Nothing was as important as this dash through smoke and across the wasteland; Diamond had to find his sister in the fiery ruins.
With its belly sheared free, Bountiful’s gas bags and bridge had jumped higher into the air, avoiding a long stretch of the rising ridge. The crash site wasn’t as close as it appeared. Diamond’s first surge took him into a wall of smoke that suddenly lifted, revealing coral boulders stacked haphazardly, lifting toward a faraway tangle of corona parts and fire. An irregular pop-pop-pop warned that ammunition was detonating. The smoke left behind the good odor of burnt wood and the sick flavor of cooked flesh. Diamond hesitated, eyes hunting for the quickest route. Then came more pop-pops from behind and overhead, and he stopped to turn and look, discovering whiffbirds descending, and beyond them, a pair of swift fletches flying the bloodwood banners of the District of Districts.
He managed one deep breath.
Then some little motion drew his gaze. He saw his father. Father was coming, struggling along the sharp uneven blade of this awful ridge, looking miserable, and Diamond had never felt more love. Father’s eyes were looking down. Every stride had to be measured before it was taken. The sore knee had to endure one step and then brace for the next step, and the next. The man barely glanced up, and he never looked at Diamond, and then one bad step caused him to wobble, wobble and then catch himself before he tumbled, instantly lost to view.
Diamond ran back down the slope, calling to his father.
Overhead, one of the fletches fired a big cannon, and the most distant whiffbird exploded, haphazard pieces falling past the reef’s last lip.
The boy paused on a knoll of sparkling blue coral, and one last time, he screamed, “Father.”
Then he didn’t as much run as he leapt, one knoll to the next, bouncing down the ridge and down the far bank, reaching a place where he finally saw the man alive and well enough to sit upright. And that was the last moment for a very long time when Diamond could find anything inside him that felt remotely like happiness.
The allegiance of outsiders let Divers win over the Seven, and that great success left her free to entertain the seductive, nearly respectable notion that dominion didn’t have borders, that control didn’t have to end with her skin.
No soul would be as close to her as the Seven. Yet there were different ways to belong and endless avenues when it came to possession. Divers had allies among the papio, and she was shrewd enough or lucky enough to choose the right champions. For several hundred days, she asked for favors that were just large enough or wrong enough to test their resolve. None mentioned her little crimes to the higher powers. Researchers and the military didn’t seem to watch her anymore carefully than before. Then one day—a decidedly ordinary day—she casually asked a few trusted soldiers and former caretakers if there might be an easy way, a clean way, to get rid of the Diamond boy.
More than she had hoped, her suggestion was embraced. Plans were drawn up and thrown into fire pits when they proved unworkable. Then new plans were invented and measured, and discarded, but this time with insights and a fresh sense of what was a little bit possible and what might be achieved with the Fates’ help.
One morning, a highly placed papio—a stranger until that moment—approached Divers with a battle plan in hand. That was the moment when she realized that for some papio and quite a few tree-walkers, Diamond was the greatest enemy imaginable. And that was probably the last moment when a phrase from her and one hard stare could have ended the plot.
But the proposed target was a single tree, and destroying Marduk seemed proportioned, even reasonable.
Divers gave her approval, and none of the Seven attempted to stop her.
Twenty days before the attack, during a final meeting of conspirators, one grinning lieutenant revealed that with so much fuel and manpower on hand, a far wider attack had been mandated. “In case the little boy wanders or escapes every trap,” was the excuse offered.
Divers couldn’t disagree with the logic.
Tritian couldn’t agree. He said nothing, but even his silence felt disapproving. Yet Divers was secure enough to invite her brother’s opinion: one last chance to offer up whatever words that he wished.
Tritian responded with the obvious logic. “If this happens, and if everything afterward happens as you hope, then the humans and the world only lose everything that they might have gotten from that one boy.”
No offspring, in other words. Which assumed of course that Diamond could father children . . . but waiting to find out meant waiting too long. If Diamond vanished, both human species would remain frail and mortal, which was exactly what Divers intended.
The Eight knew this: They had lived forever inside the old corona, implying they were in some fashion immortal. Immortal beings could afford patience. The forest and every soft mind around them would soon forget the carnage. The Eight would remember, and the other two siblings too, assuming they continued wandering the world for thousands and millions of days. And of course Diamond wouldn’t actually be dead. That was a point worth making, worth repeating. The boy would survive fire and stomach acids. And a better day was coming, a perfect day when the world that Divers had created could dredge up an old corona, embracing that human child all over again.
That’s where she put her thoughts. Every day until the trees fell, Divers reminded herself that the suffering would pass. Revenge was just a different kind of storm. Regrets mattered, but lumped together, the voices inside her—the Seven’s voices and her own—were the world’s smallest noise.
The attack was delivered on schedule, and the only important failure in that fine bold overgrown scheme was that against long odds, Diamond survived for another two days.
But that was best, in the end. The boy was a critical chore best done by Divers and Divers alone.
She ran through the night to meet Bountiful, but it fell short of her and she had to sprint to the crash site, finding Merit first. The slayer was sitting up and talking. And Divers killed him swiftly, without pain, and then she wiped the one hand clean on her trousers, thinking only about Diamond.
Because some moments have to be perfect, she misheard a nearby thudding, looking at the echo, not the cannon.
The boy was as obvious and tiny as she had imagined. He was perched high on the eroded crest of sourlip, big eyes bright from an endless flow of tears. Shame struck, but the sensation was brief and weak. Disapproving words danced about her. But there was no need to defend her actions, not to herself or any suffering witnesses. The adoptive father would have been a stumbling stone. There was no doubt in that matter. As every papio understood, dangerous stones should be kicked off the path, and nothing too wrong had been done. Yet Divers found herself wasting a few breaths arguing with the whispers coming from each of the Seven.
“Merit was disruptive,” she said with her mind.
She warned, “He would have fought us now, and he would have led the assault to recover his son tomorrow and the day after.”
Then aloud, she said, “Time makes sense of every mess.”
And she paused at that point, waiting for Tritian’s response, or anyone’s. But the only voice came from a weak sister and her steadiest ally.
“You’re talking,” said the girl. “But you’re not talking to us.”
Divers laughed.
“None of us spoke,” the sister insisted.
She laughed out loud, mocking the liars.
Meanwhile the boy hadn’t moved, which was hard to believe. Diamond was staring at the Eight. Fresh smoke was standing tall behind him. He should have run into the smoke while he had the chance. Divers had foolishly given him enough time to flee, or better than that, hide. If that little body wormed its way deep inside a crevice, it could keep out of her reach for a little while. But no, he was standing on the same knoll, too stunned or sad to think, much less act on the simplest instinct.