The distant voice shut up.

“You don’t understand,” the man said. “I see what I see. And it’s there.”

The telescope was supposed to be pointed at the reef and the papio. But instead the great brass gears had directed it straight down, aiming through a hole in the floor that had never made sense to Quest.

“When the rain stops, look,” the spotter screamed.

Quest stood in the doorway, letting the water spray everything.

The voice on the line said, “But I won’t sound the alarm.”

“Then don’t,” said the spotter.

Quest made a sound inside her throat.

Then a man who couldn’t even identify an alien standing in his midst looked up, noticing her and smiling at her as he reported with great joy, “It’s another one of the big ones, the famous ones.”

“Which ones?” she asked.

“The coronas,” he said. “It’s another big black ancient. You know. The sort that brought us the Children.”

Coming into any room, Diamond always looked at Elata first.

Elata sat beside the long table. Her back was straight, a book opened where the plate belonged. Eggs and fresh crescents were cooking in the kitchen, making the air warmer, brighter. Chocolate eyes didn’t look up. A finger and thumb were eager to turn the page. Diamond’s eyes wanted to look at nothing else. He always embarrassed himself at moments like this. The girl was a younger, prettier version of her dead mother. The long black hair needed brushing, and she was wearing bedclothes and an old wine-colored robe, and nothing about her body was revealed . . . yet the boy spent a full breath doing nothing but absorbing her.

“It seems nobody can sleep,” Mother called from the kitchen.

Thick windowless walls barely blunted the sound of water exploding upwards across the bloodwoods. The strongest wood in the world was twisting, and the entire palace groaned in response.

“Motion is a blessing,” Father used to say. “Bending is stronger than being rigid and stubborn. And that’s triply true with people too.”

Other people were sharing the breakfast table.

Master Nissim sat beside Elata. Reading glasses rested lightly on the tip of his spectacular nose, bone frames holding bright new lenses. A tightly folded copy of the morning news was perched before him. Seldom was occupying the opposite chair, reading the opposite page. “Hi, Diamond,” he said without looking up.

“Hi.”

“Finished?” Nissim asked.

“No, sir,” said Seldom, squinting at the tightly packed words.

The Master sat taller in a chair than anyone else. He had recently started to grow a beard, the whiskers emerging white and coarse. Removing his glasses, he told the newcomer, “You look well rested.”

Diamond was walking towards the farthest chair.

Turning the page, Elata finally glanced at Diamond. “That’s sarcasm,” she said.

“Only if it’s humorous,” Nissim said.

Seldom rubbed his eyes. “Some battle woke me.”

“Not me,” Elata said.

Diamond began to sit, but then his mother called out. The words, “Come in here,” were wrapped in a tone that could only mean him.

His bottom lifted off the chair.

Nissim was pouring bangle tea into his milk. Once more, he asked, “Are you finished?”

The tall boy leaned forwards, grinning. “Done.”

“Do the folding, please.”

Shaped like a giant funnel blossom, the news stood with its broad end down, flat outside faces defined by complicated folds hiding many more pages. Spidery fingers opened the blossom, hunting for fresh words.

“What did you read?” asked the Master.

“We shot down five of theirs in the Mists,” said Seldom, “and only one of ours got damaged.”

“What does that mean?”

“We lost two, and they lost three.”

That battle was fought the day before yesterday.

“Anything else?” Nissim asked.

“I bet the fight wasn’t far inside the District of the Mists,” the skeptic said. “Probably near the border with our District.”

“Our District.” Seldom was the only one among them who claimed the District of District as his own.

Diamond stopped in the kitchen doorway. The room was bright and tall, with enough counter space for three servants to help prepare every possible meal. But the one lady who helped feed them was gone. Once Mother felt well enough, she made certain that their cook had a pleasant new job waiting, and then she fired her.

“You’ll never eat as well as you did,” she told her extended family. “But who deserves feasts, these days?”

Mother was finishing a wide skillet of eggs. Without looking up, she said, “Take the crescents out, put them in their bowl.”

The oven door creaked as it fell open. The curled loafs of bread were resting on a sheet of black iron, their tips just beginning to burn. The mittens were hiding. Diamond used his hands, setting the iron on the polished coral counter.

Mother disapproved. He knew she would stare, and he imagined their conversation as he emptied the sheet two crescents at a time, the tips of each finger burnt worse than the oily bread. But Mother was ignoring him. Instead of the conversation that he expected, she said to her companion, “I told you two sweet nuts. How many was that?”

“One and one and one,” said Good.

“Which is three,” she warned.

The monkey looked at his best old friend, trying to share a grin. Then dipping his head, he moaned, “Sorry.”

And he laughed.

“Take the crescents out,” Mother repeated.

Blisters were already turning back into ordinary flesh. As Diamond matured, the healing came faster.

Mother shoveled the golden eggs into a matching bowl. “These too.”

Diamond took the crescents, then the eggs. Mother had the nuts. Sweet nuts were the one indulgence—from one of the last happy blackwoods surviving inside their old District.

“Anything else?” she asked the table.

Reading wasn’t allowed with food. Master Nissim set the news aside, and Elata closed her book and sat on it. Every chair was filled. There was room at the long table for others, but Mother didn’t like how it looked. Empty chairs were just another item on that very long list of sights that made her sad.

Good sat on a box balanced on his chair. If he put one foot on the table, he would be sent to his room.

His room was Mother’s room.

The carafe of oil was passed first, a little poured into the center of their plates, and after the food was claimed, the oil was passed a second time. Every bowl ended with Diamond. His plate was a serving platter, and his appetite was as big as any two others. Twenty days ago, he had visited the Grand University for the single purpose of sitting alone inside a special room—a sealed room built specifically for him—and he ate what he wanted and breathed naturally. Unseen people measured the oxygen used and the carbon dioxide coming out of him. The amounts were in balance, and what energy wasn’t making new tissue went into heating his blood and stockpiling energy inside each of his busy cells. Numbers proved what everyone knew: his metabolism was like an hairyheart elf’s, only on a giant scale. Scientists and doctors couldn’t find anything that was genuinely, unabashedly magical, at least in that one narrow test. But all the same, the word “magic” was used quite a lot.

“Somebody needs to talk,” Mother told the table.

She was sitting where she always sat, beside her son.

Master Nissim was the best hope. He smiled in a thoughtful way while looking at her, carefully measuring her state of mind. She didn’t seem especially depressed or sensitive this morning, which was why he risked saying, “I’m taking my class on a little journey today.”

That was the first word any of them had heard about this.

“The four of us are going to visit the Grand University. Again, yes. But we’re exploring a different specialty. The world’s leading expert on spheres and their mathematics has kindly agreed to make my students feel stupid.”