He turned, his eyes curious. And there, in the tightening of his mouth, was the opaque wall he’d erected between us. I’d surmounted it on the night he’d explained the breath to me. But, the next morning, he’d fortified his shield. He pushed me away and he kept me at arm’s length—and I knew why. There were questions he didn’t want me to ask.

“What is it, Cobane?” he said.

I went for the jugular. “The Helix—did you know all along that I was too weak to wield it?”

He shook his head.

“Then tell me, why did the Director give me a sword? You said before that I don’t want to know, but I do.”

He didn’t flinch from my blunt query. Hosea Khan never shied from a fight. He avoided violence, to be sure. But against his will, he cared too much to shut me out completely.

I played on his affection. “If you care about me, even a little, you’ll not keep me in the dark. I want to know why I have a sword, and I want to know right now.”

He took a breath. “I do care for you, and more than a little.”

I swallowed. “Then tell me.”

“You’re better off in the dark, Arika.”

“Tell me!”

He grimaced, searching for the right words. “The Director gave you a sword, because he thinks that someone can save the Kongo. He believes that the One is among us today.”

My eyes went wide. It was the last thing I had expected him to say. “The One?” I croaked. “You can’t possibly mean—”

“The Omen,” he said.

I felt the hairs on my neck rise up. The Omen had been spoken by the Great Obi Solomon himself, right before he signed the Compromise.

Before I could respond, Hosea spoke the sacred words out loud. “‘I am not the One, but One is coming—mightier than I.’”

I stared at him. His words hung in the air between us.

I shook my head, trying to think logically. “You told me that the Director wants the Kongo to secede from the North, but the Omen isn’t about seceding,” I said. “It’s about the future of all America.” I knew the legend by heart and quoted from an old reader. “One day, the Northridge will invent a piece of technology so powerful, the whole world will be healed by it. The Earth will return to its former glory and no one—not Kongo, Clayskin, or English—will labor again. At that time, the One Director of the Kongo will usher in a new age of peace.”

Hosea made a face. “That’s what you learned in school—that the One, the savior of the Kongo people, would be an English Diplomat from the Northridge?”

I bit my lip, feeling small. “That’s what they taught us.”