The Legend of Broken

“I never said as much,” Isadora replies. “But I have sent dispatches to my husband that indicate the state of affairs in this city, and, when he returns to us, not only the Talons, but the whole of the Broken army — of which you have placed him in charge — will be more than enough to rescue the fate of the Fifth District.”

“It would be,” the Merchant Lord agrees. “It is perhaps unfortunate, therefore, that by the time he returns, the Fifth District will no longer exist, at least in its present form, while its residents will either have fled the city or have been killed.” Baster-kin pulls his gauntlets from his hands with deceptive lack of concern. “That is, of course, assuming that your husband ever does return to the mountaintop.”

Isadora’s face goes helplessly pale; for she has known for most of her life that this is not a man who gives voice to idle threats. “Ever does return …?” she echoes, before she has had time to select her words more carefully. “Has my lord heard of some misfortune that has befallen the Talons in the field?”

“I may have,” Baster-kin replies, moving closer to her as he senses his ploy is succeeding. “But first, consider this: without your husband — who may, for all any of us know, be dead already — the Talons will not act against the God-King and his city; and without the Talons, the regular army will make no attempt to similarly intervene against the destruction of any part of their homeland. Then, failing any such intervention, the Fifth District will be cleansed by fire, and remade as a fit home for truly loyal citizens of Broken, citizens willing to give their wholehearted devotion to the God-King.”

Isadora’s sudden uncertainty consumes her for a long moment; but then she almost forces her confidence to return, in just the manner that her former mistress, Gisa, would have exhorted her to do: “My lord — you know full well the nature of plague. Whether it comes from a god or from man’s poison, from the Bane or from the mountain itself — for who knows what other cracks in its stone summit have appeared or shifted, over the years? — such pestilence can and must spread, if treated only through ignorance and superstition, as it will be, should you leave it attended to by Kafran healers alone.”

“Any other healers, particularly in the Fifth District, being somehow beholden to you,” Baster-kin replies. “There is no reason to deny it, Lady Arnem, my own inquiries have proved as much, over these last many weeks. But this is no reason for you to concern yourself.” To Isadora’s repeated look of silent consternation, the Merchant Lord delightedly takes a few steps forward, and places her hand upon his own. “You and your children need feel in no danger. I shall personally take you out of the district, and offer you shelter in the Kastelgerd Baster-kin. As time passes, the memory of this place, like your memory of your husband and your children’s memory of their father, will fade, and you shall envision a new future, a future devoid of squalor, poverty, and all the other ills of this place.”

Isadora nods slowly. “A future much like the one you imagined for us long ago, when I attended to your megrem in your family’s lodge at the base of the mountain; but now your father is no longer alive to object to the scheme, nor has Radelfer the power to prevent it.”

“Do not think me so entirely selfish, my lady,” Baster-kin replies; and there is a note of genuineness in his voice that even Isadora cannot deny. He places his second hand atop the one of hers that rests on his first. “I know how information travels among communities of healers in this city; I know that you must be aware of the … shortcomings of my own sons, and of their origins. Do not deny it, I beg you. But neither you nor I are past the age of bearing new children. Children who could take the name of Baster-kin, and bear it into another generation — a generation during which they could ensure the continued greatness of my clan, by assuming the leadership of this city and kingdom.”

Isadora shakes her head slowly, then finally whispers, “You are mad, my lord …”

Remarkably, Baster-kin only smiles. “Yes. I anticipated such a response from you, initially; but when the fires begin to blaze in the district, and when word comes of spreading disease among the Talons, and the citizens of these neighborhoods begin to either die or flee — will I seem so mad, then? When the safety of your children is at terrible risk, and you have but one way to save them — will this plan seem like such lunacy to you?”

Instinctively drawing her hand back in a sudden tug, Isadora looks at the man who, she suddenly realizes, is indeed still very much the boy she once treated for a crippling, maddening illness; and she shakes with the realization, not that his mind may be disordered, but that his power and his strange logic may make him frighteningly correct. “Your entire premise proceeds from two assumptions, my lord,” she says, not so haughtily as she would like to. “First, that my husband will, in fact, die—”

“Or may be dead already,” Baster-kin replies.

