"Eat faster," Dagna said, dragging a Brinehook saw through the open cage while Jiang swallowed his second fish and watched its front posts come apart; every pull made the whole sled complain beneath his belly.
With two fish in his stomach, the loss of several cage bars deserved no mourning.
Both fish came from Hedda's storm stores, wrapped in a cloth she refused to call a gift. One replaced what Brinehook's water had taken from him; the second paid for going under her sea wall; Jiang ate before anyone could improve the wording.
Aylin crouched beside him with a strip of boiled sailcloth. "May I see your shoulder?"
The eastern road was gone behind her. Rian and Gredudande were already on the other side, moving toward Eres while they fed a penguin and argued with a saw.
Her urgency had been walking circles around the smoke room since Hedda named the low tide.
Jiang looked at the clean cloth, then at the blood-dark edge of his harness. He tapped once.
Aylin loosened the side cradle without lifting his failed flipper. Cold air reached the wound. Jiang's beak closed hard enough to remind him about the crack at its tip.
"I know," she said.
He stared at the fresh red showing through the bandage around her palm.
"Mine is cleaner than yours."
That was a terrible defense. It was also probably true.
She rinsed salt and grit from the torn feathers. Her fingers stayed steady until the cloth passed close to the black-gold mark hidden beneath the salt-black cover. Then they stopped.
The Spirit Link had once told her where his pain began. Now she had to watch his beak, his breath, and the angle of his good wing like everyone else.
"Too tight?" Aylin asked quietly.
Jiang gave her two taps.
She eased the wrap.
"There?" she asked again.
He answered with one.
Aylin tied it and sat back on her heels. "We should have left when the road fell."
Dagna kept sawing. "He would have died before the first bend."
"Rian has the order."
"Rian has two working legs and no cage attached to him."
"Gredudande has no legs at all. It is still ahead."
Jiang nudged the empty fish cloth toward Aylin with his beak.
She looked down. "You agree with her?"
He pointed his beak at the smoke-room brazier, then tucked it beneath his breast.
Warm first. Chase after.
Aylin rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I liked you better when I could pretend your insults were translation errors."
Jiang answered with one tap.
That pulled the corner of her mouth upward, though her eyes soon returned to the east.
Beside Dagna, Tovin held his wrapped hand against his chest while his good hand removed the cage pins and his elbow steadied the shortened axle. Brinehook fishers had already shifted the intact runner beneath the center of the sled. The broken runner stump remained on the seaward side, useful only when the ledge tilted.
By the time the tide exposed the first black shelf beneath the southern cliff, Whitewake's prisoner cage had become a narrow drag with one low rail and a great deal less dignity.
Hedda tested every knot herself. She tied the broad safety line through Jiang's harness, ran it around the rear post, and left enough slack for him to turn without loading his shoulder.
"The cliff takes people who hurry," she said. "It also takes people who wait. Try to disappoint it in the middle."
The winter path began behind a curtain of draining weed.
Ahead of the drag, Dagna tested the stone with her spear butt. Hedda claimed the seaward edge and read the water, while Tovin guided from behind and Aylin walked with her palm against the landward rail.
Jiang rode because his left foot folded the first time he tried to walk.
The cliff rose beside his good eye, black and wet enough to reflect their legs. On his other side, winter water shouldered against the shelf and fell away in white ropes. The intact runner rasped over barnacles. Each high patch tipped Jiang toward the low rail. Each hollow sent cold water beneath his breast.
The two fish had put warmth back into him, but not much. His shivering had softened instead of stopped. Every deep breath still felt borrowed from the work his lungs had done beneath Brinehook.
The path narrowed at a hooked shoulder of stone.
Dagna raised one fist.
Someone beyond the bend shouted, "Do not touch the lower pin!"
The next wave struck hard enough to throw spray over Dagna's head. When it drained, Jiang saw a white-painted hunting drag lying across the ledge.
Its cage was half in the water.
A woman lay beneath the landward drawbar with one leg pinned. She had grey hair braided close to her skull, a split leather coat, and both hands locked around an iron bar thrust through the cage. The bar's far end held a mouth away from her face.
The mouth belonged to the largest seal Jiang had ever seen.
It was longer than the drag, mottled grey over a pale belly, with shoulders thick enough to lift half its body clear of the water. Old scars crossed its muzzle. Its eyes were black and patient.
Jiang's human mind supplied leopard seal.
His penguin body supplied run.
The bad foot kicked against the boards. His safety line caught before he could throw himself over the landward rail.
The seal's head turned.
Its jaws opened around two rows of narrow white teeth.
"Whitejaw," Hedda said. "Adult female."
"I had guessed the jaw part," Aylin replied.
