Oruzar was twenty years old and did not look it in any way that mattered.
He had the kind of face that had arrived at its permanent expression early — watchful, economical, the particular patience of someone who has learned that most situations resolve themselves if you don't make them worse, and that the trick is recognizing the ones that won't. He moved through the orphanage the way a structure moves through weather: not unaffected, but stable. The children orbited him without thinking about it. He let them, without making anything of it.
He was in the yard when Engan arrived at six, already crouched over a rifle disassembled on a cloth in the dust, hands moving through the components without looking at them. He did not look up.
"You're early," he said.
"I know."
"Vetrov told you seven."
"He did."
Oruzar checked the bolt. Set it down. Picked up the barrel.
"Most people who show up an hour early want something," he said.
"I want to learn."
"Everyone says that."
"I know," Engan said. "I mean it anyway."
A pause. Oruzar's hands kept moving. The barrel, the receiver, the trigger assembly — each one checked and set in its place on the cloth with the specific order of someone who has a system and follows it not from habit but from preference.
"Vetrov said you hit the wall on your third shot."
"I was aiming for where the bottle had been. It was already down."
"That's not what I asked."
"Third shot," Engan said. "Yes."
Oruzar assembled the last component. He lifted the rifle, checked the action, set it across his knees. Then he looked at Engan for the first time — the direct, unhurried assessment of someone who is good at reading people because he has had to be.
"Can you do it again?"
"Give me something to aim at."
Oruzar held his gaze for a moment. Then he reached into the bag beside him and came out with a single empty bottle. He set it on the far wall without measuring the distance. Further than yesterday.
He handed Engan the sling.
Engan loaded it. His hands were steady — steadier than they had any right to be, given that this felt like a test and he desperately did not want to fail it. He breathed. He fired.
The bottle rocked. Didn't fall.
He reached for the sling again without being asked. Loaded another stone. Breathed. Fired.
The bottle dropped.
Neither of them spoke. Oruzar took the sling back. He looked at the wall where the bottle had been.
"Second shot," he said.
"Yesterday I had no reference. Today I had one."
Oruzar looked at him again. Something shifted in his expression — not warmth exactly, something more useful than warmth, a quality of attention that meant he had decided this was worth his time.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Seven. We start with stance."
Engan nodded. He turned to go.
"Engan."
He stopped.
"The rifle on the cloth," Oruzar said. "Did you watch me put it together?"
"Yes."
"Which component did I check twice?"
A pause — not because Engan was unsure, but because he was making certain he'd read it right.
"The trigger assembly," he said. "And then the bolt, after you'd already set it down."
Oruzar said nothing. He picked up the rifle and turned it over in his hands. In the orphanage doorway, Vetrov appeared, still half-asleep, bread in one hand, watching the two of them in the yard with the expression of someone whose early morning had taken a turn he hadn't accounted for.
Oruzar spoke without turning. "Vetrov. Get a third chair for the table."
Vetrov looked at Engan. Engan looked at Vetrov. Something passed between them that didn't need language — the specific recognition of two people who have independently arrived at the same conclusion about each other and are only now finding out they were both right.
Vetrov disappeared back inside. The sound of a chair being dragged across the floor came through the open door.
Oruzar set the rifle down across his knees and looked at nothing in particular.
"Seven tomorrow," he said. "Don't be early."
Engan walked back toward the shack at the tree line. He sat at the table and thought about the trigger assembly and the bolt and why a man who knew exactly what he was doing would check the same thing twice. Shiro wasn't home yet. The fire had burned down to a low, patient heat.
The room was very still. The stillness had a quality he couldn't name — not peaceful exactly, more like held, like the moment before something tips.
Names were taken from the living. He didn't know where the thought came from. He let it go.
By the time Shiro came in from the morning's work, Engan had an answer about the bolt he thought might be right, and was already planning how to ask it without sounding like he was asking.