The Legend of Broken

them.”

At this, Sentek Gerfrehd almost seems to chuckle quietly, and he replies, “No, my lady. Any more than there is such glory to be had fighting alongside the Merchant Lord’s Personal Guard.”

“And so?” Isadora asks. Her boldness in speaking thus to a sentek of the regular army has made many of the terrified adults about her ashamed of their fear, and they begin to move forward to surround her and stand by their children.

“And so we will wait, my lady,” Sentek Gerfrehd calls. “For we take our orders, as you know, from the God- King, the Grand Layzin, and your husband, in such order. The merchants are not our masters.”

Isadora nods once, approvingly. “And so we, too, will wait, Sentek,” she says. “And see what actions your superiors force upon us.”

“It would seem we await the same things, then, my lady,” Gerfrehd replies.

“Indeed,” Isadora states; and with that, she nods and moves away from the wall, subtly leaning upon Dagobert for support, and offering as much encouragement to those around her as she can.

But that effort is mitigated by one question that will not leave her mind, as she walks back to her home, despite the fact that she cannot voice it to the citizens around her: yet as she looks above those citizens, above even the soldiers on the wall, and, soon, from the safety of her second-floor bedroom, toward the edge of Davon Wood, as it becomes faintly visible in the far distance, she murmurs:

“And what orders or signs will you, my husband, understand as offering the same evidence that matters are far from correct or well at home, and require your return to put them right …?”

{xi:}

Soon after ordering the city’s masons to work through the night to finish the work of sealing the Fifth District off from the rest of Broken by walling in the gateway at the head of the Path of Shame, Lord Baster-kin orders his litter to return to his Kastelgerd, while he and Radelfer journey humbly afoot to the High Temple. Radelfer waits without as his lordship enters the Sacristy, for it is here that Baster-kin must brief the Grand Layzin on the most recent developments concerning what are in fact his own and the Layzin’s plans for the seemingly ill-fated Fifth District: plans that represent the second part of a long-schemed strategy to reassert and ensure the kingdom of Broken’s strength in the years to come. (The Layzin is unaware of Baster-kin’s private intentions concerning Isadora Arnem, which the Merchant Lord considers every bit as important to the health of the state as the destruction of both the Bane and the Fifth District.)

The intelligence that the Merchant Lord brings to the Layzin is encouraging: the prospect of besieging the Fifth has brought out in his Guard an unexpected enthusiasm, if not discipline, particularly now that the regular army is in disarray, with its commander and elite troops gone and no standing orders from Sixt Arnem that might interfere with Baster-kin’s plots in place. The Guardsmen’s enthusiasm has been further enhanced by the Merchant Lord’s having revealed, prior to his departure from the Fifth District gate for the High Temple, a written order giving both the sealing of the wall and the ensuing siege of the district royal sanction, sanction demonstrated by the appearance of the God-King’s personal seal upon the document. And, now that he effectively controls all official correspondence flowing in and out of the city (including and especially Isadora Arnem’s), Baster-kin believes that no future orders contradicting this rare and extraordinary royal edict can or will be received by the commanders of the home khotors of the regular army; and they will therefore have no choice but to obediently (if, in some cases, less than enthusiastically) support the undertakings of Merchant Lord’s Guard. In the eastern provinces, meanwhile, the Talons will be at first weakened and then destroyed by the illness that is being carried down Broken’s mountain and toward the Meloderna, first by Killen’s Run, and then by the Cat’s Paw: an illness that Baster-kin believes he has coerced Isadora Arnem, by using the lives of her children as a weapon, into working with Kafran engineers to eradicate within the city, thereby eliminating it throughout the kingdom (although that eradication will, tragically, occur too late to change the fate of the Talons and their commander).

