Black water swallowed Jiang behind the whitejaw.
Cliffhook vanished above him. Gate stone scraped along his back, then released him into the outer throat where winter surf filled every hollow beneath the cliff.
Its jaws still held his harness cloth.
Each pull twisted the side cradle around Jiang's failed flipper and drove the outer strap into his shoulder. He folded his good wing close rather than fight the seal's whole body with one injured joint.
His first need was air.
A pale ripple showed the underside of a surface pocket between the cliff and the half-open gate. Jiang kicked with both feet. The unreliable one slipped through the water, but the other lifted his beak high enough to break the surface.
One breath reached him before the whitejaw pulled him under again.
Deep Lung sat ready behind the pressure in his chest, but more breath would only let him be eaten later. He needed the animal to lose him.
[Penguin Camouflage available now]
[Heat loss accelerates while active]
[Decision required: USE / REFUSE]
Jiang accepted the heat cost.
Color drained from the edge of his body. His pale belly took the green-grey cast of water below; black feathers blurred against the cliff above. The camouflage could hide an outline in poor light.
Cold reached the skin beneath his feathers faster than the sea had managed alone. The System was spending body heat to change what the water showed, indifferent to how little warmth Jiang had carried through the gate.
The cloth remained plain inside the whitejaw's teeth.
Turning toward the gate, Jiang forced the predator to correct without releasing him. Water struck his face. The animal's long body needed room to turn, while Jiang's webbed feet and one working wing could bring his short body around almost beneath itself.
Jiang carved a tighter turn, crossing the predator's pull over its own path. Harness cloth wrapped over one blunt stone tooth beneath the gate.
Tovin had built the side cradle with two separate straps. The inner one carried Jiang's failed flipper. The outer one held the mark cloth away from his shoulder wound. If the stone tooth caught the right layer, he would lose his cover and keep the support. If it caught both, the whitejaw would take the flipper with it.
Jiang kicked hard away as leather tightened across his open shoulder and the whitejaw pulled toward open water. Between them, salt-black cloth stretched until black-green light showed through its weave.
Inside Cliffhook, Aylin saw the light.
She lay across the flooded rail where Jiang had disappeared. Yrsa's kill bar blocked the gate throat below her, wedged between stone guides.
"Raise the gate," Aylin said.
Yrsa had both hands on the kill-bar chain. "That releases the whitejaw onto the winter coast."
"It releases Jiang from your gate teeth."
"I can drop the bar through the animal's neck."
"He is under its mouth."
Dagna leaned over the wheel. Water ran from her hair onto the spear in her hand. "The animal followed the cloth through three people. Open the sea path and let it carry the cloth away."
"Your captive is deciding my hunt?"
"My judgment is deciding it. Blame the bird after he lives."
Tovin had reset the wheel brake. He pressed his shoulder under the nearest spoke, keeping the bandaged hand inside his coat.
"If we open it, the lower pawl will hold," he said. "If the saltglass shifts again, I cannot promise the hinge."
Hedda pulled the recovered west-return ward from inside her coat. Its copper teeth faced the wrong way for the seaward gate, barbed toward Brinehook.
"Then keep the thread from turning west," she said. "I can give you one clean lift."
Aylin looked through the gap.
Jiang surfaced beyond the gate tooth. Camouflage blurred his feathers until only his beak and the blood washing from his shoulder gave her a shape to follow.
Aylin's injured hand tightened on the chain. Minutes earlier she had cut the line because she believed it was drowning him. The choice had saved his shoulder from the wheel and delivered him to the predator in the same stroke.
She wanted certainty before making another choice with his body. The water offered none.
He struck the stone with his beak, once toward the gate and once toward the stretched cloth. The message was simple: open the gate and tear the cloth.
Aylin closed her injured hand around the lift chain.
"Do it," she said.
Yrsa caught her wrist. "Cliffhook law puts this choice on me."
"Cliffhook put a road bell in a predator cage. The consequence is already yours."
"And if you read him wrong?" Yrsa asked.
Aylin kept her gaze on Jiang. "Then he gets to hate me while he is alive."
Aylin pulled the chain.
Dagna dropped her spear and joined her. Tovin drove the spoke upward with his shoulder. Jori, grey from pain, crawled back from the smoke-room stair and put his good arm around the next spoke.
Hedda set the return ward against the wet groove.
The copper teeth caught black-green light.
Cliffhook's seaward gate rose.
Outside, the stone tooth released the wrapped cloth by dragging it down Jiang's shoulder. The harness's outer strap tore first. Salt-black fabric peeled away from the mark and stayed clenched in the whitejaw's mouth.
Jiang's black-gold prison mark met open water.
The whitejaw let him go.
Its eyes followed the contaminated cloth as the current carried it beneath the higher gate. One sweep of its foreflippers drove it past Jiang. The animal clipped his feet with its wake and entered the open sea headfirst.
No gratitude. No pause. It took the thing in its mouth and vanished under a breaking wave.
Jiang pressed himself into a dark notch beside the gate.
Camouflage softened his body against the rock, but blood drifted from his shoulder and every shiver stirred the water. The whitejaw's pressure sense would find him again if it turned back.
One wave passed while he waited; a second would cost the surface pocket. Jiang canceled the ability.
[Penguin Camouflage manually canceled]
[Recovery period: 5 minutes]
His black-and-white body returned beneath the gate.
Aylin saw him. "Net!"
Jori kicked a folded haul net off the wall. Dagna caught it, opened the lead edge with her spear shaft, and dropped it through the gate. Tovin held the wheel while Yrsa took the net's rear line around her bound thigh and the rock post beside it.
Jiang drove his good wing through the nearest loop.
The net tightened beneath his belly. Aylin and Dagna hauled while Hedda kept the return ward against the groove. Every knot scraped the torn harness, but the pull lifted him away from the next surge and over the inner sill.
He landed against Aylin's chest.
Her arms closed around the wet body and stopped before touching the exposed mark. She shifted her grip beneath his breast and the intact side of the harness instead.
"I cut the wrong line," she said.
Jiang's beak knocked once against her collarbone. The argument could wait; he lacked warmth for it.
Aylin wrapped her open coat around him. Although she was shivering too, Jiang stayed against her because pride generated no useful heat.
Beyond the gate, the whitejaw surfaced with the salt-black cloth between its teeth.
The whitejaw bit down once.
Black-green light left the fabric before the jaws closed. The filament crossed the water along Cliffhook's exposed salt rivets and struck the loaded gate hinge.
Hedda's return ward caught its western branch. Copper teeth bent, holding the route away from Brinehook.
The remaining filament turned inland.
It moved through the hinge groove, under Yrsa's boot, and into the wall behind the bunk stair.