Ishril 25, 4633 AIA

We have a problem with the shipment. I've come back from the Taijis Nil library with my support, Naraik, to find a message waiting for me on my desk. I only came back because my slate wouldn't stop buzzing.

An urgent message, flashing bright and clear on the black screen. A note telling me I need to speak to the Guardian of External Affairs as soon as possible.

I'm Deputy Assistant Curator for the museum. I've never talked with a Guardian before. It's not impossible, of course, but it does make me anxious. The sticky feeling that I must've done something wrong. It's not real, but boy does it feel like it is.

I want to head over there straight away, since it is the Guardian xirself, after all. I sit at my desk with Naraik opposite and I wonder.

"What could possibly be so urgent about a junk shipment from the Nas Ashca?"

And it is junk. Don't get me wrong, to almost everyone else outside the museum stores, it's mostly useless. Dead tech from five thousand years ago, often more. Mostly mangled metal we can put aside to be recycled or reused. That's why it'd never be approved for a dragonlift, so it's coming overland instead.

Nobody ignores a Guardian, so I now I have to drop everything and head up to visit xem, I suppose.

All I wanted was a quiet day, and a quiet life.

"You want me to come with you?" Naraik asks and I nod, so off we go.

You're going to have to put up with me whinging now. I can't for the life of me work out why the Builders—all those brave souls who put so much work into tunnelling this city out of the canyon rock with what primitive kata skills they had to hand—decided to put a library so close to what is, in real terms, the frontline in an endless war.

Why not put the library well back, out of harm's way? Nobody's going to want to pick up a book or pop into the museum for a quick tour on the way to fight, are they?

Are they?

I think all of this as we wend my nervous way over to the elevators. It's like a warren down here. Even with several thousand tons of rock between me and that hideous rend in reality they call the Gap, I can still sense it every time the bloody thing rips open.

We all can, of course. If you were born in an Exclusion Zone, inside a Barrier, then you get what I mean. Like somebody put metal needles in your teeth and bones and pulled you inside out.

How do all those Warrior and Watcher classes do it? Defending the Line. Fighting until the sifradan and the seers can close the Gap again.

I know I couldn't.

I like my quiet, I'm not gonna lie. Isha blessed me, I guess, with the sort of skills for sorting out objects in a museum store and stacking books. You wouldn't see me anywhere nearer a Gap than I ever have to.

I'm rambling. Here we are. The elevator. There's only five of us who work down here, so we don't need more than one. I don't use the stairs; my legs won't take it.

I can tell the Gap's open right now. Naraik keeps an eye on me. Xe can read me so well. My teeth pulse, my gums taste of metal. And my legs—I'm so glad of the elevators. If I had to use the stairs I'd die. They'd have to bring all the objects up to me in our home.

So, while we're here in the elevator, I try to plan what I'm going to say to the Guardian. My slate's a good distraction. I send a message over to Ajaë to tell xem what's going on.

<Message from the Guardian Anarya. Xe wants to speak to me about a problem with a junk shipment from the Nas Ashca. I might be late home.>

Ajaë's busy; xe doesn't reply right away. Xe's always busy—the cheetah to my sloth. I struggle through the world on my failing legs and my failing heart, the kata eating away at me, and xe's the hero saving the world.

Well, kind of. Xe manages all the tricky ways kata can be used to store data on the Amnet, so of course xe's busy.

Right. We're at the right floor. I've never been up here before. Isha's sacred tits, the ceilings are high, and vaulted, too. It's busy, too.

Nothing to do with me or my shipment, of course. Service staff and assistants are hurrying back and forth. The Gap's live and it keeps everyone on their toes.

We have to weave my way around them. It's not easy with my legs being daft from standing in the elevator, but Naraik makes sure I don't bump into anyone, giving me a smooth ride. They're all impressive in their smart uniforms and stylish hair cuts.

Bushu locs are in again this year. They don't suit my hair. I'm Taija, and my hair's too thin, so I leave it natural.

