The white flare followed them east.
It burned above every ridge Jiang crossed, bright enough to stain the blowing snow. Whenever the land hid it, the light returned on the next rise and reminded him that someone would be coming to learn what their trap had caught.
Torn-Bib called downhill again and received two answers through the wind: a low note roughened by distance, then one that broke high at the end.
Mate and chick. Both alive.
Torn-Bib answered both while climbing.
Jiang managed no call at all. The breath Deep Lung had preserved under water kept returning in awkward pieces, never quite matching the work his body demanded. His loose flipper dragged through snow on every upward push. When he tried holding it close, the failed limb slipped free and struck the ice hard enough to blur the ridge in front of him.
The west group went on.
Black-Crown vanished over the final rise with the others. Jiang reached the bottom of it alone, planted his reliable foot, and hauled until his breast cleared the steepest blue edge. His shoulder scraped over the blue lip and opened. Warm blood reached the cold before he did.
Black-Crown stood at the top.
The adult had not come back. It had not descended to help. It simply waited with one eye on the west and the other on the struggling penguin below.
Jiang dragged himself into view.
Black-Crown turned east at once.
Jiang sent an unheard complaint after him. "You could pretend to care until I got my feet under me."
The adult's tail disappeared over the eastern edge, which was probably its answer.
The saddle beyond was empty.
No chicks crowded the old midpoint. No parents stood over the tracks that had once carried half the colony through the same narrow gap. Wind had softened those paths, but not enough to hide what Aylin had done to them.
She had torn the shared trail apart.
Boot marks crossed it sideways. Chips of basalt had been stamped into the shallow channel, breaking one easy line into several ugly ones. Farther downhill, new penguin tracks wandered around the lee of a ridge in separate family groups. Their calls changed as they moved, messy and alive.
Aylin remained beside the knot.
She sat with one knee raised and her coat pulled close, though one side had slipped from her shoulder. Her bandaged palm rested on the ice. Black-green light ran from the dense root coil into the cloth, crossed her wrist, and disappeared beneath her sleeve.
The same color shivered at her throat.
Jiang called once from the ridge.
Aylin's head snapped toward him.
Relief reached her face first. Anger caught it almost immediately.
"You lost the sling."
Jiang looked at the dark wet line down his breast, then at her bloody hand.
They had both made improvements.
He started toward her.
The knot spoke behind her in his voice.
One penguin cry began in Jiang's chest. Another, human grief twisted through a sound no bird should have made. The two voices met at the ending exactly as they had when he first called the colony away from the false huddle.
The copy traveled downhill.
A worn-grey shape lifted its head beyond the sheltered ridge.
Aylin slapped her bandaged palm onto blue ice. Green light tightened under her skin, and the copied call broke before it could repeat.
"Keep moving," she rasped toward the chick.
White-Nape called from lower ground. Grey-Throat answered near Split-Beak. The worn-grey chick turned toward those living, changing sounds and vanished behind the ridge.
Only then did Aylin look back at Jiang.
"It has been using your call on that one since you left."
Her voice scraped over the last words.
"I moved them every time it found the tracks. Separate paths, different rests. It kept reaching after them, so I gave it the part of the Link it already knew."
She lifted her bandaged hand. The black-green thread lifted with it.
It had not caught her while she waited helplessly. She had held its mouth at the saddle and let the colony get farther away.
Torn-Bib rushed past Jiang.
Its mate climbed from the downhill path before he could follow. The two adults met breast to breast, calling over each other while their chick shoved between their feet and complained at both of them.
Torn-Bib bent over the chick.
The chick caught its parent's beak. A silver tail appeared for an instant between them, slick with stomach fluid, and disappeared into the smaller mouth.
Jiang's own stomach clenched so hard that his good foot slipped.
Another returning adult found the youngster that had answered it from the saddle. Black-Crown passed both families and continued downhill with its crop still carrying whatever it had caught.
None of them looked toward Aylin's knot.
The food was leaving.
Jiang took one step after it.
Torn-Bib's chick begged again. Its parent lowered its beak, and the smell of fish reached Jiang through the cold.
He could follow Black-Crown. A bird with food might lose part of it. A chick might fail to swallow. Somewhere below, adults would open a huddle around bodies they recognized, and warmth could leak from the edge even if no one invited him inside.
Behind him, Aylin's breath caught.
The green line pulled her injured hand toward the knot. She planted her boot on the root coil and stopped it before her face struck the ice.
Jiang watched the last black back descend, hated the emptiness in his body, and turned around.
Resentment turned with him. Fish and huddle warmth pulled at every hurting part of his body. He wished Aylin had solved one danger without making his damage the price of the next.
The knot stayed looped at her throat.
He crossed back to her on his reliable foot.
Aylin glanced past him and saw the white column above the western ridges. Whatever she had meant to say vanished.
Aylin whispered one name. "Whitewake."
Jiang lowered his beak and scratched three short cuts into the snow. He nudged a chip of ice between the first two, then knocked his bill against his marked breast.
Her jaw tightened at once.
"A sight clasp found your mark."
He tapped the cuts.
"Those are Whitewake Guild traps. Coastal patrols." She looked toward the old western path. "They hunt Yokai-marked animals before the corruption reaches a settlement. That mark will be all the proof they want."
Jiang looked down the slope.
"Yes," Aylin said. "The way inland reaches Eres. That flare proves Whitewake still patrols it."
Jiang had found the road to Eres at the same moment Whitewake found him.
The knot pulsed under Aylin's palm.
Several stolen calls stirred inside it, but Jiang's voice rose above the rest. Black-green threads slipped toward the broken shared trail. Aylin caught the thickest strand between her bandaged fingers and pulled it back across her wrist.
"Don't close the Link," she said.
Jiang stared at her.
"Not yet." She dragged the strand away from the downhill tracks, shaking with the effort. "It has packed every voice it stole into this anchor. If I shut our Link while it is spread through the old paths, the whole weight falls back into them. Every chick that still knows those calls gets another road into its head."
Jiang pressed his good flipper into the snow and lowered beside her. His useless side slid away from his ribs. Cold reached the wet feathers beneath it.
Aylin shifted close enough to shelter that side from the wind, leaving a hand's width between them.
"It called in your voice," she said. "I kept my mouth shut. The chicks stayed with the calls that changed."
Jiang looked at the separate tracks leading downhill.
The knot tightened between them.
Aylin's hand jerked flat. Green light climbed from her wrist to her throat, tracing the damaged Spirit Link with a brightness that showed through skin.
"Jiang," she said, and this time the warning barely had sound.
He moved toward the root.
Her mouth opened before he reached it.
A penguin's two-voice cry burst from Aylin's injured throat, shaped by her living breath and carrying Jiang's stolen voice downhill.