"What was your son's name?" Aylin asked.
Hedda set her storm pole against the shutter. "Torren Morn. He kept Brinehook's upper warning chain on River-Open Night."
Behind her, Balen lowered Senn onto a bench while two villagers cut the wet trouser away from his leg. Orra sat on the floor with her crushed foot across her remaining boot. She had bitten through the leather strap rather than cry while anyone was still outside.
Now every breath hurt her loudly.
Aylin moved toward her.
Hedda blocked the way with one forearm. "My people have hands they trust. Put yours on the shutter brace."
Aylin looked at Orra once, then went to the brace.
Jiang lay near the inner step with storm water running from his belly feathers. His shoulder had settled into a hard pulse after striking the floor. Each shiver moved the open wound against cold air.
The outer bay smelled of wet rope, old fish, and blood.
One silver fish from the lost net flapped in the floor gutter. Jiang's hunger fixed on it with humiliating concentration while the humans decided which dead person had owned the night.
Hedda put both hands on the shutter bar. "The lower harbor heard your warning. We cut every boat loose before the river reached us. Those families came home because you opened that gate."
"The upper wall should have heard the same warning," Aylin said. "Both copper lines were struck before I gave the order."
"The upper wall heard cups from the festival. No warning."
Aylin's injured palm tightened around the brace. "I waited for two answers."
"You received one answer."
"I received both warning answers."
Hedda stepped closer. The storm pole remained against the wall, leaving her hands empty between them.
"Torren heard nothing," she said. "He was resetting the upper chain when your water struck the sea gate from behind. The chain tore the platform out from under him. We found him pinned in the wall before morning."
The brace creaked in Aylin's grip.
"Was Torren still alive?"
"Long enough to ask whether the boats cleared."
Aylin shut her eyes. Her mouth shaped an answer that never reached the injured throat.
Jiang watched her hand slip lower on the brace.
The Spirit Link gave him none of what stood behind her face. He could not tell whether she remembered Torren, doubted Hedda, or had found another piece of that night missing from her own mind.
The fish in the gutter beat its tail.
It should have gone downhill toward the shutter drain. Instead, it twisted around and forced its head toward Jiang, fighting an invisible uphill current.
His stomach urged him to solve the fish first.
Jiang lifted his beak from the floor. A black sheen spread beneath the animal's scales. The gutter water was moving uphill from a hairline crack beside the inner step.
He struck the floor twice.
Aylin kept her gaze on Hedda.
"At River-Open, the warning cups drowned out shouted orders," Aylin said. "That is why we built the copper lines. My father stood beside the lower gear. He heard both answer."
"A king heard what reached the gate," Hedda replied. "My son heard what reached Brinehook."
Jiang struck harder. Pain flared through the old crack in his beak.
Tovin looked down from the sled brake. "He has something."
The fish slapped against Jiang's good foot.
He pointed toward the crack.
Dagna left the outer shutter and dropped one knee beside him. Her fingertip met the water first. She rubbed it against her thumb and raised both beneath Hedda's view.
Black-green threads clung between them.
"Your wall is bleeding road filth," Dagna said.
The first surge struck Brinehook.
Stone drove a heavy sound through Jiang's breast. The floor jumped beneath him. Water spat from every joint around the inner step, lifting grit, scales, and the edge of Orra's discarded boot.
Hedda was moving before the echo ended. "Clear the bay. Balen, take the injured uphill. Open the east throat."
Balen lifted Orra under the arms. Senn pushed himself upright on the bench, tried to stand, and nearly dragged both helpers down with him.
Aylin stayed at the brace. "The east throat runs beneath your sleeping rooms."
"It runs around them."
"Not anymore. Look at the water."
Black-green fibers turned in the floor seams. Each one bent east, toward the inner shelter door.
Hedda saw them. "That is your road creature?"
"A piece of it. Open east and you carry it under every bed."
