“I am glad to hear that,” he said.

“And what about your son?”

“King is well, thank you.”

“And safe, I trust?”

“As safe as anyone on this day.”

“Indeed,” said Prima.

Then the Archon of Archons ended their difficult conversation with remarkable honesty: “Give that young man your very best, Prima. Because I doubt he would ever accept mine.”

“I will do that,” she said gladly.

“And we’ll see one another soon,” he said.

The line went quiet before she could offer a polite response, her ear filled with static. Setting the receiver on the desk, she thought about King. Just hearing the voice in the background triggered memories, few of them pleasant. Each time she met the creature, he was noticeably bigger and more powerful. But what mattered more than strength or the hideous appearance was the slow transformation in the creature’s character. King could still yell like a monster and pout like a little boy, but he was learning how to stand in one place and carry on a civil conversation. The brute was maturing, or he pretended to be older and wiser while his nature remained the same. How could she judge? He was a puzzle. The armored face with its two ugly mouths and hard black eyes gave away nothing about his real thoughts. Politicians read emotions, but when that creature wanted, he could make himself into a statue, spitting out canned phrases along with silence.

List was vile, but he was a man. She accepted the Archon’s shrewdness and the craving for power, but Prima never doubted that she could piece together what was honest inside the fabrications, and where the big smile meant nothing but one mouth full of bright teeth.

The lieutenant had returned with a fresh slip of privacy paper.

Prima broke the seal. The sloppy hand of a fletch captain had written, “Happenstance fully loaded, at the ready.”

She nodded and dropped the note into a fire tank.

The lieutenant waited.

“Your name is Sondaw,” she said.

“Yes, madam.”

Sondaw was a member of the Regulars. The youngster had a pleasant face, a man’s features drawn over a boy’s bones, nothing behind the eyes but nervous energy and an instinctive need to please his superiors.

She said, “When I was little, your grandfather visited our home for dinner.”

“My father’s father. Yes, madam.”

“He was the great general charged with rebuilding our fleet, and needing the best materials, he was building good relations with my parents.”

The lieutenant was thrilled for the attention, but he still chewed at a lip, unsure where this moment would lead.

“I want to use you, Sondaw.”

“How, madam?”

“I need certain files,” she explained. “Start with our Intelligence Department. Tell Lady Rankle that the merchant’s daughter wants to see everything she has about the King entity. I want observations and speculations, and if there are any prophetic dreams, leave them at the bottom of the stack, please.”

The officer was willing but puzzled.

To focus his attentions, Prima added, “This is your only priority.”

Sondaw nodded and then walked away, and seeing an opportunity, other officers and aides converged on their boss. Prima dealt with refugees and power outages, and she looked at fuel stocks and ammunition manifests. Then she started to address the ongoing problems with Hanner and the tree’s slow death, her mind making the inevitable turn, praying to the Creators that this endless awful day would end.

That was when the blackwood cabinet began to buzz.

She heard the warning before noticing that half of the red lights were flashing slowly and then faster. There wasn’t much room left inside her for fear, but there was still enough curiosity to make her heart skip. She approached the cabinet and the lights. Suddenly two colonels pushed past her, their fears soaring.

Hundreds of days ago, these same men had explained this machine to their new Archon, mixing expert words with rigid poise. Details were lost, but Prima retained the image of microphones set in far places, scattered across the wilderness between her District and the reef. Each sensor sent home the most common forest noises. Only the loudest, shrillest tones caused the lights to come alive, and then only when a fletch passed nearby, or maybe a single papio wing making a reconnaissance sweep. But even the loudest roar normally produced just one or two slow flashes from adjacent bulbs. But these flashes were rapid, which was significant, and the officers were plugging headsets into the portals under the busiest lights, numbly listening to noises beyond their experience.

Prima stepped past the box, using her rank to find space at the window, and she stared at a day that was rapidly drawing to a close.

Behind her, panic danced closely with duty and training.

The poise that had served her in public life was surviving. The Archon stared at the empty air and the occasional airship heavy with survivors, shaking her head slowly. A smart voice behind her—not one of the colonels with headsets—was laughing at everyone. “It’s a malfunction, a surge,” he said. “This is nothing, forget it.”

The logic had its charms.

Of course this was a malfunction. If the papio were coming in large numbers, she would hear the sounds of those engines for herself.

With fingertips, the Archon gently touched the reinforced window.

Vibrations played with the glass.

“Quiet,” Prima shouted.

And the command center fell into a forced calm, and everyone listened to a hundred horrible roars washing across them, still distant but already loud, and in another few moments, the papio had arrived.

The Happenstance had served its District for a long while, suffering few failures while enjoying no celebrated distinctions. But then Merit and Haddi produced their sickly baby, and wishing to help that good man, the fletch’s captain sacrificed a pair of royal jazzings. Some voices claimed that the baby wasn’t sick at all, but that didn’t stop the captain from openly taking credit for the child’s survival. Why should any decency remain secret? And as if to prove him right, almost a thousand days later Diamond arrived at the captain’s berth, searching for quick transport to find his father.

The Happenstance and Diamond were lashed together in the public mind. What had been a minor fletch enjoyed its celebrity, and the superstitious captain was judged either an agent of history or the idiot recipient of the worst kind of luck—depending on what those jazzings had bestowed to the world.

The ficklest of the Destinies, Happenstance was a beautiful and treacherous lady spirit. She saw to it that when Rail fell and Marduk fell, her fletch was on duty at the Ivory Station. There was scared talk about abandoning Hanner, and that’s why the ship’s tank was full of alcohol, her corona bladders bulging with hydrogen gas. The crew worked hard throughout that awful day, keeping their vessel ready to fly at a breath’s notice. Eventually the boy’s bodyguard delivered a flight plan that was to remain sealed until night. Tar`ro met privately with the captain, and a little later the captain emptied the hanger’s berth before herding his worn-out crew to their fletch’s bridge, warning them that secret passengers were coming onboard and they needed to keep their eyes on each other, not below.

Of course the boy had to be one of their passengers. Cover the cabin’s rubber windows and demand secrecy, but some truths were apparent. To keep the ship trim and ready, the hiding people’s weight had to be share. Diamond and his friends and the one guard and his teacher, plus Merit, were onboard. There was also one very large second guard. So the secret wasn’t secret, and nobody meant harm when the day was growing old and one or two of the crew mentioned “the famous boy” to the mechanics working on the ship, and to the soldiers protecting them, and maybe a spy or two were standing in their midst.