koyaanisqatsi (n.) "life out of balance"; a state of life that calls for another way of living.

Sanav's mother had always whispered tales of a kinder world – a world beyond the walls where the druj were but a nightmare, where no walls hid the sky from view, where the tagma were unneeded and their swords could lie in their sheaths, slowly blunting, for the rest of their lives. She had whispered them, those lies of hers; she had breathed them at night, perhaps hoping that he would not even hear her, and then she had gone into Mønt on the day of the druj attack and she had been killed: the enormous skeletal thing which had risen from the ground beneath the Schools had crushed her just as she had planted her blades in its shoulder. They hadn't found her body afterwards, though Sanav had discovered a boot that he thought likely to have been hers; the laces had been tied the way that she always tied them, wrapping around each other in five tight curlicues before being tucked back into the tongue of the shoe, so that nothing was left trailing in her wake. Sanav still tied his the same way; Captain Apusean of the northern corps had raised his eyes on last inspection when he noted it, but he had said nothing, and moved onwards without comment.

That was good. Sanav was prone to an overabundance of honesty when he was challenged. If Apusean had asked, Sanav thought it likely that he would have answered with a story that started with: this is the story of the boy that I was. He was not the short-winded type; he was not someone who could curtail himself once he got going. It was a tendency that had only become more pronounced the longer he found himself in close proximity to the other tagma cadets who were less open with their thoughts; being bunked with Ghjuseppu Mannazzu and Torsten Müller and Kinga Kaasik had produced many long hours divided in a binary between Sanav speaking too much and nobody speaking at all. At the beginning, more of the former; nowadays, more of the latter. Sometimes Torsten could be roused into a bit of small talk while they sharpened their swords and oiled their harnesses; sometimes Ghjuseppu would make a few wry comments about the day's events while they ate what little rations were accorded to them; sometimes, Kinga would say something cutting about his form just in time to throw his confidence before inspection. If he didn't know better, he would have thought that she was trying to sabotage him. It wouldn't have bothered him six months ago, but that had been before Mønt. Much had changed since Mønt. The other cadets hadn't even wanted to be excubitors before Mønt. They were new recruits; the army had been starving for them.

All this to say – when he rose that morning to find that Ghjuseppu's bed was empty and that Kinga's bed had never been filled, it did not make for much of a difference in the tone or content of the conversation that accompanied him to his breakfast. Torsten was there, a bruise healing slowly over one broad cheekbone; he was a man with a flat face and broad shoulders, brutish. That was the way they were all made in Kelch: like they had been hewn from granite with only a sledgehammer to hand. It would have been a great understatement to say that only a mother could love them; Captain Hijikata often said that Kelch men made for the best excubitors, because they didn't need to be concerned about ruining their faces on the job. Sanav's grandfather, originator of the Mahesar name, had been from Kelch; he had to be grateful that he took after his Txori grandmother instead. It hadn't exactly won him any favours with the ladies – or with the gentlemen, for that matter – but it had certainly given him some motivation to ensure he never fell face-first, as had become Kaasik's trademark.

"Good morning, Müller." Sanav smiled. There was a tune running through his mind that he could not name; he had been humming its bars the whole of the morning as he washed and dressed.

"Mahesar."

"Sleep well?"

Torsten drew his knife across his plate, metal scraping against wood, and said, coldly, "Hijikata wants an expedition party. I did my best to keep your name out of it, but given our comrades are absent without leave..."

So much for the pleasantries. "I appreciate your efforts," Sanav said. It couldn't be helped. He was tagma. He had chosen this path – chosen it before his parents had died beneath the footfall of titanic druj, of course – but he had chosen it nonetheless and he ought to stick by it. There was honor in serving people, and laying your life down for them – not the kind of honor Sanav craved, of course, a selfless kind of honor that demanded you first bleed before you are applauded. He didn't quite know why he wanted to be here, only that he could not bear to leave; what would his mother have said? What would his father have said? No. He stayed.

He did not, however, stay at the breakfast table for long; he and Torsten ate the porridge which had been doled out to them, and then equipped themselves with their harnesses and their swords, wondering what kind of expedition they were being called up for. They were due to graduate into the tagma proper in the coming days; they would be named watcher, scholar, excubitor or failure. Four options; nice to have some range, Sanav thought. They knew that the excubitors were in dire need of men, and he suspected that this was the reason the cadets were perpetually pressed into temporary service under their auspices: they were being tested. Sanav was quite certain it was a test that he had failed, and he couldn't find it in himself to be too disappointed at that fact. It would be a safer life, wouldn't it? The closer you got to Ganzir, the safer your service, even if you were expected to perform that service from atop one of these enormous behemoth walls. Sanav thought he might make a good enough watcher – not smart enough for scholar, not bold enough for excubitor. He didn't need anyone to tell him as much; it was clear, now and again, written on the faces of the soldiers around him. He had always enjoyed swinging swords, playing at soldiers, using weapons rather than making them – but coming face-to-face with the reality of life as a druj-killer had whetted whatever hunger had driven his initial enlistment. Now, he would be happy to walk the wall; if it kept the monsters away from the people within – away from Chandra – then he would be fulfilling his duty just fine. Wouldn't he?

