“You should run,” he said.

“Your people aren’t close enough to help,” Divers said.

The boy wiped his eyes with his fingers, the right eye and then the left, and that hand dropped to his side again.

Divers started to climb the steep slope.

And then at last, finally, one of the Seven spoke. Quietly, firmly, that loyal little sister asked, “Are we certain that Diamond is alone?”

Feet stood their ground, and it became their ground. No other place was worth so much courage and strength, passion and the unalloyed need to make the world understand its value. This one space was precious, and he said so with his entire body, including the hand clinging to the polished brass tube.

Father’s officers had temporarily become Prima’s officers. One officer was watching Bountiful’s long fall and its fiery crash. King studied the human working the controls, moving dials that engaged tiny motors that moved a telescope lashed to the Ruler’s skin, changing directions and focus and the magnification. Several large telescopes were feeding light into the Ruler’s bridge. Each had its officer watching a distant critical part of the world. Then once King understood the mechanisms, he made the officer move aside. King didn’t lift the man, and he certainly didn’t strike the uniform or the face. But the human discovered that he had lost his space, and several soldiers saw the incident and came forwards, discussing how to force King aside.

But wisdom won, and that tiny army retreated without a fight.

Peering into the telescope, King watched Diamond run away from one piece of wreckage, heading straight for the fire above.

The Ruler’s bridge was filled with bodies and voices. Every human was scared, sounding more foolish than usual. King listened to voices that mattered, keeping tabs on the battle’s progress. If war was a circle drawn on the floor, then the world was standing on the ring’s edge, toes touching the paint. Important generals were making plans for full-scale battles. Prima as well as Father shouted orders, trying to keep the fighting at a lesser, less combustive stage. Once and then again, King lifted his face to glance out the big windows. Half of the world’s weapons had been jammed into the same sliver of air. Guns fired but never steadily, and most remained silent. Flares and signal lights and individual men waving bright flags added to the chaos. Both species were screaming for something called Order, for respect of the rightful leaders, for hesitation instead of haste, and all the while everyone was aiming for neat resolutions that were never possible to begin with.

Prima was a little more in charge than anyone else.

Again and again, she ordered her fleet to move together and claim the wreckage, rescuing survivors and recovering bodies. But the papio were closer to the Bountiful, more abundant and very short-tempered. The telescope operator beside King named units and counted bodies, telling an assistant where to place each enemy soldier on a big map of the reef. She was scared enough to make mistakes, and nobody heard much of what she said. Then Prima asked about Diamond, and the operator confessed that she couldn’t see the boy, that he had vanished inside the heavy smoke.

King gave a huge wet roar, telling the entire bridge, “I see him fine.”

“You can’t,” his colleague said.

“I see where the smoke curls around him,” he replied, laughing in his best human fashion.

Every one of King’s ears listened to the bridge, and he had memorized where everyone stood. Father was protecting ground a little bit ahead of Prima. But that didn’t fool anyone. Everyone was talking and every voice was scared, but when the tiny woman spoke, the entire bridge grew a little bit quieter, and if she talked about strength or perseverance, the mood calmed for the next few moments.

A young lieutenant acted like Prima’s shadow.

Sondaw was handling papers. King heard the papers moving, and then Prima asked for a summary, and her shadow read that the base at High Coral Merry was signaling only one message. Nobody wanted war, the papio said, but there was a rescue mission of grave importance underway and to please let their brave people do their important work.

Some generals scoffed, but Prima demanded opinions.

A colonel named Meeker came forward, pointing out that nobody was positioned for a fight. Formations were scattered, and other formations were crammed far too close together. If true war broke out, both fleets would have allowed themselves to begin in awful circumstances.

“Like a mist of fuel in the air,” he said.

“One spark,” Prima said, understanding the image. Then in a louder voice, she told her fleet, “We aren’t the spark today, people.”

King began to like this brave, fierce female human.

Then the officer beside him said, “There he is. I see the target again.”

Diamond was running back the way that he came before, emerging from the smoke and swirling ashes.

Breezes bent the smoke, causing it to gracefully follow after the boy.

Every day before this day, imagining war, King dressed armies in majestic colors and marched them forwards with great purpose. In his mind, the papio and humans were two combatants standing beside contested ground, and they would trade blows and insults and bleed each other before inflicting even worse wounds, and one species would win and the other would retreat, and there was order to what he envisioned, and the imagined drama sometimes left him joyful.

But now, experiencing the thinnest example of real war, he found nothing honorable or orderly. This was mayhem. This was waste on a fabulous scale. Real war was more like a storm than any fair contest between warriors. Storms rose to sweep through the world, and they had no souls, and they were idiots—mindless, changeless impulses to be endured, or they would crush everything in their path. War was very different from one brave soul standing on his important floor, guarding the lens and his telescope for no reason except that this was the most interesting place to stand.

“What am I seeing?” the operator asked.

“A female papio,” said a third operator. “But no, she’s huge . . . isn’t she . . . ?”

King’s telescope was the last to see the apparition running over the barren, uptilted coral. But he noticed Merit before the others, and he had enough time to bring the focus to the old slayer as he fell and then recovered. A crisp shout of directions pulled the other telescopes to the scene, and every little telescope and pair of binoculars were raised, people claiming to see nothing or everything.

Father and their leader moved to the pilot’s window.

“What is that?” asked Prima.

The giant papio had stopped beside the old slayer.

“List,” she said. “What is that thing?”

The officer beside King said, “Oh. She’s trying to help Merit.”

Then the slayer was dead, and after the shared hollering, shock fell into anger and the bridge turned quiet enough that only one voice was audible.

Prima said, “You know. I think you do know. Is that the papio’s child?”

Father said, “Yes.”

“Tell me about it,” said Prima.

Everyone wanted to hear the answer. King wanted to hear. For all of his insights and honest chatter, List had never mentioned this creature, at least not in earshot of his son.

“It’s physically huge,” Father said.

“Gigantic,” Prima said.

“Female in appearance.”

“What else?”

“The creature’s inhabited by different minds, different personalities.”

“What does that mean?” Prima asked

“She’s stranger than ours,” said Father. “Your child, and mine.”

King kept the one eye fixed on the papio, watching it climb farther up the ridge. Diamond was standing on higher ground, and the whiffbirds descended, and the giant easily dropped one of war machines.