Black-green light reached the bunk-stair wall before anyone got Jiang out of Aylin's coat.
The first saltglass peg lit beneath Yrsa's boot. A second answered above it, then a third beside the lowest sleeping shelf. Families crowded on the upper steps while cold water climbed through the smoke room below them.
Outside, the whitejaw surfaced once beyond the breakers.
One of Cliffhook's hunters seized a boat hook. "We can still mark where she dives."
Yrsa watched the light move under her people. "Leave her to the sea. We hunt what entered the house."
She limped to an iron door at the top of the bunk stair and took a bone key from her belt. Beyond the inland lock, steep steps climbed through stone dust and pine smoke.
"Move the house uphill," she ordered. "Take blankets, blades, and anyone who cannot climb alone."
The residents passed through. Hunters carried an old man in his sleeping sling. Two cooks took the scalding broth pot between them rather than leave supper to the flood.
Jiang respected their priorities.
Aylin lowered him beside the landward rail. "You are staying in the coat."
Jiang wanted to stay inside its thin warmth until his shaking stopped. Black-green light beneath the sleeping shelves made that impossible.
He pointed his beak toward the shining pegs.
"You have already been eaten once today."
Jiang tapped the rail with one hard strike.
"That is a terrible argument."
He struck the rail again.
Aylin looked at the exposed black-gold mark on his shoulder. No salt-black cloth stood between it and the route in Cliffhook's wall. Her arms tightened around him before she made herself loosen them.
"Tell me where," she said.
She carried him to the flooded gate wheel and set him on a dry block above the lower hub. Dagna stood below with her spear. Tovin wedged himself beneath the nearest spoke while Jori dragged the fallen kill bar into place beside him.
Hedda still held the west-return ward against the groove. Two copper teeth had bent flat. The third quivered each time the filament tried to turn toward Brinehook.
"This will not hold another lift," she said.
Yrsa came down with Cliffhook's short-handled house maul. "Then we break the salt spine before the gate drops."
The hinge carried both problems.
Three white saltglass teeth joined the wheel housing to the seaward gate. The black-green filament ran through the middle one, but winter surf loaded all three together. Break the wrong tooth under weight and the gate would fall through the channel. Leave the middle tooth intact and the light would reach the upper bunks.
"Unload it," Yrsa told Tovin.
He pushed the wheel. Pain pulled his face narrow before the spoke moved.
Jori wedged the kill bar under the lower rim and leaned beside him. Water drained seaward until the next wave struck the raised gate. The wheel kicked backward, forcing both men off their feet.
The middle tooth flashed.
Jiang saw a hairline gap open at its base.
Then the load closed it.
"Lift it again," Dagna said.
Tovin reset his shoulder. Jori moved the kill bar to a deeper notch. Together they raised the wheel against the retreating water.
Another wave returned. The same gap opened, wider near the landward edge, then vanished under the gate's weight.
Jiang waited for the third pull.
His eyes followed the wheel, the salt tooth, and the angle of Dagna's spear. This was a new pattern, observed in the material rather than offered by a panel.
[Tactical Strike available now]
[Repeated hinge opening observed]
[Decision required: MARK / REFUSE]
Jiang accepted the mark.
A thin gold notch appeared where the gap would open again. It gave Dagna no strength and held nothing apart. It only named the instant her spear could enter.
"There," Aylin said, following Jiang's beak.
Dagna shifted her grip. "When I strike, the wheel has to stay unloaded."
"It will," Tovin said.
His wrapped hand had remained beneath his coat through the flood. Now he brought it out and set both palms against the spoke.
Dagna saw. "Use the shoulder."
"The shoulder slips when the wave returns."
"Your hand opens again, and you lose it on the inland road."
Tovin looked toward the people climbing that road. "Then do not miss."
Yrsa planted the house maul over the middle salt tooth. Jori braced the kill bar beneath the wheel. Hedda turned the bent return ward until its last tooth faced the western groove.
