“The Eight,” she repeated.
“Or a woman named Divers. Our prisoner’s story keeps changing.”
“Why wasn’t I told this before?”
“Because our people assumed that the prisoner was drunker than the papio, and nobody trusted the testimony.”
“The Eight did all of this,” she said. “The Eight and Divers are the enemy.”
“According to one alcoholic witness, maybe.”
Except List had told her about the Eight, and she knew what was true. Nodding, Prima straightened her shirt and her smile before returning to the control panel. Then she stared at the red knob, imagining Sondaw and the other soldiers sitting inside the battleworks, acquiring targets as best as they could with machines that they had never handled before.
Prima had asked too much of the man.
To prove her humanity, she let herself feel a moment of sorrow.
Then came the hatred, fixated and relentless and pure. The trees were falling around her again. Thousands were dying, and the guilty remained free. Prima looked at the knob and made her fingers resist. No. The boy had to be rescued, and the other survivors had to be safe onboard, and then maybe another little while should pass just to earn some distance, a chance for perspective. But the Eight were inside that smoke and she couldn’t stop believing that this was a remarkable moment:
Nothing would ever make the last days worthwhile.
But if she wished, one good woman could wring a measure of justice out of this madness . . .
The children sat with him. Some obligation was being fulfilled, or maybe they didn’t have anything else to do. Diamond was neither happy nor sad about the company. He rarely looked at them, even when they asked harmless questions or offered a hopeful phrase or two. Sometimes he reacted to what they said. Occasionally his words were appropriate. But when he did look at their faces, it was as if for the first time. Names had to be summoned, by force. He had to remind himself that she was Elata and the boy was Seldom, and there was a long shared history between the three of them where nothing much had happened. In reflection, nothing about those lives seemed unpleasant or special. Then the nightmare descended. It descended, and what was leftover was a ragged jumble. Diamond felt sick inside, in places that didn’t have names. Again and again, he looked at those faces while feeling deeply, eternally forgetful, and the confusion always ended with revelations that left him wishing that he could become lost all over again. Because whenever Diamond saw his two friends, he again remembered how both of them had just become orphans, and he was an orphan too.
The monkey sat on the coral dust, alone, eyes closed and the bruised body rocking back and forth. Master Nissim was injured, the pain inside his bones twisting his weathered face. Healing had never seemed so unfair. Diamond wished he could leave his skin cut, his ribs and fingers shattered. But he was whole and intact when everyone else was broken, and he caught himself wondering why his blood or the touch of his hands couldn’t heal everyone. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? It seemed wonderful until another memory was unleashed: Father claiming that the trick had been tried and didn’t work . . . and again, without fail, the boy found himself looking about the reef, wondering where his father had gone . . .
He hadn’t forgotten that one death, no.
But so many horrors lived inside him, and he didn’t want to think about any of them.
Diamond scanned the terrain, and Karlan noticed. The huge boy had made it his job to stand guard over the survivors. Stepping close, Karlan dropped the gun’s barrel and offered a broad smile that was just a little short of mocking, and with a man’s rough voice, he said, “You don’t have to thank me again. Once was enough.”
“I didn’t thank you,” Diamond said.
“For saving your life. No, I guess you didn’t.” Karlan laughed and pointed the harpoon’s tip at the fletches. “Anyway, they’re lowering cages. At most, you’ll be out of here in three recitations.”
A Bloodwood fletch was hovering overhead, cages dangling from its belly. Wings were screaming in the distance but not nearby. Only a few whiffbirds were close, and most of them were resting on the higher slopes, surrounding the gully where Karlan saved Diamond. Meanwhile papio soldiers were walking the coral, talking with hands as much as words, and sometimes picking up pieces of Divers’ wet flesh.
“Thank you,” said Diamond.
“For which part?”
“Killing her,” he said.
“Oh, your sister’s not dead,” he said, laughing in a slow awful way. “I just made her angrier, if that’s possible.”
Elata and Seldom always tried to find brave, hopeful words. Not Karlan. Karlan ground the truth until it had a keen edge, and Diamond had never appreciated the boy more than now.
Horns sounded, and human soldiers began dropping out of the fletch, riding the lines down to where they felt safe enough. Then they let go and fell, landing with guns in hand and packs bouncing and a few curses to lift their focus and practiced courage.
An officer looked at everyone before asking Nissim, “Any other survivors?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” said the Master.
The officer gave his squad orders to search the wreckage below and then the burnt remains higher up.
Fighting various aches, Nissim stood and waved the officer closer. “There’s one body that has to be recovered.”
Diamond looked away, but he couldn’t stop listening.
“Merit,” whispered his teacher. Then louder, he said, “I won’t leave until you find him. Understood?”
“Clearly,” the officer said. “And I want you to understand something, sir. We have a truce with the papio and it lasts as long as it lasts. If they block us, we back away. Once we get the boy, everything else is negotiable.”
The cages began to arrive, rattling on impact.
Two soldiers came at Diamond from the opposite sides, lifting him and carrying him without ceremony.
Diamond said, “Bring the others.”
“First you,” one man said.
He could have struggled, shouted or begged. But Diamond went limp, feeling as if he was floating over the hard ground. Then he heard a grunt and a familiar voice saying, “No no.”
Good landed on his head, clinging tight to the dense filthy hair.
The first cage had room for several people, and most of them were soldiers. The prize stood in the middle, legs and torsos pressing in on all sides. An electric winch yanked the cable, and the reef fell beneath them, and almost too late, Diamond thought to look out between the uniforms, catching a brief glimpse of whiffbirds and papio soldiers carrying pink meat back into a gully covered with tent fabric.
Divers was hidden, and Diamond was glad for that.
Then he was inside the fletch, and two more fletches swept close, ready to loan covering fire, if necessary. Voices called out on loudspeakers, every mouth mangling the enemy’s language. The air shivered with commands to stay back and honor the truce and honor the long peace, the status quo and the good lives of unborn children; and rolling inside Diamond was the idea that somebody would have to put every game piece back on the shelves where they belonged.
The other cages were chasing after him.
Diamond wanted to wait. He needed to speak to Master Nissim, though the best words kept slipping out of his grip. And he wanted to be near Karlan too, which was so unexpected. Elata needed to go home, wherever that was, and so did Seldom, and somebody should offer them a few encouraging words. But the soldiers were suddenly carrying him, almost running. They swept him into the hanger, and with no warning or explanation, Diamond was dropped into a little airship. Good climbed into his lap, feeling fit enough to snap at a careless finger. The new ship was tiny like the one that Fret and Father had ridden, but it was much quicker, engines roaring at the beginning and then screaming as he soared up and out into the sunshine.
Good cursed, and the pilot behind them echoed each word.