The Legend of Broken

preached habits of personal and public cleanliness — if you will remember, my mistress and tutor was wont to speak of them, during our time together, by the name the Mad King originally gave them: heigenkeit.† Yet how could the Mad King”—and here Isadora ventures to actually touch Baster-kin’s gloved hand and laugh lightly for effect, seeing that she is drawing her companion in—“particularly as he was, for all his wisdom, apparently going mad even then — how could he have known that what were, in his time, necessary and rigorous policies, such as the creation of the Fifth District for his aged and injured soldiers and laborers, would one day become of far less concern to his heirs? Heirs who, having become divine and removed to the inviolable safety and sanctity of the Inner City, were forced to depend all the more on advisors, too many of whom — unlike yourself — were district officials and citizens with less than sound or honest ends in mind, and who thereby helped to create, unintentionally, of course, this — this disgrace that we see about us now?”

“Admirably expressed, Lady Arnem,” Baster-kin says, turning to look again on the street about him, so that his true enthusiasm for both the thoughts and their speaker will not become obvious in his face. “I doubt if I could have put the matter any better, myself.” At that, he searches their immediate surroundings again, as if suddenly more surprised by their appearance than he is by Lady Arnem’s thoughts. “By Kafra,” he murmurs, “I do believe that this neighborhood is actually taking on an even more dismal aspect …”

Dissatisfied to see and hear that her brief outburst of opinion and feeling has apparently had so little effect, Isadora also looks outside: Is it possible, she thinks, that he truly has lost the deep, the consuming affection that he had for me, however childish, when he was but a youth? For, ironically, much as she had once feared that boyish and diseased form of devotion — a sickness that Gisa had called obsese†—she had been depending upon some part of it still being alive, in order for her plan of this evening to succeed. But she remains calm, knowing that she has another stratagem in mind with which to achieve the same goal.

{viii:}

The two litters stop before what is undoubtedly the worst of several abominable houses on a block of the street lying in closest proximity to the southwest wall. Baster-kin’s imperious bearing upon stepping out and into the midst of the human traffic that fills the neighborhood about them cannot help but suffer some small diminishment, as soot-encrusted groups of residents and indigents immediately begin to gather about his own and Lady Arnem’s litters; but the quick drawing of no less than eight well-oiled blades, ranging from the shortest (Dagobert’s marauder blade) to the imposing length of Radelfer’s raider sword, soon persuade these crowds to, if not disappear, at least to move farther off. It is with some sense of quickened purpose that Isadora, Dagobert, Lord Baster-kin, and Radelfer’s guards head toward the miserable hovel that can scarcely be called a house, while the bulger guards remain behind to protect the litters.

So strange has been, first, the ghostly gathering round of the neighborhood’s residents, and then their sudden dispersal, that those in the visiting party who have not yet been to the neighborhood are visibly shocked when a ravenous, maddened hound bursts forth from behind a large piece of half-burnt, unidentifiable wooden furniture that had simply been flung from the house into the yard before it at some past date. The beast bares its enormous teeth while hurtling toward one of the shorter of Radelfer’s men, its bestial and unending threats, along with its scarred but pronounced muscles, momentarily creating the impression that the chain by which he is secured will give way; an impression that causes more than one guard to raise his blade.

“Do not!” comes Baster-kin’s sharp order; but this stay is ordered only when it has become clear that the chain will not in fact break, strong as the animal may be. “Are you children, that you need a good Broken short- sword to fend off a chained dog?” Baster-kin angrily asks Radelfer’s men, and Isadora is gratified to see that the question is not posed to impress her, but is in fact a genuine sentiment. The scarred beast retreats and grows calmer when Isadora tosses him a bit of dried beef she has brought for the purpose; and she then urges the men behind her through the front doorway of the house, after having taken hold of the table that blocks it.

