But the crippled man just shook his head. “Those are long shots. Don’t you know anything? We’re shooting at the coronas, now that they’re nipping at our tail feathers.”

“Both of you, shut up,” the Archon said.

The men fell silent.

Turning to the healthy guard, he said, “Grab the child. Now. We’re going to the hanger, to the escape ship.”

The guard took a wary step toward Diamond, and then he paused.

Talking to the crippled man, the Archon said, “Stay here with King. When he’s strong enough, come join us.”

“I can carry your son now,” the healthy guard volunteered.

“No, he has to save himself . . . after trying this crap . . . ”

King laid still, armored eyes closed tight.

Looking at his new hand and the long steel blade, Diamond marshaled his strength for one more swing.

The guard took another step toward him.

“I told you to grab him,” the Archon said.

“But he’s got that sword.”

“You think the baby’s dangerous?”

“He put your son down. That’s some kind of power.”

Furious, the Archon said, “You have a gun. Shoot him. A bullet in the chest and you carry him like a sack.”

The guard looked down at his pistol, apparently surprised to find it waiting in his hand.

Diamond lifted the sword and spun, ready to try another desperate whack at the window. But he didn’t have time. The guard lifted the pistol. King was still flat on the floor. Then the guard started to aim, and King moved. Furious and swift and nearly silent, he reached for the guard’s hand and the gun. Diamond hit the window once more, accomplishing nothing. The guard’s wrist shattered with a hard crack, and the man crumbled and screamed, and King was standing over him, the pistol inside his strange hand.

The Archon shouted, “No.”

He told the guard in the doorway, “Shoot both of them.”

“I could try doing that,” the crippled man replied. “Or I could do nothing and finish out this damned awful day.”

King turned to Diamond, and the one mouth asked, “So what’s the rest of your father’s plan?”

“I jump and he catches me.”

“What if he misses?”

“A corona eats me, and Father spends the rest of his life hunting for that corona and for me.”

King’s mouths made different little sounds, and then he turned to stare at the Archon, saying nothing. For a long moment he was as still as any statue. Then he said, “Save myself,” and the pistol lifted. King aimed carefully and pulled the trigger and six bullets struck the glass, ricocheting wildly across the suite. But the seventh bullet pierced the pane, cracks spreading out from the center.

Once again, Diamond swung the sword, and this time shards of heavy glass tumbled free of the airship, and the sword followed the glass downwards, spinning fast as one boy leaped into that chaos, plunging toward the late day sun.

SIXTEEN

Diamond was on his back, flattened against the roaring air, waiting to be scared. He promised himself to act brave when the terror grabbed him, crying a little maybe but with the stiff-faced resolve of a wooden soldier. Except he wasn’t scared. Not so much. He felt safer while falling than when he was standing with King and the Archon. And what surprised him even more, he was comfortable. A warm wind blew up into him, and nothing was touching him, and the airship was slowly growing smaller while the little fletch flew just beneath it. The fletch’s belly looked as if it was burning, bright purple flames flowing around stubborn patches of blackness. Diamond’s skin seemed to be dipped in the same rich purple. Both ships were pressing ahead, desperate to leave him behind, but they still felt close. Only a few moments had passed since he jumped free. And now the flames weakened and then dissolved, save for one stubborn blotch that meant nothing. Diamond’s father had taught him today: to coronas, significances were carried by a light’s patterns and rhythms, and even more so, by the intricate darkness between.

A tiny figure came out from the slayer’s ship.

Diamond moved when he shouldn’t, flipping and spinning before ending on his belly, gazing down at a great forest that had grown old inside one brief day. He wasn’t truly scared. This was so much easier than fighting his brother. But a dread had started to claim him. He contemplated falling for a very long time and then vanishing, maybe forever, and this shouldn’t happen, not in this way, and what shook him was the powerful sense that he was failing to meet some great old promise.

Silver disks moved above the demon floor. From high overhead, the coronas looked delicate and slow and lovely. They looked simple. Human eyes wouldn’t be able to count them in a glance, but Diamond could. He found sixty-one of the giants, and then he counted again, discovering five less. Then the largest individual changed shape, compressing its body as it turned, and once it was narrow like a spear, it dropped. It plunged. The demon floor absorbed the impact, and a splash of golden vapor welcomed the animal back into its world.

Seven more coronas followed while others continued to circle, not one of them working to climb this high. The fletch wasn’t calling to them anymore. The raging, insulting voice was finished. But three coronas had been threatening the airship. He hadn’t seen them. Were they gone too? And almost too late, Diamond rolled onto his back again.

The heat fell over him. It struck hard and there was a terrific wild irresistible motion. His flesh felt ready to burn as the creature passed just above him, no warning that it was close, and then it was past, and he felt its scorching body and the slipstream that rolled him and spun him and left him tumbling on a new course.

Feet down, he fell faster.

The corona was smaller than the one Father killed, and it was enormous, and graceful, and spectacularly alive. The great body was as fluid as it was solid, silver with glimmers of color washed away by sunlight. Diamond thought of umbrellas. He thought of certain mushrooms and wide bowls filled with sweet oils. A giant round mouth buried in the creature’s flatter side, surrounded by a tangle of necks sporting jaws and teeth and eyes. A jet of furnace air roared from that mouth. Then the jet quit. Sharp percussive blasts shook Creation. Bladders were made huge and empty in an instant, and the body was enlarged, swollen and buoyant, matching his pace of falling, the trailing necks and heads catching up to the body and flowing into it as the beast twisted around, deftly starting back toward him again.

That gaping central mouth swallowed air, compressing each breath, making its jets ready to fire again.

A brave pair of necks stretched far away from the body, supplying the eyes that stared at this tiny apparition, this human-like creature that fell from above perhaps to feed a great soul.

Diamond flattened again.

The corona fell a little ways beneath him before swelling more. Diamond flipped and flipped, trying to flee, but the vacuums balancing its weight. Infinitely more graceful, his companion deftly matched each of the boy’s desperate moves. A single neck extended, triple jaws opening and tongues emerging, and Diamond rolled and kicked, but a tongue touched his foot and pulled back and the head retreated a moment later.

The corona had wanted nothing but a taste.

In the roaring wind, a voice shouted.

Diamond didn’t understand words or guess directions. It was possible to believe that one of the corona’s heads had called to him—not the most incredible notion in a day filled with impossibilities.

“Leave me alone,” he shouted at the head. “Go away.”

Then a man screamed, telling someone, “Leave him alone.”

Father.

Diamond turned onto his back again. The fletch had pulled away from the airship, a final few glands still leaking purple. One of the two remaining coronas was clinging to the slayer’s ship, jaws biting into the skin and struts as the long necks twisted, wrenching free whatever was weakest.