The Legend of Broken

went, I fear, beyond the power of men to either create, or to control. And so we determined that we must keep the situation exactly as we have periodically found it — spring is usually the most common time — until we determined whether or not we could persuade someone of greater consequence than ourselves to inspect it. My lady’s visit here was by chance; but then, Kafra be praised, you agreed in short order to accompany her back!”

Baster-kin looks up and down the alley with an uncertain expression, as he follows the aged veteran. “I fear you confound me, Kriksex,” Baster-kin answers.

“The smell tells much of the tale, my lord,” he says. “But if you will only follow me to the southwest wall, I believe the peculiarity will become apparent quickly enough. It will be preceded by a worsening of that same stench, in all likelihood, one noticeable above even the usually delightful aromas of the Fifth.”

Baster-kin takes a deep breath, holding his forearm out to Lady Arnem once again. “My lady? May I assist you, as we follow this good man, that I may see what the difficulty is?”

“Your attention is much appreciated, my lord,” Isadora answers, placing her hand upon his lordship’s arm; she signals to Dagobert, who steps forward and moves on his mother’s free side further down the alleyway and through the lines of veteran soldiers, each of whom salute in turn.

Kriksex maintains the lead of the guard detail that surrounds the three important visitors, and he often turns to watch the intrepid Lady Arnem with his same smile, no less genuine for its lack of teeth. As the moments mount, however, he seems to find some emotion uncontainable, and he lags back a few feet to whisper toward Lord Baster-kin’s left ear: “Is she not a fit lady for Sentek Arnem, my lord? Fearless!”

Baster-kin nods, making his way into the deeper darkness. “Indeed, Kriksex,” he agrees, in an equally quiet voice that Lady Arnem — who is increasingly engaged by those she passes by, despite young Dabobert’s attempts to keep her way clear — cannot overhear. “A finer woman could not be found in all of Broken. But, for now — to the business at hand. For, unless I am losing both my sense of smell and my mind”—the noble nose wrinkles, and a sour expression consumes the face—“Something — perhaps many things — seem to have died, hereabouts …”

“Aye, Lord — many things, if we judge by that stench,” Kriksex says. “And yet you will find neither rot nor offal to explain it; only a seemingly ordinary, even innocent source …”

It takes but a few minutes to reach the southwest wall of the city; but before the interlopers have done so, Lord Baster-kin’s disgust only grows. “Kafra’s great holiness. You say there are no dead bodies in this area?”

“Several citizens have died in recent days,” Kriksex replies. “But they are not the source of it, for their bodies were burned by the district priest, according to all proper rites and methods, eliminating their remains as a cause. Young, they have been, most of them, as have been the others who have recently died in the district.” Lord Baster-kin casts a quick glance at Isadora; for he knows that the rose fever attacks the young before all others. “A terrible pity and waste, it has all been,” Kriksex continues. “But no, my lord — what you smell is a more inexplicable thing, and yet still, the cause will appear simple enough — nothing more than a small stream of water.”

Yet that seemingly innocent statement is enough to make Baster-kin pause for a moment. “But there is no water that flows above ground in the city — even the gutters that empty into the sewers are moved by collected rain. Oxmontrot saw to as much, to keep his people safe from the evils that open water of unknown origin can bring.”

“Just so, my lord,” says Isadora, who by now is standing on the pathway that runs at the base of the massive wall. From somewhere behind Baster-kin, a group of torches seem to simply appear, carried by Kriksex’s men, and they light the scored city wall, as well as the pathway beneath it; and when the noble Lord Baster-kin turns, he sees that by now every alley and nook, every window and rooftop of any house that offers any kind of a view of what is happening in this place has filled with the faces and jostling bodies and heads of curious citizens of the neighborhood, who must, by now, have heard who their visitors are. This eerie scene is, for a man such as Baster-kin, a glimpse into another world, almost into the mouth of Hel itself, and he has no wish to prolong it any more than he need do.

“Lady Arnem?” he calls out, in a somewhat unnerved voice, turning to notice that she has seemingly disappeared. “Lady — Linnet Kriksex!” the Merchant Lord demands, and Kriksex immediately lends him guiding aid:

“My lady is farther up along the wall and the stream, my lord,” the hobbling soldier says, appearing as from the darkness and pointing. “In the same area that interested her when first she came here, where the water first appears.”

Baster-kin nods, hurrying along to where Lady Arnem crouches. There, a delicate trickle of odoriferous water does, indeed, seem to spring from the base of the massive city wall itself: a trickle that soon grows, and that should, according to Oxmontrot’s plans for the city, have been intercepted and fed into the underground sewer system long before it ever reached this open spot. It appears to run some hundred or hundred and fifty yards, hugging tight to the wall, until it finally disappears as suddenly and inexplicably as it now bubbles up beneath the lord and lady.

“How can this be?” Baster-kin asks incredulously.

“I have been puzzling with that since being shown it,” Lady Arnem says, inspiring his lordship’s momentary admiration — for he had truly believed that her ends in this journey had only to do with her husband and her second son’s service in the House of the Wives of Kafra. Now, however, it would appear that patriotism numbers among her motives. “And yet,” she continues, “its appearance is not the most disturbing part of the matter.”

“No, my lady?” he says, mystified.

“No, my lord,” she replies, shaking her head. “There is this matter of its coming and going, especially during the rains. And there is also this …” With which, she opens her hand, and holds it up to the torchlight.

The Merchant Lord sees several objects that have an all too familiar appearance; and, looking behind him to see the same crowding faces and bodies, Lord Baster-kin places himself between Lady Arnem and the citizens, holding his elbows square so that his cloak drapes her revelation.

Isadora notes this movement with satisfaction — his worry is real indeed.

“Are those …?” His lordship begins to ask the question, but he cannot finish it: whether out of worry over the crowd or his own concern over what she holds, Isadora cannot say.

“Bones,” she replies, in a pointed whisper. “Taken from the bed of this — whatever it may be, stream, spring, or something wholly new.”

“Yet — so small,” Baster-kin says with a nod. “What variety of bones, then, my lady? Have you been able to determine? Some seem not even human—”

“And they are not.”

“Yet others — they would seem—”

“Almost from a Bane, a few of them,” she says. “And yet they are not.”

“No?”

“No. They originated with our own people’s children; such bones are far different than those of grown Bane men and women. And there are these, here,” she continues. “The several that are not human — first, the bones of small but powerful forest cats: again, not young panthers, but their adult cousins, the Davon wildcats. These others, however, are simply the smaller bones of the larger panthers.”

“Lethal Davon cats, all,” Baster-kin nods. “And you believe all the bones came from this running ditch?”

“I know it,” Isadora replies. “For you may find more, if you wish, by digging deeper. The more you do so, in fact, the more you will discover. Yet these objects certainly do not originate here — nor does the water. We have the opinions of the residents as to where they may come from, but the accounts conflict, and the source of each will swear to the accuracy of his or hers, no doubt expecting to gain some small favor — wine, silver, food, anything — for in many households, you will find small mouths to be fed, as we have just encountered in young Berthe’s. And yet those children shall not linger in such houses long — for their parents are also, like the stricken Emalrec, only too ready to sell them, and far too hopeful of doing so.”

“Sell them?” Baster-kin echoes, in some disbelief, yet remembering who it is that speaks, and knowing her reliability.

“Indeed, my lord. A grave crime that has been regularly committed.” Isadora begins to walk slowly along the bank of the strange little streambed that she has been investigating, dropping the bones she holds, and then