“Spare yourself, my lady,” Radelfer says, deftly stepping in front of her. A hint of his youthful strength, which must have been considerable, is offered by the manner in which he effortlessly picks the heavy, unwieldy slab of wood from the ground and quickly shifts it to one side. “I meant no insult,” Radelfer adds with a smile, remembering that the young Isadora was always loath to have men perform tasks for her that she was capable of undertaking, herself. “But I must precede my master into this dwelling, as it is, so why not make one task of two?”

Isadora does no more than nod proudly to this logic, casting his action in a different light: “You at least speed our visit, Radelfer — in a neighborhood such as this, to be remarked upon is unremarkable: the silence now surrounding us shows that many are waiting to discover our purpose, and if we can achieve it and be away before they have gathered again, all the better.” The group forms four parties — Radelfer and two of his household guard to the fore, Isadora, Lord Baster-kin, and a proud Dagobert next, and finally, Radelfer’s last two men, their eyes ever on what and who follows behind.

The squalor within is no great shock to Isadora, who long ago grew used to such sights, during her childhood with her parents and Gisa. The hovel’s floor is granite strewn with Earth and dust; a sack filled with hay evidently does for a bed for some five terrified children across the chamber, while the sack before the fire is occupied by their ailing father, with the oldest of the children using a filthy, moistened cloth to wipe at his forehead. The woman who lives there, Berthe, quickly rushes to Isadora, terrified by the sight of the men around her, and most especially by the gaze of Lord Baster-kin, which has gone harder, not softer, at the unpleasant sight of these impoverished surroundings.

“Apologies, my lady,” Berthe whispers. “I had intended to try to order affairs here at least somewhat less offensively—”

“Lady Arnem — what is it that you have brought me here to see?” Baster-kin asks imperiously. “For I am acquainted with failure and disgrace, in nearly all their forms.”

Isadora gives Berthe a sympathetic smile and clutch of one arm, then urges her back to her husband’s side. As the woman goes, Isadora turns a gaze to match Rendulic Baster-kin’s own on him. “Such harshness is hardly necessary, my lord, given the circumstances that are plain enough, here.”

Berthe has returned to the duty of wiping her husband Emalrec’s feverish brow. He gives off the powerful stenches of rotted teeth and food, human waste, and sweat; but none of this slows Isadora, who urges the Merchant Lord on. “Come then, in the interest of the kingdom, if no other,” she says, at which Baster-kin covers the lower portion of his face once more with the edge of his cloak, and watches as Isadora pulls away the light, filthy shirt that covers the groaning Emalrec’s neck and trunk, just enough to reveal his chest. “It is all right, Berthe,” Isadora says, seeing that the woman’s terror has only grown. “These men will do him no harm, I promise you …” Picking up the barest end of a candle that is seated in a shard of pottery nearby, Isadora indicates the patient’s exposed skin to Lord Baster-kin—

And he need see no more. Not wishing to spread his concern about the house or the neighborhood, he urges Isadora toward the back of the next room, and even manages a smile for the huddled, filthy children, as he passes them by to a rear entryway. Further along, there is a small square outside, a long-lifeless patch of Earth shared by three houses. A latrine — its walls long since fallen away, and its four-holed granite bench concealed, now, only by near-useless curtains suspended from similarly degraded ropes and poles — stands in the center of this yard, the holes in the bench leading directly down to the city’s sewer system.

Dismal as this picture is, however, Lord Baster-kin’s mind is still fixed on what he saw in the room. “I do not pretend to be an expert such as yourself, Lady Arnem,” he says quietly, not even wishing his household guards to hear the words. “But, unless I am a badly mistaken, that man is stricken with the rose fever.”

“You are remarkably well informed,” Isadora answers. “Not many could detect its markings so accurately — or so quickly.”

“Thank you; but returning to the illness—” Baster-kin’s face is now a mask of pure responsibility. “It spreads among people, particularly in areas lived in by such large numbers of people, as fast as the Death, even if more survive it than do that worst of all illnesses.”

“Quite true,” Isadora answers, now becoming a little coy: a dangerous game to play, at a moment such as