“Your father’s working,” Master Nissim said.

“He’ll be back soon,” Tar`ro said. “Get a plate, sit with us.”

Platters of cold meats and boiled eggs and greasy bread waited on the countertop. Diamond filled two white bone plates, and he might have tried holding a third. But that would be too much, too blatant and bold. Sitting beside the Master, he began with the eggs, one at a time.

“Have you slept?” Seldom asked.

Every question had its traps. Diamond lied, saying, “Yes.”

Elata watched the eggs vanish. Then she put her hands on the table and studied her fingers, asking, “Will we ever go home, ever?”

Diamond stopped eating.

“What do you mean?” asked the Master.

“When Diamond reaches the reef . . . will the rest of us go free . . . ?”

Every little sound in the galley vanished. Nobody was eating. The only noise was the storm, and it had already spent the worst of its fury.

Nissim put a hand on Elata’s hands. “We don’t know,” he said.

Elata looked at the woman soldier. “Can I go back to the trees?”

The papio had warmer eyes than Diamond had guessed. But she decided to say nothing.

“I’m staying with you,” Nissim told Diamond.

Seldom looked at the Master and then Elata. “I don’t think they’ll give us a choice,” he said.

Seldom didn’t want to choose.

The urge to eat had vanished, but Diamond kept working with his hands, his mouth. One plate was bare when a mechanic came through the door, followed by Father.

“Come here,” his father said.

Diamond was already on his feet.

“Is that yours?” Father asked.

He meant the last plate.

“Bring it here,” he said. “And I’ll get one for me.”

They sat close to one another, as far from the other prisoners as possible. But the woman soldier was close enough to touch them, and she didn’t care if she stared, listening to every word.

Father had filled his own plate, but he barely ate.

“Where were you?” asked the boy.

“Above. Our guests shot a hole in one of the bladders.”

“What were they fighting?”

“A shadow, apparently.”

Diamond looked at the papio, and then he stared at the long strips of cured pink meat. “Good wants some of this,” he said.

“I bet.”

They didn’t talk, and they didn’t eat quickly. Sometimes Diamond looked at his father’s red, wet eyes.

“She’s dead,” Diamond said at last.

Father didn’t ask who he meant. He just nodded, saying, “Yes.”

“But that’s all right,” said the boy.

Merit kept his mouth closed.

“I’ve been thinking about the Creation,” Diamond said.

“Thinking what?”

“It never ends,” he said.

Father glanced at Nissim. Then to his son, speaking softly, he said, “I don’t know about that.”

“I know.”

Father looked at Nissim again.

“This isn’t one of the Master’s lessons,” Diamond said.

“All right. What do you know?”

“If the world does go on forever, if we can’t count all of the days, then everybody has to come back again. If we’re born once, we can always be born. Every trillion trillion days, each of us gets to live, and it always feels like the first time.”

Merit said nothing.

The woman soldier glared at the boy, lips taut, long teeth showing.

“You figured that out,” said Father doubtfully.

“I think I did.”

“And Haddi gets to live again,” Father said slowly, with care and some misery.

Diamond nodded.

“To live with us?”

“No,” he said. Then he said, “Maybe. Each time, we get different lives.”

The man’s mouth opened and then closed.

Diamond believed his own words, so much so that he couldn’t escape from them. But what was beautiful and obvious in his mind made the papio woman angry, and Father looked sick and no happier than before.

His plate was still half-covered with food. Diamond rose and picked it up, reporting, “Good is hungry.”

Without sound or fuss, Father wept. But he stood regardless and picked up his mostly untouched breakfast, and then he told the papio, “I want to walk my boy back to his cabin.”

The papio didn’t want Diamond to remain here. “Go,” she said.

Away from the galley, Father said, “Tell me.”

Diamond didn’t respond.

“There’s something else. Tell me.”

“Nothing,” the boy lied.

Father didn’t believe him. Shaking his head, he quietly said, “When we were above, high between the bladders, we found something. A strange something. Does that surprise you?”

Diamond remained silent.

“You say you’re starving?”

“I am.”

“And your monkey?”

He nodded.

The soldier before them rose and opened the cabin door, and Father said, “Here, hand me yours.”

Diamond willingly gave him the plate.

Father walked to the middle of the little room and spilled both his breakfast and Diamond’s on the floor, and then he cursed with a sharp, believable voice.

The soldier glared at the mess.

“I’ll get you another helping,” Father said.

Good suspiciously picked up a pair of dirty eggs.

Diamond lifted one shade, watching the simple rain. “Two more helpings would be nice, if they’ll let you,” he said.

Father wiped at his wet face, nodding. “I don’t know what’s stranger,” he said. “Your endless appetite, or each of us spending eternity eating eggs.”

The story raced ahead of Prima. At least some clipped inadequate version of what happened onboard Panoply Night passed like fire through the entire fleet. Her species had a new leader. The woman Archon was temporarily in charge of the fleet. When Prima arrived on the Ruler’s bridge, she was going to be met with cold stares and cold silence. She expected nothing else. And as she explained to Sondaw, there were reasons to be thankful for that blind, hateful response.

“What I have is a title,” she said. “A barely legal status is folded up in my pocket. Not one of List’s people is going to give me more than sporadic help, except when they go out of their way to offer bad advice, and that’s going to bring a lot of silence and anger for as long as it takes them to build their rebellion.”

“And why are we thankful?” Sondaw asked.

“List’s people are going to ignore the realities, and meanwhile, my people will be able to accomplish two or three worthy deeds. I hope.”

They were standing inside her office. Prima had put on clean dry clothes, and picked up the papers that needed to accompany her to the flagship. But most importantly, she wanted her bleeding to stop. In the end, driven to panic, a man who had probably never in his life struck another person had punched her on the chin, his knuckles sharp as razors. Her bottom lip was cut and the entire jaw ached. Yet compared to her opponent, she was virtually unscathed.

“I hope I can depend on you,” she said.

“Of course, madam.”

“Because I will.”

He nodded.

She handed her aide a thick folder.

“I still don’t understand,” he said. “Why would you take such a risk?”

Ready for the question, she said, “Believe me, I know the man. List is self-absorbed and bloodless and shrewd, and worst of all, he perpetually thinks too much about himself.”

The young man nodded gamely, but he didn’t understand.

“Four hundred days ago, when the Archon followed Diamond to the reef, the man pranced in front of the papio. He told the papio to steal Diamond. He advised them that they should kill the Archon of Archons and start a great war with the tree-walkers because the boy was that important, that precious. His tone, that corrosive attitude, didn’t help then, and it won’t work today. And I think you agree with me. Today, everything depends on the face that we send against our enemies.”

She picked up a sack full of intelligence reports and papio rosters. Everything else would be brought by others.

Prima carried the sack, walking quickly.