiang accepted the strike and turned toward the next small body.
Aylin had unfolded the silver strip across her forearm. Its surface showed three green-black branches moving under the snow, each ending beneath a different wandering chick.
"They join under you," she called.
Jiang looked beneath his breast.
The separate branches bent around his belly and entered one dark line beneath the sling.
He backed away from the chicks.
Every shallow branch followed.
Their recorded parent calls moved with him. Young heads turned. Living adults answered from the huddle, forcing each chick to choose between a near shifting body and a voice retreating toward the sea.
White-Nape reached Pale-Cheek first.
The parent stood across the chick's route and gave its slow opening. Pale-Cheek answered with the questioning beat Bent-Toe's recording could never follow.
White-Nape changed with it.
The dead copy repeated unchanged.
Pale-Cheek pressed against the living breast.
Jiang kept backing away.
Black-Crown watched the frost bend after him. The adult looked once toward the huddle, then struck Jiang's sling toward the sea.
It had found the same answer Aylin had.
Distance made Jiang useful bait.
It also made him less welcome.
An older chick remained beyond the huddle. Its copied parent kept pace with Jiang while no adult body came to meet it.
The chick called again.
No living answer came from the colony.
Jiang slowed his retreat.
Black-Crown struck his tail.
The orphaned or unattended chick took another step after the voice.
Wind had rubbed grey down from one shoulder, exposing the darker feathers growing beneath. The chick's crop lay flat. Whatever parent belonged to that call had gone to sea, failed to return, or stood lost inside the moving colony.
Jiang turned across its path.
Black-Crown hit his shoulder this time, driving him seaward. The adult had chosen the larger danger: keep the branch moving away, even if one chick still followed.
Jiang refused that arithmetic.
He hooked his right foot into rough snow and stopped the sling. When Black-Crown charged again, Jiang dropped lower and let the adult run over his back.
Black-Crown stumbled beyond him.
Jiang slid toward the chick.
Aylin reached it first.
She knelt outside pecking range and held the silver strip between the chick and the ice. Black-green frost showed through the metal, carrying the absent parent's call.
"Come bite me," she whispered.
The chick accepted the invitation.
Its beak caught her sleeve. Aylin folded the cloth around the beak without gripping it and shuffled backward. The chick followed its moving target one angry step at a time.
Jiang stayed between them and the sea.
Black-Crown circled, torn between driving him out and returning the chick. It chose the chick.
The adult pressed one flank against the smaller body and guided it toward the huddle. An unrelated parent met them at the edge, answered the chick's call once, then kept moving with its own young.
The rescued chick entered the group without a neat family waiting.
Hunger stayed complicated after rescue.
Jiang turned seaward again.
Black-Crown left the chick inside and came after him.
No peck of thanks arrived. No pause suggested forgiveness. The adult saw the branches under Jiang and drove him away before more voices split from the huddle.
Aylin took the sling with her injured arm held close. "It knows the fragment follows you."
Jiang struck one answer.
"It also knows you turn back for chicks."
His beak gave another tap.
"I am unsure which fact it hates more."
Jiang gave her a look over his shoulder.
"Yes. You hate both facts."
They crossed the last drift before the sea lead.
Dark water showed through a long break in the ice. Beneath the black surface, silver bodies moved as one, more fish than Jiang had seen since entering Aylin's world.
The school held beneath a roof of pressure ice beyond the open lead. Each turn flashed pale sides through green water, close enough to wake every hunting instinct in Jiang and far enough to punish an injured dive.
Hunger lifted his head.
His recorded call passed through the water.
Black-green light followed it under the school.
The fish turned away in a single flash and vanished beneath pressure ice.
Food waited below them.
Jiang's stolen voice kept sending it deeper.