These words fall from his mouth naturally, easily. He has said them before, though he doesn’t remember when. He remembers, though, that sometimes things don’t go as well as he says they will.
The boy whispers his thanks, grabs Schaffa’s knee and tries to squeeze that thanks into him, then trots away. Schaffa pushes himself slowly to his feet. The boy has left the faded uniform behind, so Schaffa pulls this on again, his fingers remembering how the seams should lie. There should be a cloak, too, but that is gone. He can’t remember where. When he steps forward, a mirror on the side of the room catches his eye, and he stops. Shivers, not in pleasure this time.
It is wrong. It is so wrong. His hair hangs lank and dry after the sun and salt’s ravaging; it should be black and glossy, and instead it is dull and wispy, burnt. The uniform hangs off him, for he has spent some of the substance of his own body as fuel in the push to reach shore. The uniform’s colors are also wrong and there is no reassurance in it of who he was, who he should be. And his eyes—
Evil Earth, he thinks, staring at the icy near-white of them. He did not know his eyes looked like this.
There is a creak on the floorboards near the door, and his alien eyes shift to one side. The boy’s mother stands there, blinking in the light of the lantern she holds. “Schaffa,” she says. “I thought I heard you up. And Eitz?”
That must be the boy’s name. “He came to bring me these.” Schaffa touches his clothing.
The woman comes into the room. “Huh,” she says. “Now that it’s all wrung out and dry, it looks like a uniform.”
Schaffa nods. “I’ve learned something new of myself. I’m a Guardian.”
Her eyes widen. “Truly?” There’s suspicion in her gaze. “And Eitz has been bothering you.”
“It was no bother.” Schaffa smiles, to reassure her. For some reason, the woman’s frown twitches and deepens. Ah, well; he has forgotten how to charm people, too. He turns and goes over to her, and she falls back a step at his approach. He stops, amused by her fear. “He, too, has learned something of himself. I’ll be taking him away now.”
The woman’s eyes widen. Her mouth works in silence for a moment, then she sets her jaw. “I knew it.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t want to.” She swallows, her hand tightening; the little lantern flame wavers with whatever emotion flashes through her. “Don’t take him. Please.”
Schaffa tilts his head. “Why not?”
“It would kill his father.”
“Not his grandfather?” Schaffa takes a step closer. (Closer.) “Not his uncles and aunts and cousins? Not you?”
She twitches again. “I… don’t know how I feel, right now.” She shakes her head.
“Poor, poor thing,” Schaffa says softly. This compassion is automatic, too. He feels the sorrow deeply. “But will you protect him from them, if I do not take him?”
“What?” She looks at Schaffa in surprise and alarm. Can this truly have never occurred to her? Apparently not. “Protect… him?” That she asks this, Schaffa understands, is the proof that she is inadequate to the task.
So he sighs and reaches up, as if to put a hand on her shoulder, and shakes his head, as if to convey regret. She relaxes minutely and does not notice when his hand instead curves around her neck. His fingers settle into place and she stiffens at once. “Wh—” Then she falls down dead.
Schaffa blinks as she falls to the floor. For a moment he is confused. Was that supposed to happen? And then—his own thoughts freshened further by the dollop of something that she has given him, such a tiny amount of it relative to what Eitz possessed—he understands. This thing is only safe to do with orogenes, who have more than enough to share. The woman must have been a still. But Schaffa feels better. In fact—
Take more, whispers the rage at the back of his mind. Take the others. They threaten the boy, which threatens you.
Yes. That seems wise.
So Schaffa rises and moves through the quiet, dark house, touching each member of Eitz’s family and devouring a piece of them. Most of them do not wake. The stupid son gives more than the rest; almost an orogene. (Almost a Guardian.) Litz gives the least, perhaps because he is old—or perhaps because he is awake and fighting against the hand Schaffa has clamped over his mouth and nose. He is trying to stab Schaffa with a fishknife pulled from under his pillow. What a pity that he must suffer such fear! Schaffa twists Litz’s head around sharply to get at the nape of his neck. There’s a snapping sound as he does this, which he doesn’t even notice until the flow of something out of Litz goes soft and dead and useless. Ah, yes, belatedly Schaffa remembers that it does not work on the dead. He’ll be more careful in the future.
But it is so much better, now that the taut ache inside him has gone still. He feels… not whole. Never that, again. But when there is so much of another presence inside him, even a little regained ground is a blessing.
“I am Schaffa Guardian… Warrant?” he murmurs, blinking as the last part finally comes to him. What comm is Warrant? He cannot remember. He is glad to have the name regardless. “I have done only what was necessary. Only what is best for the world.”
The words feel right. Yes. He has needed the sense of purpose, which now sits like lead at the back of his brain; amazing that he did not have it before. Now, though? “Now I have work to do.”
Eitz finds him in the living room. The boy is breathless, excited, carrying a small satchel. “I heard you and Mama talking. Did you… tell her?”
Schaffa crouches to be on eye level with him, taking him by the shoulders. “Yes. She said she didn’t know how she felt, and then she said nothing more.”
Eitz’s face crumples. He glances toward the corridor that leads to the adults’ rooms in the house. Everyone down that corridor is dead. The doors are closed and quiet. Schaffa has left Eitz’s siblings and cousins alive, however, because he is not a complete monster.
“Can I say goodbye to her?” Eitz asks softly.
“I think that would be dangerous,” Schaffa says. He means it. He doesn’t want to have to kill the boy yet. “These things are best done cleanly. Come; you have me now, and I will never leave you.”
The boy blinks at this and straightens a little, then nods shakily. He’s old for such words to have the power on him that they do. They work, Schaffa suspects, because Eitz has spent the past few months living in terror of his family. It is nothing to play on such a lonely, weary state of mind. It isn’t even a lie.
They leave the half-dead house behind. Schaffa knows that he should take the boy… somewhere. Somewhere with obsidian walls and gilded bars, a place that will die in a cataclysm of fire in ten years, so perhaps it is good that he is too damaged to remember this location. In any case the angry whispers have begun steering him in a different direction. Somewhere south. Where he has work to do.
He puts his hand on Eitz’s shoulder to comfort the boy, or perhaps to comfort himself. Together they walk into the predawn dark.
Don’t be fooled. The Guardians are much, much older than Old Sanze, and they do not work for us.
—Last recorded words of Emperor Mutshatee, prior to his execution
4
you are challenged