By dawn, riders on the closest ledges had wrapped their homebells in something they were willing to ruin.
One wore a shirt. Another had half a saddle blanket knotted around its crown. A little copper bell above the nursery disappeared inside a child's wool cap and rang against the pompom whenever the wind grew rude.
None of that stopped the voices beyond the wall.
They called from moving wings, from Widow's Needle, and from the cloud roads where nobody living should have known the old pair songs. The wrapped bells stayed quiet while the stolen ones rehearsed the Red Aeries without them.
Jiang woke to a rainfish beside his beak.
Aylin had laid it on flat stone rather than holding it for him. The silver body smelled of clean blood and the upper cistern, sharp enough to make his empty belly clench before pride could object.
He swallowed the head first.