Aylin knelt at the runoff beside Dagna's boot. Water passed through the existing crack and around the saltglass base.
"I can hold that crack for a few breaths," she said. "No longer."
Jiang watched her bleeding palm approach the water. He tapped twice.
She stopped and looked at him.
His beak pointed at the uninjured hand.
Understanding softened nothing in her face, but she changed hands.
Cool Natural Essence entered the runoff. Frost filled only the wet crack already beneath the tooth, giving Dagna a firm edge without spreading into the wheel.
"Strike it now," Aylin said.
Tovin and Jori drove the spoke upward.
Blood crossed Tovin's bandage. His injured hand stayed on the wood.
The returning wave hit.
Hedda's final copper tooth snapped and held the western light with its broken point.
Gold opened inside the crack, and Dagna drove the spear forward.
Her spearhead entered the hairline gap. Yrsa brought the house maul down on the shaft above it.
Saltglass cracked through the middle tooth.
The force broke Dagna's spearhead at the socket. Jori's kill bar bowed. Tovin lost his footing, but both hands kept the wheel from taking the load until Aylin's thin frost brace shattered.
Black-green light burst from the broken tooth.
It crossed the hinge in two directions. The west branch struck Hedda's broken ward and died against the copper. The inland branch raced up the first peg, reached the second, and opened a narrow mouth of Aylin's voice inside the wall.
"This road reaches-" The voice broke when Yrsa hit the saltglass with the maul.
The middle tooth came out in pieces.
Light vanished from every bunk peg. The gate dropped one notch onto the two sound teeth beside the gap, hard enough to shake water from the ceiling but slow enough to remain above the channel.
Cliffhook's lower drain found the sea again.
No voice finished the sentence.
Tovin slid down the spoke. Blood ran from the bottom of his hand wrap. Jori caught him by the coat before the flood could take his legs.
Dagna picked up the broken spearhead. Its edge had fused white saltglass to the steel.
"That was my best spear," she said.
Jiang tapped once against Aylin's arm.
Her tired laugh warmed him less than the coat and more than it should have.
[Penguin Camouflage: Recovery Complete]
The ability was ready again. His body heat was not.
Yrsa checked the empty hinge, the drained light, and the bunk stair where her people waited. Only after the gate settled did she look toward the sea.
The whitejaw had gone.
"We chased the right monster," Jori said.
"We survived the one we chose," Yrsa replied. "That is not the same claim."
She took clean fish leather from the gear rack and tied a new broad line through the intact side of Jiang's harness. The knot left his exposed mark visible.
Jiang pecked the line.
"You want the inland stair," Yrsa said. "You enter it as live marked quarry under Captain Virr's hand. You are neither cleared nor caged. Cliffhook owes you one guarded climb, not trust."
Dagna held up the broken spear. "I accept the escort. I dispute the hand."
"Dispute it while walking."
Tovin rose with Jori's help. His rewrapped hand hung against his chest.
Yrsa frowned at him. "You stay."
"I watched the bell choose the hinge," Tovin said. "Eres will ask Dagna whether grief made her soft. It will ask Aylin whether the dead can lie. Someone should be there to answer what the gear did."
Hedda put Torren's doubled knot into his working hand. "Then carry this without dropping it."
Tovin closed his fingers around the copper.
Aylin crouched beside Jiang while the others gathered dry rope and fish for the inland climb. "When you can speak again, you may explain exactly what you meant before I cut that line."
Jiang rested his beak against the edge of her coat.
Aylin waited until one clear tap answered her.
The meaning was not forgiveness. It was permission to keep holding him until his shivering eased.
From above Cliffhook came the first note of Eres's west horn.
Yrsa went still beside them.
A second note crossed the cliff, followed by a lower hunting answer from the inland stair.
Aylin knew both calls. Jiang saw that in the way her hand closed around his new line.
"The first names a dead royal walking," she said. "The second names a marked beast at large."
Boots struck the stone steps above them.
Whitewake's hunt line was already coming down.