by Robert Reed
Her misery deserved one backward glance from the armored beast, and nothing more. Then it looked forwards again, the talking mouth taking a huge wet breath, and what could have been a laugh erupted from it.
“Ugly stupid monsters,” he said.
The old woman gingerly picked herself off the ground.
“This is beauty you see,” boasted the creature. Then the other mouth spat at the ground. “Come with me, little monster,” the talking mouth shouted. “Surrender and nobody else is crushed.”
Streams of dust flowed down the slope, and voices called out, and Diamond heard birds speaking fiercely and the wind blowing in the distance, and then he felt the wind rush warm across his damp dusted face.
“I know you,” he said.
The strange face changed expressions.
A smile, was it?
“You came out of the corona too,” Diamond shouted. “We were inside her stomach, sleeping together.”
“You don’t know me,” the creature said.
“We’re like brothers,” said Diamond.
The other mouth spat out a gob of golden juice, and eyes that weren’t like any others stared at some point above his head. Calculations were made, and the creature increased its pace, charging up the sheer slope. Save for shorts and a belt, its powerful body wore nothing but the armor. Spikes and brass-colored scales made it seem bigger than it was, and the voice was fearless in every way but its speed. Maybe the species always breathed fast. But as it moved closer to the boy, it breathed in hard deep gasps, muttering, “We’re nothing like brothers and you belong to me and try to fight me, please, you cannot win, you shit.”
They were four strides apart when the creature pitched forwards, exhausted, and Diamond spun around and tore down the hill’s backside.
This was new ground, a new landscape. This portion of the reef was shrouded in low thick foliage. Plants didn’t fall from the sky but instead rose up out of the weathered coral, which somehow seemed more reasonable, more proper. The bark was like leather and the leaves were dark green and thickly built, each shining as if waxed by careful hands, and the talking birds were loud and urgent, and the air buzzed with myriad insects. Little animal bodies moved down runways hidden beneath the hip-high canopy. Diamond listened to them and the heavy feet chasing after him, and looking down to the next valley, he wished for Father’s voice to come tell him what to do now.
No one spoke to him, not even his enemy.
The new valley was smaller and wetter than the valleys behind them. The first, trees stood as tall as a grown man, and they looked a little like blackwoods. A small papio was scampering with her hands and head down, and then she heard him and looked up in time to move aside, hiding long incisors behind bright pink lips.
The armored creature was running fast again, closing the gap.
A sharp ugly spat came out of the bottom mouth.
The papio let the creature pass, and then she pulled a deep long meaningful scream out of her chest.
The little forest was shocked into silence.
Diamond sped up again. The trail flattened and broadened before coming to an abrupt end. One long patch of ground had been thoroughly stripped of trees and smoothed like a floor before a thick coat of blackened pitch was laid across the pulverized coral. The surface was rubbery and a little soft. Various machines stood in the open, no two identical but each following the same logic. Each machine carried little rooms up high and closed doors, and they stood on big wheels that came in pairs and foursomes. The wheels were made of rubber and wood, and the rooms rested on metal skeletons that must have been shiny once but had turned rusty red. Three papio were climbing down from one machine. They saw Diamond and stared, and then they saw the other creature. One of the papio turned to the others. Senseless words sounded like a question. Her companions considered the matter and gave different answers, and they ended up doing nothing as the two monsters ran by.
Diamond turned away from the sun, staying in the open, following the rubbery ground deeper into the reef.
Stout buildings were gathered up ahead, each fashioned from massive coral blocks. The buildings had no windows, just narrow high slots, and every door was built from heavy timbers and iron hinges, closed and sealed tight. Diamond had built ten thousand forts with blocks, and forts didn’t look too different from these structures. He slowed when they were beside him, and after glancing over his shoulder, he slowed again, trying to clear his mind.
The creature was closing again.
Diamond reached behind his back. The knife was still wrapped inside the worn leather, and he pulled it out and unwrapped it as he spun hard, slashing the air with the bright blade.
The creature dipped its head, out of reflex.
Diamond tried another swing.
Up came an arm, the motion too quick to follow. There were little spikes on the fist that smashed into Diamond’s wrist, bones shattering as the hand went numb and weak. The knife that he had carried across the world fell to the ground, skipping back the way they had run. Any fear or caution inside the armored creature was finished. It laughed at the human. It laughed and walked away and kneeled, not even bothering to watch Diamond slump over, holding his damaged arm close to his belly. The silly knife needed to be snatched up by the blade, and the breathing mouth said, “You don’t know how to fight.”
“I don’t,” Diamond agreed.
“My father says, ‘He is an innocent, and we don’t need innocents. Teach him what you know, King.’ ”
“What’s King?”
“My name,” said the creature.
The hand holding the butcher’s blade had six fingers, matching thumbs on opposite sides of a broad hard palm.
“What does that mean?” Diamond asked.
“What does what mean?”
“King,” he said.
The spitting mouth had bright teeth, sharp teeth leading back to flat ones. The talking mouth took a long breath. “The king is that great man who sits on the world’s largest chair. It is an empty chair today, unclaimed and lonely. But my destiny is to fill the king’s chair and make this world my own.”
