by Robert Reed
“Sitting in his big chair,” the guard said, grinning. Then he looked from side to side, asking, “Why?”
Several closed doors led to smaller rooms. One door exploded to slivers, and already running, King ran straight for the guard. No sound accompanied the creature. Two long strides and he lifted his arm, and the guard turned, reaching for the locks on the suite door. He barely touched one knob when King reached him, and the man started to yell, dipping his head while putting up his other hand to protect what couldn’t be protected. The armored fist struck him at the back of the skull, and King’s other hand came up under the chin and yanked back hard, and a man who was bigger and trained to fight was suddenly limp and empty-eyed, lying on a fancy carpet made from the weavings of a spider that lived only in the darkness at the top of the world.
“Is he dead?” Diamond asked.
“Or alive,” said King. “Either way, he won’t help you.”
Diamond looked at the alien face. It wasn’t as strange as before. He expected two mouths and the odd eyes and that living armor shrouding what wasn’t at all human.
The airship was finishing its turn, the engines no longer pushing hard.
King approached.
Diamond didn’t move.
“They’ll discover that I’m missing,” King said. “And my father’s going to know where I went.”
The human boy put his feet apart. “The Archon is your father?”
“Sure.”
Diamond nodded.
“But you’re not his son,” King said.
The human kept nodding.
“Do you know what I’m telling you? Can you understand me?”
Diamond was barely listening. He was full of questions, and the first question to jump out was, “Do you remember things from before?”
“Before what?”
What did he mean exactly?
“You mean back when we sitting inside that monster?”
Diamond shook his head. “No. Before the corona. Do you remember any of that earlier life?”
The armored boy stared at him. The eating mouth spat, and then the other mouth said, “You’re crazy.”
“Maybe I am. How would I know?”
“What do you remember?”
“A woman, a human woman. And there was a man too. They were like me, and there were a lot of people like me.”
“You recall this?” King said doubtfully.
“I think so.” Diamond nodded, looking at his feet.
“There is no ‘before,’ ” King said. “Do you know what we are?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you.”
“All right,” said Diamond.
“Build anything—put together a ship or house or anything—and there’s always pieces left behind,” King said. “That’s what you and I are. Leftovers. The Creators made us along with the world, and we were extra pieces. They let our bodies fall down near the sun where we got eaten, and we’ve been waiting all of this time, waiting for our chance.”
“Who says that?”
“My father knows it.”
Diamond studied the scaled chest and broad arms and then a face that was more familiar each time he looked at it. “I don’t think the Archon’s right.”
With a quick trained motion, King punched with his left fist. Diamond felt the blow and dropped to the floor, the breath beaten from behind his ribs.
“My father is very, very smart,” King said.
Diamond couldn’t speak.
What may or may not have been a laugh emerged and failed. Then King gave him one little kick before saying, “But I’m even smarter than him. And you’re probably a lot smarter than your parents too.”
Diamond found just enough breath to say, “I feel stupid.”
The light changed abruptly. Emerging from the reef’s shadow, The Ruler of the Wind found the late sun blazing up from below. Some kind of minor magic turned the glass windows dark. The room grew only a little brighter, and Diamond looked at the feet in front of him. He studied his feet and King’s, and then King said, “My brain is incredible. Nothing is like it, except maybe yours.”
“Why is it incredible?”
“The first man that had me was a slayer, like Merit. He didn’t know what I was until he got home, and then he got scared. Scared and so he got drunk and tried to kill me. I was a monster, he decided. He used knives on me. He cut into my chest and tore out my hearts, but I grew new hearts and my chest healed. Then he chopped off my little legs and my arms and new ones came out of the stumps, which made him angrier and more scared, and humans don’t do well when they’re scared.”
“What happened next?” Diamond asked.
“Oh, he got even drunker, and he fell asleep.”
Diamond didn’t know what it meant to be drunk.
“That’s awful,” he said.
“Don’t talk,” King said. “I’m telling the story.”
The boy nodded, letting time run along.
“Anyway, the slayer had a woman friend. I don’t know why, but the woman felt sorry for me. So she fed me milk and nuts, and I grew big again. The slayer slept for a long time, and then I was mostly back where I was before. And when the slayer woke and figured out what happened, he beat her hard and kicked her outside and went back to trying to kill me.
“I was an abomination. We’re both abominations, and the man knew that he’d get in trouble for all kinds of reasons. So he put my head into a vice, face down so he didn’t have to look at these eyes. I was a baby, and he fixed me down good and used a big power drill and fat steel bits to cut a fat round hole in the back of my skull. He cut faster than I could heal and got through the bone after breaking the first three bits, and then he took his hardest, best bit and tried to force it down inside my brain.”
Diamond touched the back of his own head.
