“Oh, I have nothing,” he said. “The boys are blessings from the Creators, and they belong to all of us.”

Nobody spoke.

The narrow face was satisfied, smug. “I know the full story,” the Archon continued. “Four gifts were inside that ancient corona. Two of them are ours now, and two more remain missing. But big as it is, this world doesn’t hide anything for very long.”

“And you want to capture the others,” the Master said.

“I want what’s best for our species.”

“Which is what?”

But the Archon didn’t respond. He shook his head and turned, spending a long moment admiring the view from this rough little valley: the vastness of air and the hanging forest and the coronas’ scalding realm and that thin yellowing light of a sun that no human had ever truly seen.

The doctor hurried up the gangway, happy to vanish.

The crippled man stood at the bottom, carried by his last good leg. Holding a long rifle, he glared at Master Nissim, lifting the barrel and lowering it again while cursing quietly.

“Have you seen anyone else?” the Archon asked.

“A couple of the slayer’s gang,” the man reported. “Gawking at the ship, a little too curious for my mood, so I sent them on their way.”

“Good.”

Father and Mother dropped to their knees, and Mother pressed her thumb against her son’s wet cheek.

She said, “Honey.”

Diamond wasn’t sure when his tears started flowing.

“There has to be another way,” she said.

Then Father touched Diamond on the shoulder, saying, “About our plan.”

Mother looked at Father.

“King is a complication,” Father said. “I might have guessed something like this . . . but I couldn’t . . . ”

His voice faded away.

“You have a plan?” Mother asked.

“Something risky,” Father said. “And that was before we knew about the other boy.”

She looked at both of them, and then she looked at the ground, saying, “You have to save our son.”

“I know, and I will.”

Diamond’s face was wet and sore, and his body shook, and looking up the gangway, he was nothing but weak. Too exhausted to move, much less climb any distance, he found hope. Maybe he was finally sick. Too much had happened too quickly, and his strength was gone, and the often-promised illness was going to push him into a scorching fever, destroying the powers that he never wanted in the first place.

Was that something to wish for?

The Archon whispered to the crippled man and then started up the gangway, looking back just once.

“King,” he called out.

Diamond’s brother hurried to catch the Archon, walking beside the human and out of sight.

Again, the long gun lifted.

“Hugs and kisses,” the man said. “Hurry up.”

Mother sobbed, grabbing hold of her son, squeezing until her joints cracked. Father put his arms around both of them, leaving his eyes open. He looked up at the airship until the man again said, “Hurry up.”

“We have to go,” Father told Mother.

His parents walked away. Diamond was dreadfully weak, but he didn’t collapse. Another bodyguard came close and motioned for him to follow, and Diamond took one little step and a long step. Then he stopped and turned, looking at Elata and Seldom.

“Thank you,” he told them.

Surprised, Seldom asked, “For what?”

“For buying me that food,” he said. “And everything else.”

The children nodded, faces dipping.

Elata said, “Good bye.”

“Yeah,” said Seldom, sniffing. “Bye.”

Diamond walked up to the Master. “And thank you, sir,” he said.

“I wish this had gone better,” Nissim said.

The boy nodded in agreement, and the bodyguard gave him a nudge.

Reaching under his shirt, Diamond pulled out the knife and sheath, handing them to the Master. “These are yours. I don’t need them anymore.”

“All right then.” The missing fingertip helped grab the hilt, and smart eyes winked at him, one eye and then the other.

Diamond passed the crippled man, starting up the gangway. What seemed like weakness had turned into something else. The lightness in his body came from boundless energy, nervous and relentless. He had never been this awake, this alert. Every detail in the world was obvious. Time was slowing. Without trying, Diamond pulled ahead of the three men who had followed him this morning. Then he paused, looking back at the sad people standing close together.

“Seldom,” he called out.

The boy swallowed and said, “What?”

“Wings,” Diamond said.

“What?”

“I can feel them,” he said. “I feel them growing.”

FIFTEEN

Humans were easy to scare, and they remained afraid afterwards. Yet they hated that emotion, so much so that they would do any mad thing to get free of the fear that made their hearts hurry and their soft, fragile hands shake.

King wasn’t at all like humans.

King was always afraid, and he was happy because of it.

There were days when the boy believed otherwise. It was easy to imagine the creatures surrounding him were right and smart while he was plainly wrong inside. Humans didn’t measure every face as a potential threat or a temporary ally. King did. They didn’t consider every shadow and closed door as hiding places for enemies. But the boy’s deep nature was to do exactly that. Even in the presence of well-known enemies, humans could relax enough to keep their breathing slow, their manner easy. A man like King’s father—a leader who had accumulated status and great power—could allow himself be surrounded by his worst foes. King would be too alarmed and pensive to ever do that, at least not for long. Yet those wicked people would smile at his father, and the Archon would show his teeth to them, and it seemed deeply unnatural that nobody would ever make fists, much less start to batter each other’s face.

But as King grew older, more experienced and quite a lot smarter, he began to understand what was true and what was weak.

Fear had more than one shape, more than a single definition. Human fear was a small wild shambles, tiny when set beside King’s magnificent fear. Among his tutors were retired soldiers who had won medals by battling bandits and wild beasts. They were proud bold men, but when they spoke to one another, usually with drinks in hand, they eventually confessed that their fears had to be controlled with training and iron resolve and more training. In their experience, the finest warriors could fight only so long before the terror became an enemy, making them physically ill. Sometimes they discussed the great old wars against the papio and how soldiers came home afterwards but never truly came home, how they couldn’t sleep a normal night again and cried often and drank too much. Some of those broken men even did the unthinkable, climbing to the bottom of the canopy, insulting the Creators by falling into the air, letting the coronas and the sun claim their defeated selves.

The humans were cursed, and they were cursed because their emotions were too small and untrustworthy.

King was nothing like a human.

He was unique and significant and blessed.

Even the simple task of standing was a different experience for King. Humans didn’t care about the floor under them, or the tree branch, or the dusty patch of coral. One place was as good as another, in their eyes. But King always knew what was beneath him and what was nearby. Everybody was a threat. Even the most familiar, benign face had to be measured for its intentions, and the body below that face had to be weighed for weaknesses and blind spots. Everyone scared King, without fail. Even his father—no, particularly his father—had to do very little to worry the orphaned boy. Was he going to punish King today? Or worse, was he going to spoil him? Or maybe this would be the terrible moment when the powerful Archon decided that the armored boy had become too much trouble, or he showed too little promise, and the good in King’s life was about to be stripped away.