Father had many, many enemies.
“Which is a mark of strength,” he often told his adopted son, using the quiet voice that both of them preferred.
Powerful noises didn’t need to be loud. One smart whisper delivered by the right mouth, inside the proper moment, would make the entire world shiver, and that whisper could only come from his father:
A frail, tiny creature named List.
Father’s enemies were King’s enemies. Each was a coward hiding in some other room, preferably straddling a distant tree. Their foes teased Father for how he sounded and for everything that he said. They mocked him by calling him a bureaucrat, or worse, a lowly clerk, and even more insulting, they claimed that every success in his father’s life was earned by stupid good luck. Yet no enemy ever dared speak that way directly to List, and that held true long before he had a monster for a son.
One day, King told his father, “I can always hear them talking about you.”
Smiling, the Archon said, “Your ears are better than mine.”
“And there’s more of them,” said his son.
“I was making a joke,” Father said.
“And you aren’t a funny man. That’s what everyone claims.”
King had studied many topics, including human politics. There were nine Districts with outlier communities haunting the surrounding wilderness, and each district had its strengths and its own Archon. An Archon rose to his office or her office through angry contests called elections, and sometimes luck was involved, but most victories came from careful hard and nearly invisible work.
The District of Districts hung above the world’s center. Bloodwoods were the ruling trees. Giants compared to all others, they were vast pillars wearing short stocky branches and spear-like blackish-green leaves. Bloodwoods weighed surprisingly little for their volume, yet they were strong enough to reach far deeper than the world’s lesser forests. The heaviest rains washed over them with the morning, and the strongest sunlight made them creak and roar as they grew. The bark was thick and as dark as the leaves, while the flesh inside had many colors. The “blood” in the name came from the countless splinters, huge as well as miniscule, each one sharp enough to pierce the heaviest leather. Every finished bloodwood plank was said to carry at least a few ruddy drops—traces of the foresters and millers and carpenters who sacrificed flesh to make their livelihoods.
King lived at the Archon’s palace, inside giant rooms made from corona parts and polished, heavily waxed bloodwood.
Alone in the world, his armored body had nothing to fear from sharp lumber.
In this world, King was a species of one.
Strong and tall and still growing, the Archon’s adopted son had always appreciated his nature, each day offering up new lessons underscoring how special he was.
Humans had only two ears, while King had ten.
Humans were immune to most sounds, but King could hear the highest notes inside a bird’s song, and even more impressive, he could listen to the clattering clicks of the tiniest leatherwings—the flying rats that came out only in the night, filling the forest with their bug-hunting voices.
Physicians and other specialists had examined the Archon’s son. Every portion of King had been measured and imaged, and pieces of him were cut loose and then reattached again, sometimes in novel locations. Expert faces watched spellbound as the finger or several plates of armor silently rejoin the host body. A few surgeons were allowed to cut into his deepest parts, and that was how King learned that in addition to odd-shaped guts and nameless organs, he had eight ears hiding inside his purple blood and his purple meat, absorbing not just the world’s high-pitched squeals, but also the deep low throbs that only a few scientists knew about.
The Archon of Archons was proud of his son, and he was scared of him.
Fear was completely reasonable. On that score, father and son were in full agreement.
In the same way, King and List appreciated how badly things had gone when Diamond stepped into the world. Father had decided to flush the boy from his home and his old life, and the boy went farther in less time than he had imagined. But seeing a chance to teach the papio lessons in real power and real strength, both of them had seriously overstepped, and the lessons ended up being theirs to learn.
“I tried too much, which spoiled the prize,” said Father. “And of course I didn’t take your feelings to heart, did I?”
King had multiple hearts and mouths and eyes, and he ate like ten healthy men, growing every day.
“I was crazy with rage,” King admitted.
“And you tried to do too much.”
“But I learned, just like you learned.”
Send Diamond back to the coronas: that’s what King wanted, and he nearly succeeded. But he was hundreds of days wiser now, and unlike humans, he wasn’t so crippled by pride that he couldn’t see the good fortune in his failures. Life changed after that very bad day with Diamond, for the better. The human-like boy remained tiny compared to him, and weak, condemned to a small life in an isolated District. What’s more, King was no longer a surprise waiting to be seen. He was free to wander where he wished inside the Archon’s palace. Allies and opponents came visit the world’s most powerful man, and after being introduced as the famous son, King would select a piece of floor to defend through the evening, using those hidden ears to absorb every awful word being whispered about the host. He was also free to travel with his father, walking among the small and the poor. These were the people who appreciated their Archon. Freed of pretensions about power and wealth, they could love the world’s ruler, offering hands to be touched and happy words, even as they wisely kept their distance from the monster standing silently to one side.
Father and son had a shrewd difficult love for each other, with respect built from past misunderstandings and threats that neither would forget. Perhaps they looked bizarre, walking together in public. But when it was just the two of them, and when they were talking quietly, the best parts of their relationship came into view. King would give his impressions of the day, sometimes quoting whole speeches from the admirers, and then Father sucked air through his little teeth before giving advice about leadership and the fickleness of human nature.
Humans rarely impressed King.
One night his father said, “You hear quite a lot, and that might have value. Or maybe that’s a distraction. But I do know that you’re missing the spine in these perfectly rendered words.”
“What do you mean?” asked King, the plates on his shoulder lifting slightly.
“Those people don’t adore me,” the Archon said. “They show teeth and use the right words, but they don’t actually worship anybody except themselves. And that’s the way my species has always been.”
More plates rose, but his son said nothing.
“Next time, ignore the noise but watch their honest eyes. What these people enjoy are my policies, although they know almost nothing about my decisions and my laws. They heartily approve of my tone, which reassures them without making them spend much effort. Decisions carried out in my name are what make me real. Where I take no stand, they don’t see me. And even my richest, most learned supporters don’t often think about me. The wealthy and the comfortable relish my tax codes. They love my commitment to order and one particular species of fairness, the one that blesses them. They worship the eternal supremacy of the District of Districts. Bright as they might be, the very best place they can imagine is the place where they happen to live today. The world they see is the world they want. That’s what their eyes are seeing when they sing about whoever is in charge, and that fortunate soul is temporarily me.”