The first hunter to reach for Jiang used a catching hook.
Aylin put her forearm in its path.
Steel touched the high-root line wound around her sleeve. The hunter pulled before noticing that her outer fingers had not closed.
"He is not going below loose," the man said.
The glass-helmed woman knocked his hook aside with her blade.
The man said her name like a warning. "Kessa."
"You were about to drag an injured swimmer by the wing," Kessa said. "Try being less useful."
Jiang stood between Aylin's boots with white sap drying on his face. The flooded oval mouth breathed cold across his belly. Something inside scraped stolen glass, paused, and scraped again.
He wanted away from both the hook and the opening.
The hook had torn one pale strand from Aylin's sleeve. It hung beside the place where her wrist had bled through. Jiang watched it sway and felt anger arrive under the fear, warm and useless unless he chose where to put it.
