“All right then.” The missing fingertip helped grab the hilt, and smart eyes winked at him, one eye and then the other.
Diamond passed the crippled man, starting up the gangway. What seemed like weakness had turned into something else. The lightness in his body came from boundless energy, nervous and relentless. He had never been this awake, this alert. Every detail in the world was obvious. Time was slowing. Without trying, Diamond pulled ahead of the three men who had followed him this morning. Then he paused, looking back at the sad people standing close together.
“Seldom,” he called out.
The boy swallowed and said, “What?”
“Wings,” Diamond said.
“What?”
“I can feel them,” he said. “I feel them growing.”
FIFTEEN
Humans were easy to scare, and they remained afraid afterwards. Yet they hated that emotion, so much so that they would do any mad thing to get free of the fear that made their hearts hurry and their soft, fragile hands shake.
King wasn’t at all like humans.
King was always afraid, and he was happy because of it.
There were days when the boy believed otherwise. It was easy to imagine the creatures surrounding him were right and smart while he was plainly wrong inside. Humans didn’t measure every face as a potential threat or a temporary ally. King did. They didn’t consider every shadow and closed door as hiding places for enemies. But the boy’s deep nature was to do exactly that. Even in the presence of well-known enemies, humans could relax enough to keep their breathing slow, their manner easy. A man like King’s father—a leader who had accumulated status and great power—could allow himself be surrounded by his worst foes. King would be too alarmed and pensive to ever do that, at least not for long. Yet those wicked people would smile at his father, and the Archon would show his teeth to them, and it seemed deeply unnatural that nobody would ever make fists, much less start to batter each other’s face.
But as King grew older, more experienced and quite a lot smarter, he began to understand what was true and what was weak.
Fear had more than one shape, more than a single definition. Human fear was a small wild shambles, tiny when set beside King’s magnificent fear. Among his tutors were retired soldiers who had won medals by battling bandits and wild beasts. They were proud bold men, but when they spoke to one another, usually with drinks in hand, they eventually confessed that their fears had to be controlled with training and iron resolve and more training. In their experience, the finest warriors could fight only so long before the terror became an enemy, making them physically ill. Sometimes they discussed the great old wars against the papio and how soldiers came home afterwards but never truly came home, how they couldn’t sleep a normal night again and cried often and drank too much. Some of those broken men even did the unthinkable, climbing to the bottom of the canopy, insulting the Creators by falling into the air, letting the coronas and the sun claim their defeated selves.
The humans were cursed, and they were cursed because their emotions were too small and untrustworthy.
King was nothing like a human.
He was unique and significant and blessed.
Even the simple task of standing was a different experience for King. Humans didn’t care about the floor under them, or the tree branch, or the dusty patch of coral. One place was as good as another, in their eyes. But King always knew what was beneath him and what was nearby. Everybody was a threat. Even the most familiar, benign face had to be measured for its intentions, and the body below that face had to be weighed for weaknesses and blind spots. Everyone scared King, without fail. Even his father—no, particularly his father—had to do very little to worry the orphaned boy. Was he going to punish King today? Or worse, was he going to spoil him? Or maybe this would be the terrible moment when the powerful Archon decided that the armored boy had become too much trouble, or he showed too little promise, and the good in King’s life was about to be stripped away.
Every space that he occupied had to be defended or surrendered.
There was no third choice.
Whenever the fright was its largest—paranoia running wild with every bad dream—the boy would be treated to a keen rush of blood and oxygen, and his hearts felt happy, and his thoughts were slick and sudden, and the great world looked richer and more colorful and small enough to hold in either hand.
If the space beneath him was especially precious, or if he was in a certain mood, King felt gigantic, invulnerable.
Yes, his physical power was a benefit, and so were the armored body and his durability and the endless quick memory. But fear was the richest tool woven through his nature, and that was the emotion that he nourished now.
Today, inside this one recitation, King was straddling the entire world.
Everything was at risk.
Panic, muscular rich panic, made him ready.
His great life had been lived to reach this moment, and how very wonderful it felt to be so afraid.
Stopping at the top of the gangway, Diamond waited for the bodyguards. The longest hallway in the world ended with a tall metal door. Voices came from behind the door, from inside the bridge—men and women making ready to drop anchors and fly away. Then the Archon spoke, and everyone else fell silent. “When do we get home? Before night, or after?”
“As night rises, sir,” said a man.
“I want to see the palace sooner,” the Archon said.
And a different man shouted, “Engines. On.”
The entire ship trembled and began to sway. The crippled bodyguard finished his long miserable climb, slamming a sweaty hand on an important red button, and the gangway hissed and began to rise. Standing on his toes, Diamond caught a last glimpse of his friends and the Master looking up at him, and his Mother mouthed a few words as she waved her hand.
Father was missing.
“Where do we put him?” another bodyguard asked.
“Second suite,” the crippled man said. “You stay with him, always. You? Stand watch outside.”
“Easy work,” the first man joked.
The crippled man stared at him, hard. “You said that this morning. ‘This is baby snaring.’ ”
The floor was vibrating and the walls too. Explosive thuds ripped the anchors from their cables, and water ballast was dropped from a dozen reservoirs, and the long airship began its lazy ascent. Diamond was flanked by two guards, walking in the middle of the long hallway, moving away from the bridge. The ship’s engines grew louder, and he looked up at the faces in profile, and when one man looked down at him, Diamond told him, “You should leave.”
“What?”
“If you can get off this ship, you should.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“I don’t want you to die,” the boy replied.
The men blinked and fell into the same hard laughter.
Every room along the hallway wore a heavy blue door. The first door on the left was marked, “Archon,” and after that was, “Two.” Across the hall was another suite wearing a handwritten sign over its number. “King,” the sign read. The first man unlocked and opened the door to Suite Two and walked inside. The doctor emerged from behind a smaller door farther down the hallway. Hands in his pockets, he called out, “All this is for the best, son.”
Diamond didn’t react.
The guard showed the boy a smile. “Aren’t you going to warn him to jump clear?”
Diamond shook his head. “No.”
Nothing could be funnier. Both men laughed as Diamond walked through the open door, and then the man who came inside with him shut the blue door, turning two locks. Diamond examined the enormous room, the heavy furniture and big bowls of fancy glass, corona bones and scales embellishing everything. Dark dead wood had been carved by trained hands. The tanned hides of special animals had been stretched across pieces of open floor. He couldn’t imagine the wealth poured into this space, and the prestige was beyond his imagination. But the high ceiling was impressive, as was the entire outer wall made from glass windows, thick and sealed.