“They hate us.” Hatchet said this as if it were self-evident.

“Maybe. Anybody ever ask ’em?”

Into Hatchet’s face came a guarded look. “Who could?”

Killeen was concentrating on his own thoughts but he noticed the small hesitation in Hatchet’s hooded eyes. The man’s sharp chin turned and caught the dying light of Denix’s sunset through an open hole that served as window. Hatchet was hiding something.

“Kings used be good at mechtalk.”

Hatchet’s mouth narrowed. “Yeasay.”

“Thought you might’ve picked up some information since your Calamity.”

“We spent years runnin’, same as you.”

“You’ve sure done a lot better’n us,” Killeen said, to take the edge away from the conversation. Better to back off and come at it from a different direction.

Hatchet relaxed a little but said nothing.

Killeen went on easily, “We had one trained translator. Mantis killed her.”

“Uh-huh. We got one translator, a woman.”

“She learn much?”

“Nothin’ real useful.”

“I see.”

Hatchet said, “You Bishops got any Aspects can translate?”

“Read signs, things like that?”

“Anything you can. Always need skills.”

“Well…” Killeen asked Arthur, then replied, “No Aspects, no. One my Faces can, though.”

“Any good?”

“Some.”

Hatchet looked interested behind his veiled eyes. “Good.”

“That woman translator—”

“She’s sick now.”

Killeen wondered what Hatchet was still hiding. It might just be private King Family business. Probably better to skirt the issue.

Ideas brimmed in Killeen and he could not resist giving them voice. “Point is, why’d they attack the Citadels?”

Hatchet pursed his lips, the expression drawing his face even longer in the shadowed burnt-gold twilight. “Irritated, maybe.”

“Why send the Mantis now? Why build a special Marauder?”

“Finish us off.” Hatchet was distracted, bothered, and did not want to show it.

“Why take all that trouble? A whole new design. First it used mirages on us, really good ones. Looked absolutely real. I never saw a Marauder could do anything near so good before.”

“So?”

“We killed what we thought was its mainmind. Great. Then we find it’s dispersed its intelligence into midminds. So we kill those. Looks okay. Then yesterday we run into a navvy carrying a full mind—and weapons.”

“Hey, easy,” Hatchet said, sitting forward.

Killeen realized he had been shouting, his right fist balled tight. His left hung useless, limp. “Well, you see. They’re putting a lot into the Mantis.”

“Yeasay to that.” Hatchet sucked on his teeth, gazing into the distance. “You people’ve suffered a lot. More’n us. Mind, we don’t begrudge you space, even if you’ve drawn this Mantis.”

“We’re ’preciative,” Killeen said. The unspoken truth was that Metropolis might not be able to resist the Mantis. Hatchet feared that.

Still, the Kings had a lot of confidence. Several had already come by his hut and regaled Killeen with stories of how they’d crushed Marauder attacks. But Hatchet could see the Mantis was different.

The coming of the other Families might not be simply the blessed reuniting of humanity. Equally, it could spell the end of Metropolis.

Had this realization been what Hatchet wanted to hide? No, there was something more. Hatchet had quickly passed over what their translator had found out.

There was no point in suggesting that they go out and track the Mantis. Hatchet would never rob Metropolis of its main force. What’s more, Killeen realized, he himself was no advertisement for the wisdom of tracking the thing. His left arm hung as a limp rebuke at his side.

He said a few more things to make their gratefulness apparent, though he was sure Ledroff and Fornax had done the same. It never hurt to layer on the sweet manners between Families.

He added, though, “Point is, though, why are the mechs tryin’ mash us down in the dust?”

Hatchet said again, “They hate us. Pureblood simple.”

Killeen took a breath and said decisively, “Naysay.”

“How come, then?”

“I think they’re afraid of us. We scare ’em some way.”

Hatchet laughed strangely. Then he stood, the signal that Killeen’s time was up, that the Cap’n of the Kings had things to do.

EIGHT

“Dad… ?”

Toby had been asleep for so long Killeen could no longer resist the urge to shake him gently, seeking reassurance that the boy had not slipped into some down-winding neural spiral.

“Yeasay, yeasay. I’m here. You’re all right.”

“I feel… funny.”

“Any pain?”

“No, I… kinda… can’t feel.”

“Where?”

“Legs. Just the legs now.”

“Guts okay?”

“Yeasay.”

“Sure?”

Unexpectedly, Toby grinned. “Sure I’m sure. Put your hand down there, I’ll pee into it.”

“Think you can hit a pot?”

“It’s either that or try for the window.”

Killeen found it harder than he’d have guessed to get Toby sitting up on the raised pallet. Toby, too, seemed sobered by the effort. Shadows passed in his eyes and his throat contracted with some interior struggle. Then it was gone, leaving no sign in his smooth, papery skin. He peed roisterously into the clay pot, laughing.

“When’ll my legs come back?” Toby asked when he was lying back down.

“Rest a bit, we’ll see.”

Killeen had tried to keep his voice easy and cheerful but Toby caught something in it. “How long?”

“They don’t know. Never saw a case like this, where a Marauder was surekillin’ and got interrupted.”

“Marauder? Looked like navvy.”

“Well…”

Toby’s face clouded. “Reg’lar one?” To be brought down by a mere navvy…

“Naysay. Was a Marauder disguised as a navvy. Mantis made it, I figure.”

Toby brightened. “Least I wasn’t got by some damn navvy.”

“Nasty one, yeasay.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Not good.” No point in lying.

“Use it any?”

“Can’t even wipe my ass.”

“Since when didja?”

Killeen grinned, the lines splitting his sunburned face like trenches. “Look I don’t snatch off one them legs and close that mouth with it.”

“Least it’d be something decent to eat.”

Killeen fed him supper. He carried on conversation as wan halfnight fell, shadowing the room. He made making his own tour of Metropolis seem more colorful than it really had been. Toby was enthusiastic about getting out and seeing it on his own. Killeen promised to take him out tomorrow. He would have to carry the boy in his arms or else devise some wheelchair. He had to struggle to keep his voice from giving away much of what he felt. Hatchet and the others who knew about these things said there was no way any of them could fix Toby’s damage.

Even Angelique, when she had come to visit in the day, had mournfully shaken her head. She knew how to adjust eyes and mouth-taste. She could get into some other chips at the skull base. Whole body systems were beyond her, though. No one had even a hint of how they worked or where their neural junctions came into the spine. Toby had three tapjoints set into his spine, small pink hexagonal notches. The woman who installed them had died at the Citadel Bishop. Nobody among the Bishops or Rooks or Kings knew how to connect through the notches, or even if Toby’s damage was repairable through them.

He was relieved when Toby drifted into sleep, just as Killeen had begun rummaging for interesting things to say. He went out of the small square building to get more water from the King wells and met Shibo on the path.