Why am I thinking about hair? Oh, it's because it's one of the things the Gap can affect. Along with everything else. Hair, nails...

Extensive windows give me a panoramic view of the canyon. The sharp rise of the West Wall with all its own windows and terraces, the waterfall at the head (one upside of living this deep into Amin Duum's Zone, the constant background rushing noise).

Down on the canyon floor, everyone keeping all the flora and fauna under control as the loose kata from the Gap sets them off, too.

I thought I might be suited to Botanist Class when I was very young. I do love plants. But there was an incident—let's not go into that—and I stuck to objects not liable to spring to violent life and lash out whenever the Gap goes live.

Objects are affected, but their molecules are more stable than biological organisms, so it's not so dramatic. Worst we have in the museum stores is when something falls off a table without warning.

So, I shuffle along to the side with the windows, leaning on Naraik's firm arm. I catch some much-needed desert sun. (Ajaë tells me I need more, and I nod but ignore him). Where am I going? I've not been up here before but the message said to come to the Guardian's quarters. What would they ask me to do if the Guardian was back home in Rad Ruinn?

Now we're at the end of the corridor, I notice the screens. These are like slates, some kind of special, kata-reinforced glass, but bigger. Anyone can see a readout of data from the Gap Chamber itself.

I flick a look, just out of curiosity you understand, and read a bunch of names and insignia I don't recognise.

Sacred Isha, keep them all alive and safe. May your blessing be with them this day.

A knot has gathered around the screens. "Wow, that's a bad one," somebody who can understand all those complex kata stats says. "Gonna be a long afternoon."

"Tanaka was saying they're gonna start calling in the—"

"Excuse me." I butt in. My slate buzzed again and I guess what that'll be. I don't want to keep the Guardian waiting. As a group they all turn to stare. Now I'm so aware of how I'm not wearing one of those official uniforms with the sashes.

I have one, of course I do. But if you spend all your time several feet underground sorting through dusty objects you don't wear it. It's only now I realise this.

I adjust my work smock and apron, as if I'd meant to dress this way.

"I'm looking for the Guardian of External Affairs," I say, to collective raising of eyebrows.

For some of us, everything carries on when the Gap is open. Our teeth might be tingling and our fingertips burning, but our jobs must march on.

"That way," says one sporting Bushu locs and having an especially elaborate face tattoo.

"Thank you." I give them an obligatory little bow, but they've already swivelled their group attention back to the screens, the feeds, and their analysis of the evolving fight.

I limp off with Naraik, happy to be ignored. This can't be serious; we'll be back downstairs in a blink, I tell myself. Or I tell my hips and my back, which are already whinging about all this moving about.

Another windowed corridor—bright afternoon sunshine on one side and a series of doors on the other. Double doors, single doors, large doors, small doors. In between each door, images of the High Ashad Isha Xirself in various life scenes.

I pause. "I've not seen these before! They're early. I would say early Builders, judging by the style."

Naraik leans forward. Xe might be Watcher Class trained, but xe's been around me long enough to know almost as much as I do. "I must've read some research papers on the meaning of these poses, the use of bas relief, the colour."

I have to drag myself away. If I wasn't being constantly buffeted by people hurrying about with fretful expressions, I could stand here for hours. My lower body hushes. It's as if my femurs and pelvis are as fascinated by pre-Alliance history as my brain.

Helpfully, somebody has thought to put up good signage. Three doors down, we find one of the double doors standing wide open and marked with the Sign of the Guardian of External Affairs.

Immediately beneath this delicately carved arch, an owlish person stands, holding a slate. Xe blinks frequently up and down the corridor.

At the sight of us, plainly out of place here, xe stretches up onto xir tiptoes and leans over. A heronish posture, as if xe might pluck me out of the river of the corridor. I stop, alarmed, and lean back to avoid this. Naraik clicks xir tongue to hold xem off.

