Physicians and other specialists had examined the Archon’s son. Every portion of King had been measured and imaged, and pieces of him were cut loose and then reattached again, sometimes in novel locations. Expert faces watched spellbound as the finger or several plates of armor silently rejoin the host body. A few surgeons were allowed to cut into his deepest parts, and that was how King learned that in addition to odd-shaped guts and nameless organs, he had eight ears hiding inside his purple blood and his purple meat, absorbing not just the world’s high-pitched squeals, but also the deep low throbs that only a few scientists knew about.

The Archon of Archons was proud of his son, and he was scared of him.

Fear was completely reasonable. On that score, father and son were in full agreement.

In the same way, King and List appreciated how badly things had gone when Diamond stepped into the world. Father had decided to flush the boy from his home and his old life, and the boy went farther in less time than he had imagined. But seeing a chance to teach the papio lessons in real power and real strength, both of them had seriously overstepped, and the lessons ended up being theirs to learn.

“I tried too much, which spoiled the prize,” said Father. “And of course I didn’t take your feelings to heart, did I?”

King had multiple hearts and mouths and eyes, and he ate like ten healthy men, growing every day.

“I was crazy with rage,” King admitted.

“And you tried to do too much.”

“But I learned, just like you learned.”

Send Diamond back to the coronas: that’s what King wanted, and he nearly succeeded. But he was hundreds of days wiser now, and unlike humans, he wasn’t so crippled by pride that he couldn’t see the good fortune in his failures. Life changed after that very bad day with Diamond, for the better. The human-like boy remained tiny compared to him, and weak, condemned to a small life in an isolated District. What’s more, King was no longer a surprise waiting to be seen. He was free to wander where he wished inside the Archon’s palace. Allies and opponents came visit the world’s most powerful man, and after being introduced as the famous son, King would select a piece of floor to defend through the evening, using those hidden ears to absorb every awful word being whispered about the host. He was also free to travel with his father, walking among the small and the poor. These were the people who appreciated their Archon. Freed of pretensions about power and wealth, they could love the world’s ruler, offering hands to be touched and happy words, even as they wisely kept their distance from the monster standing silently to one side.

Father and son had a shrewd difficult love for each other, with respect built from past misunderstandings and threats that neither would forget. Perhaps they looked bizarre, walking together in public. But when it was just the two of them, and when they were talking quietly, the best parts of their relationship came into view. King would give his impressions of the day, sometimes quoting whole speeches from the admirers, and then Father sucked air through his little teeth before giving advice about leadership and the fickleness of human nature.

Humans rarely impressed King.

One night his father said, “You hear quite a lot, and that might have value. Or maybe that’s a distraction. But I do know that you’re missing the spine in these perfectly rendered words.”

“What do you mean?” asked King, the plates on his shoulder lifting slightly.

“Those people don’t adore me,” the Archon said. “They show teeth and use the right words, but they don’t actually worship anybody except themselves. And that’s the way my species has always been.”

More plates rose, but his son said nothing.

“Next time, ignore the noise but watch their honest eyes. What these people enjoy are my policies, although they know almost nothing about my decisions and my laws. They heartily approve of my tone, which reassures them without making them spend much effort. Decisions carried out in my name are what make me real. Where I take no stand, they don’t see me. And even my richest, most learned supporters don’t often think about me. The wealthy and the comfortable relish my tax codes. They love my commitment to order and one particular species of fairness, the one that blesses them. They worship the eternal supremacy of the District of Districts. Bright as they might be, the very best place they can imagine is the place where they happen to live today. The world they see is the world they want. That’s what their eyes are seeing when they sing about whoever is in charge, and that fortunate soul is temporarily me.”

King wasn’t easily amazed. Yet inside that one conversation, after the boy’s armor had laid flat and he stared at the message itself, he discovered that people weren’t as simple as he had envisioned, and the Archon was the best among them—a subtle creature wielding an array of talents that his young son had still not begun to understand.

That was why King was at his desk, conscientiously reading his daily lessons.

It was morning in the world, and he was hard at his studies, just like every other morning and through most of every day too. Eventually King would take charge of the world. His name and nature had settled that matter long ago. But first, before that great day, he had to learn quite a lot about these red-meat creatures, their honest eyes and their fluid, fickle affections.

King preferred to stand while studying, and his tutor stood nearby, about to ask one of her nagging questions. This morning’s book was ancient—a government text about the weights of ordinary objects—and she would want her pupil’s interpretation about the language or the hand that wrote the words, or maybe she would use the document as evidence that jooton nuts were exactly the same size now as they were five hundred generations ago, only they were called ooloo nuts by the dead souls that ate them for breakfast.

King felt ready for any question.

But when she finally cleared her throat and spoke, he didn’t hear her voice. He didn’t hear any words or the hint of meaning wrapped around this exceptionally dull lesson.

A low sound had washed into the room.

His buried ears heard the intrusion, and he felt the vibrations with his bones, and some part of his rapid, ill-mapped mind recognized what he was hearing. Yet he had never experienced any sound so enormous or deep in the register. This happened on occasion—the unexpected would arrive along with a potent sense of the familiar. Ancient memories teased him while he spread one hand across the time-worn page, both thumbs extended. She spoke and the moments passed, and he ignored everything but the distant rumbling, trying to decipher distance, trying to guess a direction. But the vibration ended too soon, forcing him to wait, holding his breath and focus against the pressure of an old woman’s words.

Then another deep rumbling arrived, followed by several more woven over one another. Suddenly five recitations had passed with the same spent breath inside him, and the tutor was watching her singular student with a guarded expression. What was happening? Was the monster angry, and if so, was she going to suffer now? King’s talents were gradually improving when it came to reading faces, and he remembered one very good lesson:

The proper noise could make any human happy.

King abandoned his desk, intentionally towering over her. “I don’t mean to be rude, Master. But something awful is happening in the Corona District.”

The woman was relieved first and then startled, that wrinkled, spent face believing him. But she insisted on asking, “How would you know?”

There was no time for responses, polite or crude. Alarms were already sounding inside a distant room, and people were running in the hallways outside, familiar voices saying something about test and false reports, begging that this was nothing but a security trial, please.