They saddled their horses and gathered in the courtyard, as they had been bid. Sanav hummed under his breath as they went; Torsten squared his shoulders, but did not tell him to stop. There was still no sign of Ghjuseppu or Kinga; maybe they had been rostered for a day off. Sanav officially had permission to utilise such days to visit his grandmother, Betta, but he had never really found the motivation to traipse across districts just to have a stilted day of conversation with a woman he barely knew. It was unusual for both of his fellow cadets to be so assigned to the same day of visitation, but they were both refugees from Mønt; the corps tended to be a little more forgiving of such matters when it came to the residuum of the fallen district. Sanav had always considered himself hardened by the awful events of that day, but he was still one orphan in a city full of them; if Ghjuseppu and Kinga were anything to judge by, the refugees of the druj attack tended to have a peculiar hollow look to their eyes and an oddly brittle manner of movement, like at any moment they could be tempted, snapped, into violence.

They were, in that respect, better soldiers than Sanav could ever aspire to.

Rakel Sjöberg rode into the yard, her red hair agleam like so much burnished copper; she gestured with one arm, turning her horse even as she did so. Clearly there was no time to lose; her horse pranced awkwardly across the stone slabs of the courtyard, spittle flying from its bit. It looked like they might have already travelled some distance that day; certainly, when Sanav looked closer, he could see that the edge of her straight-razor sword was already stained black with the ichor of fallen druj. "Alright, lads." She smiled. She was a pretty girl, that Rakel; an orphan, like so many in the tagma, though a vestige of long-ago-fallen Obušek rather than from the more recent destruction of Mønt. "Nothing too complicated. Just venturing into Tiamat."

Tiamat. Tiamat District. Sanav had been raised there; he had called it home for so many years. Now, it had fallen to the druj; it was a kingdom belonging to the monsters alone. Well, not if the excubitors had anything to say about it – though the hole in Wall Alliette meant that for every one druj they felled, five more would swarm forth from Mainyu or from the fields of fog beyond Illéa, to reassert their dominance over the land. It would be so strange to go back, he thought; would they venture near to his hometown? Would he recognise the contours of the land? Would he see any new horror that had gone unglimpsed during the previous season's long, arduous recovery efforts?

They rode through the district on Rakel's heels, joined at intervals by her seniors: Jooa Tuominen joined them to the rear, Oktawia Chlebek to their right, each guiding their own narrow group of cadets to add to the growing number. The older tagma were relaxed in their saddle, smiling despite their mutilated visages. Their instructors had always said that there came a time in your career to earn your scars; in that once-in-a-generation moment, when the druj found a way into the city, the men and women of the corps were called upon to sacrifice limb and life alike. Something similar was reflected in the poster of the beautiful princess which adjoined the length of the wall along which they rode en-route to the Tiamat Gate: tomorrow's winds will blow tomorrow. It was a nice slogan, one of their nicer; the one that Sanav could remember most clearly was the one that had featured in his schoolhouse in Tiamat, and whose meaning he had never fully gleaned: the forest answers in the same way one shouts at it. When they had traded such slogans over dinner one night, Ghjuseppu had offered one from Mønt with a typically droll tone of voice: "for warriors, war; for war, enemies." Sanav had mused that they seemed to get more warlike the closer to the outside you drew; the ones on the interior all tended towards messages about unity and togetherness. A single string makes no music.

They were expected by Captain Hijikata at ten in the morning; the way that Rakel was guiding them, they would arrive no later than half-past nine. The streets were quiet and their horses were fresh, so their progress was swift; it would have been swifter, perhaps, if the excubitors guiding them had not borne the unmistakeable signs of the exhaustion and the long hours of work that had preceded them. Oktawia Chlebek's sleeve was stained brown-and-black with blood-and-ichor; beside her, Jooa Tuominen had a new wound on his face, the papery edges of the wound curling inwards with the unmistakeable sign of the infection which inevitably followed a druj-inflicted wound. They were not a neatly attired group, but they rode with one hand on the reins and one hand hanging by their sides as their horses moved languidly; following behind them with both hands fixed upon the reins and the pommel of the saddle simultaneously, Sanav had never felt more like a man in the guise of a duckling.

After eight months in the training corps, he still hadn't fully adjusted to the sharp eye that Captain Hijikata cast upon them. He was a severe-looking man, with hair too-long to be considered strictly uniform and dark eyes that seemed almost deadened in their black-light focus. He was one of the most scarred men that Sanav had ever glimpsed, but on this particular occasion he was well-covered; his dark green coat reached to his wrist, where his black leather gloves concealed his hands. His dark eyes swept across them – perhaps some realisation at their small number – and he murmured something softly to Rakel, who nodded and leaned back in her saddle to relay the information up the wall to the watcher patrolling along the gate.

"It'll be a short day," he said, finally, his voice cold and professional. Rakel and Jooa swore he was a decent sort once they caught him out of uniform, but by now Sanav was quite certain that they were just lying; he had never seen the man as anything less than an utterly consummate professional. "We're just doing a five-mile sweep west." If you see any druj, do not engage; simply note, and relay."

