June 5th, 2032.
Interior of Japan.
Village without a name on the main maps.
23:54 The academy door opened.
Mahãdaran stepped out first.
With the wooden hat.
With the boots that made the wooden floor of the porch register weight differently from normal weight, not louder, but denser, as though the material understood that what stepped on it was not merely mass.
His hands at his sides.
His black eyes on the darkness of the village.
The elder stepped out behind him.
With the simple posture.
With the white beard that the academy’s dim light still illuminated for a moment before the darkness outside absorbed him.
With black eyes.
Both of them with black eyes, which in the darkness was the only feature that made them visually similar, because in every other respect they were different in the way different generations are different when they belong to the same lineage of thing.
The village was silent.
The kind of silence that is not the absence of sound but the absence of the usual sound.
The wind through the trees remained, but the nocturnal animals that normally punctuated the night had stopped doing so.
Which was, in itself, information.
Mahãdaran looked over the perimeter.
With the eyes that, in combat state, processed space differently from normal state, not faster, but with another quality of attention, the kind of attention that does not distinguish between what is relevant and what is not because it treats everything as potentially relevant until proven otherwise.
— Twelve confirmed — he said quietly.
— Three north, three south, two east, two west.
— A pause.
— Two mobile.
Still positioning.
The elder did not respond.
He was looking north with the attention of someone seeing things that were not visible to the person beside him.
— Two mobile — repeated the elder.
— They’ll close the perimeter from the rooftops.
— A pause.
— They have archers.
Mahãdaran looked toward the rooftops.
He saw nothing.
But the elder had spoken with the certainty of information, not speculation.
— Where is the boy?
— said Mahãdaran.
— Waking up — said the elder.
— He’ll be here in two minutes.
Two minutes was enough time and insufficient time simultaneously, which was the specific quality of time in situations of this nature.
Humanity keeps inventing clocks as if clocks have ever solved the problem of impending violence.
The side window of Jivel’s house opened.
He came out through the window, not the door, which was on the north side of the perimeter, the side the elder had said had three.
He came out through the window with the agility of someone training had made faster than urgency, and ran crouched through the distance between his house and the academy.
He reached the elder and Mahãdaran.
Looked at both of them.
Then at the darkness around the perimeter.
— How many?
— he said.
— Twelve — said Mahãdaran.
With the flat voice of combat state, which sounded different from the voice Jivel had heard in other moments.
More direct, without the layers the joker usually added to his speech.
— Kerath Family?
— said Jivel.
— Elite squad — said the elder.
— They did not come for the same reason as the other one.
— Then they came to— — They came to finish it — said the elder.
Silence.
Jivel looked toward the darkness.
— What do I do?
The elder looked at him.
With eyes older than the face.
With the expression of someone calculating not if, but when.
— You observe — said the elder.
— But— — You observe — he repeated, with the firmness that closed the question without brutalizing it.
— What you are going to see tonight is what the training is building toward.
Not the destination.
The direction.
Jivel remained silent.
Then nodded.
The elder looked at Mahãdaran.
Mahãdaran looked at the elder.
Between them passed something that required no words, the specific communication of people who know what the other is going to do and know that the other knows they know.
— Perimeter or direct contact?
— said Mahãdaran.
— Direct contact — said the elder.
— I want them to understand who is here before we have to show everything completely.
Mahãdaran paused for half a second.
— Completely.
— Completely — confirmed the elder.
Mahãdaran inclined his head with the minimal gesture of someone who had received sufficient instruction.
— I’ll take north — he said.
— South — said the elder.
And they separated.