Aylin struck Last Gate once with her good hand.
The stone gave her nothing back. Her name still burned across the arch, pale letters declaring that the woman below them belonged on the other side.
"Open the gate," she said.
Somebody in the Glasswash crowd laughed. Somebody else told him to choke on his teeth.
Jiang lay against Aylin's chest with smoked herring settling into his stomach and wash water cooling under his feathers. He wanted the gate open. He also wanted the crowd farther away, his beak to stop bleeding, and an afternoon free of Aylin arguing with architecture.
Last Gate kept its stone jaws shut.
Ossin placed his salt-burned hand beside the royal letters without touching them. "Your blood will wake the old latch."
Rian moved between Aylin and the arch. Dagna's broken spear rose at once, but he kept his hands away from his coat.
"The name strip entered on a black-green line," he said. "Give the gate living royal blood and that line may leave with it."
"It may also open," Ossin replied.
"A knife may also remove a headache."
Aylin looked up at the place where her name crossed the center stone. The cracks in her palm had opened again. One press would supply everything the gate wanted without needing a blade.
Jiang felt her body lean.
He pecked the heel of her hand.
"I know," she said. Anger sharpened the whisper because he had interrupted an idea she already hated. "I was considering how stupid it would be."
"Consider faster," Dagna said. "The cloak is still moving."
Aylin lowered her hand. "No blood. We open something the route has not asked me for."
Ossin faced the black towers. "Last Gate has stayed shut against armies."
Ista planted her oven paddle in the wash channel. "Armies tend to arrive above the drains."
She kicked aside a wooden cover at the gate's left foot. Gray water swirled into a stone throat beneath the outer jaw. Funeral salt rimmed the opening, but the channel itself was dark rock worn smooth by years of runoff.
"Mourners wash the river stones on the city side," Ista said. "The water comes back to Glasswash here."
Dagna crouched and put her broken spear into the opening. The shaft entered to its iron collar and stopped.
"Bend turns under the gate," Ista said. "A child could reach the first one. No child could hold air through the rest."
Every adult looked at Jiang.
He hated when a room solved a problem by becoming quiet around him.
Aylin carried him to the drain and set his feet on the wet sill. Cold water crossed his toes. Beyond the opening, the current pulled inward before bending beyond sight.
His body recognized the shape of the work. Low stone, real water, a route built for a rigid swimmer instead of shoulders and hands. The same body that had failed three stairs in a row could enter cleanly.
Aylin touched the broad line at his harness. "We keep this attached."
Jiang pecked the buckle.
"Then I give you slack."
He pecked it again and pointed his beak into the throat.
Her face closed around the memory of Cliffhook's flood pen. She had mistaken needed slack for danger, cut his line, and watched the whitejaw drag him under a gate. Neither of them had enough skin left for the same mistake.
Aylin put two fingers beside the clasp without opening it. "You want the line off before you enter. Not loose. Off."
Jiang gave one clear tap.
"Because the gate can pull me through it."
A second tap answered her.
She waited, perhaps hoping he would change his mind if given room. Jiang pointed toward a narrow guide groove cut above the water throat, separate from the channel around his body.
"You want the loose line fed there," she said. "You can use it if you choose. It will not be tied to you."
One tap confirmed it.
Aylin opened the clasp.
The clean broad line fell away from Jiang's damaged harness. She held its dry end until he pushed the other into the guide groove with his beak. Only then did she feed it forward.
"You are allowed to come back before finding anything," she said.
Jiang looked at the royal name burning above her.
"That was not an order," Aylin added.
He touched his beak to her wrist and entered the water.
The funeral throat accepted his chest and little else. Rock brushed both sides of his body. His working wing could open only halfway, so his feet supplied most of the drive while the current pulled along his belly.
Behind him, Dagna's voice reached through the opening. "Side wheel is here. Grell, get your line on the upper spoke."
Metal scraped outside. Ista directed Glasswash workers away from the runoff. Ossin ordered his hunters to keep the crowd off the guide rope. Rian argued with someone who wanted the marked beast hauled back before it corrupted the city's dead.
Aylin kept her answer inside.
Jiang reached the first bend.
The channel turned down beneath the gate jaw. Water filled the last pocket of air above his head. He kicked into the dark, keeping the loose guide line against his good side without biting it.
Stone pressed the failed flipper deeper into its wet cradle. His shoulder wound grazed the wall on every rightward turn. Penguin Camouflage had spent his heat hours ago; Glasswash had returned enough water to collect the rest.
The current smelled of lime, old wool, and the mud trapped in Aylin's funeral stones.
Ahead, rock knocked twice.
The cloak was close.
Jiang drove through the lower bend on ordinary breath. The channel widened around his belly, then narrowed at a row of blunt stone teeth. He turned sideways. His good wing folded. One foot slipped through before the other found purchase.
The throat held him at the hips.
His chest demanded air.
Backing out would require room he no longer had. The funeral stones knocked farther inside, carrying the accepted Aylin toward whatever waited under the city.
`[Deep Lung I | Useful Submersion | Cost: Hunger | USE / REFUSE]`
The smoked herring's warmth had lasted less than one street. On choosing `USE`, Jiang felt Deep Lung alter the value of what remained. Panic loosened enough for useful movement while hunger closed around the fish and wrung out its comfort; no new air entered his chest.
His foot found the lower tooth.
One push freed his hips. The cracked beak struck stone on the way through, sending pain across his face, but the channel opened beyond it.
Into the darkness past the teeth, Jiang surfaced. Air reached him quickly and cleanly. Faster recovery spent the last easy warmth in his stomach and left him ravenous enough to smell the funeral cloak through river mud.
He stood in a shallow channel beneath the inner gate. A low corridor ran toward Eres, too small for a person to walk without crawling. The loose guide line emerged beside him and continued through its groove toward a round iron tongue set in the ceiling.
Above that tongue, the side wheel groaned under the human team.
Jiang struck the line twice with his beak.
Aylin's answer came faintly through the stone: two pulls, then one. The pattern proved she understood; the gate still separated them.
The funeral cloak appeared at the far end of the channel.
It moved through a taller spill chamber beyond Jiang's pool, stone feet knocking against the floor while the copper strip swung beneath its empty collar. Black-green cord ran from the hem into an old channel cut toward the city's buried center.
Jiang hauled himself from the water. His unreliable foot folded, leaving him on his belly while the cloak walked away.
High above, a horn sounded from the palace-facing tower.
King Edric's voice crossed Glasswash.
"Whitewake, bring Aylin home."
The same words entered the channel through the ceiling tongue.
Beneath Jiang's breast, something under the stone knocked once.
Then it knocked again.