The worn-grey chick left the huddle first.
It squeezed between two adult bodies and turned inland, head raised as though meltwater waited beyond the low rise. Copper struck stone somewhere past the ridge. A river answered under frozen ground.
The nearest adults watched it pass, each waiting for some other bird to claim it.
Jiang braced on his right foot and rose.
Hunger folded his belly before the foot held. Cold from Frostwake had settled into his breast feathers, and his right claws felt made of the same ice they scraped.
It kept walking toward the cups.
Other birds followed in pieces. Two empty adults broke from the huddle's far edge. An older chick trailed one until a parent cut across its path and called it home. White-Nape stayed breast-to-breast with Pale-Cheek while both watched the movement.
Split-Beak went three steps inland before Grey-Throat answered from behind. At the chick's call, the parent stopped, turned its white breast into view, and waited for the rough second answer before taking another step.
Hunger was pulling the rookery into separate decisions.
Black-Crown crossed in front of Jiang.
At a seam that glistened beneath dusted snow, the adult stopped to peck. Dry powder jumped from hard ice, but running water continued below the blow.
Black-Crown pecked deeper. Under the blow, the seam gave up another white chip and stayed dry. Copper cups knocked farther uphill in the same uneven sequence Jiang remembered from River-Open Night. Its emptiness proved the trick.
Only then did Black-Crown look back at the sealed sea lead. Fresh fractures had turned white over the opening, with fish somewhere beneath that no adult could reach. From the lead came cold, hard silence. Uphill, the false river offered a direction.
Black-Crown stepped across the seam and continued inland, following the lie with its eyes open.
Jiang's satisfaction went bad in his mouth.
Exposing the lie left the sealed lead exactly where it was.
The worn-grey chick hurried after Black-Crown.
Between the rookery and low rise, wind had scoured a shallow trough across the ice. Loose snow streamed through it fast enough to hide its depth. The chick reached the near lip while Black-Crown was already on the other side.
Jiang clamped the sling in his beak and dragged.
His right flipper took his weight. One push brought his breast forward; the bad foot turned him sideways. Deep Lung had made water kinder to his breath. On land, it had the decency to stay irrelevant.
One more step carried the chick into the trough, where wind took both feet from under it.
Jiang released the sling and dropped across the hollow. The chick struck his ribs, rolled under his right flipper, and began climbing him as though his wounds were useful terrain.
Its claws found the cold feathers over his breast.
Jiang turned with the impact. His body blocked the deeper channel, and the chick slid toward the shallow lip instead.
Black-Crown came back hard. Its first strike landed beside Jiang's eye. The second caught the sling where it crossed his shoulder. Jiang kept his beak down and made no reach toward the chick.
Wind pressed the youngster against his right side.
Black-Crown lowered its flank on the other side. Together, two adult bodies made a short wall while the chick regained its feet.
The moment it stood, Black-Crown drove it away from Jiang and up the shallow edge.
Rescue had apparently preserved all of their usual opinions.
Jiang hauled himself after them.
Along the dark seam, the river sound remained narrow. When he moved a body length away, water faded beneath the wind. Close to it, the rush returned through his breast and beak.
He lowered himself over the line.
Vibration entered at the breastbone, crossed his jaw, and left the foot resting on the seam. His other foot felt only ordinary ice. Inside that narrow line, the root carried the sound through a strip no wider than Black-Crown's body.
Loose snow told a simpler story. Every grain falling from the rise traveled down toward the rookery while the false water climbed in the opposite direction.
Jiang scraped the seam with his beak.
Hard ice. Black-green light moved underneath, too deep for his cracked tip and too shallow to be a river.
Black-Crown watched him test it.
The adult pecked beside Jiang's scrape, found the same dry ice, and faced inland again.
Jiang wanted to strike it. He wanted one useful enemy at a time. Gredudande could be the liar, Black-Crown could be the sensible adult who rejected it, and Jiang could crawl back to a huddle that had changed its mind about him.
