“They’re chasing a jazzing,” Diamond said.

The monkey’s eyes understood before the rest of him. The eyes grew bigger and scared all over again.

“One of the wild jazzings got onboard,” Diamond guessed.

No monkey was ignorant about jazzings, even if he lived far from the wilderness. Good looked past Diamond, and his arms quit ripping the canvas.

Full-grown jazzings were powerful killers, and huge. But the giant predator wouldn’t be able to climb between the bladders, which was why this jazzing had to be a lost youngster.

Diamond felt sorry for the imaginary animal.

He felt very sorry for himself.

He had been working for a long while, trying to push aside certain awful moments. But his mind was too perfect to cooperate.

A distant shot reverberated.

Then the echo was gone, and a new noise found him. The tapping was light and very quick. Good heard the tapping. Something was striking the cabin’s little window, and the talk of wild jazzings was too much of a coincidence. The monkey jumped up, staring at the shades before deciding to crawl under the cot.

Diamond imagined a fingernail striking glass.

The tapping stopped.

Bountiful was still pushing towards the reef. Branches might have clipped the ship as they passed, although they would never sound so clean and neat, so rhythmic.

Again, the tapping began.

The cabin wasn’t as dark as before. Diamond’s eyes had adapted. His thumb looked too pale but otherwise felt and acted normal. The other wounds needed more healing. What wasn’t pain told him the state of affairs. His brown trousers still had loose buttons, but he didn’t want to touch himself there. He would finish dressing when he wasn’t thinking about the knives or the papio man bent over his exposed body, and maybe then he would be healed.

The tapping became complicated, swift and full of patterns. By the sound of it, twenty fingertips were working the glass.

Diamond stood, the trousers drooping without falling.

From under the cot, Good offered a quiet growl.

The shades were black and heavy, ready to help an exhausted crewman sleep through the middle of the brightest morning. Diamond touched the outer corner of one shade, and the tapping continued. Then a single shot—a loud closer shot—startled him as well as whatever was outside.

Nothing was outside. Clinging to the ship’s skin wasn’t possible.

The tapping had stopped completely.

“Because it wasn’t real,” the boy whispered. And then he grabbed both shades by the touching corners, and he yanked them open.

A face was plastered flush against the flat glass.

Diamond took a step backward.

The face wasn’t human, and it wasn’t a monkey or bird or anything else normal. And it didn’t resemble King either. The only creature that wore any face like this was an insect. A long jointed mouth and various antennae were wrapped around the bulging eyes that covered a substantial portion of the head. But insect eyes were built from hundreds of little eyes. What was staring at Diamond was were smooth domes, clear like glass, and nothing in the world resembled them. Even the coronas were not half as strange as this creature.

Stepping up to the window, Diamond said, “Ghost.”

The glass eyes couldn’t blink, or they wouldn’t.

“It’s you,” the boy said.

And then the face was gone.

The ambush came between pages. Prima was studying the tense account of a dinner with List’s supporters and King’s explosive reaction to some perceived insult. That dinner was three hundred and nineteen days earlier. That King was smaller and angrier than the creature she last saw. How long ago was that encounter? Thirty days. What these files revealed, time and again, was that he was changing. The fiery vindictive King was absent from the later accounts, but Prima doubted that he was hidden very deep under those spines and proper manners.

For the last hundred recitations, Prima had done nothing but peel back one report to reveal the next, gaining tiny insights into a species that was utterly familiar at the core.

Then the woman dipped her head, just for a moment, her forehead kissing the desk as she fell into deep sleep.

The ambush came with dreams.

She woke shouting. She was sitting upright with her face sweat-drenched and Sondaw standing before her.

“Madam, are you all right?”

Hardly, and she never would be again.

“You were yelling,” he said. “About Rail.”

“Because it was falling and wanted to pull us down with it.”

The lieutenant nodded soberly, understanding the image too well.

“I’m all right,” she lied.

He looked at the files, the sweat and upside down words.

“What are our loyal allies doing now?” she asked.

“Chasing us and signaling us,” he said. “It took those big ships a long time to leave their berths.”

She knew that would happen.

Sondaw said, “Madam.” He had questions, but the youngster was too polite or lowly to give them words.

Prima turned the pages, letting both of them learn from the incident. King had battled the human witness with insults as well as spit thrown from the ugly tooth-jammed mouth. Even when List took exception to the behavior, the monster boy continued to berate what had been a wealthy, powerful individual.

“Are these records helpful?” Sondaw asked.

“There’s a scheming monster at work,” she said. “Vain and charmless, prepared to cheat and mislead governments and an army of opponents to get his way.”

The lieutenant nodded, believing that he understood.

“I mean List,” she said, correcting the misapprehension. “Every Archon has heard the stories. Believe me, each of us has scars. Even List’s supporters—particularly his supporters—understand that he has few principles, except for earning the greatest profit possible for his office, for the District of the Bloodwoods, and for those who can stomach watching him slice apart every political threat.”

The young man flipped back through the rest of the files, finding the brief, inadequate account of Diamond battling with King.

“Somehow our child won,” he said doubtfully.

Prima didn’t hear the comment. “Yet List does seem to be civilizing his son,” she continued. “An armored beast roaming Creation, yet the boy ate dinner with me at the last festival . . . .a young man who stayed calm and in control. It’s hard to believe, but he seemed ten times more appealing that his adopted father.”

“Yes, madam,” Sondaw said.

“Which makes King even more dangerous,” she said.

Suddenly her aide was tense enough to tremble.

She didn’t understand his thoughts.

“You think that King is responsible,” he said.

“Responsible?”

“For the attack on Rail and Marduk,” the lieutenant said. “The monster found allies to help him try and kill the boy again. That’s what you’re thinking.”

“Honestly, no,” she said.

Not until that very minute, at least.

The Ghost’s face was gone, replaced with brilliant green light.

Diamond saw blackwoods and other trees that didn’t belong with the wilderness. Beyond that little window, daylight had returned. He blinked and his heart leapt as he stepped closer, nose to the glass. This was some kind of picture, and parts of the picture were moving. Branches swayed. Airships climbed and fell while winged creatures beat at the bright air. One male hairyheart elf came close enough to show its bright face, except the colorings were wrong. Rings were etched inside the purple plumage on the breast, but Diamond knew that bird didn’t have rings. That was a wrong detail, until he remembered how Master Nissim once said in class, “We have our light, what our eyes enjoy. But blossoms and feathers sometimes have details that we can’t see. They hide past violet, and without special tools, we’re as bad as blind.”

Two fingers and the new thumb touched the glass.