Jiang held the feather so gently that the river could move it between his teeth.
Once, it had grown from his body. He remembered the pressure beneath the skin, the first hard ridge through new down, and Aylin pretending not to watch while the Abyssal coat opened across him.
Now Breathwood breathed through the hollow shaft.
Oil climbed from the rooted end in warm pulses. Each pulse reached the brood chamber behind him and came back as a calf's frightened note.
"Can you release it?" Aylin asked.
Jiang eased his beak open.
At once, the silver comb rolled beneath Hest's yoke. White fibers shortened around the shaft, trying to draw the feather deeper into living wood. Valea's barbs bent inside their red eyes.
He caught it again before the crown tore loose.
"No," he said around the shaft.
"I understood that one," Hest said.
"He sounded especially offended."
"That is how I knew."
