The teacher was another important, disregarded face. Carrying the paper and its unknown words, Nissim approached the Archon.
“What?” Father asked, anticipating some demand.
The Master used a rough whisper, the intact hand hiding his mouth and the fur around his mouth. “I need to go below, sir. There’s no time.”
Something about the request amused Father, at least enough to draw out a wary smile. “I just spoke to a caretaker at the Antiquities Library. Those volumes are on their way now.”
“No.” Nissim had distracted eyes. “You don’t understand.”
Even weakened—particularly because of his lack of power—List retained a clear sense of people, what their sounds and various silences meant.
“You found something inside that text,” Father said plainly, and not quietly.
The Master was careful to look only at the Archon’s eyes. “The spotter’s station,” he said.
“At the bottom of this tree?”
“Yes.”
The smile turned suspicious. “You want to use its telescopes.”
“Yes.”
“And a nearby window and binoculars won’t do.”
“They won’t,” the man said.
“You want to see if the sun is really gone.”
“I know it’s lost. What I need to see is what remains below us, and if I can, judge what’s between us and there.”
Their conversation was fascinating, but Meeker wanted words with Quest’s other brother. Showing only the thinnest caution, the general said, “You were eavesdropping on me. I know you heard every word that I said to Diamond.”
King said, “Yes.”
“But I want you to appreciate something, young man. A lesson that your father undoubtedly knows: patience always has to surrender to wisdom. And that includes my patience with you.”
The unexpected had arrived, and King’s attentions had to split. He lifted one foot and dropped it again. “What do you mean?”
“The Quest creature has been visiting you at the palace,” Meeker said. “I know this. For a long while, I’ve known how you and your brother dangle the bell and then slip away to meet with your sister.”
“And you did nothing.”
“Nothing to either of you, or to her. I thought it was best to bide my time, waiting until the hard decision had to be made.”
King was rigid as a coral statue.
“And this had to be the time,” said the world’s ruler. “I took action, I take responsibility, and my only apology is that I couldn’t give you either one of you children fair warning.”
King had too many mouths to follow, too many shifting conversations. He was the largest beast in the room—the largest living beast—yet for the first time in his life, he felt like a whisper about to be swallowed by the echoes.
“Crush me or let me walk away,” said Meeker.
King stared down at him.
“But be quick, please. There’s a platoon of aides waiting to share their disastrous reports.”
“Walk away,” said King.
“Thank you,” said his enemy, that tiny skeleton and the papery skin strolling past him, revealing little trace of fear.
The soldiers kept working. Quest’s mind was a slick gray body, which was exactly like King’s mind. That and a shattered skull and a sloppy length of what wasn’t a spine were being laid inside a long and heavy glass trough—a reservoir used by slayers to catch the acidic milks from certain corona glands. Despite the intense damage, those bits of tissue began to move, flinching and crawling until one soldier was alarmed enough to smack the skull with a big iron mallet, and then ten big men carried a second trough over and nested on top of the first, leaving a gap barely thicker than a human hand. Once their safety was assured, the soldiers gathered around the prisoner, everybody looking through the thick glass, a few making the kinds of jokes that caused grown men to giggle.
Father was still explaining the world to Nissim.
“You don’t understand,” he said for the third or fourth time. “We assumed . . . we had to hope . . . that the coronas had been trying to reclaim their father or grandfather, whatever this is. But no, they’re everywhere in the District of District. Thousands have come. And I’ve gotten reports that they’re attacking the reef, and blessing of blessings, they’re slaughtering the papio fleet too. But about the spotter’s post, it went silent early on. The call-lines might be broken, but most likely, the facility has been destroyed. The monsters are murdering and wreaking havoc. And so even if I could give you permission, I wouldn’t.”
King walked away from the two humans.
Diamond saw him. What wasn’t a smile revealed his icy white teeth, but King strode past, conspicuously ignoring him, and Diamond whispered to him, the same two words repeated again and again.
“Great day, great day, great day.”
King walked on.
Standing apart from everyone else, still wearing the filthy coveralls, Karlan looked ready for any order or for no orders. He wasn’t relaxed, but watching King step up to him, his nervousness showed only in the slow shifting of his feet and a lack of color in his voice. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Your ship,” said King.
The man looked up at Tomorrow’s Girl. “Yeah, and what do you want it for?”
“We need to escape.”
Karlan tilted his head, inviting his companion to listen to the roaring coronas and the gunfire. Except there were few guns left with ammunition and crews. And in the same breath, one of the colonels was warning Meeker that the fully grown coronas had arrived—bigger than these babies that had already killed uncountable thousands.
“You want my ship,” Karlan said.
“Yes.”
“Tethered and too damaged to fly, and all of these big doors locked tight. You want to use that wreck to escape.”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” said Karlan. “I never imagined you were stupid.”
A wicked sound slipped out of his bottom mouth. Then King said, “You haven’t begun to imagine my plan.”
That earned a quiet nod, and silence.
“I’ve injured humans but never killed any,” King continued.
“What’s that?”
One giant to the other, he said, “I understand the mechanics. I don’t need any help. But what I need from you is your expert opinion. When my enemies die, do I look at their faces or not?”
The final cannons stopped firing, out of shells or destroyed, and for an instant it felt as though the world would turn quiet again. But that illusion ended with a thundering that was heard and felt. A giant corona had jetted into the most distant door—meat and momentum driving into the steel plates, bending most of them and shattering a few before the bloodied carcass fell away, leaving gaps where the next three corona could shove their heads into the brightly lit interior.
Soldiers had to be given orders and encouragement and an officer to lead them.
Diamond walked toward the glass coffin, but one remaining soldier waved his hammer. “No, no. Go stand with the others.”
The others were miserable, each in his or her own way. Seldom was sitting on a spare stool and Elata was standing behind him, each with arms wrapped around their own chest and both of them crying. Haddi needed to hug her son. Diamond let her cling, smelling her sweat and her breath. But the biggest smell came from the corona. The Archon decided to ignore Master Nissim, turning to a nearby aide just to ask some distracting question. Nodding wearily, the Master glanced at the copied text before trying to roll it up. But the cylinder was sloppy, so he opened it again and rerolled it two more times before he felt satisfied.
“This is awful,” Mother said.
Diamond nodded, but that didn’t feel like enough, so he said, “It is awful.”
No words matched the mood.
King and Karlan were standing close together, talking quietly when the hammer-man approached them. Using rank and his confidence, the hammer-man told the human to get to work.