The knock inside the saltglass came twice more.
On the other side of the smoke-room wall, the whitejaw tightened its jaws around Cliffhook's test bell. Metal groaned against teeth. The animal released it only when Yrsa Pell struck the flood-pen bars with her kill bar.
"Back from the water," she ordered. "Everyone who enjoys having legs, use them."
Cliffhook's hunters obeyed. Dagna pulled Jiang's one-runner frame away from the channel. Tovin kicked a wooden wedge beneath it with his good boot, then held the rail while Aylin checked that Jiang's broad line still had slack.
Hedda stayed by the doorway.
"That bell answered before the animal bit," she said.
Yrsa limped to the bars. Jori followed with one hand pressed against his ribs and a coil of chain over the other shoulder. Their coats left dark trails across the stone.
"Bells carry sound," Yrsa said. "It may surprise Brinehook."
"Bells wait for someone to ring them. That may surprise Whitewake."
Yrsa looked back at Hedda. Neither woman appeared surprised by the other.
Inside the pen, the whitejaw slid into the water. Its scarred head passed beneath the bars and vanished into a channel cut under Cliffhook House. Jiang heard the change in its breathing through the stone before he saw the pale belly turn below the surface.
His feet pulled close to his body.
Yrsa noticed the movement.
"The marked bird knows what she is."
"He remembers leopard seals," Aylin said.
"From which sea did he learn that?"
"One you cannot reach from here."
"Yet here he is."
The huntmaster's gaze moved from Aylin's face to the salt-black cloth on Jiang's shoulder. Being dragged out from under a cage had purchased exactly the amount of goodwill Jiang expected from a guild that carried kill bars to breakfast.
Yrsa set the bar across two wall hooks. "Cliffhook has an inland stair. It stays shut until I know whether my bell called your beast or your beast called my bell."
"His name is Jiang," Aylin said.
"Names make dangerous animals easier to miss when they bite."
Jiang considered biting her.
Hunger won the vote.
The smoke room held six racks of drying kelp, a stone brazier, and a gutting table scrubbed pale by years of knives. Jori dropped three small cliff herring into a shallow bowl and pushed it across the floor with his boot.
"For the pin," he said.
Jiang looked at the fish, then at Jori's bruised ribs.
"He wants to know whether they are payment," Aylin said.
Jori's brow furrowed. "How could you possibly know that?"
"I am learning his face."
Jiang had one face and very little faith in its range.
Jori nudged the bowl closer. "Food first. Gratitude after the tide stops trying to enter my lungs."
Jiang accepted those terms.
Jiang ate while Cliffhook warmed around him.
A hunter brought net wool dried above the cook fire. Aylin wrapped it across his back and left the injured shoulder clear. Warm stones went beside the frame rather than against his feathers. Jori cleaned the blood from his own mouth. Yrsa sat on the gutting table long enough for Hedda to bind her thigh, complaining only when Hedda pulled the knot tight.
"That is for calling him a bird," Hedda said.
"He is a bird."
"Then it is for being tiresome about it."
Tovin inspected the broad line near Jiang's harness. One outer wrap had frayed where the causeway runner trapped it. Using his good hand, he cut the damaged strip away and laid it on the table.
The cloth carried Jiang's feather oil, fish, blood, Brinehook salt, and every bad decision since Whitewake captured him.
Yrsa pointed at it. "That will do."
Aylin moved between her and the table. "No."
"You have not heard the test."
"You own a flood pen and a leopard seal. I understand the shape of it."
"Whitejaw," Yrsa corrected. "And the bird remains outside the bars."
"Jiang remains outside the bars."
Tovin tucked the wrapped hand beneath his opposite arm. "If the road thread entered our gear, every house between here and Eres has the same bells."
Aylin turned on him. "You want to feed his blood to that thing?"
"I want the loose wrap put into a side runnel. Fish blood enters another. Plain sea water enters the third. Yrsa closes all three shutters at the first strike."