Diamond considered using his good hand and arm, striking that very strange face.
But King read his face, his body. Laughing loudly, he said, “Try fighting and I’ll beat you to death.”
Diamond did nothing.
“I’ll beat you so dead you won’t wake again for a day.”
The boy took a little step backwards, then a larger one.
“Here,” King said. “Take your toy.”
The odd hand turned the knife, offering the white bone hilt to Diamond.
“Take it and hurt me now.” Then with a soft, almost tender voice, King said, “Please.”
Diamond shook his head. He said, “No,” and turned away from the creature, walking slowly in the same direction that he ran before. The fortified buildings were behind him and the valley ended with the steep face of a cliff—except at least one deep cave was cut into the cliff. He hadn’t seen the cave while running, obscured by curtains of fabric and webs of string colored to look like pink coral and deep shadow.
King suddenly knocked him forwards.
The half-healed wrist broke again.
Diamond stayed on his knees, panting. “Do you see it?” he asked.
“See what?”
“That strange machine,” Diamond said.
“I see plenty of machines,” King replied.
“No, the big one that’s hiding.” Then he got his feet under him and stood. “Maybe your eyes aren’t very good.”
“My eyes are spectacular.”
“Behind those curtains,” Diamond said, pointing with his working arm.
King stepped past him. Perhaps his vision wasn’t great, or maybe he wasn’t in the mood for this game. Either way, it took the creature a moment before he stopped seeing only the camouflage. That’s when he discovered a long sleek contraption that dwarfed the wheeled vehicles behind them. Curiosity dra
gged him a few steps closer and then he paused, intrigued but not wanting to be. Finally King forced a laugh. He sounded human and he sounded otherwise, and he looked back at the little creature that he had already broken twice.
“That’s a papio wing,” he said.
“What is a papio wing?”
“It’s a machine that flies. Except it can’t stay up for long, and these shitty beasts don’t have half enough to courage to launch them.”
The wing looked like a fletch ship, except the ship had been squeezed to a tiny dense body. Maybe it swelled up when it was filled with hydrogen gas, or maybe not. But Diamond was impressed with its sleek contours and the bright corona scales fixed over its skin and that a hungry toothless mouth below with a single glass eye above. There wasn’t room for more than one papio onboard the wing, and just looking at the marvel caused a hundred new questions bubble out of his tired head.
“Impressive,” he said.
“You want to be impressed,” King said. “Let me amaze you.”
Diamond turned.
And King grabbed the Master’s knife by the hilt, driving the keen steel blade up underneath one of the big scales on his chest. Flesh and bone put up a hard struggle, but the arm was powerful enough to push past the resistance. Then the creature released the knife, the hilt hanging in the air, and he laughed and the lower mouth spat up bright purple blood. “Clipped an artery, by the way this feels,” he said.
Voices called out from a distance.
Diamond turned away from his tormentor.
The old papio couple was walking towards one of the wheeled machines. The old woman appeared even frailer than before, but she managed a steady pace as her companion held her closely, lovingly. They were talking, but those weren’t the voices that Diamond could hear.
He broke into a slow, slow trot.
A string of humans emerged from the stunted forest. The Archon was with two of his men, and there was the Master and Seldom and Elata. Father was trailing, holding Mother by her hand while he dipped his head, speaking quietly while she stared at her son.
Diamond ran faster.
King jogged up beside him, spitting purple blood at the boy’s feet.
Diamond stopped.
“Don’t run away from me,” said King. “Because if you run again, I’ll grow bored chasing, and somebody will abuse those old people of yours.”
“No,” Diamond said weakly.
“Believe me,” said King. “It would take very little to rip the arms out of that slayer’s shoulders.”
With his good hand, Diamond grabbed the exposed hilt and yanked the knife free.
“Are you ready to cut me?” King asked.
Diamond said nothing, cleaning the wet blade against his trousers and wrapping it inside the old leather. Then he put it under his shirt again, this time on the right hip, and he trotted close to the two papio.
King was relaxed, victorious and happy. The contest had gone perfectly, and he was the champion of the world, and running beside Diamond, he certainly didn’t expect the defeated boy to shove him from the side, shoving him high while pushing hard with both legs.
The creature fell onto the runway’s surface.
“What was that?” King asked, laughing. “That was nothing.”
But then the old papio woman shuffled close to him. Once again, she said the word, “Careful.” And then those old jaws opened wide, and she calmly bit King hard in the face.
FOURTEEN
Mother couldn’t look happier or sadder. Diamond came close, and she pulled herself out of Father’s hands, starting to run, long arms raised high even before she reached her son.
Sobbing, gasping, every fatigue showed in her face. She hadn’t slept for two moments since the night before last, and her features were worn and thrilled and sick with worry, and they were beautiful. The best arms in the world grabbed hold of his shoulders, shaking him. “Why didn’t you stay home?” she asked.
Her voice was furious, but she smiled as she berated him.
She took hold of his broken arm, asking, “Does it hurt?”