“Human brains are soft and wet and gooey. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Shake their heads hard, and they forget who they are.” King bent his knees, putting his face close to Diamond’s face. “My brain isn’t gooey. This body is strong, but it isn’t half as tough as the brain inside my skull. That stupid man tried to kill me. He used that spinning piece of hard steel to cut at something that can’t be cut. He burned up the bit and all the others, and his drill overheated and died, and he shot me in the head with every bullet in the house, and he even used one of the big slayer harpoons. I was this baby with my skull ripped open, and he was ready to put a fourth harpoon into his target. Three others had already busted. But he was drunk again and angry and trying to aim, and that’s when the girlfriend brought the police to his house, and that’s how my father found out about me. The police told the Archon. And my father has kept me safe ever since.”
Diamond watched the alien face—the little flicks that the eyes made and how each mouth moved in its own fashion.
“I bet your brain is the same as mine,” King said.
“Maybe it is.”
“Pretend it is,” King said. “That means nothing can kill it. But that doesn’t protect you from everything. What if some sharp knife with muscle behind it were to rip that head off your shoulders, and what if that head and your body were cut into little, little pieces, and your brain and everything else was dropped out of an airship running fast over a place where no person can go? What if you were thrown away and swallowed by a thousand coronas? Do you believe anybody would ever find enough of your bits to make you live again?”
A day of fear and the unexpected had reached this place, this monstrous moment. Diamond was terrified and cold and angry in ways that he didn’t recognize. He stared at the inhuman face, managing one worthwhile breath before saying, “Your father doesn’t want this.”
“My father,” said King. “My father wants many things. And so long as I’m the only son, no one else is in his dreams.”
Diamond started to shout.
King grabbed the boy’s throat and shook him until he was limp. The
n he stood up, just the one arm lifting Diamond off his feet. They stared at each other’s faces. A rude wet sound came from the eating mouth, and the breathing mouth said, “I am not cruel. I promise, I’ll cut off the head, and you won’t feel anything again.”
Diamond was limp, and then he moved. The dangling right foot started to kick, and King pushed back his hips, another curse leaking out of the eating mouth. That’s when Diamond struck with his right fist. Endless practice wouldn’t have made him able to hit harder. Terror and rage gave him power. He aimed at the high mouth, the breathing mouth, but King started to jerk his head back. The tiny fist hit the eating mouth before the lips could clench, and the knuckles hit teeth, and then the hand vanished and a hard long tongue retreated deep into the body, recoiling against the alien taste.
King bit.
Diamond drove his left thumb into a glassy green eye.
Eyelids encased in scales shut, but too late. King cursed and shook his head, and he bit hard enough to shred flesh to the bone. But wounds meant blood, and the salty crimson blood ran fast across the tongue and down the throat. There was a choking sound followed by red bubbles full of stomach gases that burst, making the air foul. King let go of Diamond’s neck and bit harder, and he punched the human head with alternating fists. But that changed nothing except to slice open the boy’s face ten different ways, and it was Diamond who tried to laugh, talking through gore, saying, “Give up. Give up. Give up.”
The breathing mouth yelled, “No.”
Diamond shoved his left hand into the soft wet hole, grabbing a tongue that was as delicate and soft as anything on that armored body. Then he yanked and kicked, and King tried backing away. He dragged the boy until one heel caught the leg of a chair, and he tumbled with a thud to the floor.
Diamond found himself on top.
He shoved his right knee into the neck, but the overlapping plates were harder than steel. King kept chewing and throwing blows at Diamond’s face and chest, and Diamond put the pain aside, watching the face, studying the emotions rolling across it.
King started battering the arm inside his breathing mouth.
Diamond drove his forearm deeper, cutting off King’s airflow.
And King panicked. He swung and swung with the fists, wasting oxygen by beating what was already mutilated. Then he picked his rump off the floor, and with hands and feet dragged both of them toward the windows. A long chair faced the window, offering passengers a comfortable seat while watching the perfect world pass by. A neat stack of tools was waiting on the carpet: two saws and a long sword and boning knives just like the Master’s, only newer. This was where King had planned to butcher Diamond. An empty cloth sack was waiting to hold all of the living pieces.
Suffocating and desperate, King pulled them toward the sharpened steel. Diamond climbed forward and pushed down hard at the head, trying to slow their progress. But he was too weak and much too small, and this fight wasn’t buying more than a few extra moments.
Through the window and through the walls came the urgent piercing sound of a horn wailing.
The airship’s engines began to throttle up again.
King’s motions slowed, and the throat around Diamond’s left hand began to relax.
Again the horn let loose a long scream, followed by the rapid hard thuds of a single cannon firing into some great distance.
The big armored body kept moving its arms and legs, but there was little progress. King was half-choked and nearly limp. White smoke came into the eyes, and armored plates relaxed as they would in death, affording little gaps where a blade could enter and cut at tissues no stronger than Diamond’s. The boy looked at the sword and that keen ready edge of the blade, and it occurred to him that he could chop off that monstrous head and toss it into oblivion.
He could do what his enemy wanted to do to him.
And that’s when he recoiled—an image of violence and justice; a turn that would leave no retreat—and all the miseries of the day were nothing compared to the horrible thought that he would do that and do it happily.
Diamond eased his hand out of the breathing mouth.
King gasped, and the teeth and tongue in the other mouth started to chew until that sorry mess of a hand was yanked free.
