Wet cloth spoke Jiang's name for no one.
It had chosen Aylin's.
Kaul hung against the center frame with his mouth open and no breath moving through it. Across Skykeel, copper throats had fallen quiet. Without their rough exhale, the living red strand softened inside the brace.
Skykeel began turning faster.
A street crossed the chamber doorway where open water had been. Its windows passed sideways, full of faces and floating stools, before another roll carried the whole row out of sight. Copper ribs ground against one another beneath Jiang's feet.
Inside the carrier, cloth whispered again.
"Aylin, can you hear me?"
Aylin looked at Jiang.
Not at the cloth. Not at the human voice that had once belonged inside the body he remembered every morning before he opened his eyes.
She found the living penguin in the dark water and said, "I know where you are."
Jiang's breast tightened harder than the safety line.
Beneath its wrapping, the bundle used his old voice to cough.
