The other guard didn’t understand.
“Bits,” said Tar`ro. “You were friendly with Bits, weren’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then get out of my sight.” Tar`ro waved at the other guards, saying, “Believe nothing and watch each other. Agreed?”
Prima had left her aide in charge. Excited by the responsibility, the young woman led the refugees across the landing and into the atrium. The giant room was filled with sunlight and sorry voices. The blackwood statue of a slayer remained in the room’s center, and when they walked past, habit took charge. Diamond stopped and stared up at that magnificent figure.
The aide had a specific destination. She paused to wave. “Hurry up now please,” she said.
“No, we can wait here,” Tar`ro said.
She shook a finger. “Why here? We’re exposed here.”
“Yeah, but I probably won’t feel safe inside any little room.” Tar`ro gave the space a quick, thorough study. “We can see everybody here, and we’ve got escape routes. So this is where we are going to live for next few recitations. Understood?”
The aide was in charge one moment, and then she wasn’t. Her face turned sour, and a matching voice said, “All right, but not for long.”
Merit and Master Nissim were at the back of the group, talking quietly. People were walking past Diamond. Some of the people were strangers, but plenty of faces were familiar. Some people looked straight ahead, thinking dark important thoughts. Some noticed the boy, staring at him until they felt self-conscious, and then their eyes jumped away. People were holding books and folders and critical sheets of paper. Empty hands often made fists. Nervous perspiration made everyone smell. Office clothes were wrinkled and dark with sweat, and there were green-gray militia uniforms not quite buttoned up, and four uniforms made of fancy green silk were walking together, worn by officers in the District Regulars.
The soldiers approached the famous statue and a tangle of lost kids, paying attention only to each other.
“So it was the papio,” one officer said.
“Evidence says,” another said.
The third officer offered up curses, nothing else.
Then the man at the lead said, “I don’t believe it’s them.”
Others didn’t agree, but nobody dared argue the point.
The ranking officer wore corona teeth on his shoulders and a hat made from fancy red fur. “This was a bee bite. This was nothing. If I were the papio, I’d have hit us a hundred times harder, while I had surprise working for me.”
Then the soldiers were past, out of earshot.
Again, Diamond looked at the slayer’s statue. Up close, there wasn’t any face. The blackwood had been attacked with chisels, leaving a lumpy surface that didn’t look like any human being. Only from a distance did the eyes appear, and that stern smart mouth, and the long noble nose worn by every hero in the history books.
Schoolmates stood close to one another. The littlest girl was watching faces. Her expression was very serious, very hopeful.
Diamond stepped close and said, “Prue.”
She didn’t look at Diamond. “Do you see her?” she asked.
“See who?”
“My mother. Don’t let me miss my mother.”
Good had grown heavy. Diamond poked him in the ribs, and he jumped to the floor, pushing between his boy’s school boots.
Elata was behind Diamond. She was crying again, and Seldom stood beside her, looking as if he was going to be sick. Karlan was in the background, his face flat and dry, lips pressed into a scar-colored line, both fists drumming on his thighs.
“Do you see Mommy?” Prue asked.
There was no name to put to his feelings. Diamond was miserable before he talked to Prue, and this was just a different, newer misery. Looking out at the people, his stomach felt as if it had been cut open, and that’s when a piece of him turned curious, wondering if he would throw up and what that would feel like.
“But why would your mother be here?” he asked.
“There are so many people,” the girl said, sounding nothing but reasonable. “She’s going to be one of these people.”
Diamond backed away. Master Nissim was talking to his other students. Even on his knees, the man was taller than anyone from the class. Holding two boys by their shoulders, he looked at all of them when he said, “Hope for the best, because it happens. The best happens.” He nodded hard, trying to convince. “Someone is coming to help, and you’ll get to where you need to be.”
The oldest girl asked, “Are you leaving us?”
Nissim made his mouth tiny, and he glanced at Merit.
Father put himself beside his son again, one hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t want you to leave us,” the girl said.
But then one of the boys shook free of the Master’s hand, and he said, “No, we want to get away from him.”
The boy pointed at Diamond.
Diamond’s soldiers had burned to nothing. He was suddenly thinking how those toys had names, but real people were so much bigger than any piece of paint and carved wood. He had sat with these other children for hundreds of days, and he knew their names and quite a few details about their lives, although he didn’t know very much at all. Yet with his memory, he could replay each of their days together, if he ever wanted.
If it was ever important, that is.
Then the pitch and pace of voices changed. The Archon had suddenly emerged in the deepest part of the atrium, back where the elevators waited.
The aide saw Prima, and relieved, she turned to Diamond. “This way,” she said to him and only him.
The boy began walking, but not fast.
Good leapt up on his left shoulder again.
“What about my other students?” Nissim asked, rising stiffly. “Do they come with us?”
“No, we have people to help them,” the aide said.
She wasn’t looking at anyone. People who lied often hid their eyes.
Diamond stopped and turned.
Elata was standing beside Prue, looking at Diamond. She said a word or two to the little girl. Then she ran over to her friend to say, “I don’t know.”
“Know what?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at Diamond. “Seldom, come on right now,” she shouted.
Seldom walked with his arms tight around his waist.
Karlan began to follow, and Tar`ro stared at him.
“I saved your boy,” Karlan pointed out. “Without me, we’d have all gone down with the damn tree.”
“So you’re a hero,” Tar`ro said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the giant boy said. “You can be hero someday too.”
Nobody’s face was calmer than the Archon’s face. Nothing about her could be confused for happy or relaxed, yet the day’s horrors hadn’t damaged her normal self. Problems here wanted to be solved, and there were opportunities ready to be found, and just the way she carried herself was a testament to poise and strength and an infectious will that almost everyone wanted to feel.
When the woman looked at Diamond, she smiled, compassion dancing beside a thousand subtle considerations.
When she and her aide met, Prima held the young woman by an elbow, saying, “Thank you,” before whispering a few private words.
The aide blinked and stepped back. “I thought we were going to protect him in the Station,” she said.
“Except our security is lousy,” the Archon said. “We’ve got more than a thousand people in this building, plus refugees, and if we think we can trust everybody, then we’re vulnerable to the next surprise.”
“Yeah, we’re a mess,” Tar`ro said.
The group was standing close together again.
The Archon looked at Tar`ro. “Did you know that guard well? The man named Bits?”
“Obviously not, madam.”
Father and Nissim were whispering back and forth again.
“All right,” the Archon said to the surviving guard. “If you’re making decisions, what would you do? How would you protect the boy from this point on?”