Their relationship was instantly set, and perfect.
Quest roamed by night, changing form and directions while studying the sleeping world. She eavesdropped on small generals and linchpin clerks, massaging every word for meanings. She measured jet sounds and propeller sounds and the deep throb of the farthest battles. Every airship had a name that she knew, and every airship ran without lights in the darkness, trying not to be seen. But she noticed, and she often knew where the next battles would be fought, and because of her brother’s questions, she watched the reef with neurotic care, hunting signs that the papio were about to launch some great final assault on the District of Districts.
There were respectable reasons for concern. Prisoners and two-faced spies talked about hidden fleets of wings, some bearing designs that had never been deployed. And the papio had captured fletches and blimps during the war, any ten of which might come here by night, pretending to be friendly. Every home was scared, but the mood was worse inside the Archon’s palace. The treacherous and insatiable enemies were always coming tonight. Tomorrow. Soon. What was hiding inside those reef bunkers and surviving cities was beyond measure, which was why the citizenry and the high generals had no choice but think about little else.
That final night was the same as the previous thirty. Quest wandered and watched. Five airships and a squadron of wings destroyed one another among the dead blackwoods. Later she heard an important sound, but only once and she was far from the palace. By the time she arrived, the signal bell had been pulled back into its hiding hole, and she flew away, still wearing the leatherwing form.
Later, she plastered her body across a low limb, pretending to be an epiphyte, night-blooming flowers hiding an army of eyes.
Everything was memorable, but only because everything was always memorable.
Then the night felt done, and she was a different species of leatherwing gliding back to the chuckerhole, and after putting on the day’s body and the blue uniform, she rode a descending rope, travelling down to where the rope bent and started up again. And that was the moment when the demon floor parted, raining burst upwards with a fabulous roar and the first ruddy wave of sunlight.
A woman in such circumstances was free to run.
She ran.
The rain was still rising when she arrived. But oddly, the male spotter wasn’t waiting at the door. He was usually impatient to leave, preferring to escape before he was soaked, and his absence had to be a warning. Quest felt the strong urge to turn and flee, shucking off this over-trusted disguise afterwards. But the rain was just beginning, and it felt stronger than any storm from the last hundred mornings, and even her terrors had limits: nobody would be laying in ambush for her, not in this weather and with no place to hide.
The male spotter was indoors, but he wasn’t waiting.
Unlike every other morning, he was doing real work. The station’s largest telescope was fitted with special machinery, allowing spotters to see through the darkness half as well as any night-flying creature. The man’s right eye was fixed to the final lens. His left hand was holding the call-line receiver. A voice at the other end of the line was talking, and then the spotter said, “Shut up. Shut up.”
The distant voice shut up.
“You don’t understand,” the man said. “I see what I see. And it’s there.”
The telescope was supposed to be pointed at the reef and the papio. But instead the great brass gears had directed it straight down, aiming through a hole in the floor that had never made sense to Quest.
“When the rain stops, look,” the spotter screamed.
Quest stood in the doorway, letting the water spray everything.
The voice on the line said, “But I won’t sound the alarm.”
“Then don’t,” said the spotter.
Quest made a sound inside her throat.
Then a man who couldn’t even identify an alien standing in his midst looked up, noticing her and smiling at her as he reported with great joy, “It’s another one of the big ones, the famous ones.”
“Which ones?” she asked.
“The coronas,” he said. “It’s another big black ancient. You know. The sort that brought us the Children.”
Coming into any room, Diamond always looked at Elata first.
Elata sat beside the long table. Her back was straight, a book opened where the plate belonged. Eggs and fresh crescents were cooking in the kitchen, making the air warmer, brighter. Chocolate eyes didn’t look up. A finger and thumb were eager to turn the page. Diamond’s eyes wanted to look at nothing else. He always embarrassed himself at moments like this. The girl was a younger, prettier version of her dead mother. The long black hair needed brushing, and she was wearing bedclothes and an old wine-colored robe, and nothing about her body was revealed . . . yet the boy spent a full breath doing nothing but absorbing her.
“It seems nobody can sleep,” Mother called from the kitchen.
Thick windowless walls barely blunted the sound of water exploding upwards across the bloodwoods. The strongest wood in the world was twisting, and the entire palace groaned in response.
“Motion is a blessing,” Father used to say. “Bending is stronger than being rigid and stubborn. And that’s triply true with people too.”
Other people were sharing the breakfast table.
Master Nissim sat beside Elata. Reading glasses rested lightly on the tip of his spectacular nose, bone frames holding bright new lenses. A tightly folded copy of the morning news was perched before him. Seldom was occupying the opposite chair, reading the opposite page. “Hi, Diamond,” he said without looking up.
“Hi.”
“Finished?” Nissim asked.
“No, sir,” said Seldom, squinting at the tightly packed words.
The Master sat taller in a chair than anyone else. He had recently started to grow a beard, the whiskers emerging white and coarse. Removing his glasses, he told the newcomer, “You look well rested.”
Diamond was walking towards the farthest chair.
Turning the page, Elata finally glanced at Diamond. “That’s sarcasm,” she said.
“Only if it’s humorous,” Nissim said.
Seldom rubbed his eyes. “Some battle woke me.”
“Not me,” Elata said.
Diamond began to sit, but then his mother called out. The words, “Come in here,” were wrapped in a tone that could only mean him.
His bottom lifted off the chair.
Nissim was pouring bangle tea into his milk. Once more, he asked, “Are you finished?”
The tall boy leaned forwards, grinning. “Done.”
“Do the folding, please.”
Shaped like a giant funnel blossom, the news stood with its broad end down, flat outside faces defined by complicated folds hiding many more pages. Spidery fingers opened the blossom, hunting for fresh words.
“What did you read?” asked the Master.
“We shot down five of theirs in the Mists,” said Seldom, “and only one of ours got damaged.”
“What does that mean?”
“We lost two, and they lost three.”
That battle was fought the day before yesterday.
“Anything else?” Nissim asked.
“I bet the fight wasn’t far inside the District of the Mists,” the skeptic said. “Probably near the border with our District.”
“Our District.” Seldom was the only one among them who claimed the District of District as his own.
Diamond stopped in the kitchen doorway. The room was bright and tall, with enough counter space for three servants to help prepare every possible meal. But the one lady who helped feed them was gone. Once Mother felt well enough, she made certain that their cook had a pleasant new job waiting, and then she fired her.
“You’ll never eat as well as you did,” she told her extended family. “But who deserves feasts, these days?”