By the time Jiang hauled himself over the first western rib, Black-Crown had already left him behind twice.
Six black backs moved down the far slope. Experienced adults traveled in short pushes, dropped onto their bellies when the wind hit, and rose before Jiang reached the places where they had rested. Distance kept widening.
Jiang caught the loose end of his sling in his beak and pulled it clear of his feet. Old blood had frozen the cloth hard against snow. Every tug shifted the binding around his failed flipper and rubbed the open shoulder beneath it.
His left foot folded on the descent.
He hit breast-first, slid farther than he wanted, and buried his cracked beak in a drift. Hunger cramped through him while he spat out snow.
Excellent. Apparently the west road had scenery.
At the rear, one adult stopped on the next rise. An uneven spill of dark feathers broke across its white breast, like a bib torn down one side. It turned its head downhill and called.
Wind carried away the first note. A thinner answer reached them from behind, changed, and came again.
It called once more. Its mate and chick remained beyond the ribs, hidden from Jiang, while the exchange kept moving. One voice shifted west. Another diminished toward the stable ice.
Torn-Bib would do for now.
The label belonged only inside his own head. The bird already had an identity its family could hear. Jiang needed something shorter than `the adult whose chest looks as though it lost a fight with a bottle of ink`.
Black-Crown called from ahead.
Torn-Bib faced west and resumed walking. It had heard the family behind it. It had also chosen the empty crop it was carrying back to them.
Jiang pushed up on his reliable foot and followed.
The old route offered protection in mean little portions. A shallow belly scrape hid them from the crosswind until loose snow filled it. A blue-ice shoulder kept the worst gusts above their heads, then ended at a drop Jiang had to descend on his stomach. The five adults behind Black-Crown spread whenever the surface allowed and narrowed again where the ridges pinched.
The birds were searching, not marching.
One pecked through grey crust until its beak struck blue ice. Another climbed halfway up the ridge. After staring over the far side, it returned without calling. Black-Crown rested with its breast to the wind and one eye on the western horizon.
Jiang reached their scrape after the six rose together.
His body wanted the warmth left in it. The depression held only a faint dampness where six bellies had pressed the snow. He lowered himself anyway and tucked the loose edge of the sling beneath his good flipper.
For three breaths, the wind stopped reaching his wound.
Then Aylin spoke from the ridge ahead.
"Bring back a route."
Jiang's head came up so fast his beak struck the blue lip above him.
The adults turned toward the human sound. Penguin Instincts gave him alarm, attention, and Torn-Bib's pull toward the route behind them. No bird received the words that had landed inside Jiang's chest.
Scrambling out of the scrape, Jiang searched the empty ridge. Only blowing snow crossed the top.
Behind him, her voice repeated the same four words with the breath and throat scrape of the saddle recording. Each word leaned on the next in the same tired way.
The real Aylin could repeat herself. She generally found a sharper insult for the second attempt.
Jiang looked back toward the stable ice.
After the separation, the knot had called west in her voice. Distance made it no kinder. One stolen sentence could point in opposite directions whenever the thief moved its mouth.
Torn-Bib sent its family call toward the stable ice. A living answer arrived weakly through the wind and changed at the end.
The adult stayed where it was until that change reached it. Then it turned away from both versions of Aylin and followed Black-Crown.
Jiang did the same.
The group traveled until his right leg began shaking with each step. His hunger had moved beyond ordinary emptiness. It sat beneath his breastbone like a clenched fist and tightened whenever one of the adults opened its beak.
He caught himself imagining fish smell in their breath. Their open beaks carried only cold air.
At the next hollow, Black-Crown found a pale streak under the snow and scraped it with the side of its beak. The surface broke into coarse crystals that clung to the damp edge of its bill.
Jiang tasted the nearest patch and found salt.
Salt this far inland proved only that wind could travel. The patch had survived because the hollow protected it, and the crust beneath looked older than the tracks entering it.
