Warmth left through the broken slate for the final time.
Jiang felt it pass under his belly, a thin breath from the stone that became nothing before it reached his wet feathers. Cold filled the space it left. The stranger tightened his brood fold and stood lower over the egg.
Black-green water climbed the empty heat channel.
"We move now," Pava said. "Or we discover how long an egg lives in a flooded guild basement, and I have no interest in learning that."
The male answered her voice with a warning rattle.
"He shares my opinion," she said.
He did not share her plan.
Jiang wanted the male away from the rising water. Wanting did not make him trustworthy. From beneath that brood fold, Jiang must have looked like another wounded adult backed by six tool-bearing humans and a city that had already trapped one foot. Fear was keeping the egg covered. Treating that fear as wasted time would kill what they meant to save.
