Like black sap, she flowed into the bowl with the rainwater.

Divers stood on the shoreline of this living pond, and where she saw movement, she swung hard, each blow making Quest miserable and weaker and more scared.

Nothing in the world was bigger than her fear.

And that was when what was essential inside her climbed free from what was dying, and while Divers hacked and chopped at the black goo, the tiniest shred of her soul raced away on invisible feet.

One scared soldier had dropped his big rifle before fleeing.

Diamond was standing in the little gully when he lifted the weapon with both arms and a knee. He couldn’t outrun Divers, and that’s why he needed to fight. But the rifle was heavy, and it was covered with buttons with important, secret jobs. As an experiment, the boy tugged on the trigger, and nothing happened. So he pushed buttons and tried again, startled when a single round emerged with a sharp crack, and a bullet longer than his longest finger dug its way deep inside the old dead coral.

Soon Divers came hunting for the source of the gunfire.

With a deep breath and some luck, Diamond lifted the gun’s barrel and fired eight quick shots, three rounds piercing his sister’s chest.

She watched him.

The gun was too heavy, and it fell back to where it was happiest, left behind and useless.

Divers lifted her sword, and she stepped closer.

She was wounded, but the flesh was already healing.

“They’re coming,” said Diamond, and he pointed upward.

“Not fast enough,” Divers said.

One cannon blast had started a full-scale battle. The fletch was limping away while more fletches arrived. Two whiffbirds collided with each other, and a swift wing was struck by someone’s gunfire, screaming its way past the reef’s edge, twisting down toward the demon floor and whatever lay beyond.

“Where’s Quest?” Diamond asked.

“Is that the ghost’s name?”

The boy nodded.

“I killed her,” said Divers.

“You killed everyone on Marduk too,” said Diamond.

“Hardly,” Divers said. “I said a few words, wishing for your death, and the rest of it happened on its inevitable own.”

She raised the sword higher, aiming with care.

“What are you going to do?” Diamond asked.

“Remove that brain from those little shoulders.”

He stepped back, in reflex.

She stepped closer, laughing at the gesture, or maybe something else. “And then,” she said. “Do you know what I’ll do, brother? I’ll throw that head of yours. Believe me, from this ground, I can toss you into a place where nobody will ever find you again.”

Diamond was ready to drop.

And Divers swung the sword once, aiming high on purpose. There was no time to react, and the blade was past and back over her head before Diamond could think about moving.

He was doomed.

In that doomed head, he made wild little plans for his revenge.

Divers edged closer.

“Stop,” the boy begged.

“When I’m finished,” she said.

Then came a noise at once familiar and strange. The woosh began somewhere close, followed instantly by a solid thunk, wet meat absorbing some terrific momentum.

Divers and Diamond were equally startled.

For no apparent reason, the giant had fallen on her side.

Diamond saw the wound filling with urgent blood and the torn tissues fighting to reassemble themselves, and that long papio face was filled with doubt and a growing horror. Divers was still holding the makeshift sword. She used one end of the blade to dig into her body, widening the hole before it healed and closed.

Diamond backed away, but not far.

Divers began to weep, and she dropped the sword, ripping at the wound with both hands, making a gap wide enough to insert four fingers and then the thumb, and that was the moment when the metronome stopped counting. That was when the harpoon’s explosive charge turned to gas and a white flash of light that left Diamond on his back.

He blinked.

Sore everywhere, he sat up.

Above him, the airships were firing salvos of three white flares at a time—the universal appeal for a truce.

From someplace close, Master Nissin called out Diamond’s name.

And then a figure came out from the rain of coral grit and airborne blood. A huge and fearless and infinitely capable soul strolled into sight. The launcher pulled from Bountiful was cradled in his arms, and the hair was burnt but the blistered face was grinning, and with a rough and very pleased voice, Karlan said, “Shit.”

Staring at the shredded body, he said, “Now that’s what I call a monster.”

THIRTEEN

The Creation kept unleashing new tricks and ugly twists to make the next moments impossible. Alarms were sounding. Officers shouted conflicting orders, and civilians shouted for no reason but rank terror. A passing wing threw a burst of cannon fire at the Ruler of Storms, and against orders, three of the Ruler’s batteries returned fire. But those were little matters. On the reef, Diamond was being attacked by the Eight when the smoke floating behind him suddenly congealed into a second marvel. Every face with rank was pressed against the pilot’s window. Prima propped her elbows on the glass, binoculars pressed against her exhausted eyes. The window glass was armored. The armored walls and floor would shatter before the window. But she felt utterly exposed, and her hands shook, and what she saw in the binoculars made her shake even more.

Ten times at least, she had demanded a general truce.

Every truce lasted for a breath or two, then fell away into mayhem.

And now a fresh papio squadron had appeared. A dozen Hawkspurs came from a distant base—narrow gray slips of metal and fire pushing at maximum velocity—and every onboard alarm found fresh urgency. The Ruler was the destination, the sole target. Slashing past the rest of the fleet, the wings ignored gunfire and every livid insult, reaching that perfect point in space where their munitions were released. But there were no cannons, no rockets. The enemy carried nothing but the brilliant white flares that tumbled away in threes—someone in the papio high-command just as desperate for peace as Prima was.

For the eleventh time, she demanded a fleet-wide truce.

And in that mayhem, an aide came forward with a file brought from the Panoply Night. The official document had been plucked from a tall pile of forms and scribbles and officious stamps. Ignoring the papers, Prima looked at the aide. This wasn’t Sondaw, but Sondaw made it into her thoughts, and she wondered about his progress.

She didn’t have to ask. A moment later, emerging from the turmoil, one of List’s generals strode up to the little woman, explaining how furious he was about the latest miscarriage of authority.

“Your lieutenant is taking over our battleworks,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“A lieutenant and other soldiers . . . all yours . . . claim they have full authority to act as they want with our best weapons . . . ”

“Not as they want,” she said. “They’ll follow my orders, no one else’s.”

The officer stood tall inside his glossy fine uniform.

And Prima said, “Listen.”

Now at least four of the Ruler’s batteries were shooting at the enemy, the floor shivering with each sturdy blast.

“Are those gunners following your orders?” she asked.

The general couldn’t look more imposing.

“I know what’s inside the battleworks,” she said. “The biggest, harshest weapons in existence, I know. But honestly, do you want to leave that power and so much misery in the hands of eager recruits?”

The general started to answer.

“There’s no doubt,” she interrupted. “Your flock of warriors needs a lot more training and a lot less fur on their legs, if you know what I mean.”