Black-Crown pecked deeper into the crust.
A flat silver piece flashed inside the blue layer. Jiang's stomach seized before his mind caught up.
It was one fish scale.
The scale had frozen into a belly scrape worn smooth by older travelers. Around it lay the faint brown shadow of old waste and several overlapping claw marks. Older birds had rested here after feeding, proof that the west bearing had once reached food.
That meal belonged to another day.
With its crop still empty, one adult attacked the crust until chips scattered across its feet. Dirty ice rewarded the effort. The bird swallowed one piece and continued west.
Jiang watched Black-Crown continue.
Black-Crown checked the wind, looked back at the protected scrape, and climbed the next pressure rise. The sign had earned inspection and nothing more.
Jiang had wanted evidence badly enough to mistake a dead scale for encouragement. Black-Crown treated it as a direction that still needed testing.
Correction from a wordless bird tasted bad. Finding the bird useful tasted worse.
Beyond the rise, the old belly marks ended against a pressure ridge. Blue slabs had pushed over one another and frozen into a wall higher than Aylin's shoulder. Snow packed every low opening. The sea remained absent.
Black-Crown went left. Two adults climbed onto the lowest shelf. Torn-Bib and the others searched the drifted base, driving their beaks into any patch that sounded different.
Jiang lay down with his breast against the ice.
The black-green root voice reached him first. Aylin's four stolen words moved through one narrow seam, repeated without hurry, and came back from the saddle side.
Under it, something heavier pressed the ridge.
One thud traveled through the ice and into his bones. Jiang waited through the wind.
Another push came after the wind had changed. The force traveled along the whole ridge rather than the root seam. A third arrived softer, followed by a faint drawing sound beneath the packed snow.
Water moved somewhere under the wall.
Torn-Bib heard or felt it too. The adult crossed to a hollow at the ridge base and pecked through the upper crust. Its beak vanished into powder. It dug harder, throwing snow between its feet.
Black-Crown came down from the shelf and drove Torn-Bib away from the hollow.
Torn-Bib fought back with two quick strikes. Black-Crown took one across the neck, pressed breast to breast, and forced it onto firmer ice. A harsh call landed in Black-Crown's face before Torn-Bib looked downhill.
Its family answered from too far away for Jiang to separate mate from chick.
Black-Crown released its breast hold.
Torn-Bib remained beside the hollow without entering it.
Jiang pulled himself closer.
Black-Crown struck the ice in front of his good foot.
Jiang stopped. The snow at the hollow's center had sagged below the surrounding crust. His weight sat lower than the other adults', which made him useful beneath a wind shelf and exceptionally qualified to disappear through a weak lid.
He pointed his beak toward the slowest part of the sag.
Black-Crown pecked the edge. The crust broke away and exposed older, harder snow below. No hole followed.
The adult moved to the left side, where the ridge leaned over a narrow scoop, and tested each step before giving it weight.
Jiang chose the right side.
He lowered onto his belly and used his beak as a brake. The scoop descended between two blue walls, too low for Aylin to walk through without crawling. Jiang's body fit until the failed foot caught behind him. He twisted, freed it, and felt the sling bite into his shoulder.
Blood warmed one feather line and cooled at once.
Above, Black-Crown's claws scratched along the opposite wall. Torn-Bib called from the rim. The other adults shifted across firmer ice instead of crowding either route.
Halfway down, the cold changed.
The air touching Jiang's face carried wet salt and a warmth so slight he noticed it only because the rest of him had forgotten warmth existed.
He pushed his beak into the drift.
Snow collapsed inward with a soft cough. A dark slit opened beneath his bill, no wider than two claws. Sea breath touched the raw crack in his beak.
Another shift passed through the pressure ridge, and something pale rolled below the slit.
At first Jiang took it for bone from a dead animal. The object turned against the water and showed three clean cuts through one end, too even for teeth.
Black water covered it.
Then the pale clasp pulled a dark cord tight beneath the ice.