“Well, if you insist.” Clayton's voice was muffled by the asscheek that just jammed itself into his face.
His assailant promptly tore his pants and stuffed the cloth inside the hole. Clayton was cringing the whole time, certain he was going to die of blood poisoning later that day.
Then a warm, tingling feeling flooded through his leg, growing stronger and stronger until he was positive his leg was going to burst into flames. Just as he was about to speak his opinion on the matter, the feeling vanished, and his leg felt normal again.
His assailant got up. “There you go, dear, good as new.” She pushed back bushy, grey-streaked red hair to reveal a pleasant, weathered face. She had a pattern of small purple spots on her skin that began at her eyes and went into her hairline.
His assailant was a kirian—he had done a paper once on their race in school.
“What are you doing in this part of the world?” He couldn’t conceal the excitement in his voice as he asked, because his scholar's heart had kicked into overdrive. Kirians were almost exclusively found in Scandinavia. They claimed the weather wasn't quite right anywhere else.
“That's a story for another time, dear. Right now, we need your help.” The mystery kirian said in a no-nonsense tone.
“We?” Clayton looked around and saw two small, ragged figures huddled at the edge of the spell protecting the chapter house.
He shot to his feet. If the spell was keeping them out, they were probably hostile. Not only did it keep norms from noticing strange things happening at the chapter house, but it had protections woven into it that were the first layer of defense against attackers.
“Calm your britches down, boy. They're just scared of you. They haven't seen a lot of kindness in this world, so it makes them skittish meeting new people. Come here, dears. It's ok.” The woman motioned them forward. “Be nice to them, or I'll put that hole back where I found it,” she hissed.
Clayton gulped and tried to put on a friendly face. It only wobbled a bit at the edges. The ragged figures came forward slowly. The smaller one was a little braver, so he made it to Clayton first.
“Are you really a Guardian?” Enormous blue-green eyes peeped solemnly out of a tangled mess of black hair. The boy couldn't have been more than four years old.
Something inside Clayton's heart twisted, and he got down on his knees so his face would be level with the boy’s. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
Sort of. He had gone through all the necessary training and was support staff for the best guardians in the Guard, so even though he’d never had any field experience, he figured that was close enough to make no difference to a child.
“We're safe then?” The second, larger figure had reached them. She had a matching set of blue-green eyes and tousled black hair. “Everyone says the guardians are the best.”
“Of course you're safe.” Clayton used what he hoped was a comforting and commanding voice. He reached out to ruffle the girl's hair and got his hand trapped in something sticky andgreen. Slowly extricating himself, he asked, “What can I do for you?”
“Someone keeps stealing our toys.”
Chapter
Two
CLAYTON
When Clayton dreamed of his first field assignment, it hadn’t involved rats or garbage. Or that godawful smell. What the hell was it?
“It's like someone vomited on a large pile of dead rats.” Had he said that out loud?
The kirian, whose name he had learned was Eira, snorted. “Home sweet home, pretty boy. I hope those shoes don't leak.”
They did. Farewell, socks.
As they plodded through what felt like miles of abandoned subway tunnels, Clayton learned more about his first self-appointed mission. Tommy, the little boy, had started noticing his things were going missing. It had started with his Bun Bun and moved to his socks and his underpants. Merry, his oldersister, had thought he was telling fibs to make up for losing his belongings until she started missing things too.
“After a few days, we found out that many of the people in our town were missing things, but only people who lived near me and Tommy. We came to Eira for help,” Merry said as she sidestepped a pile of something nasty without even looking. She had clearly lived in Boston Below for a while.
“She's the smartest person we know,” Tommy piped in with a great sense of importance.
“And she took us to you.” Merry ignored her brother's interruption. “What are you going to do?”
“Well…” Clayton drew out the word with relish. He wasn’t used to having people treat him like a guardian. It wasn’t half bad. “First, I have to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Talk to people, knock some skulls together, you know, guardian-type things.” Clayton had no idea what he would do, but for a simple thievery case, he was sure he'd come up with something.
“Town is just around this bend,” Eira said, waving down the tunnel ahead.
