King broke into a hard, breathless sprint.

Father’s favorite office was at the end of a long hall. The room was no larger than any other, but it offered wide windows looking across the District. There were no canopies in bloodwood country. Trees grew towards the morning’s brilliance, branches covering the trunks from their broad foundations almost to the pointed tips. Branches never reached far into the air. The sun was welcomed, able to rise up to the highest portions of this forest, which was only one reason why this District was the ruler of the others—the reliable fire from below washed away shadow and the other species of darkness, letting a multitude of crops grow and grow.

The boy found his father standing before a long table. Ornate receivers were clasped in both hands, and more receivers were on the tables behind him, pulled from their cradles. Dozens of voices were shouting from the outlying districts, each voice sputtering, distorted by the long reaches of wire. King heard the words and understood what they were describing, but what did more than impress him—what shook his unbreakable mind—was the utter terror filling the only face that he had ever loved.

“Hold tight you shits. Hold tight.”

The walkway dangled from the blimp like an exhausted arm. Boards and rope and assorted bodies were being dragged backwards through the roaring air. Big hands and long toes clung to the webbing. Diamond’s tiny hands fought to keep their grip. The blimp was dropping every drip of ballast water and two emergency slugs of black iron, and the twin engines pressed past full-throttle, threatening to explode as the aircraft fought for speed, for altitude, for any unlikely blessing.

The holes inside Diamond’s chest were healing, and he was breathing again, the new heart pushing pristine blood. The boy made himself look up the walkway. Seldom and Elata were stretched out on their bellies before him, side by side, faces hidden. Brown uniforms and blowing hair carpeted the walkway all the way to the blimp’s opened nose. Three police officers were standing inside the nose. One man was desperately trying to grab the nearest boy, cursing him when he wouldn’t reach out. Another man did nothing but point empty eyes at the tree in front of him, at Marduk. The third officer was flushed in the face, cheeks ballooned outward to create an odd expression, and a moment later he tipped forward, leaning with poise, even grace, as he threw up a breakfast of berries and curdled milk.

With every breath, the sun grew more brilliant.

Buried inside the screech of engines, Diamond was certain he heard people wailing. But only people in the distance and only behind him. Nobody trapped on the walkway wasted their strength making noise.

Good was squatting beside his boy, four hands locked in place, and he tilted the long head sideways, broad black eyes unblinking and amazed.

Diamond shoved his left arm under and then over the tight webbing, as if his short limb was a needle and he was sewing with it. Forcing his arm into a position at once painful and secure, he grabbed the webbing with his left hand and let go with his right and both clumsy boots, allowing his weight to hang from the shoulder.

That was how he spun around, eyes pointing at what the monkey could see.

Marduk was plunging, straight and fast.

Home was on the far side of the tree. But even knowing this, Diamond couldn’t stop hunting for what the mind knew best. A relentless, machine-like agent inside him paid strict attention to the walkways and each distinctive landing and the curtains of hundreds of strange homes. No detail seemed familiar enough. For a breath or two, he was convinced that this wasn’t Marduk at all and the blimp had been flung somewhere else. But that was a crazy, desperate idea, and he was ashamed to think it. The canopy was clear of the forest. The colossal brown trunk was roaring downwards. Diamond’s father was working at the Ivory Station, which was on Hanner and Hanner hadn’t fallen, had it? What was important was to remember that Father was safe. And Mother had gone shopping, which left so many ways to be spared. But the piece of Diamond that insisted on finding hope was also relentlessly searching for the big new landing of his home, and the painted corona on the door curtain, and in particular the wide window that would let him peer into his room, at the soldiers and Mister Mister and the rest of a left-behind life.

But the window was lost. Those familiar rooms were already below him, gone. In that tangle of endless detail, he saw people jumping. Some wore drop-suits, many did not. Figures ran and flung themselves off the walkways and the ends of landings, fighting for distance as the stubborn, hard-swirling air grabbed them. But often some larger structure would rush down from above. The proud landings of the richest neighbors swatted at everyone below. The tree refused to set them free. Marduk continued to accelerate, and other strangers did nothing but stand where they happened to have their feet, a thousand people holding tight to railings and each other as they watched a small black blimp pull away.

The bravest and the most fearful had leapt with the tree’s first shudder.

Those wearing drop-suits had glided a long ways, and several of them arrived like a sudden flock. Each body was tied to screams. One fierce yell descended on Diamond, followed closely by a barefoot man who struck just above the boy and above the monkey, grabbing at the webbing and missing, sliding down to where he could cling to the boy’s free arm and waist.

Good cursed, ready to bite any hand that came close.

Diamond didn’t know the man’s face. Gripping with his left hand, he watched the stranger fight to find better handholds, any toehold. Only when the man felt as if he had stopped falling did he look at the boy beside him, and he blinked, finding something wrong about that face . . . and if there was any doubt who this was, it was dispelled when he noticed a monkey that was nearly as famous as the corona’s boy.

With a quiet exhausted tone, the man cursed, and he took a deep breath, and without trying to act too abruptly or too carelessly, he grabbed Diamond’s left arm, attempting to yank it free.

Diamond seized the webbing with his right hand too, and he kicked with his school boots, striking nothing.

Tar`ro was directly below them. Master Nissim was holding the little girl close, and Karlan was at the bottom, watching the tree fall. Only the bodyguard saw what was happening, and when he started to climb, the man kicked Tar`ro, kicked his face as hard as he could with his bare heel, and Diamond’s right hand tightened its grip.

The man had a rough strong voice.

Furious, he said, “You.” He looked at Diamond and said, “You,” once again. Then he found a better grip and grabbed the boy, jerking with most of his weight, dislocating the small shoulder.

With one swift bite, Good claimed the man’s right ear.

Tar`ro grabbed a bare foot and pulled hard, accomplishing little.

Then Diamond let his right hand relax, fingers slipping out of the webbing, and with the nails of two fingers, he pushed into the soft wet centers of the stranger’s eyes.

The man cursed the Creators and every monster as the pressure built, turning his head to shake off the miserable pain. Then Good reached into the man’s mouth and yanked the broad pink tongue, bringing it out where it was bitten off and spat out.

Blind and mute, the stranger let go of Diamond and the walkway, and then Tar`ro managed to punch him once as he spun past, vanishing inside the dazzling wash of sunlight.

Marduk was just above the demon floor. Below that floor was heat beyond all measure and the coronas swimming in air so dense that it acted like water. The lowest, most sun-bleached branches of the tree struck the floor, punching past and igniting, and within moments the entire canopy was swallowed and burning. Then the tree’s descent began to slow, which was normal. Diamond had never seen a tree fall under him, but he had read accounts left by shaking hands. The tree slowed, and tiny factors caused it to tilt slightly, and then it tilted quite a lot, the highest portions of the trunk beginning to swing towards the blimp.