The empty cloak stepped off the last stair and walked straight at Aylin.
Its collar sagged. Sleeves knocked against each other without arms inside them. Beneath the white hem, river stones rose in pairs and dropped hard enough to chip Cliffhook's floor.
Jiang had spent half the day losing arguments with his own feet. Watching a bag of rocks walk better than him felt personal.
Ossin Grell swung his hook across the landing. "Oil. Burn it before it reaches the house salt."
"No fire in my stair throat," Yrsa said. "Unless Whitewake plans to rebuild my roof while it burns."
Aylin lowered Jiang toward the one-runner frame. "Keep it whole."
Ossin stared at her. "You want your corpse alive?"
"I want to know who put it on its feet."
"We know who pulled it."
"We know what pulled the thread. We do not know who sealed the cloth, who carried it, or why Eres opened its gate for a body nobody found."
The cloak reached the end of the salted stair.
Its stone feet stopped.
Black-green light ran under the hem, found the white mortar line crossing Cliffhook's floor, and tightened. The cloak lurched forward again.
Ossin caught one sleeve with his hook. Dagna hooked the other with her broken spear shaft. Cloth stretched between them while the stones beneath it kept walking.
"Now you may burn it," Ossin said.
Aylin climbed over the low rail of Jiang's frame and seized the loose collar with her uninjured hand. "Now I may look inside."
"That object was buried in your name."
"Yes. The name was helpful."
Jiang tried to stand on the frame. His good foot found the slat; the unreliable one folded sideways and put his belly back where it had started.
Tovin reached for his harness, then stopped with both hands visible. "Do you want down?"
Jiang tapped the rail once.
Tovin loosened the broad line and lowered him beside the cloak. Cold stone met Jiang's feet. The coat remained over his back, dragging at one side like a cape designed by someone who hated birds.
He moved under the hooked poles where a human head would have met iron.
The copper name strip swung beneath the cloak's empty chest. Each pass brought it closer to the uncovered black-gold mark on Jiang's shoulder.
Heat pricked under his feathers.
`[Foreign route seeking marked contact]`
`[Recognition requires direct marked contact]`
The System offered no shield and no convenient definition of recognition. It had done the useful part by making contact sound like a terrible idea.
Jiang bit down on Aylin's coat edge, drawing the wool across his mark. The copper strip struck cloth instead of skin.
Black-green light gathered along its lower edge.
"Jiang, back," Aylin said.
He wanted to obey. He also wanted the strip to stop following him.
Keeping the coat between metal and mark, Jiang wormed his beak under the salt-wet hem. The bunched cloth admitted his neck. With a sideways drive, copper swung clear; Dagna seized the opening and dragged the cloak off the mortar line. Its stones dropped together and buried Jiang under white cloth.
For one dark instant he smelled old river mud, cedar smoke, and wool stored too long in a sealed room. Then Aylin tore the collar back and found him standing among the stones.
Beneath the cloth, narrow salt cords joined the hem to holes drilled through each river stone. Nothing else gave it shape.
One cord crossed a winter seal of pale blue glass stitched inside the collar.
Aylin reached for it.
King Edric's voice spoke from the folded hood.
"You stole the councilor's cup and hid under the west rail."
Her fingers stopped above the glass.
Jiang knew that story. Aylin had given it to the false image in Rome while stripping away everything Gredudande had guessed wrong about River-Open. The voice wore a private memory she had already surrendered.
It still sounded like her father.
"That sentence proves nothing," Dagna said.
"I know," Aylin replied.
She left her hand over the winter seal until Ossin shifted his hook.
"Move the princess away."
"Try moving me," Aylin said.
Ossin planted the hook point through the cloth instead. "It has no body. We split the salt cords, scatter the stones off every white line, and burn what remains outside."
Aylin looked down at Jiang rather than at him. "My father walked behind this."
The words came out rougher than her order voice. She hated that Ossin heard it. Jiang could tell because she straightened before anybody answered.
"Perhaps," Ossin said. "Whatever this is heard the same story you told us."
"He sealed my death. This may be the only thing he touched after I vanished. I will not let you turn it to ash before I know what else he left inside."
"And I will not carry a moving route into Eres because grief asked politely."
Under the loose cloth, a river stone clicked.
Another answered from the floor drain.
One of the smallest stones had rolled beyond Dagna's boot. Black-green thread drew it through the iron grate and into a salt gutter running inland beneath the wall.
The cords in the cloak snapped tight.
Jiang threw himself sideways as the hem swept after the missing stone. Aylin caught the back of his coat before the copper strip struck him. Ossin's hook tore a long white strip from one sleeve, but the remaining cloth folded around its stones and reached the floor line again.
The funeral found its feet.
It dragged Dagna two steps before her broken shaft ripped free. Ossin held until the hook cut through the shoulder seam, then lost it with a curse muffled by his mouth cloth.
The cloak climbed onto the first inland step.
"Break the stair salt," Ossin ordered.
Korrin raised the hammer that had survived the horn.
Yrsa struck its head aside with her house maul. "That salt holds the roof weight away from the inner crack. Break it and the top flight comes down."
"So does the cloak."
"So do my families when the sea gate loses another tooth."
Korrin looked between his huntmaster and the people still carrying blankets above them.
Aylin made the choice first. "Leave the stair."
Ossin rounded on her. "That thing is walking toward your city."
"It is walking toward mine because it already got out. Burying Cliffhook behind it will not change that."
She lifted Jiang with both forearms, avoiding his shoulder, and set him back on the one-runner frame. Her injured palm stained the coat where she gripped it.
"Then we follow it."
Ossin pulled the torn sleeve from his hook. "You remain under guard."
"Keep up and enjoy it."
Hedda caught Tovin before he took the frame's front bar and pressed Torren's doubled knot against his useful palm.
"This goes to Eres," she said. "You do too."
Tovin glanced at his wrapping. "My hand-"
"Will bleed here or there. At least there it can inconvenience someone responsible."
Yrsa ordered Jori to the lower wheel and turned her back on the departing line. Hedda stayed beside her, already fitting a plain iron wedge where the west-return ward had broken.
No farewell improved the gate.
Dagna took the frame's left guide rope. Korrin took the right after Ossin pointed at it. Aylin walked beside Jiang with one hand under the coat whenever the frame jolted. Tovin followed carrying the doubled knot and his badly wrapped pride.
They climbed after the dead.
Beyond Cliffhook, the salted steps cut inland through black rock. The cloak moved downhill whenever the path fell and hauled itself upward whenever pale mortar joined one stair to the next. Off the salt, it became a heap. On the line, it remembered walking.
The hunt never gained more than a bend.
Smoke reached them before the city did. It smelled of bread crust, hot lime, rendered monster fat, and coal sharp enough to sting Jiang's nose. Glasswash spread below the final ridge in red roofs and furnace chimneys, with narrow water channels shining between crowded buildings.
The death cloak crossed beneath its outer arch.
A woman carrying oven paddles dropped one in the street. Two glassworkers backed into a wall. A boy threw a fistful of salt, while an older man sank to both knees in the wash water.
Nobody looked at Aylin behind Whitewake's hooks.
They called her name to the empty cloak.