“Just you,” she interrupted, pointing at Father.

King stepped up.

“This is no place for boys,” she said.

King killed the urge to use his eating mouth, but he let his shoulder plates rise until everyone else backed away.

“I hate this,” she said.

But then she turned to a young lieutenant, poking his chest with two fingers. “All right, both of them. And you, Sondaw. Stay at my side.”

“Yes, madam,” the lieutenant muttered.

The locked door was opened. The prison stairs felt small under King’s feet, and he made a fine racket as he followed three humans to the lower floor. Every prisoner had to be terrified, hearing his approach over the storm’s rumbling. He stomped a few times at the bottom of the stairs, for emphasis, causing Father to look back at him with a wary expression, and then, a guarded smile.

Was he being childish?

Maybe so, and maybe he didn’t care.

The interrogation cells were small and locked but only lightly guarded. Every door was heavy wire, and King looked through the wire, watching scared faces. Their destination was at the end of the longest hallway, back where the air was stinking of fresh blood and dried blood and human feces. Two large soldiers flanked a solid steel door, windowless and still warm where its hinges had just been welded to the frame. The soldiers stared at King. He ignored them, stomping where he paused in that fashion that drove everybody mad and always left him stronger. It was the lieutenant who had the key. Sondaw had just that one key, pulling it out of his uniform pocket with his left hand and passing it to his right, his nervous face glancing back at the others.

This was a trap.

King understood that much before the lock came open. Yet what kind of trap would anyone dare use? Hurting him was impossible. Killing or trapping his father was easy enough, but where would the gain find room to stand? Prima and her people were surrounded by a massive fleet that was sworn to serve the state. The state wasn’t his father, but humans loved faces and List’s face was what would rally them. No, King thought. Only a madwoman would attempt something rash, and beloved as she might be, Prima’s staff would never let insanity rule their fates.

The door opened outwards, as any prison door should.

A disheveled young man was sitting on the floor. Various chains had been worn and then discarded as his body broke down. One ankle looked as if it had been pulled out of joint and then shoved back together again. Neither shoulder appeared useable. The man had been crying. Seeing them, he cried again. The smell of urine became stronger, and with a voice shredded of dignity and most of its life, he said, “What more . . . is there . . . no . . . ”

The four of them entered the stinking room.

Prima said nothing. But she looked at her lieutenant with clear hard eyes, and she nodded, and the young man stepped forward quickly and dropped low, picking up the prisoner as if he were a broken child.

The prisoner moaned.

“Easy,” Sondaw said.

Father said, “What. Is. This.”

The words sounded like a question.

“Perhaps I exaggerated,” said Prima, her voice flat and a little loud. “This prisoner hasn’t offered much enlightenment at all. We know he hates Diamond and your boy too, and he’s not altogether fond of me, either. But if he had a role in any plot, it’s a mystery to everybody. Including him.”

The lieutenant was through the door. One guard looked in at the remaining three people, and then he smirked and winked, throwing the cell door closed and slamming the lock shut.

“No,” said Father, his voice thick and low.

There was a simple, easy response. A few driving kicks would destroy the lock or the entire wall.

Unprompted, he approached the blank steel slab.

Some small noise came from behind, barely audible over the gusting winds and furious rainwater.

Expecting nothing, King glanced back.

Standing with his arms crossed on his chest, Father wore a stunned, confused expression. He acted like a man who was sick in his lungs, his heart. Sweat poured from his flesh, and his face was exceptionally red, and the voice that people everywhere mocked without end was shriller than ever.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

Prima had punched him, and she looked ready to strike the man again. But instead of swinging, she laughed and grabbed her rain-soaked shirt, tugging from the bottom.

“The law gives us a choice,” she said quickly, with minimal breaths. “In times of peace, we can have a council of the Archons, and we vote on a single leader. And you always win. You have more than half of the world’s citizens and far more than half of our soldiers, and the rest of us couldn’t legally stand against you. But I’m sure you remember the full law, that the forest doesn’t have to be ruled by the District of Districts. In crisis but before war is declared, the leading Archon can dispense his power however he sees fit, and in another few moments that’s what you are going to do for me.”

Father was mute.

The woman had pulled off her shirt and the clothing under it. She was not young, and as King understood these matters, she wasn’t more than passingly attractive. But he was curious nonetheless, watching the trousers fall next, and the clothing beneath them. A long horizontal scar defined her belly. She stank of energy and salt as she kicked off her shoes and all of the clothes, and naked now, standing in front of Father, she claimed the pose that King knew in his blood.

It was his posture, facing any enemy.

Instinct older than his flesh took hold. King stood against the door and the wall, watching that little woman approach a man with more strength and more mass. But Father couldn’t muster the will to lift either fist higher than his aching chest, and the stick-like arms began to pummel him with long slow blows.

“No,” Father said.

The man couldn’t believe what was happening.

“Stop,” he said.

She speeded up the swings.

Already bloodied, List turned to his son.

“Help me,” he begged.

Crush the woman with one swing, and the fight would be finished. But this was Father’s ground to defend, not King’s, and far more important, nothing in this boy’s life had ever been as fascinating or enlightening as watching a sterile old woman bring her fists down on the beaten man’s face.

The cabin door swung open.

The window was a window again. Diamond was watching what was outside, unless of course this was another one of his sister’s memories turned into light and noise. He couldn’t tell, couldn’t ask. But what he saw was interesting in its fashion, built from simple shapes and a few noises repeated without end. Dark rain broke against Bountiful’s skin. What might be the long tree limb was twisting in the gale. There were only two distances in that world, near and not-near, and that was a peculiarly fascinating thought.

Diamond pulled his head out from under the curtains.

A soldier filled the open door and part of the hallway. Motioning at the boy, he repeated a word that he had just learned. “Eat,” he said.

Good sat on the cot, growling.

Diamond straightened the curtains. “Stay here,” he said.

“Yes,” the monkey agreed.

“I’ll bring you food,” he said.

“Hate you, thank you,” Good replied.

The soldier closed the door behind him and then sat in the hallway again. A woman soldier was waiting outside the galley. She watched Diamond’s walk. More curious than caring, she asked, “How do you feel?”

“Hungry,” he said.

“I believe you,” she said.

The galley was crowded, the air thick with sweat and cold food. People stopped eating to look at the boy. Some of them made faces. Some were glad to see him. Elata smiled and Seldom called to him by name, while Karlan saw something funny in his arrival, laughing loudly before he attacked his meal again.