A second hunter hung below the ledge on a rope that passed under the overturned drag. Only his head and one arm cleared the wash. He tried to climb when he saw them. The cage shifted, and the pinned woman drove the iron bar deeper between the whitejaw's teeth.
"Jori, stop moving," she said. "The lower reef pin holds the drag and your line. Pull either one wrong and we all go."
Dagna lowered her spear. "Yrsa Pell."
"Captain Virr." The pinned woman's voice stayed level. "You brought me another marked animal."
"I brought hands. Be grateful in whatever order suits you."
Yrsa looked at Jiang's covered shoulder, then at Aylin. Recognition sharpened her face without loosening her grip on the kill bar.
"Later," Hedda said. "The sea is coming back now."
The lower reef pin sat beneath the cage runner. Its head showed each time the water drew away, then vanished under the whitejaw's chest. Jori's rope had wound around it before running up through a notch in the drag.
Dagna could cut the cage free, but the same release would take Jori. Hauling him first would roll the drawbar farther over Yrsa's leg.
Tovin leaned close without using his wrapped hand. "There should be a keeper through the bottom of that pin."
"There is," Yrsa said. "The cage floor puts it past my reach."
Everyone looked at Jiang.
He looked at the whitejaw.
It watched him with the concentration of a creature considering whether an injured penguin counted as food delivered to its bed.
Jiang struck the drag once.
Aylin crouched beside the safety knot. "You do not owe Whitewake this."
Yrsa gave a strained laugh. "That is not how marked quarry works."
"I was speaking to him."
Jiang held Aylin's gaze, then tapped once more.
She let out the slack.
Dagna tied the free end around her own waist. Tovin moved to the drag notch. Hedda took Jori's upper line and braced one boot against the cliff. Aylin knelt where she could pull Jiang backward without touching the failed flipper.
Jiang slid under the landward edge of the cage.
The iron floor pressed against his back. His belly scraped wet stone. He kept his injured shoulder turned away from the bars, which left the unreliable foot toward the open water.
The whitejaw breathed through its nose above him.
Hot fish-stink crossed his feathers.
His body wanted to freeze. Freezing was sensible around a predator that found movement interesting. It was less useful with the sea climbing around his feet.
At the reef pin, he found a bone keeper rather than metal: a toggle driven through the bottom and lashed with tarred cord. Saltwater had swollen the knot into a hard black lump.
The side of Jiang's beak caught the loose end, but his cracked tip skated off.
Above him, the whitejaw struck the cage floor.
Iron slammed across Jiang's back. Aylin pulled the safety line, but he braced his good foot against the pin and tapped twice against the stone. His answer meant hold the line where it was.
At once the pull stopped, leaving the line trembling between them while the cage floor hid Aylin's face. With the cord farther inside his beak, Jiang twisted his whole neck until tar tore loose and the bone toggle hung halfway through.
The next wash lifted the whitejaw's weight from the runner.
Jiang hit the toggle with his beak.
It shot into the water.
"Free!" Tovin shouted toward the others.
Dagna and Hedda hauled while Tovin lifted Jori's rope over the unpinned notch with his good hand. As the drag pivoted toward the cliff, Aylin pulled Jiang out and Yrsa dragged her leg clear without releasing the kill bar.
Jori came over the edge on his stomach, coughing seawater. The whitejaw drove forward once, but the turning cage jammed its shoulders between the seaward bars.
The rescue load passed through Jiang's narrow drag.
Wood cracked behind him. The broken runner stump and three cage slats tore free and went into the surf. The remaining frame jerked sideways, then held on its single runner.
No one followed the lost pieces with their eyes for long.
The tide covered the place where they had been standing.
Yrsa could put weight on her leg, though not without showing her teeth. Jori bound her thigh with a strip cut from his sleeve. Dagna and Tovin lashed the whitejaw's damaged cage to the rear axle of Jiang's ledge frame.
"Leave it," Aylin said. "The path is going under."
Yrsa took the front haul line. "It bit through two road bells before we caught it. It ignored both handlers. I want to know why."
An enormous wild predator already had excellent reasons to hate bells. Before Jiang could object, the whitejaw turned away from him.
Bolted inside the cage was a dull grey bell with a white saltglass tongue. The animal pressed its teeth against the metal and held still as if listening through its jaw.
They reached Cliffhook House with water washing over the ledge behind their heels.
Whitewake hunters opened a seaward door cut into the rock. The damaged cage rolled straight into a barred flood pen while the party's one-runner frame scraped into the smoke room beside it.
Jiang lay wrapped in damp sailcloth, close enough to hear the whitejaw breathing through the wall.
Its attention stayed on the test bell. Teeth closed around the metal again, and something inside the saltglass knocked back.