Instead, the rival saw the same lie and chose the dangerous road anyway.
Behind them, the rookery stretched.
White-Nape remained with Pale-Cheek. Several adult bodies closed the gap the chick had left. Others stood between the stable huddle and the uphill sound, calling to partners or young before choosing another step.
Split-Beak moved forward, one careful step at a time.
Grey-Throat followed within sight of its parent's white breast. Their two calls changed as the distance opened, each answer belonging to the body that made it.
Gredudande added a perfect Grey-Throat call from farther up the rise.
Split-Beak stopped so sharply that snow kicked past its feet.
The living chick complained behind it, rough and impatient. Split-Beak turned toward that changing voice and waited until Grey-Throat reached its tail.
Gredudande's copied call continued alone.
The real chick's complaint held every listening adult where it stood.
Black-Crown resumed walking toward the rising cups.
Jiang worried the sling into place with his beak until his good foot found firmer ice. The worn-grey chick followed Black-Crown, so Jiang followed both. A rival's mistake could still bury a chick.
The first climb ended quickly.
Wind-scoured ice steepened near the low rise. Black-Crown stopped in the lee, and the empty adults gathered in a ragged crescent. Chicks pressed low where the wind passed over them. The running water promised a grand march; tired bodies answered with a few dozen paces and a rest.
Jiang reached the lee and collapsed on his breast.
Hunger tightened when River-Open carried the smell of hot seed cake across the snow.
That smell had fooled Aylin beneath Rome. Here it mixed with fish.
Black-Crown raised its head, and every empty adult did the same.
Cold feathers and the old blood in his sling filled Jiang's beak. The food promise entered through memory rather than air, yet his stomach cramped as if a feast waited over the rise.
Gredudande had learned appetite without learning how to feed it.
The worn-grey chick pecked at the seam. Its first blow was careful. The next two came hard enough to make its head shake. Each time the ice returned the little crack of beak on stone and the river ran on beneath it.
The youngster opened its mouth over the sound.
There was nothing to swallow.
It snapped at Black-Crown's breast instead.
Black-Crown took the bite, shoved the chick away from the black-green line, then lowered its belly to the ice. The chick wedged itself against the adult's warmer flank and trembled there. Black-Crown looked toward the sealed lead once more.
Jiang understood that look too well. The adult had chosen badly because every choice it trusted had already failed: sea, huddle, waiting. It could hate Jiang, see through Gredudande, shelter a strange chick, and still walk toward the cups.
That made it harder to dismiss than an enemy.
A shape appeared above them.
For one breath Jiang saw a dark coat and green light, too tall for any bird. Then the shape slipped on the far slope, caught itself with one hand, and came over the rise with considerably less mystery.
Aylin's injured arm remained bound against her ribs. Snow crusted one side of her trousers. Around her left boot, a black-green strand had frozen into a crooked ring.
She saw Jiang first.
Relief changed one step and disappeared from the next. Jiang pushed himself up to meet her, but the bad foot folded and drove his breast back onto the ice. Aylin's mouth tightened. She began toward him anyway.
Black-Crown rose between them.
Aylin stopped before the warning became a strike. She looked past Jiang to the moving adults, the worn-grey chick, and the seam climbing between them.
"It crossed the salt road," she said. Her damaged voice barely carried over the wind. "Then it heard the rookery and turned back."
Jiang tapped the dry seam with his beak.
Aylin crouched far enough away that Black-Crown allowed it. She touched the ice beside the black-green line with two fingers, then followed its bearing toward the basalt humps beyond the rise.
The worn-grey chick shoved its head deeper under Black-Crown's breast. Far below, White-Nape called from the rookery. Another adult answered from the slope. The colony had stretched across the ice, half turned toward hunger and half toward the young it had left behind.
Copper cups struck their uneven rhythm.
Water rushed uphill under her hand.
Aylin's face tightened with recognition.
"River-Open came down from the basalt gate," she said. "This is climbing back into it."
Under her frozen boot, the black-green strand tightened.