Pain came back to Jiang's right foot one toe at a time.
He had never been so pleased to feel something bite him from the inside.
His claws curled beneath his belly. The movement sent a hot line through the sole, faded, then returned meaner. His left foot gave him a dull throb and no useful answer. Inside the sling, the bound flipper still felt like a wet parcel tied to somebody else.
The huddle had moved beyond him.
Black backs pressed together beneath the blowing snow, opening and closing as adults traded the outer wind. Somewhere inside that living wall, the chicks Jiang had sheltered were warm enough to complain again.
He lay outside with a stable chest, frozen edges, and no share of the warmth he had helped preserve.
Fair had never been one of the rookery's survival rules.
Jiang braced the edge of his right flipper against hard crust and levered his breast up.
His right foot clenched. His left folded. The sling dragged hard across his shoulder, and he dropped before his breast had cleared the snow.
Wonderful. He had upgraded from corpse to badly packed luggage.
Wind had already erased Aylin's tracks over the low rise. No silver flashed there. No boot returned to catch his sling.
At the colony's seaward edge, hunger pulled three adults out of the huddle.
White-Nape emerged first. Pale-Cheek tried to follow, but the parent turned across the chick's path and pressed it back among warmer bodies. Their close calls changed around each other until Pale-Cheek yielded to the moving wall.
Split-Beak left Grey-Throat in the same shelter. It waited until its chick answered from between two adult breasts, then followed White-Nape toward the lead.
Black-Crown came last and looked at Jiang before it looked at the water.
The adult saw him fail to stand. Its beak lowered anyway.
The lowered beak promised another strike if he edged closer.
Jiang kept his good flipper flat and his head away from the huddle. Black-Crown turned toward the sea.
The reopened lead was little more than a dark tear between ice shelves. Fish flashed beyond the black-green root, close enough for Jiang's empty belly to tighten at every silver turn.
White-Nape reached the rim and entered without waiting for either adult.
Its breast split the water cleanly. Webbed feet vanished, and the white patch beneath its tail rolled under the ice.
Split-Beak leaned over the opening. Black-Crown held farther back, body low, watching both the water and the colony.
Jiang's right foot cramped beneath him. He let it work.
Under the pressure roof, White-Nape's pale belly moved past the lead. The adult should have turned where open water broke the ice above. Instead, its shadow continued sideways beneath the solid shelf.
A chick called from under the ice.
Pale-Cheek's thin upward break came through the ice. White-Nape answered before the living chick replied from the huddle, its note bent by bodies, wind, and the parent's sudden absence.
From under the roof came the first clean note again.
White-Nape turned toward that one.
A warning gathered in Jiang's throat and stayed there. Gredudande already wore his voice through the rookery; another call would give the fragment one more place to stand.
Closing his beak jarred the crack at its tip.
White-Nape's pale shape slipped beyond the lead's narrow view.
Through the ice under Jiang's breast came the first scrape.
Claws dragged against the underside, broke contact, and struck again. A heavier blow followed as White-Nape's back hit the roof. The vibration traveled through Jiang's feathers before the noise reached the air.
Split-Beak pecked at the open water. Black-Crown called once over the lead, but Pale-Cheek's stolen voice answered from farther under the shelf.
White-Nape struck the ice again.
The adult was searching for a hole that no longer lay above it.
Jiang caught the loose sling end with his beak and flung it toward a ridge beside the lead. The cloth slid off.
He tried again. This time the loop caught around a broken knob of ice.
His cracked beak closed on the strap. The good flipper shoved. His right claws found enough feeling to scratch backward while the left foot trailed.
The pull moved him half a body length and opened his shoulder.
Warm wetness reached the feathers beneath the binding.
Jiang released the strap, pushed it ahead, and hooked the next rough edge. Every pull made the ice answer through his beak. Every pause let White-Nape's trapped blows grow less regular.
Black-Crown crossed between him and the lead.
Jiang kept pulling anyway.
The adult struck the sling once. Its beak punched through cloth close to Jiang's face and pinned the strap to the snow.
Jiang stared past it at the ice.
White-Nape scraped beneath them.
He hit the pinned strap with his good flipper, then pointed his beak down.
Black-Crown felt the next blow under its feet.
The adult lifted its beak from the cloth.
Permission would have been too generous a word. It moved one step aside.
Jiang dragged himself to the place where the lead narrowed beneath an overhanging lip. The ice there carried water noise into his breast. Somewhere behind and below him, White-Nape battered the roof while the copied chick called from a place with no chick, no breath, and no moving feet.
Jiang turned his head and struck the ice with the side of his beak.
His beak gave the ice two close taps.
The crack at his tip punished him. He waited, moved as far as his right flipper could push, and struck again.
Then he gave one separate tap.
White-Nape's scratching stopped.
Jiang shifted closer to the open water.
His beak knocked twice more.
A body hit the underside behind him.
The blows were moving the wrong direction.
He crawled around the curve of the lead, dragging the bound side and keeping each new tap nearer the opening. His right foot recovered just enough to steer his belly. When it cramped, he used the sling. When the strap slipped, he drove his beak into the crust and pulled against his own neck.
The route hurt in a different place every time. He knocked once more.
White-Nape struck beneath his last position, then followed the next vibration.
Again Pale-Cheek's copied call sounded under the deeper roof. White-Nape's body started toward it. Jiang struck twice, each impact reaching his jaw.
The adult corrected toward him.
The taps offered only a place: Jiang's beak at one impact, then a new patch of ice at the next. White-Nape could follow movement without choosing between stolen family voices.
He reached the ice lip and knocked once beside the open water.
White rose under the dark surface.
White-Nape missed the opening by the width of its head. One flipper struck solid ice and pushed it sideways. The adult rolled, found black water above its beak, and drove through.
Its breast hit the rim. Split-Beak caught the wet body with its own flank while White-Nape clawed onto the surface.
Water ran from its feathers. Its beak opened on rough breaths, empty of fish.
From the huddle, Pale-Cheek called.
White-Nape answered with a broken note, paused, then changed the ending.
The chick changed with it.
The clean recording beneath the ice repeated what they had already left behind.
Black-Crown looked from White-Nape to the trail Jiang had scraped around the lead. Its gaze followed the blood on the sling, the uneven belly furrow, and the fresh beak marks ending at open water.
Jiang wanted that look to become something useful.
Food, perhaps. Space beside the huddle. One day without being struck in the face by the bird he had just helped.
Black-Crown drove its beak into his breast and rolled him away from White-Nape.
There was the rookery's answer.
Jiang landed on the bound side, hated the entire species for a breath, and used the anger to get his good flipper under him.
White-Nape stayed alive. Pale-Cheek stayed in the huddle. The lead remained open.
Black-Crown stood between Jiang and all three.
Jiang stopped before the next tap.
The last vibration faded under his belly.
Far beyond the lead, where solid ice covered black water, the same pattern answered from below.
Two close taps came back.
Then, after Jiang had made no move at all, one final tap.