“Where’s the Master?” Seldom asked.
“He’s trying to lose that man.” She said the words and then thought that was a funny way to talk, as if the dangerous fellow was a possession to be put into a box and forgotten. Hugging herself, she watched the people streaming past. People were watching them, watching Diamond. Keeping her voice low, she told Seldom, “We’ll look for him now. Leave the bicycle here.”
“We should take it back where we found it,” he said.
He was such a nervous boy, nothing at all like his brother. “The owner finds it or doesn’t,” she insisted. “Either way, we’d waste time, and Master Nissim would have to wait for us.”
Seldom left the machine propped against the railing. “It looks lonely,” he said.
“I guess it does,” she said.
They trotted ahead. Past the pillars, the walkway spread out into an enormous open plaza, silvery-white and famous across the world. Half a thousand citizens were moving in every possible direction, all of them busy. The tree trunk was covered with government buildings, elaborate wooden constructions soaring up and up, windows and staircases and ladders beyond number, every office marked by a banner hanging in the noisy air. The biggest banner was the highest, and it read, “Archon.”
Diamond paused beside one white pillar, his hand playing across its surface.
“Come on,” Elata said.
But he was fascinated, focused. The pillar was built from hundreds of teeth, each tooth long and slightly curved, each set snug against its neighbors. The razor edges were buried inside. Gaps in the mortar and a few stolen teeth afforded handholds for a determined girl, and that’s how she had managed to climb to the top. Slick and very cold, the teeth felt as if they were alive. That’s what she thought whenever she touched one. And nothing else in the world was as purely, perfectly white as what was slipping beneath her friend’s quick little fingers.
“Where do these come from?” Diamond asked.
“The corona,” she said.
He looked at her, touching his mouth, his teeth.
“I don’t know who put them together,” she said. “But these markers are older than any tree, and they always stand guard in front of the Corona District’s headquarters.”
Diamond stepped back and looked up, mouthing the letters on the flapping flag.
“The District of Corona Welcomes All,” she read aloud.
Again, Diamond looked at her.
“The district is named for the animals,” Elata told him.
“Why?”
“Because there’s no better hunting in the world than here,” she said.
She could have predicted it. “Why?” he asked again.
“I don’t know why,” she said. Then a nice thought jumped into her head, and she said it. “Ask your father when we find him.”
Seldom was listening. He had his own big smile, and he said, “Look where I’m standing. These came off the coronas too.”
Diamond stepped out on the plaza and knelt down, hands pressed against silvery-white surface. Thousands of scales covered the thick planks of wood. Each one was as big as a man’s shirt, and they overlapped like they would have in life, fixed in place with special glues and pins.
“These weigh almost nothing,” Seldom said, always happy to sound smart. “If you held one of them, it would feel like paper, except it’s very strong, very tough. We use the scales to build machinery and armor and other important, expensive stuff.”
Elata was watching for Nissim. She didn’t want to admit it, not even to herself, but she was scared. Where did the Master go? When would they see him again? And what if they couldn’t find him and he couldn’t find them before the wrong men appeared again?
“Corona bones are stronger than ours,” Seldom said. “We use their teeth to carve their skeletons into fancy shapes, and pieces of their bones end up inside whatever needs to be as tough as possible.”
“Enough,” Elata interrupted.
“I was just explaining,” he said.
She hit him with her stare.
Seldom felt a little ashamed, if not certain why. Then he stood and started to watch faces, and right away he smiled and pointed. “Over there. Isn’t that Master Nissim?”
Cowardice wore many faces, and none of those faces were shy.
The urge to flee kept shouting at Master Nissim, again and again and again. It warned him that nothing here was what it seemed to be, and he was nothing but a clumsy, foolish imbecile, lacking any good clues about what was true. The day wasn’t halfway done, and it was already jammed full of impossibilities. Aiding a strange young boy seemed good and noble, but that illusion had vanished. Who was he helping? Nobody, obviously. The temptation was to leave now, take his next breath with him and walk away. He could be standing beside the familiar butcher’s block before the day was finished. That’s what the cowardice promised him. Nissim had a comfortable room where he slept well enough and waking habits that weren’t unpleasant. Maybe his life was a touch dreary, even lowly, but that life didn’t injure anybody. Nobody thought about him in any important, dangerous way. Yet that peace was finished, at least for the time being, and he ached in his guts and his heart beat like growler drum, and his remaining thoughts were consumed by one furious moment that shouldn’t have happened.
There. That was the heart of the trouble.
Again and again, Nissim imagined a bloody leg on the block and the favorite cleaver in his hand, aimed and falling.
A man screamed in his mind, and then the man screamed once more, louder.
Nissim had to get out of this mess. He decided to hunt for the first person in authority, he didn’t care who, and he would confess about the lost boy, explaining just enough while confessing to nothing. Then he would board the next blimp for home. That was the right plan—the only sane plan—and so sure was he that he took his first deep breath in what seemed like too long, enjoying the illusion of being certain about things that would never make sense.
But fear had endless faces, and a compelling new visage emerged.
Run away, even for the best reasons, and the guilt would easily chase him down. The butcher was sure about that much. And if anything ugly happened to one of those children, remorse would define every awful day until death finally claimed him.
The man was near shock, but despite his worst nature, he saw exactly what was at stake.
“Go find those kids,” Nissim whispered to himself.
Then he told every fear but one, “Leave me alone.”
Ugly shame was what pushed him up the stairs, up onto the busy broad plaza.
Diamond rose and saw the Master.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked.
The man was moving slowly, painfully. Once in the open, Nissim paused, eyes sweeping the plaza until he saw three children watching him. He tried to smile but managed only a painful grimace, and he took one enormous breath before walking again.
Elata ran toward him.
The boys followed, and then Elata stopped and they fell in beside her. The Master was pale and sad, but he managed to smile. The voice wasn’t the same, too soft and too gray. But the words sounded optimistic, saying, “This worked out well enough. Everyone is all right, I see.”
“Are you hurt?” Elata asked.
He didn’t answer.
She stopped in front of him. “What happened to that man?”
Nissim sucked on his teeth, narrowing his eyes for a thoughtful moment. Then he said, “No. No, I’m not hurt.”
She didn’t believe him.
“What about the man?” asked Seldom. “Is he following us?”
“No.” Nissim started toward the government buildings, telling no one in particular, “He won’t be our problem anymore.”
That sounded like good news, except Elata wasn’t happy. She was still full of scared thoughts, and now she felt sick to her stomach, and her throat hurt.
Seldom looked sick too.
“Is that man dead now?” he asked.
Nissim took one step and another before he stopped and looked back at them. Then with a careful firm voice, he said, “Nobody has killed anybody. And nobody wants anybody dead.”