Shattered Shields - eARC by Jennifer Brozek, Bryan Thomas Schmidt

heard stories about what the Protectors of the Law were capable of. “The Protectors are only men, Baldev. They’re only men.”
    * * *
    “You are wrong.”
    Keta woke up with a start. He sat up in the straw, and his first instinct was to move his hands about to make sure no one had stolen his belongings or the meager amount of food he had stashed. It took him a moment to regain enough sense to understand that it was very late, and the bunkhouse was too quiet. The snoring, grunting, and farting of the packed in bodies seemed muted, like his ears were plugged. But he’d heard a voice. Keta looked around and flinched as he realized somebody was sitting in the straw behind him, only a few feet away.
    “The Protectors are more than men now. It is best to think of them as a one man army, or perhaps a one-man inquisition. They are warrior monks of the highest caste, whose bodies and minds have been broken by hardship and reformed by magic, and if one of them is trying to kill you, then you will more than likely die.”
    Keta slowly put one hand on the handle of his cleaver. Squinting, he tried to make out the visitor’s features in the dark. The stranger was very old, probably forty years at least, thin even by casteless standards, and dressed in fabric made of the coarse woven fibers common to one of their station. “Who’re you?”
    “Someone who has been listening to your plotting and been rather amused by it. Our people were thrown down forty generations ago. Do you really think in all those years you are the first who has thought he could destroy the Law?”
    “Quiet!” Keta hissed. The old man wasn’t even whispering. He scanned the room, but everyone appeared to be asleep. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
    “You are doing a fine job of that without any help from me. Besides, none of them can hear us. We may speak freely.”
    Keta snorted. “What? Are you supposed to be a wizard or something?”
    “Yes, Keta the butcher, something like that. I am the Ratul, Keeper of Names, and I have come to help you shake the foundations of the world.”
    * * *
    Keta did not speak of the strange visitor to anyone, especially his fellow conspirators. They would’ve either thought he was mad, or that it was some sort of elaborate ploy to expose them. But a Keeper of Names? They were a tale that casteless mothers would tell their children to give them enough hope to sleep at night. Even talking of the Forgotten’s clergy was a violation of the Law. Only a babbling madman would claim to be one. Yet, Keta had to know the truth.
    The next night he waited for everyone assigned to his shack to fall asleep before sneaking out the back window. His sandals didn’t make much noise on the grass. There were so few warriors here that he wasn’t worried about being seen, but even if he was, he’d never been caught violating curfew before and more than likely could plead his way out of it by saying that he was going to visit one of the women assigned to a different shack. He’d probably only get a beating to show for it at worst. As much as the higher castes would never admit it, Keta suspected he was far too valuable at his duties to start chopping his limbs off for such a minor infraction. He did the work of a butcher and a storekeeper, and it would take far too long to teach another casteless to read the inventory ledgers.
    The tide was high. The surf was crashing against the black rocks. Ratul was waiting for him there.
    The madman did not turn to look as Keta approached. “Did you know that in the days before the sky opened and the demons fell from the heavens, that man actually moved across the waters in great vessels?”
    “That’s foolishness.” The ocean was pure evil. There were only two things to be found in the ocean: death and fish. And fish were only good to feed to the casteless, as whole men would never touch something tainted by unclean salt water. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”
    “Because we are not