“And second,” Isadora continues, a deep shudder making itself visible in her body, much to the Merchant Lord’s satisfaction, “that the disease that is making itself manifest in the strangely recurrent stream of water at the base of the southwestern wall will suddenly and simply disappear.”

“As it will,” Baster-kin answers confidently. “For you yourself have told me that you know the secret to making it thus disappear. And make it vanish you shall — shall, that is, if you wish your children and yourself to escape the inferno that will soon engulf this district.”

And with another shudder of recognition, Isadora realizes that she has been, at least for the moment, outwitted, and that Rendulic Baster-kin has at long last gained the upper hand he longed for as a youth.

“None of these are propositions or notions that you can attempt to address now, my lady,” Baster-kin says, turning to signal the very curious Radelfer, and ordering him to bring the litter they arrived in to the spot where he stands. “And so, wait. We have both, it seems, cast our dice on gambits of extraordinary stakes — results over the next few days, or even weeks, alone will allow us, and particularly you, to come to any heartfelt decisions. Bearing that in mind”—as his litter bearers and his seneschal rush to where he stands, Baster-kin notices a new, stronger element of doubt creeping into Isadora’s features—“we shall, indeed, wait …” Pulling back the curtains of his litter, Rendulic smiles in a manner that Isadora has not seen since he was a youth. “But as you wait, think of this — your husband is a great soldier, who was perhaps always destined to die in the field, one day, campaigning against Broken’s enemies. And, should that death have already come, or were it to come now, would you truly have wished or wish now that your children perish amid what is a necessary and unstoppable change within this city? Is your loyalty to the squalor where you spent your own childhood really so extreme that you would allow that? I leave you with those questions, my lady — and with a quick demonstration, soon to come, of the God-King’s deep commitment to not only remaking Davon Wood, but to restructuring the Fifth District. My thanks for your guidance, and for your explanation of what is, I have no doubt, causing the deaths within the city walls.” He turns to his seneschal, who had expected that, by now, his master would be overcome by frustration, rather than strangely calm, even serene. “We go,” Baster-kin declares. “And Radelfer will maintain contact with you, my lady, in the event that you should require anything during the days to come — although that contact will have to be initiated, of course, by way of the city walls.”

“The city walls …?” Isadora says, increasingly confused.

“My meaning will become clear very soon,” the Merchant Lord replies. “Good night, my lady.” Baster-kin then vanishes into his litter, leaving Isadora none of the defiant — almost naively defiant, it seems now — satisfaction that she had thought the statements with which she had first presented her onetime patient would bring.

Radelfer turns to Isadora briefly, as confounded as she that he finds no expression of quiet triumph upon her face. Although he cannot say the words aloud, being too close to his lordly master, Radelfer would ask Isadora why this is so: why do her features not reflect the same expression that he had already perceived in Kriksex’s, the silent pledge that, When next we meet, we shall be on the same side of the storm that rises …?

Given this strange aspect upon Lady Arnem’s face, when Radelfer turns and sees Kriksex offering a final and distant salute of comradeship, the seneschal, suspecting that the kind of devious manipulation of which he knows Rendulic Baster-kin to be a master is at work, can only return the gesture half-heartedly. Then he suddenly begins to bark harsh orders at his household guards, who move at a near-run in order to get their master safely back out of the squalor of the Fifth District. But the seneschal does not move so quickly that he fails to notice that Kriksex’s men keep their blades drawn, as the Merchant Lord’s party passes: suspicion yet reigns — indeed, has been heightened — between the two groups of veterans, although neither can say why …

“And so, my lord,” Radelfer murmurs quietly, attempting a gambit of his own, “did my Lady Isadora fulfill your expectations?”

“Not yet,” comes Baster-kin’s surprisingly friendly reply. “But she is close.”

“Indeed, my lord?” Radelfer answers quickly. “Close to abandoning both the district of her birth and the