King managed another deep breath and started lifting his arms.
Diamond picked up one long knife, and before the battle could start again, he pushed the tip into the gap that had already been stabbed once, pushing to the healed artery and twisting the blade until a heart was shredded, leaving his brother temporarily dead.
The cannon fired quickly and then quit firing. Some of the engines slowed while others held their terrific pace. The ship was attempting one hard turn, but the Ruler was enormous and stubborn and nothing changed quickly. Somebody shouted in the hallway, the words tangled together, making no sense. Then a big male voice came through a tube in the ceiling, calling everyone to battle stations, and that’s when hands began pounding at the locked door.
Diamond stood and let go of the knife, taking the sword with his better hand, lifting the hilt but not the heavy blade.
Keys rattled.
The Archon called out, “King. Have you seen him?”
King reacted to his name. Legs kicked, and he grabbed blindly at the knife in his chest, pulling and pulling again, finally yanking it free. Purple blood rose from the gash, forming a bright persistent bubble. Then he managed a pair of deep soggy breaths, finding the strength to whisper, “Here.”
Locks yielded, and the man on guard outside kicked the door open. His partner was limp on the floor and the human boy had a sword in hand, but the guard couldn’t see King behind the furniture. He cursed and came close and then thought better of it. What kinds of powers did this little creature possess? Stopping a few steps back, he pulled a heavy pistol from under his shirt, and with a hard voice, he said, “Come in.”
The Archon eased his way into the room. Nothing about him seemed formidable or special. Staring at Diamond, he yelled angrily for his son, but the voice was shrill and almost too soft over the droning engines.
“Here,” King repeated.
Keeping his distance, the Archon walked around the long chair. “What is this?” he asked neither boy. Talking to the bloody floor, he said, “This is not what we wanted.”
He asked, “What is this? What’s happening here?”
The airship had just started making its turn and now the engines changed again, struggling to push them in another direction. It was as if the steering hands didn’t know which line to follow. Another big gun began firing, this time beneath them, the furniture and the windows rattling hard. Diamond looked at the heavy glass and then at the sword, and once again, he tried and failed to lift the massive blade.
Out in the hallway, one of the ship’s crew shouted for the Archon.
“In here!”
The crewman entered. He was wearing a fine blue uniform and a tilted hat, and his jacket was soaked with perspiration, and the hat fell to the floor when he tried to salute.
“What’s the count?” the Archon asked.
“Three coronas, but dozens are rising, sir.” The crewman scooped up his hat and twisted it in his hands. “The captains says we’ve got maybe five recitations before those first few reach us.”
The news was an irritation. More important was his bloodied, helpless son. Eyes fixed on King, he said, “As I told you and everybody else. Shoot the slayer’s damned ship.”
“It’s very maneuverable, sir. And we’re short of gunners.”
“It’s no warship,” the Archon said. “Kill it, and the coronas forget about us.”
The crewman nodded, saluted, and ran out the door with his hat.
Diamond’s chewed hand was half-healed. He grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands, lifting the tip off the floor.
The cannon under them fired again, seven fast rounds followed by nothing. None of the Ruler’s guns were firing, and the captain had given up trying to maneuver, the e
ngines running hard and straight now.
The Archon decided this was good news. He smiled and let himself breathe deeply, some of the original smugness shaping his face. Looking at Diamond, he said, “I suppose Merit was trying to lure the coronas out of their house.”
“He is,” Diamond said. “Father told me his plan.”
“What exactly did he tell you?”
Diamond looked at the strong blade and the bright sharp edge. “While you were chasing me, my father’s men chopped the special lights out of the dead corona and tied them to a slayer ship. I don’t know how, but those dead lights can be made to shine again.”
The Archon nodded, and then he began to speak again.
And Diamond swung the sword. He didn’t think that he could, but he got the blade into the air and turned his entire body around once before the tip dropped again.
The Archon and bodyguard reflexively jumped back.
Diamond swung a second time, driving the hard steel into the middle of the tall darkened pane.
But the glass was thick and far too strong to break.
“Except Merit’s scheme is finished,” the Archon told him, finding a good sharp smile. “Drop your weapon, son.”
“I’m not,” Diamond said.
“What’s that?”
“Your son,” he said.
Then the cannon beneath them fired twice, and after a pause, it threw one more shell into the air.
Several voices shouted from the ceiling tube at once, no word making sense.
Suddenly the Archon felt less certain about everything.
The bodyguard was standing beside the injured man. Relieved, he said, “Just a blow to the head, by the looks. I think he’s coming around.”
“This boy is what matters,” said the Archon.
The guard came around the chair. He finally saw King lying on his back, fighting to breathe, and the man opened his mouth and said nothing and closed his mouth again.
Boots ran in the hallway. A uniformed crewman appeared in the open door, his scared face visible in profile.
“Status?” said the Archon.
But the crewman was racing for the stern.
“Status!” the Archon shouted.
The third bodyguard appeared. He was sweating too, pain more than any terror responsible. He came into the doorway and tipped himself against the jamb, blood seeping through his bandages and his face pale as milk.