Oktawia was waving them through the gates. "Your swords are a last resort, kids. Running away should always be the priority."

Sanav wasn't sure that he had to be told twice; he was quite certain that Torsten could have done with another telling or two, from the grip that the older cadet kept on his razor as they began to ride through the gate of Aizsaule into the green lands of Tiamat beyond. Passing through the shade of Wall Szymanski, Sanav shuddered to think of the utter confidence he had once held in the fortifications which ringed their kingdom. The first wall had fallen; what would happen if the second one followed suit? He couldn't afford to be complacent; would he be able to save his sister a second time? How many Illéans would die screaming this time? God, he was scared to even think of it. And yet he thought of it – he almost felt as if he had to. He was so sure, in moments like these, that he was wrong to even think of becoming a watcher; he would not be content to live as anything less than an excubitor, doing what he could on the ground. Watching the more experienced tagma fan out around him, the way that Oktawia snapped her swords into her hands and leaned back gently in her saddle, the way that Rakel nocked an arrow in her bow even as her horse stumbled over the uneven land, the way that Captain Hijikata kept his eyes on the horizon as they skirted the shadow of the wall, Sanav wondered – not for the first time – what it would be like to be as strong and sure as the people with which he seemed fated to surround himself.

That, of course, was why he would have been happier for the earth to open up and swallow him whole than to have what happened next happen next: his horse threw a shoe, stumbled onto its shoulder, and threw Sanav, sword-and-all, directly over its head and onto the ground.

He hit the ground hard enough, barely catching himself on one hand so that his wrist bent at an unbearable angle and he rolled, fast, onto his back. The sheaths of his swords had kept them from biting into him; he was grateful for that much. Moving awkwardly, slowly, Sanav eased himself up onto one arm and looked for his horse; it didn't seem to have injured itself, though it had fallen.

As it stumbled back to its hooves, Sanav could see, over its shoulder, that some of the other excubitors were riding to his assistance. Rakel Sjöberg swivelled out of her saddle and had leapt to the ground before her horse had even slowed from a canter; she meandered, rather than ran, to Sanav's side, clearly having perceived that he was not too badly injured. "Thought they were teaching basic horsemanship in the corps these days."

Torsten had hoisted up the horse's fetlock, and was closely examining the shoe in question. "What made it falter?"

Sanav could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment as he accepted Rakel's extended hand and allowed her to pull him back to his feet. He tested his ankles and wrists hesitantly – yes, he thought, if not fine, then certainly not gravely injured. His right wrist hurt when he tried to rotate it more than thirty degrees; he thought it would right itself after a splint. "I was –" he began, but then paused, staring at the space between his boots. There was a pattern here – not claw marks, as was so common in the Tiamat of the druj, but… something small, square, and silver.

Crouching hesitantly, and wincing as his joints protested the simple movement, he ran his fingers along the shape, and found that they were set deep into the ground; he could not lift them, or pry them for the ground. They were square silver nails, set deeply into the compacted soil, so deeply that they could not be levered upwards. They reminded him of the studs used to hold whole houses together; of the deep nails that he had seen employed to cobble together the scaffoldings which led up to the watchers' patrol along the edge of the wall at its full height.

A whole line of these nails trailed back towards the very edge of the enormous wall, all shrouded in the shadow thereof; waving away Oktawia's questions, Sanav followed their path, tapping his boot against each set as he found them; they led right up to the wall. Over his shoulder, he was dimly aware that Oktawia was calling for the captain's company; he devoted his attention, rather, towards the narrow square formed by these nails along the exterior of the wall. Drawing his sword, he set the edge to its outline and carefully etched out the square, finding fault lines in the soil below as he did so. His blade cut through the grass; no packed earth impeded it. It was a…

Rakel set a hand on Sanav's shoulder to guide him back from the square he had etched into the earth; Torsten and Jooa had stepped forward to lever up the soil, which was not soil at all, but a slab of thick wood which had been set into the earth to cover up the trapdoor set parallel to Wall Szymanski. It was a trapdoor, Sanav saw, with some degree of trepidation. He didn't like this; he didn't like what it might mean. Tunnels, he thought, tunnels beneath the city, tunnels beneath the kingdom, tunnels linking the districts… It was a hole bored deeply into the earth, and as Hijikata stepped forward to crouch at its edge and peer within, Sanav could see a pained expression of tired cynicism flicker across his scarred features.

"This," he said, wearily, "is bad."

"Because..." Sanav began the sentence without quite knowing where he wanted to go with it. He still felt, faintly, as if he were still falling.

"Because," Oktawia said, with a slight smile that did little to cover up her clear apprehension at the new sight before them. "We'll have to inform the palace."

"And he'll have to speak to Morozova," Rakel added, "for the third time this week."

"You're not entirely wrong, Sjöberg." Hijikata straightened to his full height. "Smile, Mahesar. You're finally going to get a chance to meet that princess of ours. Men have murdered for far less." He brushed off his gloves, and inclined one dark eyebrow. "Well, then. Do I have any volunteers, or am I heading down there myself?"