Diamond was like a statue.

And King heard the voice.

Very quietly, the voice said, “This is the Great Day.”

King couldn’t tell which of his ears had heard the voice, if any. He didn’t recognize the language, yet the words and meanings were perfectly understandable. Needing a worthy explanation, he decided that Diamond had pulled some trick on him, and maybe he should break Diamond’s spine in a few places, as a warning.

But then that little neck turned, and nothing in that human face hinted at a joke.

“You heard it,” said his tiny brother.

King said nothing.

“What did it tell you?”

King didn’t want to say.

“What day is this?” Diamond asked.

Then he answered his own question, saying, “This is the Great Day.”

King stared into the blackness.

“But you did hear it, right?”

“I heard something,” King allowed.

Diamond smiled brightly.

“But if this looks like a great day,” King said, “then your mystery voice damn well can’t tell the time.”

TWO

Human faces were difficult to mimic and human manners were impossible to duplicate. But early on and a million times since, Quest had witnessed how these myriad faces carried their own habits, unlikely quirks and singular tricks of the tongue. Being peculiar was normal. Being unique was ordinary. Humans had endless troubles trying to be human. Besides, the District of Districts had a reputation for its odd people, and war only made it more so: refugees fleeing the outlying Districts, particularly the wealthy and their grateful staffs; government officials sprouting from the shadows; officers too crafty to be sent into danger and young males learning to be soldiers in the high camps; plus the endless merchants taking “a little dust from every coin,” making themselves even wealthier. Most of the world’s tree-walkers were clinging to these the giant trees. There were even rumors about closing the borders to the outlying Districts, before the sheer mass of meat and money ripped the bloodwoods out by their roots.

In the midst of chaos, where almost every face belonged to a stranger, one fearful little soul could vanish easily, again and again.

Today and for almost six hundred days, Quest had wandered the forest by night, changing bodies and guises until dawn began to stir under the demon door. Forty-eight mornings ago, she found a chuckerhole and its owner, a ratty and selfish chucker monkey. The owner was waiting beside his escape hole, but he was also eager to defend his fortune of carefully hoarded trash. Chucker monkeys adored the color blue. That proud fellow assumed that Quest was here to steal his treasure, which was why he was easy to kill, and she ate him through the night, using the light of a fake glowdob to search the lost pieces of paper for anything useful.

Spotter uniforms were a deep wonderful blue, and the monkey had abducted several of those treasures.

The cleanest uniform carried the picture identification of a plain-faced woman. Quest donned the shirt and trousers, stolen boots and then a suitable body. With the plain face shining in the bright sunshine, she walked about in the human world. For ten days, nobody questioned her presence or her purpose. On the eleventh day, as she wandered the airy bottom of the forest, a genuine spotter called to her by her apparent rank.

Quest considered leaping into the open air, feigning suicide.

Suicides happened every day.

But the man kept talking, revealing his boundless ignorance as well as another possible stroke of luck.

“My shift’s done,” he claimed. “Please say you’re here to replace me.”

She carried a name and a woman’s voice. Using both, she asked why he would grab that conclusion.

“You look lost,” he said with considerable hope. “And I don’t think anyone could find our station on the first try.”

Hundreds of spotter stations occupied the low tips of the bloodwoods. These were not popular jobs. Crawling inside a big, overloaded room filled with telescopes and binoculars required a rare individual, someone who could stand the boredom and solitude, and this man was definitely not one of the best.

“I’ll show you where you work,” he said. “And I’ll replace you come night.”

She managed a believable smile, and later, when the grateful man in blue returned, Quest had a plausible life story to follow the smile. But the man never asked about where his partner came from or where she lived now, and he certainly didn’t care about her sisters’ names or why she voted for the Archon in the recent election.

Their relationship was instantly set, and perfect.

Quest roamed by night, changing form and directions while studying the sleeping world. She eavesdropped on small generals and linchpin clerks, massaging every word for meanings. She measured jet sounds and propeller sounds and the deep throb of the farthest battles. Every airship had a name that she knew, and every airship ran without lights in the darkness, trying not to be seen. But she noticed, and she often knew where the next battles would be fought, and because of her brother’s questions, she watched the reef with neurotic care, hunting signs that the papio were about to launch some great final assault on the District of Districts.

There were respectable reasons for concern. Prisoners and two-faced spies talked about hidden fleets of wings, some bearing designs that had never been deployed. And the papio had captured fletches and blimps during the war, any ten of which might come here by night, pretending to be friendly. Every home was scared, but the mood was worse inside the Archon’s palace. The treacherous and insatiable enemies were always coming tonight. Tomorrow. Soon. What was hiding inside those reef bunkers and surviving cities was beyond measure, which was why the citizenry and the high generals had no choice but think about little else.

That final night was the same as the previous thirty. Quest wandered and watched. Five airships and a squadron of wings destroyed one another among the dead blackwoods. Later she heard an important sound, but only once and she was far from the palace. By the time she arrived, the signal bell had been pulled back into its hiding hole, and she flew away, still wearing the leatherwing form.

Later, she plastered her body across a low limb, pretending to be an epiphyte, night-blooming flowers hiding an army of eyes.

Everything was memorable, but only because everything was always memorable.

Then the night felt done, and she was a different species of leatherwing gliding back to the chuckerhole, and after putting on the day’s body and the blue uniform, she rode a descending rope, travelling down to where the rope bent and started up again. And that was the moment when the demon floor parted, raining burst upwards with a fabulous roar and the first ruddy wave of sunlight.

A woman in such circumstances was free to run.

She ran.

The rain was still rising when she arrived. But oddly, the male spotter wasn’t waiting at the door. He was usually impatient to leave, preferring to escape before he was soaked, and his absence had to be a warning. Quest felt the strong urge to turn and flee, shucking off this over-trusted disguise afterwards. But the rain was just beginning, and it felt stronger than any storm from the last hundred mornings, and even her terrors had limits: nobody would be laying in ambush for her, not in this weather and with no place to hide.

The male spotter was indoors, but he wasn’t waiting.

Unlike every other morning, he was doing real work. The station’s largest telescope was fitted with special machinery, allowing spotters to see through the darkness half as well as any night-flying creature. The man’s right eye was fixed to the final lens. His left hand was holding the call-line receiver. A voice at the other end of the line was talking, and then the spotter said, “Shut up. Shut up.”