Ander struggles with the scope of Detrich's ambition (post-revolution)

[guardiansverse]

Ander already knows that his lover sees into souls. It's no great news: anyone who knows the bare essentials of what a Land's Own Guardian is knows it. There is nothing to fear in it either. The nation is a great web, its people strung like pearls on strands of loving magic, on belonging and shared fate; and at the heart of the web is the Land's Own, holding and held. All of Festus's predecessors have been there, in that balance and that trust, and he is no different, even as he holds Ander's heart alongside his soul.

But Festus is different by definition. In everything. And where he is not, he makes himself so.

Ander already knows that whatever Festus feels for him, it isn't love in the ordinary sense that ordinary men feel. He isn't sure if he is a pleasant distraction for the busy Land's Own, an exercise in claiming - though Festus would be furious at the suggestion; he has said time and again that for him Ander is a brother in the revolution, not the noble-born officer he had been before he came to the cause - or even a kind of collateral, for the loyalty of the army. It is one of a hundred things he has had to make his peace with, to touch what he can touch. To come as close as he had to the singular fire that has reshaped a nation, and be able to tell himself that he is unscathed. It's a lie, of course, but Festus sees souls and he doesn't call the lie out. So he lets it be and dreams - fifty years old, a general and a veteran, and he dreams - that someday, someday Festus truly will see, see him and not see through him.

He has a place at the right hand, a step behind, at the crucible of the new order. Festus does not care that a Land's Own Guardian is meant to see, not touch, and he sees so much that needs his hand. His touch is everywhere. With rule of law restored he cannot decimate the nobility on the barricades and hunt them in the streets, but he chokes them in the banks, bloodies them in parliament, skins and rakes them and builds railways with their bones, trading ships with their flesh, telegraph wires of their skin. He casts their blood into guns to build a nation of soldiers. He is at the workers' rallies, the universities, the publishing houses. And while the city struggles to recollect itself behind him, he is on the fields, by the dikes and the ditches. Riding along the river where the ships amble on their way to the ocean. Scouting the border like the common footsoldier he has been born to be, scenting for war and prodding for the scent where it isn't forthcoming. And Ander bears witness with awe, and knows: it isn't enough.

He knows, because the day is done he is tired - older than he would like to admit to himself, perhaps, too old to see so much change whirling and not come away dizzy - but as he holds out his hand from the bed, Festus is still burning a long candle. Outwardly silent and still, but now everywhere inside, in the web of souls. When his focus is turned away from the world, his face works freely without his notice, a frown of deep focus shifting now and then to frustration, to open amazement and triumph, now and then, stunningly, to exhaustion and pain.

"What are you doing in there?" Ander whispers.

Festus starts, turns around to look at him. Now the openness of his features is one that he allows. Whatever he truly does feel for Ander, he permits him an honest answer. "Taking stock of my Guardians. It's a small task. They are still too few."

"It's to be expected, after a revolution." Ander has heard it was so. He's lived through one revolution only; he cannot imagine another. "There is nothing to be done."

"Isn't there? Nothing that can help it?"

"Nothing but time."

"Time!"

"You have more of it than you think." Ander chuckles. For everything Festus is, he is also barely thirty-five.

Festus rears back, dark hair tossed from over dark eyes. "Every day is history."

Ander wants to counter him and cannot. It is for you, he thinks, and wonders - the hundredth time, wonders - what Festus sees when he looks at him. When he looks at any man.

"Will you come to bed?" he says quietly. He is fifty years old and a veteran and general, and it is a plea. "What more there is, what more you look for... it will wait. You've done enough today. Festus - " you've risen from nothing, made yourself a name and a place. You've claimed a people, dethroned a king, reshaped a land. You have me here, begging. "You've done enough."

Something wild flashes in those dark eyes at the word. Festus shakes his head, mutely, and rises from his seat to go outside into the night.

Ander lies back in the cold bed. He might as well rise; might as well go, find someplace warm elsewhere. But Festus will return, he knows, perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow. For whatever reason, he will return. And someday, perhaps, someday...

He stares at the candle-flame, and wonders which of them is madder in his ambition.