Parts of what they do make sense to them.
They assume what feels silly is really smart, but they don’t waste the effort trying to piece together the obscure logic.
These strong men and very strong women are the result of a long, careful search. Each was born and raised in the Corona District, although their parents might have been born elsewhere. They have unblemished service records and no secrets left to uncover, and by most standards, they are neither political nor religious people. But the most important quality shared by each is a supreme, nearly superhuman capacity to avoid opinions about that one strange boy.
The guards’ identities are supposed to be confidential, but the District isn’t large enough for anonymity, particularly when the subject proves so fascinating. Every guard faces moments when a cousin or childhood buddy or that pretty woman on the stool beside him asks questions.
Simple questions are easy to deflect, and rare.
Everybody knows quite a lot about the boy already. Four magical creatures were rescued from the belly of the ancient corona, but despite his odd proportions and the curly hair and a nose that looks tiny against his very peculiar face, Diamond seems to be some kind of person. He certainly looks more like the guards than he looks like the papio. But his unique birth and curious appearance aren’t half as fascinating as his freakish, unnatural capacity to heal.
That’s what people ask about when they think they have permission.
“How fast does he heal?” they want to know.
“Have you ever seen him badly injured?” they inquire, hoping for stories of carnage and rebirth.
“Is it true?” they ask. “Can the creature cut off his own hand and then push it back on the wrist, and the hand reattaches in one or two recitations?”
No guard earns his pay by answering the wrong people’s questions. But if they told the truth, their audiences would be disappointed, probably dismissing the answers as lies. Diamond rarely suffers anything worse than scrapes or splinters. Four hundred days of shadowing the child has produced remarkably few tales about weathering injuries or other mayhem. And there haven’t been a dozen incidents where somebody had to brandish a pistol or wrestle some troublemaker to the floor.
Maybe the guards aren’t necessary. It’s possible that there aren’t any dangers looming over Diamond. But every person likes to believe that he or she is doing important work, and that’s why the guards see their own work as being instrumental, nobody else doing half as much to keep the client safe.
“And who are you protecting him from?” civilians might ask.
But everyone knows the answers. The world is the upper half of the Creation, and there can be nothing else. Old faiths are the most enduring, and every old faith, human or papio, claim that the walls of this world are its ends. Certain people whisper and grumble. They say that these strange entities—the four children of the corona—are abominations. Guards know that whispers often turn into action. Except this boy acts nicer than most boys, and he seems utterly harmless. Inside his home district, Diamond’s presence is usually taken as a blessing, and maybe he is a great blessing, just as their Archon says.
Trapped inside the corona’s stomach, the children weren’t dead and they weren’t alive. Rumors claim that the papio took possession of the biggest prize, but rumors are liquid, hard to hold and never the same shape twice. No authoritative eye has witnessed anything that casts a shadow. Of course it can be assumed that the papio are plotting to steal the most human child. But complicating the problems is a different mess of rumors about a secretive monster that lives in the wilderness, hiding between the old forests and the reef. If that monster exists, then one has to wonder if it will slip into the District some day or some night, aiming to steal away its one-time sibling. What the guards can’t dismiss, they have to believe. And then there’s Diamond’s famous brother who lives at the very center of the world, in the palace with the Archon of Archons. Except for having arms and legs and one head set on top of a giant body, that monster barely resembles humans or the boy or even the biggest papio. That powerful creature is covered with armored scales and bright sharp spikes, and he has two mouths and a burly temper, and he happily wears the name King, which is an ominous old word.
Every guard appreciates that List, the Archon of Archons, is ambitious and unnaturally shrewd, cultivating the talents of his adoptive son while no doubt wishing to steal Diamond away, earning him a special place on the chart of worries.
No matter how much is known, a great deal is mystery. No opinion should feel like steel. But Diamond has been tested by doctors and scientists. Blood and hair and his skin have been studied with every available tool, and according to the smartest gossip, he is surely the most human among the four.
This intrigues the average citizen more than anything else.
Yes, the boy seems indestructible. But his magic blood looks and tastes like ordinary blood. Under a microscope, his skin is indistinguishable from human flesh. Tree-walkers and the papio have very similar bones, varying a little in shape in shape and size, and it’s the same with Diamond. Every human is assembled according to the same orderly rules. What’s more, Diamond’s voice and most of his manners are familiar enough, and if you didn’t see his odd face, you might think that you were talking to any child.
Unknown beasts and the armored King can make the public marvel only to a point. Similarities are what make Diamond the biggest wonder among the corona’s children, giving rise to dreams and endless and nearly crazy speculations.
Guards should never discuss their duties or observations with the world outside. But in their own realm, when two or five or ten of them are together in the same private room, they’ll trade stories about the boy and his odd ways and the monkey nobody likes and the school where Diamond pretends to be normal. Drinks help the guards share frank opinions about the boy’s friends and his teacher and those old people who pretend to be his parents. Then one of the guards, usually someone who has been off-duty for a few days, will turn to the others, and with a quiet, careful voice, he or she will ask what matters beyond everything else:
“Are his whiskers coming in?
“Is he losing that little kid voice?
“Any sign, anywhere, that his seeds are trying to move?”
Diamond’s parents work to immerse their son inside a happy, half-normal life. The boy has friends and routines that include attending the local school with only minimal precautions in place. Bright children deserve the best teachers, and the boy has a genuine Master named Nissim—a one-time butcher and scientific scholar brought to the Corona District through some fusion of fate and odd opinions.
In principle, Diamond is free to travel anywhere inside the local District, but always accompanied by his guards. Calibrated intrigues try to deflect the uncounted, mostly invisible enemies. Meanwhile, important people have traveled across the world just to shake his hot hand and match his white smile. List has visited the boy several times, usually for important civic events, bringing that odd shrill voice to make apologies for deeds that might be regretted and disasters that were misunderstood. He even brought his monster son for the last visit, which meant that ten guards were stationed in the same room, each hoping for the excuse to shoot King, leaving him temporarily dead. But the armored creature said nothing except polite words, and King left without challenging his brother, not with either mouth or a single one of his armored fingers.
The local Archon has always been the boy’s great champion. Prima was adored long before this wonder-child fell into her lap. No other Archon could have handled her citizens with the same graceful ease.