"And when Whitewake decides he is the thing it wants?"
"Then I know what I am escorting."
The answer hurt Tovin to give. Jiang saw it in the way his good thumb rubbed the edge of the bandage over his other hand.
Dagna stood beside the brazier, spear across her shoulders. "The test needs his answer."
"He is under your line," Yrsa said.
"The line keeps him from the sea. His choices remain his."
That was more than Dagna had offered at the first Whitewake cage. Less than freedom. Jiang could work with the distance between them.
Aylin crouched until her eyes were level with his. The room had dried the loose hair against her cheek, but her palm bandage had bled through again.
"One tap means you accept the test," she said. "Two means we find another way."
The route to Eres sat behind Yrsa's closed inland door. Beyond it, Rian carried the road order and Gredudande moved through old salt. Smashing Cliffhook's bell might stop one path while leaving the next bell waiting under someone's hand.
At the thought of his scent in the predator's water, Jiang's feet curled under him; even so, he wanted the next route house warned before another bell answered.
Jiang looked at Tovin.
The young hunter held his gaze. No plea. No apology offered before it was earned.
Jiang gave one clear tap.
Aylin's jaw tightened. She faced Yrsa. "If you change the test after he enters the room, I open every gate you own."
Yrsa stood carefully on the bound leg. "That sounded royal."
"It was personal from the start."
They let Jiang sleep before they took his scent to the pen.
He expected his body to refuse. The whitejaw moved under the adjoining floor, and each brush of hide against stone reached him through the one-runner frame.
Warm wool, three herring, and Aylin's hand resting on the rail gave exhaustion more weight than fear. Jiang tucked his beak beneath his breast.
When he woke, the brazier had settled to red coals. His feathers were dry except around the clean shoulder wrap. The deep drag behind each breath was gone, and a full inhale reached the bottom of his chest without catching.
[Deep Lung I: Recovery Complete]
The System offered no praise. Jiang preferred it that way.
Cliffhook's test channel ran along the outer wall of the flood pen. Three hand-wide streams entered through separate wooden shutters and joined beyond the whitejaw's bars.
Jori took the fish bowl. Tovin carried Jiang's used line wrap with wooden tongs. Hedda watched the worked-salt bell while Dagna kept her spear lowered and ready.
Yrsa opened the plain-water shutter.
The whitejaw surfaced beneath it, tasted the stream, and sank.
Jori squeezed fish blood into the second runnel. Red washed through the bars. The animal turned once below the surface, close enough that its pale scars rose through the color, then continued toward the far wall.
Tovin looked at Jiang before lowering the used wrap.
Jiang struck the frame once.
The third stream darkened around the cloth. His own smell reached him faintly over salt and smoke.
The whitejaw stopped beneath them.
Its head lifted from the water beside the test bell.
Yrsa closed her hand around the shutter bar. "Come on, then. Choose."
The animal ignored all three streams.
It pressed its muzzle to the bell's saltglass tongue.
Black-green light showed inside the cloudy material. The line was thinner than Torren's cut braid and moved against the draining water. It crossed the bell bracket, entered a worked-salt groove in the wall, and reached the hinge of the seaward gate.
Jori dropped the fish bowl. Tovin lifted Jiang's cloth clear before the streams could join.
Dagna put the point of her spear between Yrsa's hand and the kill-bar release. "Your bell changed the test."
The saltglass spoke in Aylin's voice.
"This road reaches Eres."
Aylin went still beside Jiang's frame.
Hedda took Torren's doubled knot from her belt and held it near the groove. Its blackened copper ends trembled toward the moving light.
"Same road," she said.
Yrsa released the shutter bar and reached for the kill bar instead. "Jori, drain the pen. Tovin, keep that cloth. No one touches the bell."
The whitejaw bit down.
From inside the locked flood pen, the bell rang.
Above it, the seaward gate pin began to lift.