Dagna ran after her own sled.
Beneath the runners, the old salt road dropped away. Each time the bone runners struck a buried seam, pale runes flared under the rails and gave the sled another hungry shove downhill.
Tovin clung to the lead stanchion with one knee over the side. Aylin had both arms around the cage behind him. No one had a hand on the steering yoke.
Dagna cast the hook-headed spear.
Her hook caught the aft rail. Dagna's boots skipped across the ice, struck nothing, and rose behind her. For one ugly stretch she hung from the spear shaft while the road scraped past beneath her coat.
Then she hauled her chest over the rail and landed beside Aylin hard enough to shake Jiang's cage.
"Brake, now," she said.
"Trying. It kicked back."
Tovin dragged himself forward. The brake lever bounced beneath his glove, came up halfway, and slammed down again as another rune flashed.
"Your foot released it," Dagna said.
"Her voice came from under the runner."
"Her mouth was full of bandage," Dagna replied. "Be embarrassed after we live."
The sled hit a ridge in the road.
Jiang rose with the cage and landed on his belly. Whitewake's pale ribs had been built to deny bigger quarry room to turn. They were equally effective at keeping an emperor penguin shaped like a sack of wet grain from doing anything dignified.
Somewhere in his old life, he had complained about public transportation.
He owed several drivers an apology.
His failed flipper slid away from his body when the cage jumped. Pain pulled through the open shoulder, then settled into a steady burn. He tucked his good flipper beneath him and tried to turn his head toward the front.
Bone stopped his neck.
The low cage gave him one useful view instead.
Loose netting lay dark beside his breast. Every sight bead woven into its rim had gone blind beneath the salt-black cloth. Under that rail, one bead shone like a small white eye.
Its white face remained fixed on the road behind them.
Jiang hammered his beak against the bottom ribs.
Aylin dropped to one knee beside him. "What?"
He pointed toward the rear runner.
Her gaze went to the cord still looped through the slack net at his throat. She caught it before the next jolt could pull.
"I have the line."
Jiang struck the bone beneath him twice. No.
The slack cord snagged Aylin's bandage as she let it go. That same wounded hand had saved his throat on the saddle. Here, her care had spent another stretch of road. Jiang saw the understanding reach her and hated that a hard correction was the clearest language he had left.
Aylin looked at his beak, then at the line in her hand. Frustration tightened her face. The old link would have carried the direction of his alarm before he finished moving. Now she had a wounded bird, a rattling cage, and guesses.
He pointed again. Bead. Road. Bead.
The sled slewed across a patch of wind-polished ice. Dagna caught the cage with her hip and used both hands to force the guide bar left. The front of the sled shifted. The right runner refused to follow.
Aylin crawled along the sled's rear edge until her head dipped below it.
"Captain. That bead is still awake."
"They remain lit after a strong mark," Tovin called.
"It is looking away from him."
Dagna pushed the yoke into Tovin's hands and returned over the rocking sled. She braced one boot beside the cage, reached through the ribs, and lifted the lower edge of the black cloth with two fingers.
Cold white light returned around Jiang's breast.
The nearest net bead brightened first. Two more woke along the loose rim, all three shining toward the strip of exposed prison mark.
The bead in its bone fork kept watching the empty road.
When Dagna covered the mark, three beads died. The rear one stayed bright.
She lifted the cloth once more. Jiang endured the flare crawling over his wet breast while Dagna watched a third identical cycle. Her spear point shifted from Aylin toward the floorboards.
"Stay down," Aylin's voice said.
It came from beneath Dagna's boots.
Dagna's hand left the cloth. Her weapon turned point-first toward Aylin before the last word finished.
Aylin had not moved her lips.
"That one was not me either," she said.
"Move!" the runner answered in her voice.
Dagna lowered the spearhead toward the floorboards.
Tovin looked back once. The naked guilt on his face vanished when the lever kicked against his hand again.
"Rear housing," he said. "The voice is inside the rear housing."
Dagna found the cage's low reach-slot and pulled its thumb-bolt. The hatch opened no wider than Jiang's head.
"One bite at me," she told him, "and I shut it."
Jiang pushed his beak through before she finished.
Wind tore at his face. The road rushed past below, close enough for his beak tip to feel grit thrown from the runner. A human would have needed to hang over the rail to see beneath the housing. Jiang only had to flatten his belly and accept that, once again, his absurd body had found the best seat in a disaster.
The bright bead sat in a fork of bone above the right runner. A dark stain ran from its metal socket into the brake housing.
Stretching until the ribs bit, Jiang gained enough reach to touch the outer plate. Cage bone pressed into his shoulders. He shoved with both feet, and the left one folded against the floor.
His chest struck the open hatch. The salt cloth slipped but stayed over the mark.
"Do not force him," Aylin said.
"Then tell him to stop forcing himself," Dagna answered.
"He stopped listening to me before we met."
Jiang would have objected if he had possessed the correct throat for it.
The next rune flare lit the housing from below.
For that brief pulse, he saw it.
A black-green filament had wound through the brake slot and around the steering pin. When the rune brightened, the filament drew taut. The pin lifted, pulled toward the straight channel, and dropped before Tovin could guide it into the curve.
The strand relaxed into grime when the light faded.
Jiang tapped the outer plate once.
"There?" Aylin asked him.
He answered once again. Yes.
Dagna crouched beside the hatch, keeping her spear across her thighs. "What does it do?"
"Show us, Jiang," Aylin said.
The flare came again. Jiang pinched at the filament through the slot. It snapped tight before his beak closed and dragged across the metal with a dry scrape.
The steering pin jumped straight.
Dagna felt the kick through the floor. Her gaze moved from the housing to the bright rear bead.
"Close the slot," she said.
His boot had left a pale scrape beside the loose brake. Tovin stared at it, then at Jiang's beak waiting inside the hatch. His face still burned with the mistake. He planted both feet.
"No." Tovin hauled the brake bar up with both hands. "He found what I missed. Let him keep it."
The brake teeth struck the runners. Bone shrieked across ice, and the sled's rear swung wide enough to throw Dagna against the rail.
Tovin held on with both arms.
"You are arguing for the marked animal now?" she asked.
"I am arguing with my runner."
He tore the brake line out of its guide and passed the loose end down the floor. Aylin caught it and fed it through the open reach-slot.
Leather filled Jiang's beak. He hauled until it creaked and the teeth dug deeper into both runners.
Speed bled away, but the black-green strand tightened with the next flare and forced the same pin into the straight channel again. Jiang felt the change through the leather before the others saw it through the road.
The old salt track curved left.
Ahead, two ice shelves pressed against each other around a gorge. White spray breathed from the split whenever the lower shelf shifted. The road followed the solid rim above it, bending out of sight behind a wall of blue ice.
Its right runner carried them off the curve and straight at the pressure gorge.