Another finger's width of the seaward gate pin emerged.
Water punched through the gap beneath it. One rush filled the whitejaw's pen; the next crossed the test channel and struck Jiang's one-runner frame broadside.
Aylin caught the landward rail before it rolled.
"Upper bunks!" Yrsa shouted. "Move everyone above the flood line!"
Cliffhook's hunters left the gear racks and drove the smoke-room residents toward a stair cut into the rock. Dagna planted her spear butt behind Jiang's runner. Hedda kicked the three test shutters closed while Tovin dragged the recovered scent cloth away from the joining water.
Beyond the bars, the whitejaw rammed the bell.
Saltglass drove backward through its bracket. Black-green light raced into the hinge groove, and the gate pin jumped higher.
Jori reached the wheel first.
He threw his weight against one spoke. Half a turn lowered the pin until a hooked chain rose from the floor and caught beneath the bandage around his ribs.
With the next surge, the chain pulled tight.
Jori hit the stone on his back. One arm remained trapped between the wheel and the wall, while the chain across his chest shortened each time the gate lifted.
"Brake!" he called. "Our lower pawl has slipped."
Tovin ran to him. He wedged his shoulder under a spoke and reached for the brake lever. The wrapped hand stayed against his coat.
"I can hold the wheel," he said. "I cannot reach under it."
Yrsa took the kill bar from its hooks.
Floodwater lifted the whitejaw until its shoulders cleared the inner bars. One more lift would give it the open test channel and a straight path to the bunk stair.
"Dagna," Yrsa said. "Left eye when she comes through."
Dagna reversed her spear and set the point over the low rail.
Jiang watched the whitejaw.
Its gaze passed over Jori's kicking legs. It passed over Tovin at the wheel and Hedda beside the shutters. Fish blood still drifted through the pen, but the animal turned away from that too.
Black-green light moved inside the hinge.
Following it, the whitejaw turned her whole head.
When the light shifted behind Dagna's spear, the animal struck the stone beneath the blade rather than the hunter holding it.
Dagna drew back for the eye.
Jiang shoved himself across the frame and caught the spear shaft with his good wing.
Pain tore through the shoulder cradle. Dagna's spear point dropped and scraped one of the whitejaw's old muzzle scars.
Her head snapped toward him.
For one ugly instant, Jiang had the complete attention of a predator whose distant relatives had spent generations learning how emperor penguins moved.
"Get off my spear," Dagna said.
Jiang struck the shaft with his beak, then pointed toward the moving light.
"He saw it choose the hinge," Aylin said. "It left Jori alive."
Yrsa kept the kill bar raised. "A bite can follow two hungers."
The whitejaw forced her shoulders through the widening bars.
Its chest hit the test-channel wall. Stone cracked. Chasing the light, the animal twisted and swept Dagna's legs out from under her with one flipper.
Jiang's frame tipped beneath him.
Cold water took his belly, then his breast. Aylin hauled on the broad line and pulled the frame against the inner wall before its runner rolled over.
His salt-black mark cloth touched the flood.
Black-green light left the gate hinge.
It crossed the worked-salt rivets along the channel, entered the soaked edge of the cloth, and stopped over his shoulder.
Now the whitejaw turned toward him.
So much for being right in a useful way.
Jiang backed toward the smoke room. His bad foot folded against the runner, and the broad line pulled him sideways. Through the broken inner bars, the predator slid with less space than its bones should have allowed.
Its jaws closed on the low rail where Jiang had been.
Wood broke between the teeth.
Dagna rolled to one knee and recovered her spear. Its body filled the channel, leaving no angle to the eye without sending the point through Jiang first.
Jori cried out behind it.
By then, the wheel had lifted him from the floor by the chain across his ribs. Tovin held the spoke with his shoulder and one hand, but the gate pulled against him through the gears.
"Find the lower pawl," Tovin said through his teeth. "It is under the water, behind my boot."
No adult arm could reach it while the wheel was loaded. Jiang could fit beneath the lowest spoke if he entered from the flooded side.
It was the whitejaw's side.
Aylin saw where he was looking. "Jiang, wait."
Jori's chain cut higher into his coat.
Jiang lowered his breast into the water.
He wanted Jori free. He wanted the predator anywhere else. Life rarely arranged his preferences in a helpful order.
His body floated off the frame before the unreliable foot could fail again. One wing steered. Close to his body, the supported flipper stayed tucked while he slipped beneath the first wheel spoke.
Across his back, the broad line tightened.
He needed slack from the rear post. Jiang struck the wet wood twice, pulled toward the wheel, and pecked at the loaded rope.
Aylin leaned over the rail. Spray hit her face. The gate's groan drowned his beak against wood.
"The line is trapping him," she said.
"Give it around the post," Dagna called.
Aylin reached for the knot. As the frame rolled toward the whitejaw, the line dragged Jiang's open shoulder against the bottom spoke.
She drew her knife and cut the rope.
Behind Jiang's harness, the tether parted.
He had asked for slack. She had given him the entire sea.
Freedom would have felt better without the leopard seal.
Jiang shot beneath the wheel.
Under the hub, the lower pawl hung open inside a pocket. A strip of white saltglass had wedged behind it, shining with the same black-green line now pulsing across his shoulder cloth.
He caught the strip between the sides of his beak and pulled.
The whitejaw struck the wheel.
Pressure rolled through the water and drove Jiang against the hub. His failed flipper shifted inside its cradle. Fresh shoulder wrapping tore beneath the harness edge.
Tovin's boot appeared beside him. It pressed the pawl downward while Jiang worked the saltglass free.
Above the surface, Hedda shouted the incoming wave. Dagna and Aylin took Jori's chain. Yrsa abandoned the kill angle and jammed her bar beneath the lifting gate pin.
Its pale head came around the wheel.
Jiang saw pale belly, old scars, and a mouth wide enough to remove his middle.
He tore the saltglass strip loose as Tovin drove the pawl home.
The wheel stopped climbing. Jori dropped far enough for Dagna and Aylin to pull the chain over his shoulder. Hedda dragged him by the coat toward the smoke room.
Floodwater kept rising through the lower house, while the bunk stair remained above it.
Jiang surfaced beside the wheel.
It passed Jori's blood and Tovin's leg, its black eyes fixed on the salt-black cloth stretched over Jiang's mark.
He turned for the frame.
Without the tether, nothing pulled him back when his failed flipper ruined the first stroke. His good wing drove him forward. Turbulence from the whitejaw lifted his feet.
Aylin lay across the rail and reached for the harness.
Their eyes met across one body length of water.
Jiang aimed his beak at the seaward gate, then at the cloth on his shoulder. Tear it there. Open water. Get the route away from the house.
Aylin reached farther toward him.
The whitejaw arrived first.
Its teeth closed around the salt-black cloth and the outer edge of Jiang's harness. The bite missed his body, but the pull struck through his open shoulder like a hook.
Aylin caught one trailing strap. Wet leather ripped through her injured palm.
"Jiang, take my hand!"
With a violent jerk, the whitejaw dragged him beneath the half-open seaward gate.
Yrsa's kill bar fell behind them.