Thus, to hear Baster-kin tell it, this evening has been full of developments that offer hope to his kingdom, his ruler, and his faith — as well as to his clan, although this bit of triumphant news the Merchant Lord must continue to keep private. But open expression of any such triumph is unnecessary: the Merchant Lord has so much encouragement to offer the Grand Layzin, as he stands upon the latter’s dais in the Sacristy and explains in detail just what all the commotion within the city signifies for Broken’s royal retinue, as well as for its most eminent citizens, that he quickly assumes an almost heroic aspect, one that he feels he must temper:

“It had been my hope, Eminence,” Baster-kin ultimately declares, with false regret, “that if I gave Lady Arnem an honest account of how the pestilence that both she and we have discovered to be at work in the Fifth District, as well as locations as far east as Daurawah — a sickness that remains, almost certainly, the work of the Bane — she would urge her husband to return home at once, in order both to organize a defensive force to take the place of Sentek Gledgesa’s doomed Ninth Legion and to oversee the cleansing by fire of the Arnem family’s portion of the city. Yet such remains her strange allegiance to her district, as well as her bizarre apprehension that the priests of Kafra are purchasing or simply abducting its children, that she places the safety of its residents — for in truth, one could not call them citizens — above any concerns for her husband. To be frank, I believe that she has grown used to a position of power in the district, and will not surrender it until she is sharply reminded of what she owes to both the God-King and to Broken itself. In short, she can be brought back to a useful life, Eminence, of this I am certain, but not until she has been thus humbled.”

“And you are willing to undertake the task of forcibly returning her to the path of obedience and faith, my lord?” the Layzin says, removing the clasp that holds his golden hair at the back of his neck. “The God-King would not demand it of you, for you have already been tireless in stemming the waves of misfortune that have descended upon our people.”

“I suspected such royal and divine generosity, Eminence,” Baster-kin replies, working hard to keep his eagerness to “humble” Isadora Arnem from becoming plain. “Yet the woman is too important to this undertaking, she possesses too many strengths and gifts, to allow less than careful treatment — I know this from the experience I myself had with her as a youth. And so, I will undertake it. In the case of the Talons, however …” Baster-kin holds his arms aloft in seeming helplessness, piling deception upon deception. “Their laudable zeal to continue their campaign to destroy the Bane, despite my most recent warnings to Yantek Arnem of the newfound dangers they face — warnings that have still yet to be answered — confirm the tragic irony that they are men condemned by their own zeal. They will die soon, if they are not in fact dead already; and so, I believe we must look to our commanders within the city to train a new force for the East, and proceed with our plans to reward them, as well as any senior officers of my Guard who may distinguish themselves in the action to come, with new Kastelgerde and smaller homes within a rebuilt Fifth District.”

The Layzin passes a hand through his loose-flowing hair. “It seems that there is no problem to which you have not turned your considerable energy, my lord.”

For a moment, as he realizes he may achieve all for which he has long schemed, Baster-kin’s heart feels a passion it has done without for many years; yet he knows that, for the sake of those schemes, he must control such joy. “It is little enough, Eminence,” he says evenly. “Given the manner in which our God-King and his ancestors have always favored the clan Baster-Kin.”

“Perhaps so,” the Grand Layzin replies; and the softness of this response makes it seem as though his thoughts are distracted in some obscure manner. For an instant, Baster-kin fears this distraction may betray dubiousness, perhaps even a comprehension of his own shielded designs regarding Isadora Arnem. But the Layzin’s next statement lays such fears to rest: “Above all, we must ensure that any attempts at communication between the good Yantek Arnem and his wife are intercepted, for theirs is the sole partnership that might rouse truly popular following within the city and the kingdom.”

Baster-kin smiles just perceptibly: what he had taken for skepticism was in fact the Layzin’s tacit approval, as he could not have asked for an order more in keeping with his own plots. “Rest easy, in that regard, Eminence,” he says. “All correspondence of any kind is interrupted at the city gates by my agents — our control of all aspects of life within Broken is as complete as we could wish for.”

With these words, Baster-kin takes note of the sudden appearance of a Wife of Kafra from behind the