With his breathing mouth, King blew into the tube.

The bell dropped and the rope straightened, and the bell rang out. Not even King’s exceptional ears could hear the tiny clangor, not from indoors. Which was why they had settled on this signal.

The statue was set back in place.

Diamond was waiting in the empty hallway, patient but not patient.

A bolted steel door led to the rest of the palace. But they took a different route, climbing stairs to an observation tower built from corona parts and the strongest glass ever pulled from a furnace.

In other times, the District of Districts would have worn spectacular lights. Even in the belly of the night, a million people would have been awake, burning candles and electric fires, and the little public blimps would have been climbing and falling, taking insomniacs and drunks to whatever door seemed like a good idea. But this was wartime. Fuel wasn’t scarce, but the generals demanded rationing to build character. Besides, just the glimmer of a few hundred lights would help the enemy wings navigate between the giant bloodwoods, and nobody wanted to make any attacks easier for the papio.

One window panel was unlocked. Diamond popped the latch and pushed the glass inward—a curved triangle rimmed with a rubbery white gasket made from corona fat.

They waited.

In the distance, in the direction of Diamond’s former home, were several more blasts, each with enough punch and heart to be heard by human ears.

Diamond crossed his arms, saying nothing.

They might wait until dawn, of course. Or this could be a wasted night, although that would be unusual.

Because he wanted to talk, King said, “Dreams.”

“None were interesting,” said Diamond.

Sometimes the boy endured glimpses of an earlier life, or at least that’s what he claimed. He told what he could remember and what he might remember, and sometimes he made allusions about a disembodied voice that came while he was awake, dispensing nuts of wisdom and nuts with no meat at all.

“What about your dreams?” the boy teased.

King had never suffered from those hallucinations. Sleep was oblivion for most of his soul, black and intense and relatively brief, while a lucid sliver of his mind remained on duty, constantly watching for enemies and potential allies.

The brothers stood together but not together. They looked like strangers who happened to share a destination.

Night held its pace, and talk fell away to bored silence, and King considered sleeping on his feet.

Finally the boy said, “She won’t come.”

“It’s too soon,” King agreed.

Five nights ago, while they stood exactly here, a pair of night-flying leatherwings had descended on the tower. One of the leatherwings circled nearby while his mate landed on the sill and reshaped her face, conjuring a human mouth and young woman’s voice.

“Good evening, brothers,” she had said.

Quest’s skills never stopped improving. Any body shape was possible, rendered with the proper feel and scent and countless details. The male leatherwing had been fooled by her disguise. King had heard the high-high-pitched cries demanding caution, professing love, and endlessly promising to remain loyal whatever happened. And as always, he felt admiration for this marvelous creature. But it wasn’t love, no. He wouldn’t allow love to blossom ever, no. But there were secret thoughts where his sister grew brave enough to slip inside the palace with King. Diamond was anywhere else, and once inside King’s quarters, she would summon a body like his, only female.

How she would look, he had no clue.

And the biggest part of his secret, what made his hearts race, was failing to imagine that wondrous moment.

Five nights ago, the brothers shared gossip about the war while their cautious sister described what she had seen. Tree-walkers had attacked the City of Round Roads, but they did it only because the city was already devastated. The papio didn’t defend wastelands. Heavily armored airships pulverized the broken buildings, and all but one returned to base intact.

The secret consensus and the public consensus were very similar: the war was going badly for both species. The papio were always short of fuel and bombs, while the tree-walkers could make all the alcohol and explosives they wanted from what remained of their forest. But the tree-walkers had lost far too many airships, and there was nervous, consistent talk that the stockpiles of corona parts were just about spent.

“I don’t see them preparing for any abduction raid,” Quest volunteered.

The boy always asked about the imaginary raids. Five nights ago, he accepted the news the same as always: silently, nodding once and then once more before steering the conversation back to Quest.

Their sister wore endless shapes, but she never stopped carrying her fears. Even when it was just the three of them, escape routes on all sides, she remained guarded, anxious. She might talk about where she went at night, but her daylight haunts were her own business. She had dropped clues that she was human-shaped now and again, but whenever King brought up the possibility, Quest offered various reasons why that disguise was too demanding and far too dangerous.

“Humans don’t notice leatherwings and epiphytes,” she said. “All humans care about are their own faces and the sounds those faces leak.”

King remembered every word spoken at the last meeting.

Diamond was probably doing the same.

The giant looked at his brother’s face, reading the seriousness. “What do you want to ask her tonight?”

“Nothing,” the boy lied.

Bright green eyes stared, King waiting.

Finally, Diamond admitted, “I wanted to talk about the Eight.”

Just mentioning the name caused the plates on King’s shoulders to life.

“Where is Divers?” the boy added.

They looked at one another for a long while. Then the human approached the open window, and King stood behind him, watching the naked hands touching the white gasket and the sill where their sister would perch, if she showed. But she wasn’t coming tonight. They should give up the hope and sneak back to their quarters before their absence was noticed by someone who cared enough to sound an alarm.

In the distance—a different direction this time—King heard the screaming of a single papio rocket flying flat and swiftly into a flurry of cannon fire, accomplishing nothing, the rocket continuing on its important path.

Diamond probably only heard a murmur of the battle. But he tilted his head, listening intently.

And then the rocket struck its target or maybe a lucky cannon shell, and the explosion spread outwards, the blaze outraced by a roar that made the great bloodwood tree shiver slightly.

Diamond breathed hard, and he pushed his head into the open air.

King watched the back of the creature’s close-shaved head, the tiny neck exposed. Was this a test? Was the boy testing if his brother could be trusted? Regret was a beast that preyed on other creatures, not King. He never once doubted his reasons for trying to cut off Diamond’s head and throw the pieces back to the coronas. One moment demanded one action, but moments changed. Conditions slipped away, leaving new conditions. This boy might remake his species, or he would fail, but King would more than likely remain the largest and smartest brother. Eventually the war would end, and the Archon would die in his sleep, more likely than not, and his son would inherit whatever remained of this Creation. At that moment, inside a single breath, there was no other future worth cherishing.

They listened to the night.

Finally Diamond pulled his head back inside the tower, ready to close the window and give up on their sister.

But then he paused.

Diamond stood as motionless and King was close behind him, watching him, not thinking about anything at all.