"SDAC Tabishka?" Owlish has an appropriately hooting voice. Nobody uses my full title in that form. It takes me a blink to reply.

"Yes, you wanted to see me?" This isn't the Guardian of External Affairs. I might be a dusty creature from under the Taijis Nil library itself, but not even I am so uninitiated into the rarified air of the Caipashad that I don't recognise a Guardian in person.

This is an assistant. A senior assistant, of course, but still an assistant.

"Follow me." The assistant rotates like a top and strides off on a pair of long legs with a lot more power in them than I have in mine.

I shuffle past him, but I'm breathless and aching a yard or so beyond the doorway. I huff, in a circular antechamber of some sort, with yet more bas reliefs of Isha.

I'd like a pause. "Could we stop here so I can sit down and break?" I hold up a hand to seek out extra support but it stops. It hovers in the air because right in front of me is a scene I'm so familiar with but I've never seen before.

"Of course."

This relief is the High Ashad Isha negotiating with the Five Nations. Not the grand negotiations we've all seen a thousand times, enacted in Dura after Dura.

"This is after the Rending," I say. Isha, shown in the profile form the Builders preferred for their art, reaches out an arm, holding a palm leaf. A leaf with five spines upon it, one for each of the Nations. Two more lie on the ground before Xir feet.

Opposite Xem, the representatives of the Five Nations stand about in various bold poses to reflect the work they'd later take on as Guardians of the Alliance. That bit I recognise, but not the Guardian standing front and centre. I've seen the Guardian Defender taking xir palm, I've seen the Guardian Dragonmaster take xir's.

Never the Guardian of External Affairs (they can't have called xem that back then, can they?) reaching out to take the palm. Under xir feet, lines of smaller people represent the rest of the Nation xe led. The Taija. My Nation.

"Are you all right?" A new voice slices through my reverie.

I manage to untangle myself to see—yes, this is the Guardian of External Affairs. Not a carving but the living version, another tall being in a uniform, but xir jacket is open, and xe appears much more relaxed.

Xe reaches for me, offering an additional sturdy arm for me to lean on.

"This is post-Rending, isn't it?" I point at the wall with my free hand. "The Agreement and the Foundation?"

"You know it." The Guardian raises xir dark eyebrows. Xe doesn't have the hair for Bushu locs either, but I'm not sure whether a thousand-year-old being would be in any way a follower of fashion.

"I do and I don't," I say. "I've never seen it represented."

"Our big moment." The Guardian beams and it's unexpected. "Other than the one where we refused to fight, of course, and got demoted to basic administration for all eternity." Xe treats me to a wink. "Come this way. Tea?"

Owlish flutters along behind us, xir slate poised to take notes. All this must be recorded, I suppose, but for the moment, I'm more thrilled by the Guardian's surprisingly relaxed manner.

"I'm sorry to drag you all the way up here," xe says. "But we have some additional security—"

Xe waves a hand vaguely around this new, almost circular space with its gently rough yellow walls and plain furniture. "And what we need to discuss should be handled with caution."

"The shipment?" I accept a soft seat from Owlish—I should stop calling xem that, but now it's stuck and I'm not sure what else to do.

"Yes. It might not be as urgent as an active Gap to anyone else, but it is a matter of Alliance security beyond the Barrier. That falls to me, alas."

The Guardian settles on a low sofa opposite me. As if by magic, Owlish withdraws. I wonder what type of tea xe'll bring. I hope it's cold. I'm thirsty after that rushed trip and buried within Amin Duum's walls, it's warm. Naraik gives me a look and follows Owlish to offer guidance.

"Is it a border issue?" I try to sound knowledgeable, since I'm sure last time it was a border issue.

A distant pair of cultures unsure about what protocols applied to such an odd assortment of goods. But that didn't require the Guardian's input. My boss dealt with that.

The Guardian sits forward. "No, not this time. It's more serious than that. The caravan was attacked. The whole shipment was stolen."