Diamond likes to stare at the uniform, letting his mind be fooled into seeing a person dangling against the black wall.

The outside door is always locked at night. Steel and choice woods are stronger than the tree. On the other side of that door, on this side of the curtain, sits one of the guards. His stool is tall and easy to tip. The guard is never supposed to sleep. That’s why Diamond uses knuckles to hit the door, and he steps back and counts the moments before his protector thumps at the wood with an elbow, saying hello.

Then the boy returns to his room.

Good stirs long enough to lift his fierce head, staring at the half-naked shape that approaches his nest.

“Sleep,” says Diamond.

“Sleep,” the monkey agrees, curling into a fetal tuck and lost again.

But the other inhabitant is too alert to climb back into bed, much less try to rest. Instead he picks soldiers from the shelves and arranges them in a half-circle, every blind face pointing at their owner, their general.

Nothing about the moment feels special.

Many nights stretch too long, and the boy often wakes early and sits near one of the night lights, playing quietly, waiting for fatigue to claim him.

If he is patient, sometimes the dreams reveal themselves.

But this is not one of those nights.

Diamond moves the soldiers into a perfect circle, every face looking outwards, and he leaves them, walking to the window. A greater richer darkness sits beyond the reinforced panes. The landing juts far out into the air, and the net is a popular perch for the glowing insects and buzzing insects that don’t exist in the day. With an ear to the glass, he listens to the rasping, chittering songs. Sitting to his right is a second guard, barely in view, feet up and eyes plainly closed and the boy wondering what he could throw at the window that would scare the man.

A heavy rubber ball sits inside a toy box, waiting to be used.

Diamond follows his memory to the box and opens the lid, reaching inside with his free hand, memory closing his fingers. The ball is black, but everything is black in the darkness. Remembering the wooden soldiers, Diamond crosses the room again, passing the ball to the other hand and back again, never looking where his bare feet touch.

One of the soldiers isn’t where he expects it to be.

The boy has never been bigger, never heavier, and the heel of his left foot pushes hard against the bayonet and then the helmeted head.

Pain is quick, but he is too distracted to notice.

The soldier fights bravely, jabbing the fake blade into the giant’s foot, but the pressure is enormous and an ancient flaw in the wood reveals itself with a bright sharp crack that makes a monkey jump to his feet.

Diamond drops the ball and then his body. The sharpest piece of tantalize wood is buried inside him, and it hurts no worse than a nuisance. Mostly he is angry and sorry, unsure how the toy was somewhere it didn’t belonged. Two pieces of the body are on the floor, and he yanks the third from his heel, the blood already retreating inside the torn skin while the entire foot warms even more than normal.

The soldier might be repaired.

If Diamond asks, Father will do that.

But the questions of glue and craftsmanship fall away. The burly monkey stands at the edge of the bed, his head cocked to one side while the black eyes gaze at nothing. Maybe he can hear something. That’s why Diamond listens, following Good’s example. And maybe he hears something too. But when it happens and even afterwards, the sensation isn’t so much like a voice or any other sound. No. It is as if the little sounds of the world cease. The endless play of tree trunks bending and winds drifting, insects celebrating the dark while fifty million souls mutter in their collective sleep—all of these noises suddenly fall away.

Silence finds Diamond.

And the silence has shape and color, and it has meanings as deep and true as any word, and this misplaced boy suddenly hears what can only be a warning.

“Be wary,” says the presence, the Other.

Diamond isn’t breathing, and he might never breathe again.

“Danger is everywhere,” it says.

In the quietest fashion, Diamond whispers, “Monsters.”

“There are no monsters,” says the voice.

Diamond fumbles with words, with concepts. Then to the invisible agent, he says, “But there are evil ones.”

“No.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is no evil,” the voice warns. “Everything is good, and that is the ruin of All . . . !”

ONE

Wind came before the sun.

Nothing changed and nothing changed, night holding tight to the world, and then wet hot masses of angry air rose in a thousand places, suddenly punching their way through the demon floor far below the vast tree canopy.

Shifting pressures were felt. Every ear heard portentous rumblings from below. Leaves twisted in response, ready to let the wind pass, while nocturnal insects found hiding places and sleeping birds instinctively clung to prized perches. The empty air between the demon floor and canopy was crossed in a few recitations. The first impacts lifted small limbs while broad strong branches creaked and moaned but refused to bend, fighting the rising wind until the atmosphere turned furious, and then the entire canopy groaned with wrenching voices, the first touch of the day driving itself up where the great trees hung from the roof of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of nights had ended exactly this way, and Marduk had endured each of those mornings. Strong dead heartwood and the vigorous sapwood formed a single column encased inside bark and walkways and landings and homes. Every airship was in its berth, securely tethered. Bright electric lights blazed in the gloom, along with luminescent panels and forgotten candles. Rope lifts and elevators were shut down, and the few people who found themselves outdoors felt the tree shiver and heard the wind’s roar pressing close, and buttoning down whatever raingear was in reach, they either dropped low and grabbed hold of any likely handle, or they took a different measure of the danger, walking to the edge of a landing, watching the gale come straight up into their grinning faces.

Good and Diamond were awake and maybe they had been for a little while. Each yawned, and the boy sat up in bed as the first spray of rain swept across the window, and the monkey jumped to the floor and shuffled over to the old chamber pot, efficiently doing his business.

On the floor beneath the bed was a fancy metronome—a recent gift from his Archon, from Prima. Diamond pulled it out. Eight hundred recitations was the count—a short night. But he had guessed twelve hundred, judging by how hard he slept and how rested he felt and no residue of dreams.

Good helped himself to the bakebear fruit left from last night. Picking up the chamber pot, Diamond walked down the hallway, dumping the pot and using the toilet and then washing his hands with the hard soap that smelled like bride-witch flowers. By the time he returned to his room, the wind was screaming and there was as much water as there was air outside. The monkey was back on the bed, napping on Diamond’s warm pillow. Diamond pushed his face against the reinforced glass. An electric security light rocked above the locked gate. Two guards were huddled beside the gate, one inside and one out, each wearing a rubber poncho blacker than the rest of the world, resembling lumpy globs of corona fat, faceless and unwilling to move. But the third guard had abandoned his post at the house doorway, standing at the far end of the landing instead. Wearing a long poncho, the figure was perched on the brink of the open air, both hands on the railing and the feet apart, short strong legs and the stronger shoulders able to fend off the gusts and the sprays of water and every reasonable urge to stay safe and dry.