List’s quarters were in the center. Diamond’s people lived on this side of List’s quarters, and King lived on the other side, near the Archon’s offices. Windows were forbidden, which was for the sake of security and very reasonable. But it was an absence that never stopped reminding Diamond of his first room, closed off and secret, and that made it easier to remember how small and fragile his body had felt in those times.

Diamond used the toilet and flushed the bowl, and he let the sentry watch him return to his room, which was his plan.

The door floated on greased hinges, and by turning the knob, he made the hard sounds that a sentry expected to hear when the bolt was resting in the jamb.

The nightlights were luminescent yogurts. He stared at them and waited for the sentry to begin his routine rounds.

Another distant rumble arrived, following the same pathway.

Diamond was no little boy anymore. He wasn’t grown either, but the enduring body was showing interest in maturing. What had always looked small was gaining meat and strength. He would never be half as powerful as King, but when they trained together—and they trained every day, without fail—it was apparent that Diamond was going to wield more power than most fit men.

The curly thick hair was very long just three days ago, but then it was sheared off and sent to a factory making armaments for the war. Like everything else about Diamond, his hair only looked human. But it was as strong as the best kinds of silk, and if woven together in the right way, a mass of his hair could become the armor that an important soldier wore over his heart.

The world was that desperate. One boy’s hair could win the war.

The sentry wasn’t moving.

Diamond waited.

Humans, true humans, grew sick when they were sad. Beasts called grief and depression engulfed the soul with blackness, and the blackness could kill even the strongest among them. Mother was depressed for a long time after Father died. Diamond had worried about her. Everybody was concerned about her state-of-mind. But then Good couldn’t sleep with him anymore, and somehow the monkey ended up inside her room. After that, she wasn’t so sick with misery. Not that Good made her happy, because he didn’t. But his face looked at Mother when she spoke, relating thoughts that she kept from others, and the monkey was older and better trained now, which helped the two of them live together. Mother was so comfortable with her friend that she had begun planning how she would have to change her life to care for an orange-headed monkey as he moved into old age with its endless, unremarkable problems.

Sadness and blackness and every shape of worry had found Diamond, and each clung to the deepest reaches of his mind.

Yet his mind was unbreakable, stubbornly free of numbness, or worse, the hopeless serenity that came to some people when they suffered an absolute collapse.

Diamond could not stop remembering who began this war. In his head, a button was waiting to be pushed or be left alone, and the boy pushed it willfully, without hesitation. There was no forgetting the moment or the very good reasons that shoved him into that moment. He could summon every doubt and every smart regret suffered over the last five hundred and ninety-one days. But doubt and regret didn’t wipe away one event. The Ruler of the Storm launched its worst weapons, and the war eventually killed the airship and half of its crew, and most of the survivors had perished in a string of less historic, relentlessly tragic battles.

Diamond had memorized the crews’ names, and because those tallies were published on occasion, he studied the pages for those names. That was an important, awful chore. And despite the misery, Diamond was prepared every day to read another long line of dead names.

The palace was ruled by security. No part of the world was genuinely safe, but these rooms were secure enough that hundreds of known faces could work close to the unbreakable boy, and every day brought strangers through the guarded doors. There were events to be attended—symbolic meals and symbolic meetings and audiences with dignitaries eager to see both of the corona’s children. Standing beside Diamond, some visitors made it their duty to assure the odd boy that nobody blamed his finger for the war. That was a lie, of course. But sentries and servants, ambassadors, and various generals felt it was important to remind him that the Eight did horrible things to the world. It was the Eight who killed his poor father, and revenge was something that everybody understood. There was also blame for the papio and certain awful people among the human ranks, and there were plenty of hatred that was already ancient and would survive this business just fine. “As inevitable as the days,” they said about war—a phrase too old to have any author. And then the optimists would claim that if Diamond hadn’t punched that button—if his courage had failed him—then the next war would have certainly found them on even less decent terms.

Strangers could afford to share a single comforting position. But those who saw Diamond every day had offered a variety of opinions, conflicted and often contradictory. The Archon’s aides and the generals had told him that he was blameless but wars should never be launched without planning and every advantage. Office workers assured him that vengeance was right, even noble, but a hundred days later, the same voices claimed that nothing right had been accomplished and nothing good could be found anywhere. Everyone liked to talk about evil people dying, yes, but they couldn’t stop from praising the heroes and the innocent who died every day. Nissim and Elata and Seldom were trusted voices: each had held Diamond by a warm hand, claiming that their lives would have looked much the same without war. Or maybe they were talking to themselves, wrestling with doubt. With or without the war, this odd family would have come to the District of Districts. They were destined to stand behind heavy walls and locks and paranoia. That was the future and always had been, at least since Marduk fell, but it was hard to argue that the rest of the world would been the same tonight if one salvo of reef-hammers had remained asleep inside their tubes.

One simple story had been recited many times, and the Archon told it best. The narrow, shrill-voiced man thought it was a good story, a comforting explanation. He smiled as believably as he could manage, promising Diamond that this fierce, seemingly endless contest was inevitable. It had to happen. Because Diamond existed, this was nothing less than destiny. Nodding, List explained that whatever Diamond was, he had always been the irresistible prize: a human who wasn’t quite human, a blessing that was going to remake one species and the Creation.

Perhaps. But nothing was known for certain, Diamond said.

List scoffed at that complaint and maybe at the weak will that made it. The great prize was the great prize because of belief. Reality was everyone’s secondary concern. But of course Diamond would be a man soon, and everything might be answered soon. He would have a family of enduring, unbreakable children, or there wouldn’t be any children and he would be just one great blessing, like King.

The Archon of Archons claimed that both of those destinies should make the boy smile now and again.

Diamond still smiled, but never for those suffocating reasons.

Habit and being polite were the only reasons to smile anymore.

Everybody held various opinions, except for Mother. She didn’t pretend ten opinions, or even just two. There was one hard truth and nothing else: she was a widow who lost more than her husband. Everything but her only son was gone, and the son that she couldn’t stop loving had proved himself to be as ugly as was every angry boy and boyish man who ever picked up a club.