The first dead star broke before Morrowfin reached it.
A silver-sailed deckhand had thrown the shell whole. The crosswake caught it, drove it against a curl of the wounded wing, and split it into three white pieces.
Morrowfin let every piece pass beneath her.
One fragment spun close enough for Jiang to see the soft light leaking through its cracks. It smelled of hot stone and old salt, nothing like food. Morrowfin's great underside tightened as it passed her mouth, but the mouth did not open.
The woman at the bronze horn swore.
"Stop feeding the breakage. Whole shells only."
Her crew were already moving. Two people kicked a cracked bin overboard rather than let its contents scatter in front of the animal. A third crawled along the open keel with both boots locked beneath silver bars. Nobody reached for Morrowfin with a hook. Their long poles touched shell, rope, and one another, never the dark skin passing below.
