Three spearheads met Jiang at the station boundary.
Tovin dragged the brake with his wrapped forearm and his bare bleeding hand. The sled stopped outside a waist-high wall of salt-grey stone, where the road divided around the occupied shelter.
Every bead on the seaward rack stared at the boundary groove.
Black-green filament climbed from that groove into the lowest fork. White light ran through bead after bead, drawing their faces toward the station roof.
"Hold outside," a man called.
He came through the gate with a hooked knife in one hand and a square of salt-black cloth in the other. Wind had burned the top of his left ear smooth. His white coat carried no patrol marks, only the dark shoulder patches of a station keeper.
"Iven Rask," Dagna said. "Cut your inner rack line."
Iven's attention stayed on Jiang. The salt cloth over the prison mark had slipped during the turn, exposing a black-gold edge against wet breast feathers.
"You brought that to my wall?"
Dagna threw the torn runner collar onto the ice between them. Black rot covered its inner curve.
"That brought itself. The penguin tore it out."
One of Iven's hunters lowered her spear toward Jiang's throat.
Dagna stepped across the point. "Watch the control."
She lifted the cloth from Jiang's mark. A loose net bead beside the open cage brightened and turned toward his breast. The rack above the boundary groove kept facing the road.
Dagna covered him again.
Under the cloth, the net bead died while the exterior rack kept burning white.
Iven repeated the test with his own cloth. His burned ear reddened in the wind while he watched one light obey the covered mark and the others follow something beneath the stone.
"Cut the inner line," Dagna said again.
This time, Iven moved.
His hooked knife caught a thick white cord where the rack entered the shelter wall. He sawed through its salt-soaked braid. Wooden shutters dropped over the inner bead alcoves, separating the living room from the exterior forks.
Behind those shutters, a cook shoved the breakfast pot away from the wall. Two off-duty hunters dragged their bedding clear of the inner cords and shouted when the floor was bare. Iven waited for both voices before withdrawing his knife.
The filament reached higher.
Aylin slid from the sled before anyone could stop her. She pressed her bandaged palm to the boundary stone, and cool Natural Essence whitened the old road groove with frost.
Black-green thread appeared inside it.
The line climbed through the seaward rack's foot, crossed the lowest fork, and searched along the severed inner cord. Finding a cut end, it recoiled toward the road.
"There," Aylin said. "Break the foot before it finds another path."
Iven's spear line shifted toward her.
"Do it," Dagna ordered.
She drove her spear hook through the rack's bottom fork. Aylin held the frost around its stone socket. Dagna pulled until the wood split and the infected foot tore free.
The rack fell outward.
Sight beads struck ice and rolled, their light dying as the severed cords went slack. The black-green filament slipped from the broken socket, crossed beneath Dagna's boot, and entered the outbound groove on the inland side of the station.
Iven hammered a salt wedge into the branch that led beneath the shelter.
The thread took the open road instead.
It vanished around the far wall, moving toward the next boundary rack without ever crossing the occupied room.
Iven watched the empty groove. "You brought a marked animal and a road infection to my door."
"I brought the reason your people still have a roof," Dagna said.
Jiang shivered beside the open cage.
The frozen leather stay had cracked down its center. One half pressed the failed flipper against his ribs; the other cut into feathers below the open shoulder. He tried to shift away from it, and the left foot folded beneath him.
Aylin caught the safety line rather than his body. The old link gave her no warning before the movement, but she had learned to watch his feet.
Iven saw Jiang's breast strike the floorboards.
"Living quarry arrives at Eres breathing," Dagna said. "That is still Whitewake practice."
"You call this quarry?"
"Call him your monster. Feed him anyway."
Iven looked at the broken rack, then gestured to one of the hunters.
At his gesture, one hunter crossed the yard and returned with two small whole fish from a stone cold box. Frost silvered both stiff tails.
"Two fish," Iven said. "Outer shelter. The line stays on, and my people touch no mark."
"Agreed," Dagna said. "Bring them."
The first landed on a clean slate in front of Jiang.
His body took it before pride found an argument. The fish slid into his beak headfirst. He tipped his neck, swallowed, and felt the narrow weight descend into a stomach that clenched around it.
By the time Jiang's mind composed an insult for Iven, the tail was gone and hunger had sharpened for a few painful breaths.
Another fish arrived on the same slate. Jiang forced himself to look once at Iven, once at Dagna, and once at Aylin before swallowing it whole.
No one tried to hand-feed him.
That small mercy mattered more than he wanted it to.
Iven opened the outer wind shelter, a low black-stone bay meant for injured sled beasts and living quarry. Dry reed mats covered its floor. The wall stopped the western gust without enclosing Jiang among people who still held spears.
Dagna carried the safety line inside. The cage stayed outside with its door open. Iven planted his spear at the shelter entrance and kept the point low enough to avoid pretending it was welcome.
Aylin waited beside the cracked stay until Jiang met her eyes. She laid two fingers against the loose edge and held them there.
Jiang tapped the mat once.
She peeled the frozen leather away. Pain followed the failed flipper when it sagged, but the open shoulder stayed clear of new pressure.
Tovin knelt with his injured hand wrapped against his coat. Using the other, he opened a broad fish-leather harness from the station stores. It had a breast panel, a back strap, and a shallow side cradle meant to carry a damaged limb without closing over a wound.
Iven tossed him a strip of boiled linen. "Bind the hand before you salt my leather with it."
Tovin caught the strip against his chest. He wound it with his teeth and working hand, losing the first knot when his numb fingers slipped. On the second try, the cloth held. Blood still darkened it beneath the knuckles.
"I can buckle it," Aylin said.
"You can hold the shoulder clear," Tovin replied. "My mistake put him under the runner. My hand can finish something useful."
He trapped one buckle tongue between his teeth, fed the strap with his working hand, and tightened it by leaning his weight away. Aylin guided the failed flipper into the side cradle. Jiang corrected her once with two taps when the leather approached the wound, then gave one when she found the clean line beneath it.
"Too tight?" Aylin asked him.
Jiang shifted his breast against the panel, tested one full breath, and tapped twice. She loosened the back strap by one hole and asked again. His single tap came only after he moved the supported flipper as far as the cradle allowed.
Each question cost a look and an answer. Aylin waited for both.
The harness held the limb against his body.
It did nothing for the torn shoulder, weak foot, cracked beak, or cold.
Iven's hunters blotted seawater from Jiang's outer feathers with dry cloths while Dagna kept the salt-black square over his mark. They worked from beak range and withdrew after each pass.
Jiang lay on the reed mat. Wind stopped stealing each breath before he finished it. The fish settled. His chest continued rising hard for a while, then found a deeper rhythm that no longer ended in the old underwater ache.
[DEEP LUNG I: RECOVERY COMPLETE]
The System offered no warmth, healing, or praise.
Jiang still shivered. Hunger remained inside him, smaller now and far from gone. He left Huddle Pulse untouched.
Dagna crouched across from Aylin. "Give me the name your own voice answers to. I need it before the far rack speaks."
Aylin rubbed warmth back into her bandaged palm. "Aylin Seran."
Iven went still beside the doorway.
Dagna's hand tightened around her spear shaft. "Say it again."
"My name is Aylin Seran."
The captain rose. "Eres sent that name down every winter road after River-Open. Aylin Seran died there. Whitewake was taught that anything wearing her face had stolen it."
Iven's spear left Jiang's breast and leveled at Aylin's throat.
Every other point followed it.