Everybody laughed with their faces, their voices. But serious eyes kept giving the world hard study. Then the captain stepped away from the edge, and the three of them stood with their backs to the doorway, hands over mouths, each taking his and her turn in the conversation.

“Something is happening,” Tar`ro agreed.

“They hear your father,” the Master guessed.

Saying so made it a little bit true. But not enough.

“Father isn’t coming,” Diamond said.

“You don’t know that,” Elata said.

Just the same, the boy got to his feet. Sitting was awful. His legs were desperate to walk.

“Stay,” Tar`ro said.

But Diamond was already running on the hard black rubber floor, leaping over tied-down machines and a neat stack of deflated bladders. The captain was a short woman, stocky to the brink of fat, and she had a deeper voice than some men. The voice said his name. One arm lifted, and Diamond let himself be caught short of the doorway. Then she squeezed his shoulder, saying, “Please, stay with me.”

“Where’s my father?”

As if expecting the question, she said, “He isn’t late. But we need to leave this place at once.”

“No.”

“Quiet,” she said.

He didn’t think that he had been yelling.

“Look at me, Diamond.”

She had been a pretty woman before she got old, and she was always talented, and more than once, Father had mentioned how rare it was for any woman to give her life to killing coronas.

Diamond yanked her hand and skipped sideways.

Shaking what hurt, she told him, “We had another weak rain this morning. The canopy below was already thin, but now it’s thirsty, and someone could easily see us from below.”

“The papio might,” the mechanic said.

“Anybody might,” said the harpooner, sucking air through his golden teeth.

“So we’re preparing to cut loose and move,” the captain said. “But don’t worry. Your father knew this was possible and told us where we’ll go next. He might well beat us there, honestly.”

A broad leatherwing came from under the ship, slow lazy strokes beating at the bright air. A flock of millguts swirled high above. From inside the canopy, in those places where shadows joined ranks, a single big jasmine monkey proclaimed dominion over the best part of Creation.

“But there’s something else,” said the captain. And with that she put her bulk in front of him.

Good jumped up on Diamond’s shoulder, and the others walked up after him.

Tar`ro asked Seldom, “Do you see your brother?”

“Not now.”

But Elata nodded, saying, “There.”

Karlan was helping drag heavy machinery. Working on the far side of the shop, he was a huge figure beside the crew, and even at a distance, he looked as close to happy as any of these miserable people could be.

Diamond wasn’t worried about Karlan. The crew scared him, but not the boy who tried to kill him.

Was that foolish?

The captain touched Diamond with her sore hand, lightly.

“Listen,” she said.

He focused on her face, her open mouth.

“Stories,” she said. “Out here, all of the stories get told. People think they see things and they believe they hear things, but nothing’s ever certain. Except that four creatures were trapped inside that old corona.”

Diamond saw where the words were pointing. Harpooners had great eyes; the boy couldn’t count the times people had said so in his presence. Once again, he slipped past the captain, two leaps putting him at the floor’s end, a lip of bone and featherwood pressed against the toes of his boots.

“Where’s the ghost?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” said the harpooner, an exceptionally strong hand dropping on the boy’s shoulder.

Diamond remembered to be scared of the man.

“It’s that burr-tree that worries us,” the harpooner said. Then the hand moved, pulling Diamond back from the emptiness. “I was counting branches, which everyone should do. You know, to keep your faculties sharp. And somewhere in the last five recitations, while I was looking everywhere else, one of those very big branches decided to melt and then vanish.”

The fleet had come from the District of Districts—one hundred and seventy-three giant machines serving as backbone to humanity’s combined fleet. Each airship was dressed in the name of a hero or famous battle, or some vivid emotion, or moral concepts that even the wicked enemies would appreciate. There was the Fire at Night, the Wettle, the Passion, the Honest, Raging Fist, the Marqlet, Vengeance, Shattered Wings, the Chew, and the venerable Destiny, older than any living man but holding its hydrogen as well as any of its mates. Every ship was held aloft by the best corona bladders, tough as steel and a fraction the weight. Each had a skeleton of corona bone draped with skins and scales pulled from a thousand dead monsters. The fleet moved together, like a mishmash of dissimilar birds forced into one long flight. Some of the ships were little fletches, bird-shaped and lightly armored to allow for speed and endless grace. There were bigger fletches with banks of engines, a few towing complacent, balloon-like panoplies. There were warrior-class spears and battle-class behemoths, and a dozen fast-freighters carried stockpiles of fuel and food and munitions. And the fleet was bearing quite a lot more—a stew of orders and guidelines, ranks and egos, thousands of soldiers who had never walked on coral, and one overriding command ruling all others:

Protect the flagship.

Nestled in the armada’s heart, the Ruler of the Storm was both safe and magnificent. The younger sibling to the Ruler of the Wind, the machine was only two-thirds finished when her sister was destroyed. But a useful bureaucratic panic allowed the construction to be finished in record time. The Wind’s crew was dropped like gears into their old tasks, minus the original captain who was given a public trial leading to a loud plea of guilt by incompetence. Then the Archon of Archons spoke to a select audience, telling supporters that while old Merit played a role in the disaster, he appreciated the slayer’s motivation. He was also a father, and however wrong the methods and however shameful that day, the Archon used his office to grant the hero a full pardon for that enormous crime as well as for any and all failures of character during the last thousand days.

“Remember the pardon, son?”

Every word returned to King, as well as his father’s burning humiliation.

“No,” said King. “It’s lost to me.”

Smiling, List said, “We know better than that.”

The past was usually a prologue to some little lesson.

“Now what if I’d accepted everyone’s wise advice? Put our most famous slayer on trial, the man standing for a cause that nobody had ever imagined possible. I would have won an effective verdict. Our allies in the outer Districts would be warned. No one would doubt that I was in total command. But that’s all I would have won—a lone judgment underscoring what everyone already appreciated. Words riding soft white leather, framed in my office and worth nothing.

“The boy was going to remain inside the Corona District. Prima would make certain of that. Diamond is hers, and contesting her ownership would have been a massive waste of time and resources.”

And here was the lesson, King knew.

“I win and the rest of history plays out as it has. Merit languishes in jail, while his son runs free in this District, despising me. Then the evil and the idiotic try to murder Diamond just the same. And what’s my position in that scenario? My fleet goes where it wishes. Nobody can stop us. But look at the people above us. Better and better, you know how to read our moods, our fears. Study those faces. Find one face isn’t thrilled to see us, threatening our common enemies with quick brutal law.”