Diamond couldn’t speak.

What may or may not have been a laugh emerged and failed. Then King gave him one little kick before saying, “But I’m even smarter than him. And you’re probably a lot smarter than your parents too.”

Diamond found just enough breath to say, “I feel stupid.”

The light changed abruptly. Emerging from the reef’s shadow, The Ruler of the Wind found the late sun blazing up from below. Some kind of minor magic turned the glass windows dark. The room grew only a little brighter, and Diamond looked at the feet in front of him. He studied his feet and King’s, and then King said, “My brain is incredible. Nothing is like it, except maybe yours.”

“Why is it incredible?”

“The first man that had me was a slayer, like Merit. He didn’t know what I was until he got home, and then he got scared. Scared and so he got drunk and tried to kill me. I was a monster, he decided. He used knives on me. He cut into my chest and tore out my hearts, but I grew new hearts and my chest healed. Then he chopped off my little legs and my arms and new ones came out of the stumps, which made him angrier and more scared, and humans don’t do well when they’re scared.”

“What happened next?” Diamond asked.

“Oh, he got even drunker, and he fell asleep.”

Diamond didn’t know what it meant to be drunk.

“That’s awful,” he said.

“Don’t talk,” King said. “I’m telling the story.”

The boy nodded, letting time run along.

“Anyway, the slayer had a woman friend. I don’t know why, but the woman felt sorry for me. So she fed me milk and nuts, and I grew big again. The slayer slept for a long time, and then I was mostly back where I was before. And when the slayer woke and figured out what happened, he beat her hard and kicked her outside and went back to trying to kill me.

“I was an abomination. We’re both abominations, and the man knew that he’d get in trouble for all kinds of reasons. So he put my head into a vice, face down so he didn’t have to look at these eyes. I was a baby, and he fixed me down good and used a big power drill and fat steel bits to cut a fat round hole in the back of my skull. He cut faster than I could heal and got through the bone after breaking the first three bits, and then he took his hardest, best bit and tried to force it down inside my brain.”

Diamond touched the back of his own head.

“Human brains are soft and wet and gooey. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Shake their heads hard, and they forget who they are.” King bent his knees, putting his face close to Diamond’s face. “My brain isn’t gooey. This body is strong, but it isn’t half as tough as the brain inside my skull. That stupid man tried to kill me. He used that spinning piece of hard steel to cut at something that can’t be cut. He burned up the bit and all the others, and his drill overheated and died, and he shot me in the head with every bullet in the house, and he even used one of the big slayer harpoons. I was this baby with my skull ripped open, and he was ready to put a fourth harpoon into his target. Three others had already busted. But he was drunk again and angry and trying to aim, and that’s when the girlfriend brought the police to his house, and that’s how my father found out about me. The police told the Archon. And my father has kept me safe ever since.”

Diamond watched the alien face—the little flicks that the eyes made and how each mouth moved in its own fashion.

“I bet your brain is the same as mine,” King said.

“Maybe it is.”

“Pretend it is,” King said. “That means nothing can kill it. But that doesn’t protect you from everything. What if some sharp knife with muscle behind it were to rip that head off your shoulders, and what if that head and your body were cut into little, little pieces, and your brain and everything else was dropped out of an airship running fast over a place where no person can go? What if you were thrown away and swallowed by a thousand coronas? Do you believe anybody would ever find enough of your bits to make you live again?”

A day of fear and the unexpected had reached this place, this monstrous moment. Diamond was terrified and cold and angry in ways that he didn’t recognize. He stared at the inhuman face, managing one worthwhile breath before saying, “Your father doesn’t want this.”

“My father,” said King. “My father wants many things. And so long as I’m the only son, no one else is in his dreams.”

Diamond started to shout.

King grabbed the boy’s throat and shook him until he was limp. Then he stood up, just the one arm lifting Diamond off his feet. They stared at each other’s faces. A rude wet sound came from the eating mouth, and the breathing mouth said, “I am not cruel. I promise, I’ll cut off the head, and you won’t feel anything again.”

Diamond was limp, and then he moved. The dangling right foot started to kick, and King pushed back his hips, another curse leaking out of the eating mouth. That’s when Diamond struck with his right fist. Endless practice wouldn’t have made him able to hit harder. Terror and rage gave him power. He aimed at the high mouth, the breathing mouth, but King started to jerk his head back. The tiny fist hit the eating mouth before the lips could clench, and the knuckles hit teeth, and then the hand vanished and a hard long tongue retreated deep into the body, recoiling against the alien taste.

King bit.

Diamond drove his left thumb into a glassy green eye.

Eyelids encased in scales shut, but too late. King cursed and shook his head, and he bit hard enough to shred flesh to the bone. But wounds meant blood, and the salty crimson blood ran fast across the tongue and down the throat. There was a choking sound followed by red bubbles full of stomach gases that burst, making the air foul. King let go of Diamond’s neck and bit harder, and he punched the human head with alternating fists. But that changed nothing except to slice open the boy’s face ten different ways, and it was Diamond who tried to laugh, talking through gore, saying, “Give up. Give up. Give up.”

The breathing mouth yelled, “No.”

Diamond shoved his left hand into the soft wet hole, grabbing a tongue that was as delicate and soft as anything on that armored body. Then he yanked and kicked, and King tried backing away. He dragged the boy until one heel caught the leg of a chair, and he tumbled with a thud to the floor.

Diamond found himself on top.

He shoved his right knee into the neck, but the overlapping plates were harder than steel. King kept chewing and throwing blows at Diamond’s face and chest, and Diamond put the pain aside, watching the face, studying the emotions rolling across it.

King started battering the arm inside his breathing mouth.

Diamond drove his forearm deeper, cutting off King’s airflow.

And King panicked. He swung and swung with the fists, wasting oxygen by beating what was already mutilated. Then he picked his rump off the floor, and with hands and feet dragged both of them toward the windows. A long chair faced the window, offering passengers a comfortable seat while watching the perfect world pass by. A neat stack of tools was waiting on the carpet: two saws and a long sword and boning knives just like the Master’s, only newer. This was where King had planned to butcher Diamond. An empty cloth sack was waiting to hold all of the living pieces.

Suffocating and desperate, King pulled them toward the sharpened steel. Diamond climbed forward and pushed down hard at the head, trying to slow their progress. But he was too weak and much too small, and this fight wasn’t buying more than a few extra moments.

Through the window and through the walls came the urgent piercing sound of a horn wailing.

The airship’s engines began to throttle up again.

King’s motions slowed, and the throat around Diamond’s left hand began to relax.