Black-Crown stood in the hollow Jiang had used for shelter.
The adult faced him with both flippers spread, its back to the huddle and its beak aimed at his cracked tip.
Jiang stopped outside striking range.
Aylin held the remaining silver against her bleeding forearm. The strip was too narrow to wrap the wound and too valuable to leave loose. Behind Black-Crown, their low snow shelter offered the only break in the wind.
Beyond it lay Bent-Toe's body.
White-Nape stood over the dead adult. Pale-Cheek pressed under one side, called, waited, and called again. Each answer came from far beneath the ice in the strong voice Bent-Toe had lost before death.
The living parent beside the chick answered differently each time.
Around them, the rookery moved.
Adults on the exposed edge shuffled inward while others took the wind, and chicks vanished between legs as the huddle flowed around Bent-Toe's family without ceremony.
Jiang understood the lack of a funeral better than he liked. Cold, hunger, and a stolen voice had survived the bird.
Aylin touched his sling. "We need the hollow."
Jiang looked at Black-Crown.
Black-Crown tipped its beak nearer the ice.
"It disagrees with the plan."
Her throat turned the sentence into gravel. Jiang had no useful voice to give back. He pointed his beak toward the far edge of the hollow, then toward the silver.
If Black-Crown watched him, Aylin could place the strip low enough to keep wind off her open arm. No wall. No blocked huddle path. A shelter shaped for two unwanted bodies.
Jiang began walking sideways.
Black-Crown matched every step.
He moved again. The adult stayed between his beak and every chick.
After the petrel, Bent-Toe, and the shallow branch, the refusal scraped somewhere raw. Jiang had bled beside these birds. Aylin had spent her last road on them. Split-Beak's chick lived because Jiang had pulled it from black water.
Black-Crown still saw danger.
Jiang filled his chest and gave one low call.
Heads turned toward him.
Aylin slipped left with the silver.
From beneath the huddle, Jiang's voice called again.
The copy carried both voices cleanly. It lacked the crack pain had put into Jiang's beak and the rough catch his shoulder gave the breath, yet it owned his timing from a healthier night.
Three chicks turned toward the bodyless voice.
Black-Crown hit Jiang in the face.
The blow landed against his cracked tip. White pain ran through his skull. He fell across the sling and tasted blood where the beak had split farther.
Green warmth flashed through Aylin's fingers. She saw the chicks turning toward Jiang's copied call and pressed that power into the snow instead of Black-Crown. Meltwater darkened her palm, then froze again.
Black-Crown called over him.
Penguin Instincts gave Jiang fear, warning, chicks, and the pressure of a dangerous adult too close. Gratitude had no place in that meaning because his voice had opened the colony again.
Aylin abandoned the hollow and dropped beside him. "Stay down."
Black-Crown struck the snow by Jiang's eye.
He kept his beak shut.
The copied call moved under his belly. When Jiang stayed silent, it repeated the same answer, then the same one again.
Nearby chicks hesitated. Their parents filled the gaps with living songs, each exchange changing as bodies found one another.
Black-Crown drove its shoulder into Jiang's breast.
The adult wanted distance.
Jiang wanted to point out the dead petrel feathers on the ice, the saved chicks, the blood under Aylin's hands, every piece of evidence that should have bought him one sheltered hollow.
Another stolen call rose behind Black-Crown.
The bird was right.
That fact hurt worse than the strike.
Jiang pushed with his working foot and slid backward. Black-Crown followed, head low. Each time he paused, its beak hit the snow close enough to make the next direction obvious.
Backward travel spared his useless foot and dragged the sling across his shoulder wound. Every shove left fresh warmth under the wrap. Black-Crown smelled the blood and kept driving him away from the chicks.
Aylin gathered the sling and walked beside him.
"It is exiling you," she rasped.
Jiang glared at her.
"Us," she corrected. "I feel included."
He almost called in answer. Black-Crown's beak lifted.
Jiang swallowed the sound.
They passed Split-Beak and Grey-Throat at the huddle edge. Split-Beak placed itself over the chick and let them go without a peck. Narrow judgment, nothing more.
White-Nape remained beside Bent-Toe.
Pale-Cheek looked toward Jiang when his recorded identity sounded under the body. White-Nape answered the chick and blocked its path with one foot.
The wind took the living reply into the huddle. Gredudande sent Jiang's copy the other way, toward the sea.
Black-Crown heard both voices.
It shoved Jiang again.
Outside the moving colony, the ice held no shelter taller than a drift. Aylin lowered the silver strip against one and tried to pack snow over its edge with numbed fingers.
Black-Crown struck the metal away.
"That is mine," Aylin said.
The adult spread one flipper across the strip.
Aylin's good hand tightened. Natural Essence stirred beneath her skin, green warmth waiting for anger to give it an excuse.
Jiang tapped her boot.
She lowered her gaze.
He turned his beak toward the huddle's slow path. Even this far out, the birds would reach the drift as the wind moved them. Silver had already become a wall once.
Aylin opened her stiff fingers.
"I hate being corrected by the same bird twice."
Jiang tapped her boot again.
Black-Crown lifted its foot after Aylin folded the strip into her sleeve.
The shelter problem remained. So did the truth beneath it: anything fixed near the rookery became an obstacle, and anything Jiang called became another mouth for the fragment.
Aylin took the rear loop of his sling. "Then we go farther."
Jiang pointed toward the inland white.
She looked toward the white distance where low clouds hid every feature of her world. "Eres lies beyond land, not sea. The coast is that direction if the old ice has not changed."
"Basalt ridges should rise beyond the shelf," she added. "Past them, an old salt road reaches country my family once held. It is a journey, not a gate."
Her hand turned away from the rookery.
Jiang pointed toward the black-green pulse beneath them. It moved seaward.
"The fragment is going to the water," she said. "My city is going the other way."
He tapped the ice over the pulse, then pointed at himself.
Aylin understood too quickly. "You think it will follow you."
Jiang gave one tap.
"That makes you bait."
He struck twice. Bad plan.
"It may also pull the voice away from the chicks."
Jiang watched Pale-Cheek disappear behind White-Nape's body. The fragment already had Bent-Toe. It already had him. Keeping both recordings beside the colony helped nobody except the thing below.
He pushed the sling toward the sea.
Aylin caught it before the wind turned him. "I am recording my objection in the ancient language of carrying you anyway."
Her forearm shook when she pulled.
Jiang hated adding his weight to the wound. He hated the alternative more.
They moved beyond the last chicks.
Black-Crown followed them out.
At first, the adult stayed close enough to strike Jiang's tail. As the huddle receded, it left more space, stopping whenever he stopped and advancing whenever he turned back.
The colony became a dark island behind them.
Jiang's copied call sounded beneath the island.
Black-Crown looked toward the colony.
Another copy answered from under Jiang.
The adult faced him again.
Gredudande had kept one voice near the chicks and sent another after its owner.
Aylin stared at the black-green frost forming under the sling. "Distance is dividing it."
Jiang settled his breast flat and listened through the bone behind his beak. The pulse beneath him moved toward open water, carrying his healthier voice ahead.
Black-Crown walked after it.
When Jiang slowed, the adult struck the snow behind his tail and drove him on.
It kept the dangerous stranger between itself and the rookery.
This time, Jiang went willingly.