At last, Divers began climbing to the ridge’s crest. The reef beneath her was as narrow and keen as an old medical scalpel, and she couldn’t run fast. The boy watched her coming, and then he yelled, one hand high over his head and waving, as if that motion helped fling his word into the high bright morning air.
“Here,” he shouted. And again, “Here.”
Divers glanced over her shoulder. Two fletches were closing on the boy, but they were still too distant to matter.
She sprinted on feet and hands.
Then the hard chugging rattle of rotors took away every other sound, and three whiffbirds came from behind, sweeping low over her, two of the craft pivoting before settling on the ridge in front of Divers, stubbornly barring her way.
The unit banners told her everything. These were birds from a distant base, and none of these soldiers could be trusted.
Divers stopped for an instant, pretending obedience.
To the Seven, she said, “Suggestions.”
No one responded.
Then she broke into a hard sprint, bounding down the slope to evade the big machines. Armed warriors jumped free, shouting commands at each other and at her. She was past the first whiffbird when the second machine launched again. A loudspeaker punched through the roar, the woman pilot shouting to her, saying, “Back away and let us take the prize. The prize. The prize.”
Divers paused, listening for the other Seven, listening carefully, but she heard nothing. Not disapproval, not agreement. Not rage or fear or even an empty gray sound inviting her to do what she wished.
What she wished.
The world’s largest hands grabbed and yanked, a lump of coral wrenched free of the weathered reef. Her aim felt wrong, and as soon as the projectile left the hand, she began hunting for more ammunition. But the pilot never imagined being attacked by something as stark as one tossed stone. She couldn’t guess Divers’ power and flew straight until the canopy shattered and the airship dove, striking nose-first, rotors shattering and scattering before the wreckage came to rest on the broken, worn-out ground.
Divers picked up one of the rotor blades—a long piece of corona bone, white in the body and whiter along the sharpest edge—and ran on. The third whiffbird had settled just under the knoll, on a tiny patch of half-flat ground. Diamond was surrounded by papio soldiers. He didn’t run from them either. Then a big loudspeaker blared, a tree-walker yelling from the nearest fletch, the worst possible rendering of papio saying, “Ours, ours, ours.”
Divers arrived at the base of the knoll.
Two soldiers lifted their rifles, and she chopped them with the blade.
An officer fired into her body, and she knocked him down with her sword’s blunt face, yanking the gun away before lifting his body—a proud papio warrior held kicking in one hand.
The Seven said nothing.
The officer rose and spun once in the air before landing in the whiffbird’s whirring rotors, and the reef was splattered with pieces and mist.
Panicked, the remaining soldiers scattered.
But Diamond remained where he had always been, rocking side to side and then not rocking, setting his feet apart and his hands at his side.
“What are you doing?” Divers called out.
“Standing like soldier,” said the weeping boy.
“You should have run,” she said.
“You should run,” he said.
“Your people aren’t close enough to help,” Divers said.
The boy wiped his eyes with his fingers, the right eye and then the left, and that hand dropped to his side again.
Divers started to climb the steep slope.
And then at last, finally, one of the Seven spoke. Quietly, firmly, that loyal little sister asked, “Are we certain that Diamond is alone?”
Feet stood their ground, and it became their ground. No other place was worth so much courage and strength, passion and the unalloyed need to make the world understand its value. This one space was precious, and he said so with his entire body, including the hand clinging to the polished brass tube.
Father’s officers had temporarily become Prima’s officers. One officer was watching Bountiful’s long fall and its fiery crash. King studied the human working the controls, moving dials that engaged tiny motors that moved a telescope lashed to the Ruler’s skin, changing directions and focus and the magnification. Several large telescopes were feeding light into the Ruler’s bridge. Each had its officer watching a distant critical part of the world. Then once King understood the mechanisms, he made the officer move aside. King didn’t lift the man, and he certainly didn’t strike the uniform or the face. But the human discovered that he had lost his space, and several soldiers saw the incident and came forwards, discussing how to force King aside.
But wisdom won, and that tiny army retreated without a fight.
Peering into the telescope, King watched Diamond run away from one piece of wreckage, heading straight for the fire above.
The Ruler’s bridge was filled with bodies and voices. Every human was scared, sounding more foolish than usual. King listened to voices that mattered, keeping tabs on the battle’s progress. If war was a circle drawn on the floor, then the world was standing on the ring’s edge, toes touching the paint. Important generals were making plans for full-scale battles. Prima as well as Father shouted orders, trying to keep the fighting at a lesser, less combustive stage. Once and then again, King lifted his face to glance out the big windows. Half of the world’s weapons had been jammed into the same sliver of air. Guns fired but never steadily, and most remained silent. Flares and signal lights and individual men waving bright flags added to the chaos. Both species were screaming for something called Order, for respect of the rightful leaders, for hesitation instead of haste, and all the while everyone was aiming for neat resolutions that were never possible to begin with.
Prima was a little more in charge than anyone else.
Again and again, she ordered her fleet to move together and claim the wreckage, rescuing survivors and recovering bodies. But the papio were closer to the Bountiful, more abundant and very short-tempered. The telescope operator beside King named units and counted bodies, telling an assistant where to place each enemy soldier on a big map of the reef. She was scared enough to make mistakes, and nobody heard much of what she said. Then Prima asked about Diamond, and the operator confessed that she couldn’t see the boy, that he had vanished inside the heavy smoke.
King gave a huge wet roar, telling the entire bridge, “I see him fine.”
“You can’t,” his colleague said.
“I see where the smoke curls around him,” he replied, laughing in his best human fashion.
Every one of King’s ears listened to the bridge, and he had memorized where everyone stood. Father was protecting ground a little bit ahead of Prima. But that didn’t fool anyone. Everyone was talking and every voice was scared, but when the tiny woman spoke, the entire bridge grew a little bit quieter, and if she talked about strength or perseverance, the mood calmed for the next few moments.
A young lieutenant acted like Prima’s shadow.
Sondaw was handling papers. King heard the papers moving, and then Prima asked for a summary, and her shadow read that the base at High Coral Merry was signaling only one message. Nobody wanted war, the papio said, but there was a rescue mission of grave importance underway and to please let their brave people do their important work.
Some generals scoffed, but Prima demanded opinions.
A colonel named Meeker came forward, pointing out that nobody was positioned for a fight. Formations were scattered, and other formations were crammed far too close together. If true war broke out, both fleets would have allowed themselves to begin in awful circumstances.
“Like a mist of fuel in the air,” he said.