The captain, who had a well-deserved reputation for simple clear talk, had explained the mission to his disciplined crew.

Quyte understood his ship’s role and his personal responsibilities.

Three others fletches were patrolling in the formation, all to their right. Bountiful was on their left, and while signaling with flashing lights and important horns, the Jugular pushed to full speed, dropping water and climbing to intercept the runaway airship.

Quyte was watching Bountiful when the first wings appeared.

From behind him, a high-hand shouted, “Two hawkspurs under the canopy’s toes.”

He should have seen the wings earlier, and he turned surly. An instant later the papio were on top of them, using those roaring wasteland engines to slice at the air and try to ruin his courage. But unexpectedly, the intruders were a welcome change. They made the situation vivid and immediate. Quyte was a gunner again, nailed to a tough worthy job. The newfound sense of duty rode with him all the way to Bountiful. The papio were brazenly supplying cover for the corona-hunter. Whether they controlled it or not was a question for others. His duty was to watch everything, protect the men riding with him, and protect his world to the best of his ability—and every moment of training seemed to matter as he held the gun with both hands, tracking one wing and then the other until the Jugular reached a point just ahead of the corona-hunter.

Their captain ordered a full stop, and the slick triangular airship reversed engines to block the way.

Bountiful sounded its collision horn, but the captain or its pilot weren’t taking chances, dropping ballast before passing overhead, aiming for the next substantial gap in the canopy.

More papio wings appeared, three and then another pair buzzing about the scene without getting close to branches or those tough slow-moving targets.

Bountiful was climbing fast, but a second fletch had closed the gap, pushing overhead and then barring the escape route.

Again, the collision horn blew.

The third fletch pulled ahead and spun around, her nose facing Bountiful, her speed and grace matching every movement that the corona-hunter could manage.

Following protocols, the Jugular eased close to Bountiful, blocking another one of the available retreats.

The fourth fletch still had air to cross, but once it arrived, that big airship wouldn’t have anywhere to escape. Long before the harpooners and slayers and that one odd boy could make it to the reef, Bountiful would be surrounded and boarded, and that’s how the peace would be saved.

Quyte had very little to watch now. The hawkspurs couldn’t approach the canopy, and there was nothing to see among the branches. So he watched the notorious ship, and in particular the open doorway and its airborne dock. Their natural enemies were standing inside that huge room, pretending to own the place, which answered one critical question. The papio had been chasing the boy for two days, and now they had him. Quyte and the other high-hands watched the whiffbird propellers start to turn and the papio soldiers standing near the open door with weapons in hand, and then Quyte put his telescope to his right eye, discovering humans in the shadows, standing along the back wall in a neat short line.

The boy was there.

His proportions were weak and wrong, and Quyte recognized the tightly wound hair and the sickly face. Then he saw what might have been a smile, those peculiar white teeth catching the little bit of morning light that made it to the back of the room.

Quyte was certain that he saw a smile.

If someone could have talked to the young high-hand a day or two later—if Quyte was given the chance and enough encouragement to explain his actions—he would have had very little to say. He was no deep believer in any custom or tradition, particularly his own. He thought that Creators and the meanings of humanity were other people’s interests. His personal losses from the attack were huge, yet he had the wife and unborn child too. He was trained. By every measure, he was disciplined and proud of his uniform. Maybe he had heard other soldiers talking with conspiratorial tones, plotting this or implying that. But the gunner had never felt interest in treachery. His sole crime was to not mention the dangerous chatter to his thoroughly indifferent superiors. Indeed, Quyte looked like the best man to put inside that blister. But then he peered through the telescope and saw the boy smiling, and he watched the papio working quickly to launch their whiffbirds, and the peace and apparent stability of that scene made this young soldier think in a startling new way.

Two days ago, trees died and people died so that one creature had this chance to move from the trees to the reef. That was the truth dangling in plain view. Maybe the boy asked to live with the papio. Maybe he even planned for it, or he was an innocent moved by some greater evil. Details didn’t matter. The core of the story was impenetrable to reason and evidence and every fear of being wrong. What mattered was that vast forces had unleashed the explosions as a cover or as punishment, and it only seemed as if the boy had been lucky enough to escape.

But Diamond had to survive Marduk’s fall.

That always was the plan.

And that had to be why the creature was standing where he was, the monstrous smile filling a wicked alien face. Those sick white teeth were what caused the gun to move, and only the faint, faint possibility of innocence kept the high-hand from shooting Diamond with the first shell, aiming instead for a place that was higher and far more frail.

“Women are rarely stronger than men,” Crock’s mother used to joke. “But women are never, ever as weak as the strongest man.”

Crock was strong by every measure.

Becoming a soldier wasn’t easy work, but after two days on that path, her vocation was set. Others failed in their training, and good soldiers could complain. But not Crock. Physical challenges were weathered without complaint. She liked to run. She loved to carry and climb. Shooting was a fine challenge wrapped around geometry, and following orders, even the dumb orders, proved easier than the headstrong girl had imagined. Once trained, she would never stop being a soldier. It was the blunt polished certainty of her existence that made her happiest, and because there hadn’t been any war for generations, it seemed self-evident that her running and shooting were good reasons for fun, and following dumb orders was the cost to having a uniform and abundant food as well as a pension once it was time to retire.

Six hundred days ago, Crock was posted to the roughest, poorest slice of the world, and soon after that she volunteered to fly inside whiffbirds. Whiffbirds were risky duty, even in peace. But the pay was better, and she had new skills to learn, including new words and fresh curses. She endured bruising training sessions where crews were taught to protect something that was very special, very secret. Something that they were forbidden to know about. But soldiers had always been bold and young, and no secret was safe with those kinds of people. Smart voices talked about the Eight, and later Crock heard about an armored child and a half-human child who had come out of the trees for a visit. And once during a very long day, she was standing alone in the wilderness, inside a blind, practicing her stealth skills when a creature with no clear shape walked on the branch in front of her. And just like that, she was one of the few people who knowingly saw the beast that could dress itself in dream.

Soon after that the Eight became One, and that was Divers.

Every day more soldiers were stationed nearby, as bodyguards and mechanics, pilots and simple soldiers.