With paint and knives, King had altered each one of the gifts. An unsuspected artistic talent helped him adjust the lay of the armor and the color of spikes and the precise dimensions of legs and arms and the two mouths. Why this should matter was a mystery, particularly to him, but the creature never questioned his instincts. He considered these figures to be his family. Maybe they were ancestors; maybe they hadn’t been born yet. Names and life stories mattered less than their presence, particularly the sense that he belonged to some abundant species populated with names and important stories.
King was taller than any human, tree-walker or reef-walker, and he weighed half again more than the largest papio. But three hundred days ago, this body that he barely understood had stopped growing. He knew that before anyone else. The butcher scale in the doctors’ offices soon proved it. Eating more earned him nothing but more frequent trips to the toilet. His full-sized body was also showing other signs of maturity, and he had to assume that each stage was inevitable, natural, and healthy. Yet how could he be certain? A species of one had no guidelines, no history. He was alone in the worst ways, and alone in the best too, and maybe that’s why it was easy to take pleasure from standing inside a magnificent room where King-like figures were set in rows—a pattern that felt right and proper and lovely.
“Did you hear the explosions?” asked his guest.
“They woke me,” said the breathing mouth.
“How many?”
King raised both hands, implying twelve.
His brother nodded, leaving the door slightly ajar.
“Did he wake?” King asked.
“Not when I jumped over his bed,” Diamond said.
It was an old joke. The Archon was a light sleeper, but both of them had experience slipping through the man’s home without being noticed—unless List was aware and had decided not to challenge either of them.
“Where was the fight?” asked Diamond.
King pointed at the memory of each blast.
“My old home,” the human said sadly.
Only little battles were fought in the Corona District. The blackwoods were dead, and the papio had all but abandoned that portion of their reef, which made this night a bit unusual.
“Maybe someone’s starting a large offensive,” said King.
Diamond nodded.
King had finished growing, but the human was only beginning. Everything that had been frail and small about Diamond was being swallowed by strong human muscle and a skeleton that was brawnier than anyone might have guessed. If the boy grew like his truly human cousins, he might end up tall. He could even find power, in some fashion. But he was also a species of one, which meant that nobody knew the answers. He could just as well grow until enormous, or he could transform into some unsuspected entity, like a thunderfly springing out of its chrysalis.
“Let’s watch the war,” King suggested.
Diamond was holding the fancy brass knob. He started to open the door but then closed it again.
“I’ll get us to a spotter station,” King said.
“No,” the boy said. “I don’t want to see the war now.”
King waited, knowing what was coming.
“Put it out,” Diamond said.
They had used the sign five nights ago, and this was too soon.
“Or I’ll put it out,” he said.
Saying nothing, King walked to the wall nearest the outside world, gently lifting a statue of himself made from silvery corals frosted with paint. This was the statue that resembled him best, which was why he called it Grandfather. It took a fair amount of power to lift his ancestor, exposing a small hole that had been surreptitiously cut through the wall and between the sacks of protective water, leaving a tube where a simple bell and tether lived.
With his breathing mouth, King blew into the tube.
The bell dropped and the rope straightened, and the bell rang out. Not even King’s exceptional ears could hear the tiny clangor, not from indoors. Which was why they had settled on this signal.
The statue was set back in place.
Diamond was waiting in the empty hallway, patient but not patient.
A bolted steel door led to the rest of the palace. But they took a different route, climbing stairs to an observation tower built from corona parts and the strongest glass ever pulled from a furnace.
In other times, the District of Districts would have worn spectacular lights. Even in the belly of the night, a million people would have been awake, burning candles and electric fires, and the little public blimps would have been climbing and falling, taking insomniacs and drunks to whatever door seemed like a good idea. But this was wartime. Fuel wasn’t scarce, but the generals demanded rationing to build character. Besides, just the glimmer of a few hundred lights would help the enemy wings navigate between the giant bloodwoods, and nobody wanted to make any attacks easier for the papio.
One window panel was unlocked. Diamond popped the latch and pushed the glass inward—a curved triangle rimmed with a rubbery white gasket made from corona fat.
They waited.
In the distance, in the direction of Diamond’s former home, were several more blasts, each with enough punch and heart to be heard by human ears.
Diamond crossed his arms, saying nothing.
They might wait until dawn, of course. Or this could be a wasted night, although that would be unusual.
Because he wanted to talk, King said, “Dreams.”
“None were interesting,” said Diamond.
Sometimes the boy endured glimpses of an earlier life, or at least that’s what he claimed. He told what he could remember and what he might remember, and sometimes he made allusions about a disembodied voice that came while he was awake, dispensing nuts of wisdom and nuts with no meat at all.
“What about your dreams?” the boy teased.
King had never suffered from those hallucinations. Sleep was oblivion for most of his soul, black and intense and relatively brief, while a lucid sliver of his mind remained on duty, constantly watching for enemies and potential allies.
The brothers stood together but not together. They looked like strangers who happened to share a destination.
Night held its pace, and talk fell away to bored silence, and King considered sleeping on his feet.
Finally the boy said, “She won’t come.”
“It’s too soon,” King agreed.
Five nights ago, while they stood exactly here, a pair of night-flying leatherwings had descended on the tower. One of the leatherwings circled nearby while his mate landed on the sill and reshaped her face, conjuring a human mouth and young woman’s voice.
“Good evening, brothers,” she had said.
Quest’s skills never stopped improving. Any body shape was possible, rendered with the proper feel and scent and countless details. The male leatherwing had been fooled by her disguise. King had heard the high-high-pitched cries demanding caution, professing love, and endlessly promising to remain loyal whatever happened. And as always, he felt admiration for this marvelous creature. But it wasn’t love, no. He wouldn’t allow love to blossom ever, no. But there were secret thoughts where his sister grew brave enough to slip inside the palace with King. Diamond was anywhere else, and once inside King’s quarters, she would summon a body like his, only female.
How she would look, he had no clue.
And the biggest part of his secret, what made his hearts race, was failing to imagine that wondrous moment.
Five nights ago, the brothers shared gossip about the war while their cautious sister described what she had seen. Tree-walkers had attacked the City of Round Roads, but they did it only because the city was already devastated. The papio didn’t defend wastelands. Heavily armored airships pulverized the broken buildings, and all but one returned to base intact.
The secret consensus and the public consensus were very similar: the war was going badly for both species. The papio were always short of fuel and bombs, while the tree-walkers could make all the alcohol and explosives they wanted from what remained of their forest. But the tree-walkers had lost far too many airships, and there was nervous, consistent talk that the stockpiles of corona parts were just about spent.