Another impact bowed the shutter inward. Its crossbar rose from one socket before slamming back.
Hedda caught the bar with her shoulder. "West relief floods the net cellar."
"Then you lose nets."
"In winter water. We lose the next catch with them."
Aylin shifted beside her until both women held the bar. "Open east and you may lose the people who would tie new ones."
Hedda looked past her.
Orra had one arm around Balen's neck and the other around Senn's waist. The three fishers moved together toward the uphill door, refusing to leave the slowest behind. Brinehook's children and older residents waited beyond them on the inner stair.
"Balen," Hedda called. "Drown my nets. West relief first."
He passed Orra to another villager and limped back toward a wheel set low in the western wall. The wheel moved a finger's width before old salt locked its teeth.
Tovin left the sled brake hooked and crouched beside it. He put his good hand on one spoke.
"The wrapped hand stays off," Dagna told him.
"Then give me your shoulder."
Dagna braced the opposite spoke, and together they forced the wheel down. Beneath Jiang, the uphill seep thickened until the live fish washed against his breast. His beak closed over it before his mind settled the question.
For one blessed instant, salt and oil touched his tongue.
Then something sharp dragged across the old crack in his beak.
Jiang jerked his head and spat. The whole fish landed in the gutter beside a length of green-black cord, one end bound around a narrow copper braid.
The cord pulled toward the floor crack, where Gredudande had threaded itself through an older line. Jiang pinned the slippery braid beneath his good foot. The black cord tightened. The unreliable left foot folded when he tried to brace, and the pull turned his body toward the wounded shoulder.
Aylin saw him this time.
She left the shutter brace only after Hedda took the full weight. "Dagna, the line under him."
Dagna released the wheel to Balen and caught Jiang's safety tether before it crossed his throat. Tovin kept the wheel moving with his good hand while Balen leaned his whole body across the lowest spoke.
Aylin knelt beyond Jiang's beak. "May I take the copper?"
He tapped once against her boot.
She seized the braid behind his foot. Cold green light gathered between her fingers, faint enough to leave the wet cord flexible. Frost traced the copper toward the floor.
Frost carried the line beneath the inner step, then turned through a sheet of black glass fused into Brinehook's foundation. Storm water had polished the scar until trapped shapes moved inside it like smoke beneath ice.
"Yokai glass," Hedda said. "It grew the night the river reached us."
The west wheel gave way.
Water dropped beneath the floor with a hollow rush. Somewhere below, shelves broke and bundled nets slapped into the flooded cellar. The pressure under Jiang's belly eased, though black-green light kept pulling the copper braid toward the glass.
He lifted his foot.
Aylin and Dagna drew the old line out together. A tarred knot emerged first, followed by two severed copper ends sealed beneath black glass.
After letting the shutter bar settle into both sockets, Hedda crossed the bay and took the knot. Her thumb found one doubled turn beneath the tar.
"Torren tied this," she said. "He repaired the upper warning braid before the festival. He doubled every wet knot because royal cord slipped."
Aylin folded her hands against her abdomen and studied the two exposed ends.
Black glass covered each cut strand all the way across. No copper had torn bright after the scar formed.
"The line was already cut when River-Open water made the glass," Aylin said.
Hedda's fingers tightened around her son's knot. "Before you opened the gate."
"Before I received an answer from a line that could no longer carry one."
Hedda looked up. The cut braid bent between her callused fingers.
"You opened the gate anyway," she said.
"Yes. I opened it," Aylin answered.
Under the black glass, Gredudande's filament abandoned the recovered braid and slipped deeper into the wall.
Jiang followed it to a rusted grate beside the flooded gutter. The narrow bars stopped Hedda's storm-pole hook at the mouth.
Black-green light moved beyond the grate, down where the sea struck Brinehook from underneath.
Hedda looked from the drain to Jiang's soaked harness.
"That drain kills seals," she said.
The thread vanished into it.