People nodded, trying to agree with her foggy platitude.

“Come with me,” she told Sondaw. “The rest of you, make the fleet ready to embark. Soon.”

“To meet up with Archon List and the main fleet,” the general guessed, concerned but hopeful.

“One way or another, of course.”

She struck the steel door. A soldier on the other side looked through the tiny window, slowly twisting the locks.

Prima and her lieutenant entered, and the door was locked again as they walked downstairs. Every interrogation room was occupied, but the quality of prisoners was generally poor. Two papio pilots wore chains strong enough to restrain giants. Neither had offered anything but curses and the desire to rescue one helpless boy. Several office workers had always lived beyond their means. They were now sharing the same cell, but besides selling a few harmless secrets to the enemies, they seemed to be blind little nothings living inside moldy wood. Merit was right about one bitter fact: this nightmare wasn’t about the papio government or papio intrigues. The reef-humans didn’t want to fling Diamond back to where he came from, and they certainly wouldn’t bring down trees and lives, risking total war to make their point.

A different beast had killed the trees. Criminals from both species working together seemed most likely. They seemed like a deep wicked enemy, evil beyond measure, and that’s why a handful of foresters and occasional smugglers had been shoved inside the biggest cell. These were the people who could carry the fuel and explosives from the reef to Rail and to Marduk and the rest of their targets. But more credible suspects had vanished, including an explosives expert and the bodyguard dispatcher who placed Bits where he needed to be yesterday morning. Were they dead innocents or enemies in hiding? And how many papio knew, condoning or at least ignoring the plot’s horrible progress?

Time and patience would normally wring out clues. But time and patience were luxuries. Worse still, the Ivory Station had burned, destroying all kinds of records. From birth, Prima was taught to believe in good ends waiting after the greatest tragedies. She couldn’t stop imagining sanity and stability, both kinds of humanity sitting at the traditional Table of Accord: polished coral and polished wood in equal measure. One day, perhaps in her lifetime, the scope of this wicked conspiracy would become apparent. Maybe not the full details and not every guilty name, but the Creation was built on true principles, and nothing as horrific as yesterday could fully vanish.

She could only do what she could imagine doing, today and tomorrow and no farther than that.

Protecting her species was what mattered. Saving the world was the only priority, and that’s why she came down to this place. Prima wanted the room behind the final wire door. A hard stool was standing in the hallway outside, and sitting on the stool was a specialist who was talking to the prisoner. A powerfully built man of no particular age, the interrogator was bland in appearance and manners. As the Archon approached, he stood up. His right hand was scraped. Someone else’s blood gave his white trousers their color. Reading her face, he stepped back from his post, saying, “I could stand a break, if you’d like to keep watch for me.”

“Thank you, we will,” said Prima.

He left, and she touched the wire door. Sondaw was standing on her right. Both looked into the little room. A steel cot once stood in the back, but that indulgence had been wrenched loose and stolen away. There was a tiny bucket for shit and an electric light that was too powerful for the overhead fixture. The prisoner had no place to sit but the floor, but heating coils had been woven inside the bone tiles, keeping the surface too hot for exposed skin. The man’s left arm was hanging at an unnatural angle. He had two bare feet and nothing for clothes except oversized underwear, intentionally filthy, and he stood on one foot for a long moment before rocking to the other, and after the pain built too much, he returned to the first foot.

“His statement,” she said. “Show it to me again.”

The lieutenant handed her an important piece of paper.

The trees just begun falling when an old woman in the dispatch office announced that one very suspicious man once stood at her counter. Was it twenty days ago, or thirty? She described the suspect to her colleagues. They didn’t remember him. She claimed that they weren’t paying attention to their jobs, and why didn’t anyone else see that he was evil? But the woman had developed a sloppy memory, the sort of mind where yesterday was lost while the deep past was vivid and close. There might have been a suspicious visitor once. Who knew? But the woman was close to retirement, and her colleagues liked her well enough to help her search the recent files, and that’s why the recent permission form was discovered—a thoroughly routine document allowing one survey team and one airship to fly through the highest, darkest reaches of the forest, coring out samples of the living trees to determine their health. That was a routine project. But the flight was happening ahead of the published schedule, and the airship wasn’t only several times larger than necessary, but it was last stationed in the wilderness, working for foresters living on the brink of papio air.

The prisoner’s signature lay at the bottom of that form.

The barefoot man confessed to writing his name on the appropriate line. How could he deny it? But he also claimed no special knowledge or evil design. The form was a duty. As a member of the Archon’s staff, his duty was to tend to hundreds of forms that slid over his desk every day. Making official business happen: that was what he did, and that’s all that he had ever done.

The prisoner was brought here and the interrogation commenced. Again, Prima read the bold words and studied the eerily neat signature. The confession didn’t take long, and it admitted to very little. The man was guilty of nothing but a rank principle, an ugly belief. This young man told his interrogator that the Diamond creature was no child, and it wasn’t human either. He claimed that the Archon and her government were coddling a soulless beast that was only pretending to be human, and as such, the corona’s spawn was even more dangerous and vile than the armored King.

Bealeen was the prisoner.

Her one-time aide had admitted to nothing but hatred, pure and rich.

About the surveying airship, he knew nothing. But Bealeen did mention that if he were given the chance and half a measure of courage, he would have done exactly what others had tried to do. On that ordinary stationary, he wrote that ten thousand dead was no great loss when the world and Creation were at stake, and he was proud. His loathing was majestic and it was just, and against some long odds, he had kept his thoughts hidden from foolish eyes.

The Archon put her fingers through the wires, watching her prisoner.

She didn’t know this man. This Bealeen was silent, eerily composed. He hadn’t made any noise since she arrived, his face damp from sweat but genuinely impassive—despite the arm hanging from the shoulder, out of joint, the collarbone presumably shattered.

It was the stare that she came to see. She studied those hard fixed eyes and the face carved from unfeeling wood, and the man’s silent rage. There was enough rage to spread thick across time, making the next twenty generations ache.

The one leaf had recovered, standing still in the blowing forest.

Prima dropped the confession, watching the useless page twist and curl on its way to the floor. And then to her lieutenant, she said, “He knows a lot more than we realize, I think.”

“Madam,” Sondaw said.

“I can see it in him,” she said.

The officer stared at the same face, seeing very little.