The monkey looked up, one lip lifting to brandish the incisors.
“They don’t want to think you could have done this by yourself. You’re too polite, too kind. Too dull and plain and normal. I must have coaxed you somehow, and the guilt is half-mine.”
“It’s not yours,” said the boy.
King laughed, asking, “Aren’t you going to share with your brother?”
Diamond sighed and closed his eyes. “You’re still walking free.”
“Do they have a room that can hold me?”
“You’re my brother,” Diamond said.
King said nothing.
“And you tried to kill me once.”
“I won’t again.”
“No?”
King needed to see the eyes, wanting this chance to measure the soul. That’s why he said, “I killed ten men to come down here and tell you something, brother.”
The pale eyes lifted.
King tried two smiles. “You’re the scariest one among us. But you always suspected that, didn’t you?”
She ate enough not to need food anymore, and she practiced shapes that she had never mastered, measuring her successes in the reflective surfaces sharing the storeroom with her. One shape was critical, and she didn’t like the results. But this was the best disguise for the environment, and that’s why she put it on and made it as close to perfect as she could before leaving the storeroom behind.
The long, awful day was finally drawing to an end.
Fear had always governed Quest’s life, but this was no simple fear, urging her to flee to reliable safe havens. She knew that she couldn’t continue living in the wilderness, not with a war screeching past every few moments, and she couldn’t feel safe in any outlying District. But riding the Ruler back to its home berth wasn’t the strategy of a desperate coward. This was one brother’s home, and from the scuttlebutt and offhand statements of little officers, she knew that the other brother would soon live among the bloodwoods, biding his days until he was old enough to sire a new race of humans.
She needed to be close to Diamond and to King.
A thousand terrors had pushed her inside a white sack filled with dead parts, brought to the Ruler and a storeroom where field rations and bottled water made her halfway strong again. And now she was inside an endless hallway that cut down the middle of the world’s largest machine, walking past soldiers, past civilians and mechanics and people whose lives were undecipherable to her. She wore a plain face for good reason. Men didn’t look too carefully at her features or her bland fleshy body. Her uniform and the boots were stolen from a closet, and they helped hide most of her new flesh. But every step brought terror, every pause doubt. She smelled wrong, and her bones were wrong, and she didn’t have any kind of life story to share with strangers.
Why did she even risk stepping out into plain view?
But then she happened across a crew lounge and its tall windows. As if she saw these scenes every day, she slowly crossed the open floor. The Ruler was approaching the first of the great bloodwoods, grand and powerful, dwarfing this assemblage of gas and corona parts, metal and more metal. The window was shaped to afford a fair view forwards, and for the first time in her life, Quest could see the center of the world up close, and her new heart slowed in response, fighting to keep her calm.
Another soldier, a female with a similar rounded build, joined her at the window and said, “Hello.”
Voices could be difficult, but human voices weren’t the hardest noises to mimic.
“Hello,” Quest said.
Then she turned her head, looking back beneath the forest. In the late day sunlight, very little was understood. A couple orange flickers might mark wildfires, or maybe they showed fighting on the ever-shifting front. Questions needed to be asked, but soldiers weren’t supposed to exchange information too freely. How could she phrase her curiosity and not end up in a wild chase?
Then the strange woman said, “And now I have seen everything.”
She was looking down.
Quest followed the gaze with eyes that only looked human. The last light in the world rose up into her head and her mind, and she didn’t understand what she was seeing. What was there was obvious enough, yes. But what were they doing?
With her new mouth, Quest asked, “What do they want?”
“A spectacular question,” said her new friend.
Above the demon floor, floating or flying back and forth, were thousands of coronas. There were small coronas and giants and even another one of the dark ancient creatures like the one that had given birth to her.
“They’re doing nothing but watching us,” the woman said. “That’s as simple and true as any explanation I can think of.”
Countless necks were twisting, heads lifting, eyes fixed on the forest above.
“They know our hunters aren’t flying,” the woman said. “They’re safe, and a war is underway.”
“You’re right,” said Quest. “To the coronas, this must be a very beautiful evening.”
The room belonged to no one. That point was made by several people, first and last by the Archon. The palace had many unoccupied rooms, but the voices claimed that this was one of the finest rooms, claimed or unclaimed, and there was an implication in those statements—a reason for celebration and importance, or at least some careful pride.
Diamond felt none of that.
After so much, Diamond sensed no emotion as he was shown the room. But the space was enormous. Every wall was distant, and even though the day had been finished for a long while now, the ceiling was filled with lights that hummed and glowed, working as hard as possible to make every bare surface shine.
Good walked to the middle of the room, looking hard for one thing.
“Where’s the toilet?” Diamond asked.
List wasn’t sure. He had to open three tall doors before he found the proper little room. But the bath was little only compared to this huge bright unclaimed empire of light and walls and curtain-covered windows.
Diamond expected to be left alone at any time.
But the Archon of Archons wasn’t leaving. In fact, he was staring hard at the boy, with energy and the strangest joy that the man had ever displayed. On arriving at the palace, several aides had taken List aside. Diamond assumed that there was another meeting about the war or the Eight or an equally massive topic. But since then that odd encounter, the man had been nursing a smile that didn’t seem to fit his face.
Diamond looked at the distant bed and the furnishings and the bookshelves that were covered with volumes but still looked only half-filled.
The Archon stepped closer.
From the bathroom came the sound of water running, in the toilet and then in the sink, and again in the toilet.
“I have news,” the Archon said.
Diamond wanted him to leave.
“I want to show you something, Diamond.”
The monkey emerged from the bathroom soaking wet. In one hand was a bar of perfumed soap, and with great precision, Good heaved the soap at the nearest light, glass shattering, glittering shards raining down.
Not even that violence bothered the smiling man.
Diamond followed List, turning off the lights on the wall switch as he left, telling the monkey, “Make a nest.”
Good looked at him.
“Boy,” he said.
Diamond stopped. “What?”
“I forget the sack,” Good said. “I forget you putting me in the sack.”