“No,” he began.
But she interrupted, asking, “Do you know what kind of risk you took, coming out of your room, looking for us?”
Diamond smiled at her smile.
“But I found you,” he pointed out.
She hugged him and wept, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
Father stopped short. The Master stood beside him, and they glanced at one another, saying nothing.
Elata and Seldom eased past the two men.
“Stay here,” Nissim warned.
Seldom stopped, but Elata took one more step.
“It caught you,” Seldom said.
Elata reached back, poking Seldom with a finger.
Then the Archon arrived, flanked by two bodyguards wearing pistols. A grim, important sneer defined his face as he walked past Diamond and past the two papio. Speaking to King was the first task—angry and quiet words, almost inaudible, were delivered in one breath—and King did nothing. He remained motionless. Then the human grabbed one of the spikes and tried to shake his son, and King still did nothing, standing rigid, never moving, resembling a statue carved from some bright golden species of coral.
Exhausted by their trials, the old papio continued on.
The little doctor had just emerged from the trees, standing in the distance, dancing on nervous feet.
The Archon turned, walking back toward Diamond.
“I have a confession,” he said with that singsong voice. “I never imagined you’d travel this far or fast on your own. My sense of these things was that you wouldn’t find the courage to come out of that room until afternoon.”
“You unlocked the door,” Diamond said.
“An assistant did.” The man clucked his tongue. “No, you aren’t as timid as promised. And who would have guessed that you’d find a butcher with time and the inclination to help an orphan?”
“What does ‘orphan’ mean?” asked Diamond.
“It’s a boy who has been cast aside,” the Archon said. “By Fate or design, his parents have been lost forever.”
Mother straightened her back. “He is not an orphan, sir.”
“He is and King is.” The Archon was close enough to touch her and Diamond, and one of his hands rose, as if considering doing just that. But then it dropped again, and he said, “Madam, you were the boy’s guardian. But to my mind, the dead Creators were solely responsible for this child. They built this miracle when they built the world, but there wasn’t any place for him. Until now. His immortal body floated beside the sun, which is the beginning of all life, and a corona ingested him but could never make him into a meal.”
“What is this?” the Master asked. “I don’t know that legend.”
Diamond took a step backward, and then another.
The Archon offered him a wink. “There’s no way to know how long you floated inside that awful gut, waiting to be found. Waiting for the Fates to place where you needed to be. But I credit Happenstance and the other Fates for everything. For King, for you. For every blessing, including making such an enormous journey on your first day in the world.”
Then with his reaching hand, Archon motioned to King, and the statue turned into an armored boy again, coming forward to stand beside his foster father.
“I’ve heard rumors,” the Archon continued. “Tales about other children being cast from the belly of that enormous beast. I’m not a fool, my boy. What happens once can always happen again, and I know when a man is being blessed, and I am not a soul who ignores opportunities.”
Kneeling, he waved his hand.
“Come here, Diamond.”
Diamond didn’t obey and he didn’t retreat.
Something was a little bit funny, and the Archon let himself laugh. Then he winked again, saying, “Ask your parents. Ask them what the average person would think, if something as strange as you were put into their grasp.”
Fa
ther shook his head and sighed, and Mother stared at the ground.
“If any other ruler came upon creatures as different as you are, creatures with no obvious place in the world . . . then that important person would be entirely within his rights to call you abominations. You’d be judged threats against the norms of good society and what is permitted. If your friend the butcher were honest, he would have warned you: the average Archon would wish you dead. Yes, yes, yes. He and his citizens would sleep well knowing that an infestation of monsters had been destroyed—monsters that shouldn’t have been alive in the first place. Your great fortune, my boy . . . what you must appreciate first and always . . . is that in some ways I am as unique as you are. In the realm of Archons, I am one of a kind. No one else has both the power and wisdom to treat you and your brethren with the proper respect.”
Again, the Archon said, “Come here.”
And again, Diamond did nothing.
His stubbornness wasn’t humorous anymore. The Archon rose and motioned to King, and King grabbed Diamond beneath the arms, carrying him where he had to be.
To the Archon, King said, “He’s carrying a knife.”
“But he won’t hurt me,” the Archon said. “Nobody needs to be injured. I’m sure everyone has learned that lesson by now. And as long as you behave, these other people won’t suffer in the slightest.”
Diamond looked at his parents first, and then he glanced at Elata and Seldom, and Master Nissim too.
Every face was scared.
“What happens now?” Diamond asked.
“First, naturally, we return to the Ruler of the Wind, and as my guest, you enjoy a quick flight to the District of Districts. King should tell you about his grand home. Frankly, it’s a wonderful place for children who never break. You’ll have a hundred rooms to explore and the best tutors, and as time passes, we’ll all come to appreciate your significance, your potentials.”
Again, Diamond looked at his mother, his father.
“Merit and Haddi are allowed to reclaim their lives,” said the Archon, anticipating the question. “If they really want what’s best for you, they’ll keep the secrets and abide as they did before you arrived. I won’t even prosecute the corona slayer for stealing what never belonged to him.”